It Can't Be Unsaid
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em, don't get money for it.
AN: Just a short vignette after watching "Mindhunters"
Mild spoilers
It followed her home. His voice seemed to echo in her ears.
"...that bad thing that happened to little Lilly, long, long ago..."
It hadn't occurred to her that someday a suspect would use that against her. It was hers. Her secret. She didn't even want to think about what they guys were thinking, standing behind the one-way mirror. It hadn't clicked that they'd heard until after, when she was sitting at her desk.
Usually that's the first thing she would have thought about. She took pride in the fact that she was just as strong as the boys. Weakness, personal weakness, wasn't something she let creep in her professional life. When she'd opened up to Scotty about her mother, she'd kicked herself for days. Approachable but inaccessible. That's what she worked hard to portray. Mysterious yet reassuring.
But when he'd pinned her with those cold eyes and thrust her demons into the light, she hadn't been thinking about anyone overhearing.
She'd been scared. He'd scared her. And that was unacceptable. That was the thing she worked on hardest of all, above anything else. No one could scare her. She would never let herself be the scared girl she'd been when she was little, or the frightened woman she'd been when she was married. No one had that power over her anymore.
Or so she'd thought.
And that's what followed her home. What slid in around the edges as she watched her sister sleep, when she admitted to herself that she'd lied to him. She did dream about it, sometimes. It was one of the things that had shaped her life, molded the Lilly she saw in the mirror every day.
And it skulked into the bedroom that night. She tried to pull all her resolve together, put everything back behind its walls, and deny that there was a crack there.
And it almost worked.
Almost.
