I recently rewatched episode 7.2 "Proof" and for some reason, I couldn't get this idea out of my head: what if Emily was the vulnerable one and what if Reid was the one who offered comfort? On that note, this ones-shot is pretty out of character and is rated T for some harsh language and references to drug use, but it was fun to write. It's meant to be set somewhere in season 7, probably after "Proof." Enjoy and please let me know what you think. :)
"But I don't mean to be a bother. I don't need you to take my burden away and I ain't afraid of dying cold and alone when my time comes." – City and Colour, "Harder Than a Stone."
Her presence shouldn't have surprised him, but it always did now. He half-expected any member of the team on his doorstep before her, even Morgan, but it wasn't the late-night visit that made his hand grip the cold doorknob until the skin on his knuckles whitened.
It was the tangibility she had, the space she occupied, and the way he always had to fight the urge to reach out and touch her arm, a strand of her hair, a light fingerprint against her smooth skin, just to prove to himself that she existed. She was real, alive, but she wasn't. She couldn't be. Emily returned months ago, but Reid felt as though she'd been a mirage all along, threatening to dissolve when he finally got too close.
Moments earlier, Emily had been leaning on the door for support and when he opened it, she'd stumbled over the threshold, nearly sending them both to the ground. Instinctively, he reached for her shoulders, feeling the jutting bones through her thin jacket that was covered in a layer of fine mist. She leaned her forehead against his shoulder and laughed, but the sound was void of any warmth. Before he could say hello, or ask what was going on, she'd staggered inside, and he was staring at the dark space where she'd just been.
He had buried her, mourned her, but he hadn't. Emily could appear on his doorstep at 3am on a Saturday, shaking rain from her jacket that she'd now yanked herself out of and thrown onto a chair. The overwhelming smell of alcohol and cigarettes lingered in the air behind her.
Emily was dead, but she wasn't. Don't go there, his brain warned. Don't do that to yourself.
Reid shut the door, spinning slowly on his heels. Reid watched as she tottered into his apartment, picked up a poetry anthology, and flipped through the pages before letting the book crash to the floor. Emily moved her head from side to side, taking in the sight of precariously stacked books besides the living room furniture and the assortment of coffee mugs perched on the coffee table. She laughed again, and Reid flinched at the sound.
Sometimes it was difficult to believe that the Emily Prentiss was no longer a memory he suppressed by avoiding the sight of her empty desk in the bullpen or by thinking that Gideon was right; after all these years, Gideon's words had been the ultimate truth all along because they couldn't keep each other safe. She was no longer a granite gravestone he stumbled to during his most desperate moments, the ones that thumped old urges into his veins. Just one hit, the past had said, and he'd almost given in more than once, more than he'd verbally admit to anyone anymore.
But Emily was alive and she was laughing and drunk in his apartment. Reid shook his head to dislodge the past.
"God, I missed this place, Reid." She turned to him with a sloppy grin, "I missed you."
Her smile was from another time, a lighter one that he recognized now, and Reid felt his wrinkled expression soften.
"Emily…" His voice sounded scratchy and unused.
Prentiss was walking through his living room, studying titles on book spine and picking up empty coffee mugs and peering inside. She opened the drawer to a side table, frowning when its contents revealed only a lighter and a spare set of house keys. Disinterested in his things, Emily flopped onto the couch, nearly missing the cushions and crashing into the sharp edge of his coffee table. Reid rushed forward again, grabbing her by the waist and shoving her onto the sofa. If she were sober, Reid knew Emily would have commented on his quick reflexes, but instead she chose to comment on the placement of his hands.
"Hey there, Reid..."
Reid released the grip he had around her waist. Cheeks burning, he took a few steps backward, clumsily maneuvering around the bulky wood coffee table until he found his favorite worn armchair. Gratefully, he sunk into the soft seat.
There was a long pause in which Emily repositioned herself amongst the cushions, finally settling after a few throw pillows were chucked with surprising force to the floor. Reid watched as one bounced off a stack of books that he'd been reading before an inebriated Emily materialized on his doorstep.
Reid stared at Emily, and she avoided his gaze. Once or twice, he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, poised to speak, but he didn't know what to say. Sometimes it still felt weird that he could talk to Emily and she could respond. For months, he'd murmured to her headstone in a dark cemetery, telling her everything and expecting nothing but silence and the weight of grief in return.
Reid exhaled the air he hadn't realized he'd been holding inside. Emily slumped into his couch, the cushions puffing out at odd angles. Her ivory skin looked even paler against the beige fabric. Reid frowned when he realized she'd lost weight. A quick glance at her nails told him she'd been anxious too.
