[Hey, sorry for the break, but I had some writer's block to deal with. But then I thought of this idea, and I guess I'm over it! Yay!
I'm sorry that this is so long, but I didn't quite know how to split it up. Enjoy!]
Stephen King wrote, "We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones."
Garcia knows she doesn't have to stay. She knows that once the teams en route, her job is done. Yet never, ever, in her seven years of working there, has she left. Always, she waits until they catch the killer - or don't. She waits for the reassuring call from Morgan, the one that lets her know that everyone's alright – that they survived the day. When he finally confirms this, when he tells her to go home and get some rest, that he'll see her tomorrow; that's when she can bring herself to leave.
Only after she talks to him does she let out the breath that she's been holding all day and get up slowly, turning off all her computers one by one. Only then does she turn out the lights in her office and head out, looking back into the place that had become more than her home.
She used to walk home, during her first years here. Her apartment's only two blocks away, anyway. But then there was a case of a killer that hunted women in the dark and victims that never really recovered and terrible pictures of mangled bodies – lets just say walking lost it's appeal. So now she drives, even though she feels the fresh air would be much better for her anyway.
Sometimes, when she gets to the parking lot, she makes a few circles around her building, with some hope of shaking off the days events. Even though it never happens, she always tries to get the images that she sees out of her head. She doesn't want to bring that home to Kevin – he needs to see her happy.
Yet as hard as she tries, as many laps as she drives aimlessly around, everything's still always fresh in her mind when she stands outside her place. So she opens the door quietly, careful not to rouse a possibly sleeping Kevin. He tries to wait up, he really does, but she doesn't blame him for giving in sometimes. She's thankful that he tries, at least. With this job, not many people would.
She hangs up her coat and takes off the outfit of the day, wiping her make-up off in the process. Then she tiptoes into the dark bedroom where he's sleeping and curls up around him, taking deep breaths.
Sometimes, she just needs comfort. She doesn't want to tease or joke or flirt once she's home. All that's a coping mechanism for while she's working, but when she gets home, she rarely wants to talk at all. She just wants the feeling of another body curled around hers, of another heart beating in rhythm to her own. She wants to forget the day, and she wants to feel loved.
So she does. She falls asleep in his arms and somehow wipes all of the horrors from her mind, so that, miraculously, she wakes up the next morning ready to tackle another day.
~CM~
Hotch is always the first one off the jet. As soon as the last shred of paperwork's turned in, he's rushing out the door, rushing home. Not for himself, of course. He hasn't done anything for himself in a very long time. It's about that little boy at home, the one who'd already lost so much.
He drives through the empty streets and before he knows it he's on his own doorstep. Always, out of habit, he opens the door slowly. He grips his gun in his hand and checks behind every door before turning on the lights.
There's the nanny, drifting off to sleep on the couch, an infomercial playing quietly before her. She shoots up and starts to apologize, but Hotch doesn't care really. He's lucky he even found someone who'd work these hours while Jessica was away.
He hands her the money for the night, with an extra couple dollars thrown in – Jack likes her, really. Then he shuts the door behind her and starts for Jack's room, like he always does. The little boy's there, sleeping peacefully, a small smile on his innocent face. Hotch doesn't wake him, just strokes his hair and sits on the edge of the bed. After the day's events, he tries desperately to soak up some of his son's innocence.
On the nights that he sits here, he tries to convince himself that he was right. He tries to justify staying in the FBI after Haley. If he tells himself that he's doing the job to make a safer world for Jack, then the guilt of depriving him of a full-time father lessens.
Always, he has this internal battle until his brain is too tired to even function. Then, he usually gives the boy a kiss on the forehead and heads to his own room, putting his gun in the nightstand drawer and falling asleep in the day's clothes.
But sometimes, after a particularly bad case, usually one that involves kids, he can't bring himself to leave. So sometimes he ends up drifting off in the rocking chair next to Jack's bed and holding his hand for the whole night. It's uncomfortable and it hurts his back and he gets barely any sleep, but it's all worth it when he sees Jack's face in the morning – when he sees how happy he is that the first thing he sees in the morning is his father.
Hotch knows he can't protect him from everything, but god knows does he try. Because it's all about that little boy for Hotch. Himself, huh, he hasn't thought about himself in years. He figures he's already too far gone. But his son, he owes it to Haley to raise him to be a good man. He owes it to himself to protect him with all he has.
