Jennifer Jareau had always been the strong, silent type. Ever since Rosaline died JJ had suffered from the complete inability to truly show emotion. Rosaline's suicide had ripped a hole deep within her that would never heal. Where her sister's love once flourished now stood a gaping, ragged chasm too toxic for that kind of unconditional love to ever grow again. She had never let herself love anyone that honestly again from fear they too, eventually, would leave her.
JJ had been running that monotonous road for a quarter of a decade and she was exhausted. It hadn't always been this miserable, there had been brief moments of sunlight which punctured through the shield of darkness and had touched her soul over the years. The problem was, daylight was fleeting and night would inevitably resume as so it goes.
When she and Will had started dating she longed so desperately to feel human again, to feel longing and desire to feel what the world describes as the greatest emotion. JJ had tried so very hard to open herself to love but there was always that nagging darkness holding her back. She loved Will the best she could, but she would never be fully his. She had been hopeful when Henry was born that she would begin to heal. She believed that a mother's love for a child was the ultimate healing for a tortured soul. She had spent years dealing with grieving families and had learned to never underestimate a mother's love.
The birth of Henry had brought her longest reprieve to date. She had been joyous at his arrival and had naively hoped he would be the reigning knight over her dark ages, but the earth turns and the sun goes down. She loved Henry more than anyone else but it still wasn't enough. Then, again she felt that nagging hope when she found out she was pregnant with a second but the world was an unusually cruel place for Jennifer Jareau. Tivon Askari had ripped away that child's life before it ever had the chance to grow in her heart.
After returning from Afghanistan, JJ had been completely numb to life. Will had done his best to support her, he tried to listen he wanted to be able to be there for her, but she refused to open up to him. She saw no reason for him to know about the miscarriage. She would have never wished him to go through the agony she had been facing. She painted on her fake smile and pushed through the days, it may have fooled her team but a husband knows. He couldn't pinpoint what exactly had happened but Will knew some part of his wife had never made it back from that wretched desert. He saw it in the way her smile slightly turned under at the edges. He saw it in the way she looked at Henry, like it had become almost a chore to see her own child. He noticed the way she spent a little too long in the bathroom with the door locked. Or how she took a little too long in the shower, thinking he couldn't hear her sobbing.
Anytime he tried to get her to open up it only seemed to push her further away. She would constantly reassure him, "I'm fine." But they both knew those two words were brimming with lies and pain of which neither of them knew how to address, so they simply didn't. Time passed and JJ got better at her charade. She poured herself into work and Will had been grateful to see a familiar side of her when her best friend, Emily, had returned to the unit after hiatus. Although he wanted JJ to feel comfortable talking to him about her struggles, he was grateful she had Emily to talk to. It seemed to help for a while, he even thought he caught a few genuine smiles every now and again. He didn't know how to help her so he offered the only thing he could, patience. Will loved JJ with every fiber of his being, he would have walked to the edges of the Earth to see that woman happy. Even though she didn't seem to understand or appreciate his genuine devotion, he never left her side.
He had been right about one thing, JJ had been happy to have Emily back. Emily Prentiss had always been JJ's rock. They shared demons no one else understood. Emily too had lost a child, when she was fifteen she had mistakenly become pregnant and had an abortion without telling anyone. Even though the choice had been hers, a woman doesn't readily forget the experience. When JJ had miscarried, Emily had been in hiding after Ian Doyle had nearly killed her and escaped. JJ was instructed that no one was to know Emily's undercover alias, as a precaution to her and the rest of the team, but JJ had looked over the documents before giving them to Emily. She had been grateful for her deceit because when she lost the baby, Emily was the only person she longed to talk to. Emily talked her back from the ledge on multiple occasions. When Emily was finally able to come out of hiding, JJ was overwhelmed to have her person back. It was a small comfort in the wake of disaster. There had been so many nights JJ would sneek out of her house, driving aimlessly for hours on end, only to end up at Emily's front door.
Emily had welcomed her with open arms. Emily held a matching darkness within her eyes and there was an understanding that went far deeper than words have ever been able to express. The affair was nothing more than the desire to feel something , anything. They attempted to fill each other's void with physical pleasure, but it was a temporary fix. JJ had become addicted to Emily. Over time the need became more and more difficult to satiate. Desperate to keep her constant high, JJ began seeking higher risks for greater rewards. JJ appreciated that Emily didn't ask questions, she simply obeyed. JJ's longing for pleasure soon turned into a devilish obsession with pain. Emily never hesitated, she offered everything of herself in order for JJ to feel alive again even if it had only been measured in minutes and hours. However, the human body can only withstand so much and like a succubus, JJ drank Emily physically and spiritually dry. JJ wasn't even surprised when Emily left, they all leave in the end.