Without a word or look of warning, Emily broke the tension and groaned, placing her head into her shaking hands.
"Fuck, Reid. Just fuck."
Reid blinked, but remained unmoved, as if he was waiting for Emily to start reciting Latin verb conjugations or ingredients she'd need for the next night's dinner.
"Don't even pretend you're not surprised with me," she slurred.
Her eyes darted to his and in an instant of connection, he caught a hint of fear in the chocolate orbs. Outside the window, the rain began to fall more steadily than before, and droplets pinged off the glass pane.
"I am surprised," he weighed in a composed tone that he'd learned from Hotch over the years, "you're right."
She met his eyes for a longer time, enough for him to see the question he didn't dare ask. When she spoke again, her voice was steady.
"I know that you know how this feels."
"I don't know what you mean, Emily."
He wasn't lying; this was one of the few times he genuinely felt unsure and derailed. Her words were almost pleading with him to catch up. His brain felt stuck, unhinged by the lost, desperate look in her eyes, at the tears threatening to spill onto her cheeks. It had been months, and Reid didn't know if Emily or past memories of her were staring back at him.
"Yes you do, Reid." She told him softly. "I know you understand."
An idea he wished he could forget began to form, and Reid thought back to about ten minutes earlier when he had opened his apartment door and a waft of whiskey had burned tears to his eyes.
"What did you take?" He finally asked.
The question hung between the two agents. Outside the window, the rain syncopated patterns against the roof. A radiator in the corner clunked to on. Headlights from a passing car trailed across the top of the room's walls before vanishing completely.
Emily slowly shook her head, "Not that type of understanding, Reid."
He swallowed, nodded yes, eyes sweeping over her thin frame once more. Prentiss snaked a hand through her hair, meeting his gaze before looking away as her face darkened to a deep red. Suddenly, he knew. He wished he didn't; he wished he'd never known at all.
"I know how it feels to die." He realized, unsure if he had spoken aloud.
Emily didn't speak, but she made a small sound that told Reid he was correct. Ice trickled through his veins that were beginning their old, familiar begging for the substance he simultaneously desire and despised.
"You're struggling."
He sounded like Gideon lifetimes ago in a New Orleans jazz club and he hated himself for it.
"You came here because you're struggling with your near-death experienced, and you know that I understand because I've experienced one too."
The words were forming and leaving now, and he swallowed past the ball lodged in the middle of his throat.
"You took longer to figure that out than I thought," Emily joked, a half-smile forming on her lips before it disappeared.
Reid exhaled and searched for her eyes before he admitted, "I don't talk about what happened that often."
"I know, Reid."
Emily's tone explained it all: I know you don't have that conversation because I know you. But Reid didn't know if she did know him because he certainly hadn't known her. He thought he had; he had believed he truly had known that she'd like a five-hour Russian film or geeky science experiments or Vonnegut books or even late-night chats over Indian food. He thought, at one point, Emily was one of the few people who could reach across a small private plane and take his hand in hers and tell him she'd be beaten again for him and that she'd save him from another religious fanatic just so he wouldn't have to relive that particular experience again. He had known her, trusted her, and he been so angry at her when she returned, yet he desperately wanted it all back: the past and all its incongruities and not the murky present he and Emily were currently navigating by groping through an attempt at conversation and closure.
"Maybe I shouldn't have come here."
Emily made no effort to move off the couch, though, and when the light caught an angular cheekbone, Reid saw that her face was wet. Guilt burned in his stomach.
"If the roles were reversed," he began, "and I had been through what you had, I'd be struggling too."
What Reid didn't say was not only would he be a drug-fueled mess, but also he'd never tried to imagine himself in her position, even after all the months she'd been back and after all the anger he'd directed at her. Now, the disregard for her feelings about returning to the BAE –- the very team she'd gone AWOL to protect –- seemed foolish, immature, and made his stomach churn. What kind of person, friend, was he?
"If that's what you want to call it…call this…" Emily shrugged, as if to say being smashed at 3am in Reid's apartment was normal, as if the past year was.
"You're upset and drunk, Emily."
He'd expected the words to sound more accusing, but his voice was soft, edged with concern.
She nodded again, avoiding his gaze. "I'm fine, Reid."
"No you're not."
Those words were the same ones he had once longed to hear from one of his teammates after the Hankel case. They all had tried, but only Emily had come closest to shoving the very real truth into the limelight. In a brief rush of clarity, Reid's own words came back to him: Believe me when I say I know exactly how this feels.
