So, this is a little piece I put together. I just got into Criminal Minds, and Prentiss is by far my favorite. I love the story with her and Ian Doyle. This is just something that I thought of while reading through some other fanfics. I hope you enjoy!


'If I am what I have, and I lose what I have, who, then, am I?'

-Erich Fromm-


STOCKHOLM

My first coherent thought after the nightmare was 'get to the bathroom'. A second later my stomach lurched, and I knew I wasn't going to make it. I leaned over the side of my bed and wretched up what little food I'd managed for supper. When I was done, I leaned back against my headboard and pulled my knees to my chest. I couldn't make myself stop shaking. I tried to remember the entire nightmare, but, like always, I only remembered his eyes.

I gagged again, but there was nothing to come up. I forced myself to calm my breathing. I inhaled deeply through my nose and exhaled through my mouth until I finally trusted my control over myself. "I need to call someone," I whispered. My voice was raspy, and my throat was sore like...like I'd been yelling. No, not yelling, screaming. "Dammit, Emily. Get ahold of yourself." I hissed.

I know I'm alone. Years of extensive training and under cover work had programmed parts of my mind to inspect my surroundings while my conscious mind worked elsewhere. However, that knowledge doesn't ease the sickening dread that I was being watched...that somehow he knew where I am...and the control he still has over me.

My right hand moved to my chest. Through the thin silk nightgown I feel a ridge just under my collarbone. I follow the ridge with my fingertips. I know the pattern so well, as I should. Again I gag on the memory. It's then that I realize I'm crying and sweating through the nightgown.

For the first time, I look at the alarm clock sitting on my nightstand. Great, one thirty in the morning. I'd only gone to bed an hour ago, and I knew I wasn't going to be able to go back to sleep especially with the mess just beside my bed. Without really meaning to, I reach over and grab my cell phone from the nightstand. I stare at it for several seconds before setting it down then picking it back up again. "I can't call them. They'll come. I know they will, but...this is my problem. I need to face it alone. I need to-"

I don't know what I need. All I knew was that I couldn't sleep. I hadn't slept for more than two hours in almost three weeks now. I'd had nightmares before, but this one was different. This wasn't just a nightmare. It was a memory...a fantastic memory that I held close to my heart at all times, but my mind had even taken that away from me. It contorted the memory into something horrific and terrifying. It chilled me to the bones and made me want to scream until my voice drowned out the memory.

I try to catch my breath before I lose control again and send myself into a panic attack. 'Do something' my mind told me. 'Anything.'

I mechanically get out of bed from the opposite side I'd thrown up on. I examine exactly how much of a mess I have to clean up. Fortunately, I hadn't eaten much, so the mess is small. I'll have to have the comforter dry cleaned, but that can be taken care of later. I go to the bathroom, careful not to look at myself, and grab a towel and a wet rag.

Once it's cleaned up, I head back into the bathroom. My mind registers almost instantly what I'd missed, or ignored, minutes ago. The bathroom mirror is shattered. Pieces of glass cover the sink and countertop. I remember then smashing it with my brush just before I went to bed. That was going to be hard to explain to guests, not that I had many, and even harder to replace. Through the cracked glass, I can make out my dark brown hair. My face is contorted as well, but at the bottom of the mirror there is a space of clear glass that somehow managed to escape the carnage of the rest. Through this small space, I see the scar, my scar, his signature.

That's all it takes, and I'm screaming again. I hear my voice raised in fear, but I don't associate myself with that voice. It's too terrified, too weak, to be mine. I fall back against the wall and slide to the ground. My hands, my useless hands, are hanging in the mid-air. What is going on with me? I force myself to stop screaming. The episode is over, and I remember why I smashed the mirror. I never want to have to look at that scar again. I don't want to have to look at anything that reminds me of him, but how can I escape my own body?

I see now, the extent of his madness and my torture, he knew, that even if in the unlikely scenario where he died and I lived played out, that I would have to live with his mark for the rest of my life. I would never escape him. I never had.

Hyper-vigilant. Paranoid. Those were words my team, my family, had called me, but they didn't know that I could never be vigilant or paranoid enough. I, better than anyone else on this planet, knew what he was capable of. I knew I could only ever be safe as long as he was behind bars, and then, only to an extent. I trusted my JTF team to cover my tracks, but there was always the chance that Ian would find a way. And he did.

He found me, and from the first moment I learned of his escape, I knew that the only way I was going to live would be to face him head-on without hesitation. He was used to people waiting just a second too late because of his reputation, and rightly so. Yet, he had known me too well. He knew that I would go looking for him. He knew me better than I know myself.

When I saw his face, I knew it was the face of death, but I felt something that had shocked me, and shook me to my core. I learned, as I looked into his startling blue eyes for the first time in years, that I still loved him, that I had never stopped loving him.

I gasp and make myself come out of that train of thought. I cannot go back down that road again. I cannot be her again. Lauren Reynolds is dead, and so is Ian Doyle, my love. No, I correct myself, her love. She loved Ian. Not me. He loved her. Not me.

That thought breaks my already unstable heart. He never loved me. He loved someone who never existed. He loved a character in a movie, or rather, a prank. I played him first, and this is my punishment. I laugh at the irony. Our story could be one of the great Shakespearian tragedies. A woman tries to trap a man with her love, and he ends up trapping her with his.

"Do you think he was capable of love?" Morgan had asked me shortly after I'd made my way back from the dead.

"He wanted me to marry him, Morgan. He wanted me to raise his son, and while he did have ulterior motives for the latter, I see no reason for the first." I had answered with such surety then. Never, in the years that had passed between our meetings, had I ever doubted our love for one another.

I was a trained profiler. He was a skilled liar, but there is one thing that no one on the planet can fake: love. When he looked at me, it sent shivers down my body. When he said my name, I wanted him to never stop talking. Our bodies, and if the all the stories are real, our souls were connected in a way that I've never experienced with another human being.

How many men had I been with since him? And yet, I could never get the taste of his lips out of my mouth. No one could ever give me the feeling I had when he caressed me. No one had ever taken my breath away again. I was ruined, soiled, by memories that could never be replicated. Memories that were all lies, but beautiful ones. I had let my guard down. I had allowed him, with all his charm and wit, to entice me into forgetting who I really was.

Perhaps, if it hadn't been so easy to let go of Emily, of myself, then I could have come out cleaner, but once I felt love, knew what love meant, how could I go back to a world where that didn't exist? How could I go back into a world without him?

After months, years, of trying, I finally managed to get myself back out of the compartment of my mind I had hid away in while Lauren ruled my life. It had been a survival tactic in the beginning. I needed to be Lauren, so he wouldn't suspect anything. Always, at any moment, I could pull Emily out of the recess of my mind and be her again, but after spans of days, weeks, sometimes months, of being solely Lauren because Lauren knew love, I became her. Only after I found a new family, a new kind of love, had Emily been able to pull herself back to the surface then he came back, and everything changed.

I realized how much I missed being Lauren, being held in his arms, being the only recipient of his kisses. I was the only person in the world he confided in. I was his world, and he was mine. No, he was her world, and she was his...I'm not quite sure there's a difference, but I know there should be.

One thing will always be certain in my mind. This one simple fact gives me the strength to stand and face the mirror again. I position myself where my scar, his mark of eternal affection, is visible in the space of untarnished glass. "I will always love you, Ian." I whisper, and I feel like myself again.


'Perhaps it is impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.'

-Orson Scott Card-