Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. Mark Twain.
She could not help but hope that Aaron Hotchner would come walking through the hospital doors and tell her that he was glad to have her back. But neither could she pretend that the past had not happened and that she had forced him to live a lie with the people he cared most about in the world. She was intelligent enough to know that forgiveness was always a lot to ask for.
"There's a man here to see you." The nurse seemed to almost creep up on her. She jumped and, upon seeing the nurse's shock and confusion, offered an apologetic smile.
It would take some time to getting used to the world being so safe again. Naturally there were dangers and naturally she would have to face them. But an unnatural danger and the biggest threat to her life, and the lives of others, was gone. Ian Doyle was dead. She could stop running, stop looking over her shoulder. She could return home.
No - that was something she could not do. She had faked her own death and forced two of the people she loved to play along with it. She had known that what she was doing was going to hurt the others but she had consoled herself, and Hotch and Jennifer Jareau at times, with the knowledge that she had had no other choice if she wanted to keep them safe - if she wanted to stay alive. But she saw now that she had been foolish to hope for all those years that when it finally ended, if it ever did, she would be welcomed back. His absence was a warning to stay away.
"Who?" she asked the male nurse. She knew that Doyle may have been dead but she still was not about to take any chances.
The nurse looked at her case files sitting at the end of the bed. "Said his name was Clyde Easter - British accent?"
Her heart leaped and her head snapped up from the nails she had been picking at. At the same time her hopes were shot down like a lead balloon. Clyde - who had kept so many secrets from her, and who had been so mysterious right up until Tsia's death, and who had never even made an attempt to get in contact with her afterwards.
Well, a small voice inside of her argued, how was he supposed to know you were still alive? Did you tell him?
She was glad to see that he had survived the three years of Doyle's escape - she was well aware that other agents, some whom she had never worked with personally and others whom she had, had not been so lucky in keeping themselves out of the man's firing line. But again this did nothing to ease her suspicions. He was good, but was he that good? Surely it only proved that he had sold them all out and bought himself protection?
"Can you send him in please?" she asked. "And is there any chance you could get me some water, I'm feeling kind of feint-? Thanks."
The male nurse left the room and as she heard his footfalls distance themselves on the corridor's tiles she eased herself out of bed and hurried to the bag she kept underneath. From it she withdrew a small handgun which she had kept with her at all times for the past three years (it had helped her out in lots of...tricky situations).
She was confused and she knew that if things were not simple then that meant there was room for suspicion. She could not understand how Clyde Easter would have known that she was alive and recovering in a hospital bed - or more she could not understand how he could have this knowledge, and yet Doyle had remained blissfully ignorant to her being alive up until the very moment of his death. If Clyde had known then he would have betrayed her - she knew because it's what she would have done as a spy.
And how could Clyde know that she hadn't died at Doyle's hands anyway? Aside from herself only two other people in the world knew that and both of them were people she had been sure she could trust with her life at all times. She knew that in the unlikely case that they had told anybody else, it would not have been a double-crosser like Clyde. Hotch would have been able to read the signs, he would have known.
In any case he would not have revealed her to anybody while Doyle was alive. He just didn't work like that and she knew it. It was one of the reasons why he was the first person she had turned to in the hospital that day when it had all been arranged. That meant that Hotch knew she was alive and in hospital, and that he also knew Doyle was truly dead and no longer a threat.
But if he knew all of that for sure then why wasn't he here himself? She knew that the answer was one she had long suspected - he would never forgive her for the role she had forced him to play and the hurt she had put the team through. And if she was to continue to pride herself on being a realist then she had to accept that him, or the others, welcoming her home had never even been a possible scenario.
Not that it ever should have been, she reminded herself sternly. Look at what he did to protect you - and you still haven't even told him the whole truth yet. She shuddered. She could never tell anybody the whole truth. Morgan had been wrong that time in the car, one of her last memories of him, when he had said that she could come to him with anything.
Clyde strolled into the room with a few more grey hairs than she remembered previously and few more lines on his face. His eyes were watery and there was a sad sort of crinkle to his lips. "Emily." She gripped the gun tighter underneath the covers of her blanket. "Emily - thank God you're alive."