In another life, he remembered how she'd confronted him with his addiction and traumatic experience, his own wavering composure and sobriety, and he winced at the memories of his past infractions. The real Emily was sitting in front of him, and he wanted to reach out, but he didn't dare move. He wasn't sure why it still hurt to see her, even though he was quickly realizing she was struggling more than she'd let on, or more than he'd allowed himself to realize and understand these past few months.
"It helps, Reid."
She didn't elaborate about her drunkenness and he didn't ask. Reflexively, he grabbed the inner crook of his left elbow, massaging the old spot with his thumb. If Emily noticed, she pretended not to.
"Don't, Emily. Please."
He could have said a lot of things just then, like how she was better than drowning her fears and regrets with alcohol, but the words were lodged somewhere with his apology that would not budge from his sandpaper-dry throat. Instead, he changed the direction of their conversation.
"Why me?"
It was the question he really wanted to ask the minute she'd stumbled over the threshold of his apartment. Why not JJ or Hotch, who'd both known the truth, or even Morgan, Emily's partner? Morgan been mad too, but he'd never turn Emily away in her current state. Either would you, Reid thought. None of them would, no matter how angry or upset, no matter how weird it felt to see her alive and breathing and existing outside fragmented memories and faded photographs.
"I came here because I know you were, you are, upset with me, probably more than everyone else."
The truth sunk into the very center of his chest. Reid looked at the floor and his worn moccasin slippers as shame singed his cheeks. He was thankful that the lone lamp in the room cast long, dark shadows so Emily wouldn't see how just correct she was and just how awful he felt.
"I'm not mad anymore, though."
It was a weak argument, and he knew it just as much as Emily did. She huffed, and he sighed. He deserved that. After all the harsh words he'd so casually flung at her and all the stony silences he'd submitted her to, the words still stung.
"It was stupid of me to come here," Emily said while trying to push up from the soft couch, but she was too drunk and flopped helplessly before grunting and giving into the cushions once more.
Reid waited until she was done fidgeting before he spoke in a soft voice, "What's going on, Em?"
He expected a rebuttal or for her to actually try to and succeed at leaving this time, but what he didn't expect was for her to break open, as though the words were piling up behind the months of silence and she had reached the moment when they no longer could be contained by alcohol, parsed lips, fake smiles, and darting eyes. She spoke so fast that he had to strain to hear as each truth spilled over the next on their rush out.
"I came here because I can't sleep, Reid. I can't stop seeing Doyle everywhere, even though I know he's dead and the chase is done. I'm terrified every second of every day because I keep seeing the past all around me. I want it to stop, need it to, but I can't let my guard down for one fucking minute because everyone is watching –- everyone is waiting for me to break into pieces, so I'm drunk instead.
I came here because I'm back on the team and I should be happy, but I'm not; I'm not coping and I'm wasted and I'm on your couch pretending I know what I'm doing, but I don't, and I want, I need, someone to help me, but not to fix it. I just need one person to lie to me and say that I'll be okay again because I'm starting to think I should have just killed Doyle and then left. Maybe that would have been easier than this act I have to put on every day. I'm more than a little lost here, Reid, and I don't know what that means and maybe I'll regret this when I'm sober, but I don't know what I'm doing here, and I know you get that, Reid.
I picked you because I know you understand, more than Garica and Hotch and Rossi and Morgan and JJ. I know you get what I'm saying more than any of them, and the weird thing is, Reid, that I hate that it's you and not one of them. I hate you for being the one person that can understand me right now."
Emily's chest heaved and her labored breathing filled the empty spaces in the apartment. Reid had never heard Emily disclose so much at once and he certainly had never seen Emily this vulnerable. Her words hung heavily in the air, and he replayed them over and over in his mind: He thought he hated her and the web of deceit she'd spun, but he had really violently missed her; she hated him, but only because he knew what it was like to have the experience of dying at the hands of a desperate man. What she really hated was the understanding they shared. Reid knew she was letting him in not only because he had a near-death experience before, but mainly because he had been the hardest on her when she returned. She was hurting and begging him to trust her by being completely exposed in front of him. Reid felt sick.
"It's okay that you hate me. I'd hate me too."
"See," she tried to smile but her bottom lip trembled, "that's exactly what I mean."
Emily's hands shook as she clasped them together. The tremors spread to her body. Her face was glistening in the low light, and her hair had started to curl at her jawline.