So when Hotch comes home, he doesn't think about his own demons. Even as the nightmares plague him, they're never about death or darkness – always about failing Jack. Every night, he goes to sleep with the hope of protecting the one thing he has left, and every morning, when he wakes up to see that little smiling face, he is thankful. He is thankful, and ready to face another day.
~CM~
Emily tries, always, to act like nothing phases her. She'd learned many years ago how to put up a brave face, and by now she was proficient at it. During the case, the arrest, the paperwork, she's the very image of calm and collected. But when it's time to go home, she feels the little shivers rolling down her body and she pushes the down inside herself – to deal with when the door to her apartment closes behind her.
Her and Morgan usually carpool, sometimes Reid. The rides home at the end of the day are quiet, or sometimes filled with meaningless jokes and empty laughter. None of it means anything, it's just them trying to cope.
When they reach her place, she jumps out of the car and makes a witty remark before waving goodbye to Morgan, knowing he's headed home to a wall just waiting to be knocked down. She envies him sometimes, being able to have a release like that. God, she wishes it was that simple for her.
Emily sighs and unlocks the door to her place, turning on all the lights the minute she steps inside. She's never really hungry on these nights, so she walks past the kitchen into the bathroom, turning on the tap, drawing herself a bath. While the water flows, she goes and unpacks, stacking everything neatly into drawers, all to be taken out anyway the next time they go away.
When the bathtub's full, she sprinkles some rose-smelling thing in there and slips out of her clothes and into the water. It's hot, maybe too hot – it burns her skin, but she kind of likes it. It seems fitting for her, like she deserves it, somehow.
She tries to relax. She even attempts to ignore the way her body tenses every time there's the smallest sound, and the way her hand shoots to her gun, which god knows she shouldn't even be taking into the bathroom.
On some days, she lays there until the water's cold and her fingers look like prunes. Still, her shoulders never lose that tensed posture and her hand never makes it more than a foot away from the gun. And she can't help the overwhelming feeling that she's drowning, that she'll never make it out of this black hole that the job had become. She lays there thinking about this for hours, until it feels like the thoughts are drilled into her brain.
Eventually though, she has to get out. Most of the time she dries off and just slips underneath the sheets naked, falling asleep almost instantly. By that point, the exhaustion's overwhelming and she doesn't have to think. But she cries, sometimes. If it's a bad night, she'll let her tears go into her pillow – the only place she would let that happen.
So when she wakes up the next morning, the remnants of last night's makeup running down her face, she has something to do. She puts herself back together - makeup, hair, clothes. She makes coffee, and even attempts a smile as she leaves her place, knowing that as bad as the day will be, she will always have here to break down.
She reassures herself with the fact that if she can hold it together at work, she can fall apart here all she wants. And, with that thought, she walks out the door to another day.
~CM~
Dave doesn't think he can count the amount of cases he'd worked in his life. With 30 years as a profiler, he'd probably gone through thousands. And when each one is over, the same sour feeling settles in the pit of his stomach, even after all this time. It never gets easier. Even if they do save the person; even if everything does turn out exactly right, there's still that sense of darkness in his mind when he's on the jet on his way home. Because once the case is over, once you don't have to focus on the profile anymore, the sheer reality of what the killers had done settles into your mind, staying there until the next morning when you're forced to bury it deep inside yourself and carry on.
Yet when Dave gets off the jet, he doesn't go home like the others do. He doesn't fly out the door like Hotch, or even Morgan or Prentiss. He has no one to hurry home too.
So usually he finds himself at a familiar bar, listening to the game turned up way too high. The bartender knows him there, and minutes after Dave arrives a whiskey is being slid to him across the bar. He looks up and gives the bartender, Harry, a smile and a nod before taking a gulp of his drink. It burns its way down Dave's throat, but somehow gives him the illusion of washing the days events away.
No one of the team knows that this is where he goes every day. He can't tell them; he knows what they'll think. But it's not like that, he's not like Strauss. He ever only has one drink – the rest of the time is spent sitting on the stool observing people across the bar.
He doesn't try to profile, but he guesses its become such a big part of him that it's impossible to turn off. So as he watches, he takes note of the body language, of the expressions. And then, by the end of the night Dave knows that the girl in the red dress is cheating on her boyfriend and that the man in the blue suit tells his wife he's working late but instead comes to sit here alone.
You would think that knowing all these people's problems would make Dave more stressed, but somehow, it doesn't. It relaxes him – knowing that there still are such medial problems as cheating girlfriends and lying husbands.