She knocked aside his words and tried to remember how she had felt looking at Tsia's body. "What do you want?"
"To see you." He did not even sound offended. He raised his hands. "Emily, I know that you think I betrayed you, but I never have - I never would."
"How come you're the only one still alive then? And why did Tsia end up with a bullet through her head?" she fought to keep her voice even. "I don't know why you're here. But the nurse is coming back in three seconds and you've given him your real name."
He let out a weary sigh. "Which shows that I have no intention of hurting you. And that you still don't trust me." His eyes flickered to her hand beneath the blanket. "Keep the gun if you want - but I haven't brought anything to harm you with."
"You are one of the best spies I ever worked with, Clyde, you know I can't do that or believe you." She told herself that she didn't want to anyway.
His eyes locked onto hers. "And I know that you are one of the best profilers that I have ever worked with - so you know that I'm not lying. You know that if I was the one who betrayed you then I wouldn't have even come here." He frowned. "Emily, I'm just so glad that you're alive - I thought you really had died. Obviously I couldn't go to the funeral, but I had Aaron Hotchner lay flowers on your grave for me, I-"
She could not be sure whether she did it on purpose or not, but she dropped the gun from her hand. She was smart enough to know that too many facts contradicted the theory that Clyde had been working with Doyle all along. She let out a long sigh.
"When did you find out that I wasn't really buried? Who told you?"
He walked across and sat in the chair next to her bed. His eyes were still watery. "Aaron Hotchner. He contacted me about three days ago. He didn't say very much except that I would find you under the name Leslie Sloane, in a hospital in Tulsa. I didn't believe him at first but then it all seemed to make sense."
"I didn't know that you were such good friends." She tried to deflect from the way he was looking at her when he mentioned Hotch, like he was sorry that he had to, as if he was mentioning a friend of hers whose death had brought her great pain.
"He caught me trying to leave the state right after you went hunting for Doyle and he wanted all of the information I could give him. I told him I had taken oaths, but he never accepted that, told me if anything happened to you he would hold me personally responsible and I think the direct quote was 'destroy me'." Clyde paused only for a moment. "He went to extreme lengths to find you."
She tried to deflect again the way he was looking at her and speaking to her. "Yeah well, I told you he's the best, and he is a man who goes to extreme lengths." She wished that her heart didn't ache at the thought of him desperate to find her.
Clyde refused to drop his gaze of scrutiny despite the fact that she was busying herself with her nails again. "Are you going to get back in contact with him and the rest of your team? I assume that you'll want to-"
"It doesn't matter what I want." She was snapping but she couldn't help herself. "They think the exact same as you thought - that I'm dead. And if Hotch told you that I was alive, then he definitely didn't tell them."
Clyde threw her a phone. "Tell them yourself then. I thought they were you're family, who you loved. What's stopping you?"
She didn't know why she felt like she couldn't trust him anymore. But the truthful answer was guilt and she said: "I don't know."
"You did what you had to." He seemed to know anyway. He always seemed to know everything. "And they will come to understand that." She looked up when he said that. He raised an eyebrow. "Did you expect me to pretend that they would accept it from the start? Of course they won't - it sounds to me like even our friend Aaron is a bit pissed off about it. But time heals all wounds...and they've missed you."
A lone tear leaked from her eye but she wiped it away quickly. When she looked up from the phone, she saw that Clyde's eyes had never left her face, and that he was even smiling. "How do you even know?" she asked. "How do you know that they can forgive me?"
"Because I know that they love you." Clyde did not hesitate in answering. "Why do you think Aaron Hotchner called me to tell me that you were still alive? He doesn't know me really and he doesn't owe me anything. It wasn't to ease my grief. It was because he knew that I would come and see you - it was because he may not have had the heart to come himself, but he didn't want you to be alone either."
She closed her eyes to avoid shedding more tears. And with all of her heart Emily Prentiss hoped and wished and willed that he was right.
Forgiveness seems almost unnatural. Our sense of fairness tells us people should pay for the wrong they do. But forgiving is love's power to break nature's rule. Lewis B. Smedes.