Small-town Delaware cornfields were like thousands of well-choreographed dancers. Emily watched them bend and sway as the cruiser maneuvered around potholes, thankful for a reprieve from her jumbled thoughts. As the light plane above them opened its landing gear and prepared to skim the single makeshift runway, Emily gave a fleeting nod of admiration to the stronger stalks on the perimeter as they stood resolute against the whirring of the propeller. They refused to be uprooted by the callousness of humans. She would try to do the same.
For the duration of the drive Spencer Reid had been wedged into the back seat as a buffer between JJ and a young Clayton officer with hungry eyes and a rash around his five'o'clock shadow. He'd spent the first fifteen minutes out of Wilmington sprouting facts about mental asylums and ghosts, none of which Emily had managed to retain among the struggle that was her constant compartmentalizing. Eventually, the Clayton Police Chief had picked up the feeble waves of a country music station and spent the remainder of the drive masterfully increasing the volume every couple of minutes, and Reid's voice had been drowned out by the occasional crowing of Hank Williams over the crackle of static.
JJ was first out of the vehicle and Emily couldn't blame her. The officer was scratching the flaking skin around his stubble with renewed vigor and smiling in her direction with one prominent rotting tooth. He couldn't have been more than twenty-five - scrawny and unkempt - out-of-his-depth but summoning every ounce of misguided confidence to hurry after JJ's quickening form across the runway.
You can't make this shit up. Emily watched wryly as JJ tried to ignore the blonde strands whipping around her face from the slowing propeller, unaware that it increased her sex appeal ten-fold. Despite the proximity of Officer - what was his name? - JJ had stood as solid as the corn stalks, barely flinching, probably hoping beyond hope that the pilot - a fly-in from Dover - had located three boys among the pine forests. Emily could almost imagine them from the photos in the file - skinned knees or even broken bones - sheepish but very, very alive.
She hadn't even made it to the dying grass on the landing strip before the grim look on the pilot's face told her that they'd best settle into Clayton.
Off the 7, where the Henson twins has disappeared thirty years before, the peacefulness had been unnatural, unnerving even. It was as if the town had wanted Emily to feel at ease with its hum of insects and sweet scent of maize crop and tractor diesel. It hadn't worked. The savagery of her job only caused her to second-guess the simple beauty in the world. Despite the warmth of the mid-morning Spring sun and the crisp country breeze, Emily had been unable to think of anything other than the horrors the boys were surely facing. Their lives had barely begun, and yet the chance of them being extinguished was far too real. Her thoughts had drifted to the parents at the station; to the aching despair they must have felt, and to the unendurable fear that was not knowing what had happened to your loved one.
With Reid preoccupied, Emily had bitten off her nails, simultaneously cursing the thought process that threatened every time to consume her. It was the single greatest kink in her armor; the biggest danger to her obsessive ability to compartmentalize. She would sympathize with the families, and then she would empathize, and then there was always that one step further, that special form of self-punishment that knotted her stomach and hastened her breathing, and left her an anxious mess of nausea and bleeding cuticles.
You remember that time that person who meant the most to you was gone, don't you Prentiss?
Fuck, she remembered JJ's kidnapping with stinging clarity. She didn't need a cognitive exercise to recall the staleness of the room mixed with the stench of rotting human flesh and damp dog hide. She still felt JJ's frigid skin during nightmares and heard the same guttural cries of relief when they rescued another victim or put a bullet through another unsub. Since then, Emily had imagined scenarios that would have made that horrible day pale in comparison. She was certain they were borne partly from the brutality of her job, and partly from her ever-increasing affection for the younger blonde with those blue-green-gray eyes. In Emily's broken, butchered imagination the story would change, but the protagonist was always the same: Special Agent Jennifer Jareau.
Emily had been aware of the subtle shift in their relationship since she'd been back. From colleagues to friends to better friends. Or maybe better friends was just her smoke screen, her excuse for the countless hours she'd spent in frenzied agitation for JJ's well-being. Whatever it was, it existed, even if only in Emily's mind. It was there as Emily bent over JJ's chair to look at the laptop screen back at the station. It was there when her fingertips curled tightly around the plastic, reaching for, but not quite grazing the material of JJ's blazer. It was there when she accidentally inhaled too much of JJ's buttery shampoo, and had to step back. It was there.
By the afternoon the haze was thicker and the first cicadas had started up. Emily's eyes burned with sleep-deprivation while her head and its muddle of unprocessed thoughts threatened to betray her. Still, she pulled on the flak jacket mechanically. Like the corn stalks, she told herself, clipping her gun into her holster and tying back her ebony hair. Like the corn stalks she was bending with the circumstances, but not snapping.
The drive to Jimmy Ridley's house was uneventful, although the promise of uncovering the whereabouts of the boys made Emily impatient as Alvez skidded across the loose gravel of another unsealed country road. A hairpin bend, another cornfield, another hairpin bend. Emily had drummed her fingers on the dash until Alvez had demanded she stop, and so, with nothing else to think about, her thoughts had drifted back to the blonde in the car behind them.