He guesses that everything in his life is on such a big scale – too much of it is a life or death situation. And it amuses him, at least for the night, to see these people struggle with their almost nonexistent problems like it's the end of the world. It brings him back to reality, out of his world of monsters and suffering. It reminds him that, for some, the biggest problem is what they should wear.
Usually, he sits until the bar closes. Harry always offers a cab, and Dave declines because he only ever has one drink, after all.
He gets into his car, smelling faintly of sweat and smoke, like the bar. Then he heads home, taking unnecessary turns and driving slowly. When he finally reluctantly pulls into his driveway, he is momentarily impressed at how big the house is. He's proud that he accomplished all that, but then the realization comes that he'll be going to sleep in the huge house all alone, and all the pride is gone. Because of this, Dave starts to resent this god damned mansion.
Every night, he walks in and takes a shower, letting the water wash the smells of the night off of him. Then, he walks over to the living room and settles down on the couch, turning the TV on. Somehow, his bed feels too big – it just makes him feel that much more alone.
And he watches the infomercials until he drifts off, thoughts of the people from the bar still in his head. He preoccupies himself with thinking of a million solutions to their little problems, meanwhile he can't think of even one for his. Yet, it helps, because when he opens his eyes in the morning, he is ready to give it another try.
~CM~
Even though JJ is no longer the media liason, there's still an unspoken agreement between the team that she is the best at dealing with the victims' families. She spends her days handing tissues and watching people sob over their children, whom they would never see again. So by the end of the day, all she wants to do is go home and see her own little boy safe and sound. All she thinks of on the plane ride home is seeing him asleep, knowing that he is safe.
She does her paperwork as fast as humanly possible, yet Hotch always somehow leaves before her. Maybe it's because her office is a complete mess and even finding a pen to start writing takes a couple minutes.
When she's finally done, she heads out, saying goodbye to Morgan and Prentiss, who are usually still in the bullpen, throwing a piece of paper around to procrastinate doing paperwork and cursing Reid for not helping them.
She lives twenty minutes away, yet the ride home always seems to take forever. As she drives, the faces of the mothers who'd lost their children pop into her mind, and sometimes, by the time she makes it home, there are tears rolling down her cheeks. She wipes them away, grabs her bag and heads inside, finally relaxing before she even gets inside.
Will stands at the door, his arms already open, a perfect place for her to fall into. She does, burying her face into his shoulder, breathing in the scent of his cologne mixed with the smell of Henry – the smell of home.
They walk inside, his arm around her, and he points to the kitchen, says there's leftovers in the fridge. She smiles and goes to get them, curling up on the couch with the plate, suddenly hungry. Will just sits on the chair across from her, a small smile on his face watching her eat.
She's always amazed that he always waits up. She wouldn't hold it against him if he didn't – she'd told him that. Yet he always waits, and deep down, she appreciates it.
When she's done eating, he takes her plate and she heads into Henry's room, where the boy is fast asleep, clutching his teddy bear. "Hey sweetheart. Mommy missed you.", she whispers, pushing his hair out of his face. JJ sits, listening to the sound of him breathing - a new kind of relief, until Will's silhouette shows up in the doorway, signaling that it's time to go.
She kisses her son on the forehead, whispering a prayer into his hair. Then she goes and joins Will in their room, stripping off the clothes of the day and melting into her pillow as his arms snake around her. There's a minute of meaningless chatter – questions about Henry and her case and the neighbors, and then she's asleep, the exhaustion of the day finally getting the best of her.
Sometimes, she feels terrible about it. She should be able to give him so much more. She's never home, and when she is, she barely lets him touch her. The job takes every ounce of energy she has, with nothing left to give to him. JJ loves him, but most days, there's just nothing. She's shocked every day that he doesn't leave. He's always there, waiting with his arms open, despite the fact that she barely acknowledges him. And that just makes her love him more.
So she slips in the occasional kiss, the random 'I love you', even though romance is usually the farthest thing from her mind. She does it though, because he deserves to hear it. After all he does, it's the least she can do to repay him.
Without him, she's sure the job would have taken her by now. But him and Henry, they provide a sort of shelter. Will's comfort and Henry's innocence somehow wipe out the events of the day and give her the motivation, the next morning, to move on and face whatever the new day may hold.
~CM~
The team always teases Reid about his constant stream of facts. They think it's because he wants to prove something, or because he wants to be useful, but really, it's nothing like that. The useless facts he spurts out are his way of dealing with the horror he sees every day.
Somehow, knowing that is the fear of long words and that there are approximately 800 kernels on a cob of corn helps him shake off the images of bleeding bodies and destroyed corpses.