Being overcome with fear of being alone, she had urged Will to marry her. Being willing to go to any length for her, he of course obliged. Will thought of it as a sign the woman he had fallen in love with had come back around. Unfortunately, that could not have been further from the truth. Emily's company had only been a distraction and when she left it put JJ right back on that line where reality blurs into shadows.
Time passed and again, JJ went through cycles. There were good days and bad. Some days she spent hours sobbing into the bottom of the shower as heavy water pelted the skin, she so desperately wished she could cleanse. Other days she was able to keep up appearances, smiling halfheartedly or filling a conversation with the almost forgotten sound of laughter. But the the demons still lurked, deep within, awaiting a moment of weakness.
That defining moment came at the hands of the same villain whom had taken her child from her, Tivon Askari. When he abducted and tortured her, she wished so badly he had finished the job. She had already been so broken, barely holding on by the skin of her teeth, but after the night in that warehouse she was shattered. She recalled it was the first time she had hallucinated. In her delirium, she had imagined Emily coming to her, telling her to be strong. At the time, she chalked up the delusion to the tremendous amount of torture she had endured. But after that night, the hallucinations continued. They intermingled with the voices in her head. Voices which had begun as the faintest of whispers but had gradually become so uncomfortably loud she was surprised others couldn't head them. They were the voices of the people she wasn't able to save, she had seen so much loss, the voices were like a full blown chorus raging between her ears. Her sister's voice was the most prominent, a constant reminder of JJ's first failure. If only she had unlocked the door sooner. If only she hadn't left the razor on the edge of the tub. If only she had told her parents Rosaline had been acting strange. She would never forgive herself for what happened that night, though there was nothing she could have done differently.
The only thing that seemed to lessen her hallucinations seemed to be physical distraction. She had discovered the remedy by accident one morning when she burned her hand on the tea kettle. The searing pain had momentarily overthrown the cacophony in her mind. After that, she tested this theory to no avail. She would look for new ways to test her limits, thriving off the adrenaline rush that first accompanied the risk then coasting through the shock wave as pain set in. She had been sleeping in the guest bedroom for over a month when she first felt the indescribable ecstasy of a cold steel blade across the insides of her thighs. She constantly reveled in the sight of crimson as it danced against her ivory skin. It was easy enough to hide from Will, as they hadn't been intimate in sometime. Some days when she was feeling particularly on edge and wasn't able to release the tension (usually on the jet or at the BAU) she would cross her legs and squeeze her thighs together so the cuts would open against the strain and send that familiar sting throughout her body.
Amazingly, the body has a natural way of adjusting to reoccurring pain over time. Much like a chef who no longer feel burns because their fingertips are so callused, JJ was no longer able to get relief from the blade. She sought other avenues and ending up taking up boxing. She had always loved the martial arts, and boxing was the perfect (healthy) physical distraction. It gave her an outlet for her anger, while still letting her relish in fits of pain.
After about six months of dangerous depression, JJ decided to finally fight back. Boxing helped keep her physically and spiritually active and she sought out a doctor to help with the other symptoms. Her psychiatrist prescribed medications which surprisingly helped her feel a tinge of normalcy. Soon she managed to string together more and more "good" days. The nightmares had lessened, the voices had quieted to a dull white noise and she hadn't hallucinated in some time. She felt like she had regained some footing and even felt the dimmest hope she was gaining control again. But her journey back to reality was about to prove far from over.
She had moved back into the master bedroom and had even made attempts to mend her relationship with Will. They had begun going to couple's counseling on a weekly basis and they seemed to be making headway. The therapist urged JJ come see her alone as well but JJ refused. She had compromised with Will to go talk to someone together but she was not ready to talk to anyone on her own. Instead, JJ kept their sessions focused on their marriage and deflected any attempts by the therapist to get her to open up about anything personal.
As she began to feel better, JJ decided to stop seeing her psychiatrist. She felt weak having to seek medical help for anything less than a brain tumor and she didn't see the need in continuing the medications now that things had begun to look up. She ignored her doctor's warnings and without telling Will, she had stopped her medications completely. JJ was proud when she continued to be stable for a while. Inescapably, things began to dwindle without aid.