He realized how terrified she was, like she must have been in that warehouse in Boston, knowing she may possibly die cold and alone, and that she'd abandoned the only people she'd cared about most in the world. For a moment, the imprint of a shovel filled his hands and the smell of fresh soil permeated the air around him. He'd climbed out of his own grave in Georgia and had embraced Hotch, who had been there at the very instant he felt his world filter into a blurry before and a altered after. Despite the intervening years, Georgia and Hankel were, at times, still so close, yet there was a difference between his experience and Emily's: Hotch had been there in the aftermath - they all had –- and perhaps that's why he hadn't fallen so hard or at least as hard as he'd desired to fall back then. Perhaps, that's why his own words to Hotch that night under the starry Georgia sky came back to him: I knew you'd understand.
"Have you talked to anyone about this?" He asked quietly, leaning forward to close the physical distance between them.
"Only you."
The confession stole his breath. Lifetimes ago, he'd had headaches. Lifetimes ago, he'd confessed to Emily. Lifetimes ago, she'd been one of the few people he confided in because he trusted her. Now, she trusted him, was practically throwing her baggage at his feet, and he felt the weight of the past year –- the one she'd carrying by herself –- drop onto his shoulders. His chest ached.
"Tell me what to do," he whispered because his throat was closing and the words were trapped somewhere inside.
A nod. "I need you to tell me how to fix this, Reid, because I can't…I don't know how anymore…"
And what he had once thought had been her way of saying goodbye came back in a burst of memory: Thanks for being you. I don't know how to be anyone else. I know. That's what I love about you.
Emily was alive. All this time, she was alive and right in front of him, but he'd been too angry to notice she was ready to leave him again. He'd been too self-righteous to realize he'd become the ghost.
Reid stood, body moving into action before his mind could really comprehend what he was doing. He nicked a shin on the coffee table and knocked a stack of books to the ground before he sat onto the couch next to her. The cushion sunk with his weight.
Emily stared, and Reid saw the disbelief in her eyes: She was still trying to understand that he was real too, that she was alive, that this life meant something other than harsh words thrown across a precinct, a pseudonym on a fake passport, and a dark warehouse where she'd run away only to be left behind to bleed out and die alone.
"You were right," he said softly, reaching for her icy fingers and squeezing them in his, which caused her lips to part slightly in surprise at his initiation of physical contact, "I know how you feel, but you're not alone. Not anymore."
She stared at him and nodded rhythmically, as if his words were lulling her to sleep, but then her expression crumbled, her grasp tightened in his, and her chin dropped to her chest.
Whatever she said was muffled by his arms pulling her against his chest. Tears soaked through his shirt and her hands balled his shirtsleeves. He held onto her, kissing the top of her dark hair, inhaling the scent of her lavender shampoo. The action was something Morgan would do, but it felt natural, like he was used to physical comfort and friends and words of comfort and all the years that felt like decades of abuse that just kept piling down on everyone and everything he loved.
He wanted to apologize for his own deplorable actions and words and for Doyle and for how alone and scared she probably had been, but the words that left his lips were not apologies but, rather, the permission she needed to hear, "You're okay now. You're okay."
He held Emily for a long time; long past the time when her tears stopped and she ceased telling him about nightmares and memories and moments he didn't have any right to know. He held her until his arms burned from lack of movement and the weight of her slumped body.
After she had been silent for close to an hour, he'd nudged her sleeping body supine onto the couch as his arms had tingled from the sudden rush of blood. His favorite throw blanket was folded across the top of the armchair, and he'd reached for it, gently placing it around Emily's sleeping frame. For a moment, he'd stood protectively over her, letting the feeling return to his numb arms before he moved to sit in his armchair.
He studied the rise and fall of her chest, the flutter of long eyelashes, and the way she slept soundly. He knew the pressing exhaustion she'd be carrying, and he leaned into the seatback of his chair. The rain fell steadily onto the roof, a syncopated pattern that became the metronome that helped ease Reid's racing thoughts as he completed his penance and watched and waited for morning to come.
On the couch, Emily stirred, but did not wake. The light bulb sparked and then shuddered to off, and Reid did not move to change the now-dead bulb. In the gray shadows, the past offered itself to him –- all the wrongs he had created and rectified and all the problems that could never be solved, no matter how much he longed to fix everything and move on and away from it all. He thought about Hankel, and old cases, and victims, and anthrax, and Gideon's letter, and his father's last look, and dilaudid, and Doyle, and his mother reading poetry to him in her darkened bedroom. He thought and thought until his brain settled on only Emily.
When he leaned forward to grasp Emily's hand, she did not wake, and Reid realized that when he'd joined the FBI, he had no idea of what it was like to die and become reborn and to live with the burden of the knowledge that life and death existed on the same warped spectrum. After all this time, he'd finally come to understand the layers of loss. He finally realized what he had been really trying to tell Emily despite all those stony silences and harsh words.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to the sleeping form of the ghost that had been resurrected, "I'm sorry for everything."