When Emily thought about the exercise of finding Jimmy Ridley itself, there was nothing non-regulation. It wasn't as if her stint as Unit Chief could have been called over before it had begun. Still, she'd entered the house with an uncharacteristic trepidation, unable to put her finger on the reason for the dread that was causing the hairs on her arms to stand on end.
They'd drawn their weapons, cleared the living room, the dining room and then the hall - like they'd done so many dozens of times before. Emily had found the woven shrine of victim photos and personal effects first, and it had startled her appropriately - enough to signal to the team that this wasn't quite the innocent country cottage. Still, Emily had seen thousands more alarming things during her BAU stint. She had almost - almost - let the dread dissipate. There were no dead kids, but a hive of circumstantial evidence that they could pore through. Up until that point the whole exercise could have been considered at least partially successful, save for no sign of the missing boys.
The damned thing had only fallen apart at the clanging of metal from the kitchen.
Shit. There's something - someone - under the sink. Emily couldn't remember who had cleared the kitchen. If they'd cleared the kitchen. Fuck.
They'd turned in unison, the four of them, weapons raised a little higher. JJ - fearless JJ - had been closest. And Emily - stupid Emily - had been the furthest. Before Emily could say anything; before she could muscle her way to the front of the group, or even think of how to reverse the roles so she could put herself appropriately in the firing line, JJ was in position. When she bent down to throw open the sink cabinet, Emily's savage imagination reared its head without warning, and the result had been a fear so primal and raw that it had almost caused her to discharge a full clip straight into Jimmy Ridley's goading grin.
Fuck you, you absolute waste of a fucking - Emily's finger went rigid over the trigger and for a split second she was paralysed by her own conscious. But then Ridley had laughed - that deep, diabolical laugh - with JJ still barely a half-metre away on her haunches, and something had burst forth from the depths of Emily; something she couldn't control. It had sent JJ sprawling back onto the grimy kitchen linoleum, willowy limbs splayed about her, and caused Emily to cuff Ridley so roughly that his mouth had twisted in torturous pain.
It was only then that Emily had concluded Ridley hadn't been an immediate threat - a realization that her team had come to much earlier. Reid had holstered his gun and Alvez had hauled Ridley up. JJ was collecting herself from the floor, unsure if Emily had seen something she hadn't, a glint of a weapon maybe? For Emily, no amount of relief had suppressed the scene her mind had constructed just moments prior, nor forced the bile back down her throat. In her twisted hallucination, Ridley had been cradling a shotgun; pump-action, double-barreled - one bullet easily through Reid and then another through JJ before Emily could even react. She had seen it so acutely, that, had she not been leaning against the kitchen counter, she was sure her legs would cave. As the chief led Ridley away and the team exhaled, Emily had kept holding her breath until her lungs screamed, afraid that the stinging tears would escape if she let go.
Outside their inn, on a hill off the main strip of Clayton, they was a swing hanging from an old maple tree. The rope was frayed and dirty and the singular branch had yielded to the weight of bodies over the years. Emily dared not sit on it, but little JJ, with her slighter frame, had no such reservations. She sat watching the sun, orange from the dust, melt and spread across the town as it descended.
Emily watched from the step outside her room, leaning against the splintered wooden railing, letting the drop in temperature cool her cheeks and settle her. She watched until she had to strain her eyes to see JJ's silhouette, wondering if she'd come in. She didn't, and so she'd watched some more, until the mist had started rolling across the cornfields. Then she had risen with a blazer in her hand, and crunched loudly over fresh pine needles to announce her presence.
"You okay?" the blazer was a peace offering - an apology for throwing the delicate blonde across the floor of a dirty kitchen. JJ said nothing about the incident, but she took Emily's too-big blazer graciously.
"Thanks"
"JJ? You okay? Emily asked the question again, suddenly feeling very exposed in the dark. She fought against a shiver, not wanting even a shred of vulnerability to creep in to the interaction.
"Yeah. I'm just..." JJ had paused to play with her lip and gulp back emotion. Although it was almost pitch black, Emily could see shining eyes and it gnawed at her capricious emotions. Had the tired, old branch been stronger, had the drilled wooden plank been longer, she might have sat down and crossed the line in the minute it took JJ to finish her sentence. "...I'm just thinking about my own boys. How do you even cope with the possibility of losing the most precious thing in your life, you know, Em?"
Emily had to shut her eyes, and this time the small shiver overwhelmed her. Her hand reached, unsure of whether to unfurl JJ's slight fingers from where they were curled around the fraying rope, or caress a wayward blonde wave. She needed something tangible to hold for a minute. Eventually her flexed fingers found JJ's slender shoulder under the bunched material of the jacket, tense with worry, and gave it a small squeeze of reassurance.
"I know, JJ"
Because boy, did she know.