She tried so desperately to pull herself together for the sake of her son and husband. But the more she teetered between safety and insanity, the more she closed herself off again. By the time January crept onto the calendar, she was back to that well known chaos. She had not expected the anniversary of her torture to be so triggering, but just the thought of having spent the entire year completely distraught, still bent to the will of a dead man, sent her into full psychosis.
It had become progressively harder to hide her rapid unraveling from those around her. Spence had been the first on the team to ask her point-blank what was going on. The astute boy genius had always held a soft spot for JJ and it was clear that he was genuinely concerned. JJ wasn't sure why, after all this time, Spence had been the one she ended up breaking down to. Perhaps, it was because he would listen objectively or because those big brown eyes reminded her so painstakingly of Rosaline's. Whatever the reason, she had ended up briefly telling him that she was still haunted by Askari and divulged the truth regarding her miscarriage. He tried to do his best to comfort her, but she was long past what little help he could offer.
JJ had been holding on to what little sanity she could and as much as Spence had tried to help, it had only dredged up the vile memories that had been settling into her fractured psyche. He had reached out to Emily and put together as much information as he could about Askari, hoping it would help JJ understand what happened to her. On the contrary, the file revived stifled memories of her torture leaving them fresh and new, piercing her mind like a deep cut just starting to swell with blood. JJ had not so much as fallen over the edge but had forcibly been thrust into the abyss.
She was drenched with sweat, heart pounding as if she'd just finished a triathlon. Her body was visibly shaking as she frantically looked around the room for signs of her demons. She couldn't remember driving home. Last thing she remembered was sitting in her old office confronting Askari. She couldn't discern reality from hallucination anymore, she shook her head violently as she rocked back and forth.
"JJ. JJ? Jennifer!" Will shook the door handle frantically, while trying to keep his voice calm.
She blinked slowly, tears sliding down her cheeks. Her head was overrun by the images of Askari's victims commingling with all of the faces of the ones she hadn't been able to save. She sobbed and yelled incoherently at monsters no one else could see.
"Jennifer, please, baby. I need you to open the door!" Will's voice faltered as he shoved against the door with his shoulder. "It's okay, Jennifer. It's okay! it's not real!"
"He took everything from me! I can't do this anymore," JJ yelled angrily. "That bastard stole everything from me. He took everything I was. I can't live like this. No one should live like this!"
"Jennifer," Will pleaded. "Askari is dead. He can't hurt you anymore. He can't hurt anyone anymore. He's dead and you're here."
"I don't want to be," JJ admitted. "I don't want to be here anymore. I'm done fighting"
JJ heard his voice, but couldn't make out his words. The sound seemed so far away. She was lying in a heap on the bathroom floor, staring up at her sister's sad brown eyes.
"I can't do it anymore Will," JJ continued weakly. "I just can't fight this anymore. I'm so tired. I'm so, so tired." She pulled the slide and cocked the gun, pressing the cold barrel into her temple. Smiling softly as Rosaline reached out warmly to welcome her sister to the other side.
Will leaned his ear against the door sliding to the floor, tears flowed freely down his face as he searched for the most important words he would ever say, "Baby, you are the strongest person I know. Jennifer, god, please, please Jennifer. Open the door. I'm here. Jennifer, Please, please, don't go," he pleaded desperately.
"But I can't. I just can't. Henry deserves a mom who can love him unconditionally, he deserves to be happy. You deserve to be happy, I'm just holding everyone back!" she yelled through ragged sobs, "I am in so much pain, Will. I can't do this. I'm sorry. I tried for so long, but I'm so tired. I just want to sleep...I just want to sleep."
The gunshot echoed through the bathroom and nearly ruptured Will's eardrum. Everything went silent and still. Time stopped completely for what seemed like hours. A scream of something not wholly human ripped from the pit of his stomach, spilling into the silence echoing off the roof of his mouth like a cathedral. He heard Henry stirring in his bedroom.
"Hey buddy, stay in your room. Stay in your room for Daddy!" Will cried back to his son. He stood up and kicked the door until it finally gave way against the weight of the blows.
"Oh god. NO! NO NO! Jennifer, fuck, oh my god, no." he mumbled as he rushed to his wife. JJ laid in a limp mess on the floor, the gun splayed to the side. Her cold, still blue eyes stared up at him.
Blood and heavier bits covered the previously white walls and tile floor. JJ laid in a puddle of crimson, Will collapsed next to her. He scooped her into his arms and kissed her over and over, rocking her as he wept.