When the case is over, no matter what the outcome, the images haunt him. So he finishes his paperwork in a matter of minutes, ignoring Morgan and Prentiss' protests as he grabs his things and heads home, never quite ready to tackle his nightmares.
He usually takes a cab at night, since he carpools with Morgan and Prentiss in the mornings, but he's always out of the office so much faster than they are. On the ride home, he stares out of the window at the dark streets and goes over all of the information he has about the last case. No matter how it ends, Reid needs to make sure that there's nothing that he could've done – nothing else he could've contributed that could have saved someone. He ponders this for the whole ride home, up until the cabby turns onto his street. He pays and gets out, walking the short distance to his door rapidly.
When he gets inside, he goes straight to his bookcase, picking a read for the night. Then, book in hand, he makes it over to the couch and sits down, disappearing into the world of Tolstoy or Dickins or Orwell.
He reads until his eyelids are literally drooping and he can't keep his head up from the exhaustion. He reads with the hope of filling his mind with thoughts of fiction so that the reality wouldn't creep in. He reads so that his head is filled with pictures of mythical creatures and characters instead of Tobias Hankel.
And, sometimes, it works. Sometimes, the nightmares never come and he awakes in a better mood than he went to bed in. And yet occasionally, especially after a bad case, they do. He sees Tobias, and his father, and the team dying before his eyes and it gets so bad that he wakes up screaming and reaching for the Dialudid that he still keeps hidden behind the fridge.
It never gets that far though. No matter how bad a day's been, he thinks of the period where Emily was dead. He thinks that if he had the strength not to use then – that now shouldn't be a problem. He convinces himself that he doesn't need it, that it doesn't help, but deep inside he still craves it.
Though when those cravings come, usually after a nightmare, he forces himself to lie down and close his eyes. He thinks of the team, of his mother, of all the people he could be losing because of this one stupid night and a relapse. And, somehow, eventually, he drifts off again.
In the morning, he's exhausted. But with the exhaustion comes a sense of pride for making in one more day without the drugs. And the pride lifts his spirits, just a little. But even that's enough to give him the strength to get up out of bed and go do it all over again.
~CM~
For Morgan, the days are endless. From the moment he wakes up to when they're on the jet heading home, he's in overdrive, trying to do everything and save as many people as possible. By the time he's headed home, Morgan's physically and emotionally drained.
As he drops Prentiss off, he knows she's assuming that he's going home to his punching bag or a wall to knock down. But she's wrong. Yeah, he's angry. He's so damn pissed off at the world and all the evil in it and at himself for not being better at his job. Yet he just doesn't have the energy to let his anger out, so he lets it fester.
He drives home from Prentiss' in a daze and opens the door to an overjoyed Clooney jumping practically onto his shoulders. He feeds the dog and then steps into the shower, turning the water on cold. As it hits his skin, he allows himself, momentarily, to be angry. He thinks of the sick murderers who got away with too many things, and of the families who never get answers. He thinks of the team, each being torn apart by the job in their own way. And he allows himself to think if it's really worth it.
Reid's words from a few months back are cemented in his mind – if we can't save ourselves, then why are we even doing any of this? Damn, he doesn't know. Derek just knows that doing anything else, to him, would feel wrong. He lets the uncertainty and anger bubble up inside of him, but pushes it all back down the moment that the water stops.
Then, he dresses and heads toward the kitchen, taking a bite of leftovers from the fridge and pouring himself a glass of water. He takes the familiar bottle of sleeping pills out and swallows one, gulping the water down.
Yes, he's exhausted and his eyes are drooping shut, but he knows that without them, he will never fall asleep. Derek makes his way to his room, Clooney following close behind. He feels the effect of the pill immediately and he's asleep by the time his head touches the pillow.
Yet even with the pills, he sometimes gets nightmares. Mostly, they're about that day in the warehouse – they're watching Emily die a thousand different ways and always being just out of reach. He wakes up screaming and with the grief and guilt bubbling up inside him, just like when she was gone.
But then he forces his shaky hand to reach for the phone and reads the recent texts from her, reassuring himself with what he already knows – that she's alive. He never falls asleep after that, but by that time, it's usually morning anyway.
That's when he gathers up his things and goes to the gym, where he really lets himself feel angry. He lets everything out, until he's sure he's so raw and empty that he has nothing left to give.
Then, finally, he can head off to work again, where the problems could sometimes be solved – while he was sure that his own problems could not.
[Thank you for reading and please review!]