"He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future." - George Orwell
From her perch, JJ could oversee the whole team, her family. Not to her surprise, her eyes drifted to one Emily Prentiss. That immediate reaction had long ago stopped surprising her. JJ could see that Emily was exhausted. The dark circles under her eyes could circumference JJ's own, and Emily didn't even have a toddler at home. The dark haired woman had a small terse smile: the kind she only got when she'd compartmentalized everything down until she was a smooth, pleasant shell. Emily's shoulders were just a little too high for her successfully pull off the calm, at ease look she was most likely trying to convey, at least to JJ's eyes. Occasionally JJ would question her meticulous inventory and study of the dark Agent Prentiss. She wasn't exactly oblivious to Sapphic inclinations... she did go to college on a soccer scholarship after all.
She'd often ponder the existence and breadth of her attraction to the woman, and, while she had long denied it, she suspected that it wasn't one sided. Questions of ethics, propriety, complications, and hope would stir in her head during those long dark hours on the jet following the completion of a case. She'd run the scenarios countless times, an endless loop playing in the background. She'd ask the brunette out for one drink that would become many. They'd eventually end up at her apartment door or Emily's: heated touches, grazing teeth, whispered confessions wrapped in satin. She'd take her on her desk, scattering the paper tragedies replacing them with only Emily. She'd take respite between porcelain thighs; she'd leave the woman a more gratifying type of bruise to hide. In the elevator; on the jet; in the bullpen; hell, she'd had one or two successful fantasies of the two of them in Hotch's office.
All of these coveted thoughts were put to a halt when a southern man with a raspy voice sauntered into her life. She ignored him at first. She tried to resist the advances out of a desire not to lose whatever she was on the verge of having, of what she could have, with Emily. But it was easy; he was easy. She had so much space in the long distance. It was fun and soft, and it was easy. After all her struggles in life, on this job, it was nice to have one thing that was easy. Emily, she knew, was passionate, beautiful, fascinating, brilliant, but the woman would never be easy.
Then she got pregnant. And while it was scary and nerve wracking, in some ways it was still pretty easy. There were conceptions and paths to follow when these things happen. She could go through the motions. Marry the father, have the child, go back to work. And she did. Even so, she still cataloged every new facet of Emily's personality, every smile, every flinch, every personal tidbit that escaped the older woman's vault of compartmentalization. She still watches when the brunette puts on the Kevlar, and most glaringly of all, she still feels herself caught up in the gravity that is Emily Prentiss. Unable to avoid nearness and the peace it would bring to her often-frazzled psyche. She didn't expect those things would ever change, so like she said, she'd only think on it occasionally.
"JJ." They blonde jumped just slightly: a movement that would have gone unnoticed if she had worked anywhere besides with the best observers of human behavior. Slowly she turned her attention away from her passing thoughts and shifted her eyes from one brunette to another
"Yeah, Hotch?" Hotch's eyebrows furrowed in concern, but he paused to allow her room to explain rather than question. When she didn't, he moved on, "We have a new case. Briefing in 10." It was one of the things JJ had always appreciated about Hotch; he didn't push unless he thought the team would suffer. Having an insight into the human psyche doesn't give the right to always act on it. He understood this.
Momentarily flustered JJ cycled internally through every case she'd seen pass through her desk.
"I haven't received a new case." There were some missing women, but they all had the markings of personal abductions.
"No. This one came straight to me." JJ sighed. That, she knew, was never good.