"God, Jennifer, why?" he cried out towards the heavens. He was pulled from his state of shock as he heard the familiar pitter-patter of curious feet heading down the hallway. Henry was only 7 years old, much too young to understand why but not young enough to forget the scene. Will was covered in his wife's blood and brain matter. The thick pieces clung to his shirt where he had been cradling her lifeless body.
"Henry! Go back to your room!" Will yelled. He forced as much authority in his voice as he could through overwhelming sobs, hoping to prevent his son from the abject horror of the bathroom. Unfortunately, Henry had already made it into the bedroom.
"Daddy?" the young boy asked, not being able to see into the bathroom. "Daddy, what's wrong? Where's mommy?"
Will stiffed his cries and took a deep breath to keep his tone even, "Henry, I need you to be a good boy. I need you to go downstairs and I need you to call your Grandma, okay? Please, Henry. Can you do that buddy?"
He heard Henry's feet moving closer as he kicked the door, just enough to close it to where Henry would be spared the violent scene. He called out again, "Henry, do not come in here. You have to go call Grandma. Tell her she needs to come over because Mommy needs her, okay?"
"Okay Daddy," Henry obeyed and Will heard the innocent boy's footsteps trail down the stairs and out of earshot.
Will reached in his pocket and found his cell phone. He dialed for help, still grasping JJ's corpse.
"911, what is the location of your emergency?"
Will had been a detective for over a decade. In that time he had seen hundreds of bodies, much like this one or worse. He had investigated numerous cases, visited unspeakable crime scenes but there was something especially gruesome about being right in the middle of the catastrophe. In all of his time on the force, nothing could have ever prepared him for the stench of freshly ignited gunpowder and burned flesh mixed with the metallic scent of blood. Or the sight of his wife's once beautiful body splayed across the tile with a gaping hole where her perfect blonde hair swept across her shoulders only hours before. Nothing could have prepared him for the deafening sound of the gun fired feet away from him, still an ear splitting sound despite the door. Nor the taste of vomit burning in his throat between exasperated sobs.
"Hello? Can you hear me? What is the location of your emergency?"
"7079 Blackbird Court," Will sobbed as coherently as he possibly could. Blackbird Court. JJ had picked out the house, she had simply insisted they live on this street. Despite the inconvenient location and the dwindling property rates, she told Will no other house would possibly be this perfect for them. He had agreed only to appease his loving wife, never knowing the true meaning that simple word meant to JJ. Never knowing she had moved them to this house because she needed the constant reminder that she could transform, that she could overcome the haunting ghosts of her past. Unfortunately, she had never made it to the other side of the metamorphosis. JJ had died with the same broken wings she had first adorned in Afghanistan. She had taken her demons to the grave, or rather they had taken her there.
Will stayed on the floor, clasping his wife's corpse as the weight pulled against his arms. When the EMTs and police finally arrived shock had taken hold and he could not do much but stare down at JJ lost in a catatonic state. He kissed the unblemished bit of flesh still left near her forehead as the police men pulled him from the floor. Her lax body slunk into a heap in the pool of her demise.
Everyone was asking him questions but he could only hear the echo of the gunshot piercing his ears, forever committed to memory. They took him downstairs and reunited him with Henry, who was sitting in the kitchen with an officer. Henry was obviously shaken in the confusion. He was crying as the female officer tried to comfort him. Henry caught sight of his father and rushed to his side, ignoring the bloodstains adorning his clothing.
Will picked up his son and held him closely, whispering reassurances to clam the young boy. Just about the time he had gotten Henry to stop crying, Sandy Jareau came into the house completely distraught. Sandy had been aware of her daughter's mental status and had nightmares about this moment. She took one look at Will and collapsed in the foyer, screaming as tears broke free in a flood down her cheeks. Will went to her, Henry still in his arms.
Sandy wailed as she reached out for her son-in-law, he knelt down and joined her on the floor. She brushed Henry's long blonde hair and kissed him again and again. Will wrapped his arms around them both in a meek attempt to block out the evils of the world. They stayed in that huddled mass, crying and whispering reassurances until Henry finally fell asleep in his Grandmother's arms.
Will helped her load Henry into the car, looking back at their home from the front drive. This place was tarnished now, marred by loss and monsters untold. Will looked solemnly up at the light coming from the master bedroom and wept as he saw the medical examiner loading the body bag onto the gurney. He knew they would have to move out of this house of horrors if he and Henry were ever going to move past this tragedy. But nagging deep in his heart he knew, realistically that no matter where they moved this would follow them both the rest of their lives.
JJ had died the exact same way she had spent the last 25 years, alone.