A/N: I know I haven't written in a REALLY long time, and never for this fandom, so pardon my not-beta'd mistakes. This song just really reminded me of last night's episode (6x18 Lauren), and I had to write a song-fic to it. As a usual post-ep fic, this has major spoilers for 6x18. Lyrics taken from Regina Spektor's "The Call."
No Need to Say Good-Bye
Rated: T
Summary: A post-ep for 6.18 "Lauren." Prentiss-centric. "You'll come back when it's over, no need to say goodbye."
It started out as a feeling And then that word grew louder and louder I'll come back
Which then grew into a hope
Which then turned into a quiet thought
Which then turned into a quiet word
'Til it was a battle cry
When you call me
No need to say goodbye
EMILY POV
It has to be this way, or so JJ told me. She was right—I had to be dead. Did I like it? Not one bit, but I haven't liked any of this from the start. I am not Lauren, she is dead, and I beat Ian Doyle years ago. And this is the price I have to pay for that victory. This is the price I have to pay for saving Declan, I am okay with this. Building a new life at forty isn't too bad—it's like a midlife crisis that I had no control over. Its okay, I can do this. I will be back some day, I will kill Doyle, I will anxiously wait for the day when I get to talk to Aaron in person and tell him how I really feel. I will be back within the year, I swear to it.
That flight was the longest I've ever been on. Well, maybe not, but it sure as hell felt like it was—between the constant poking and prodding of the medical staff and the midnight cacophony of snores and heavy breathing, there was an overabundance of racing thoughts and bittersweet memories crowding my mind and interrupting any fleeting thought of sleep.
JJ and Hotch came in a little while after she had told the team that I had died on the operating table. The only one of them that I can contact anymore is JJ, because the team might suspect something is up if Aaron gets a call or email from me—not even a letter passed through JJ. It is somewhat a comfort to know that, even though I cannot talk to him, he knows the truth. I will not say good bye to him, as I could not say good bye to the rest of my family.
Just because everything's changing All you can do is try to know
Doesn't mean it's never
Been this way before
Who your friends are
As you head off to the war
Pick a star on the dark horizon You'll come back You'll come back
And follow the light
When it's over
No need to say goodbye
When it's over
No need to say goodbye
JJ POV
I wished her luck—how lame was that? This new job has pulled me away from my friends, but I guess that it has its upside since I am sort of reunited with Em, even if it is under the most horrible of circumstances. I am lucky to be one of the few that really know the truth about her 'death.' I guess that is a small mercy.
Emily is on a plane to Paris right now, where she will recuperate until she can move on to one of the three options I gave her. Not even I can know which she chooses, but that is okay, because it is all the same. Emily is still Emily, and she will be safe until we catch Doyle.
The sky is so beautiful tonight—we had Emily's funeral today, and even the weather seemed to know that she wasn't dead—the day was beautiful and full of the hope of spring—the birds were singing and the buds were bursting on the trees. As all funerals go, hers was a celebration of her life—only; Hotch and I were the only ones there who really knew that there was no death to mourn.
I send off a text message to tell her where to meet me in twenty minutes, I'm anxious to see her and remind her that, even though our paths split here, we can still communicate. I am still her friend, now more than ever. I cannot wait to remind her that once this is over, she can come back, and her family and friends will accept her with open arms—a moment that I assume both she and Hotch are waiting for. When we she walks away, she does not say good bye—she doesn't need to, because we both know that someday soon, she will be back.
Now we're back to the beginning Let your memories grow stronger and stronger You'll come back You'll come back
It's just a feeling and no one knows yet
But just because they can't feel it too
Doesn't mean that you have to forget
'Til they're before your eyes
When they call you
No need to say goodbye
When they call you
No need to say goodbye
HOTCH POV
Doyle's dead. The CIA tricked him into going to Wales to reunite with Declan. They caught him in the vacant lot where they carefully staged the takedown so that this time he could not get away. The sniper took him out at two nineteen in the morning. It was quick, it was clean, and now it was finally over.
Emily was brought back to the State Department—she is sitting in JJ's office at this very moment. I cannot wait to see her again. She will be here soon—she returns to us in the way that she left—by the cover of darkness. I make sure that no one is in the bullpen when she enters the BAU for what seems like the first time again. Her cheekbones are sharper than they used to be, and her hair is a soft honey brown. Even with the subtle changes to her appearance, she is as beautiful as she was the first time she came to us. JJ ushers her up to my office, which is where I am waiting for her.
JJ cannot get caught here again—Rossi walked in my office last week when I was on the phone with her arranging Emily's return, and then Seaver bumped into her in the parking garage and announced it when she came in to the rest of the group. Somehow, they still don't know that Emily is still alive, and that she is here, in my office, in the flesh. They couldn't know yet, because Emily still had not decided if she would return to us at all.
Emily—well, her new name is Katya, but she is still our Emily, my Emily—sits in the chair across from me as JJ makes her escape. The team should start to shuffle into the bullpen in an hour or so, which gives me an hour to convince our Emily to come back and stay home. Last night, I had strategically placed candid photos of her and the team around my office and one of her and Jack on my desk in hopes of bringing back the happy memories of her past with us.
The team misses her terribly, and although they don't know she's here, they will call to her once they become aware of her presence. They never forgot her, and they still blamed themselves. Morgan wished he could have gotten to her just a little earlier that night, Garcia wishes that she could have found SOME way to use her technical genius to find the real source of Emily's distress in her last days, Reid misses her more than he cares to admit, and he really wishes that he had the chance to say good bye to her before she died. Rossi understands why she did what she did, but wishes that there was something he could have done to spare her life—I had to talk him out of re-retiring three times since she 'died.' Seaver misses her mentor, but there was no real connection between them; she felt guilty that she got to keep her probationary position because of Emily's departure.
The awkwardness dissolved when she left her seat and hugged me. I readily and eagerly reciprocated, and then I knew, everything was going back to the beginning (except, I welcome her to the team with open arms now). She tells me that she loves me, and wishes that she could have told me before she left, and that, unless I loved her too, she was going to stay Katya of Croatia, and wouldn't return to the team. I love her, I finally told her. But she is still not sure about returning to the team—about contradicting what they have finally begun to accept this seventh month since her funeral. She doesn't want to hurt them anymore than she already has.
We talk for almost an hour about the team, about what she has missed, about our good times, about Jack, about what she's been through these past eight months since this Doyle situation had resurfaced. I saw Rossi pass by my office on the way to his, and I had to break off our conversation. She had to decide now if she wanted the team to know, because the first had arrived, and she would have to sneak out quickly to avoid him and the rest of the team as they started their day. Her memories have finally convinced her to stay.
It is a good thing that she had decided to stay, because Rossi noticed that the light was on in my office, and he saw the two of our silhouettes. The team was basically all there now, except Seaver, who was on medical leave due to her carelessness on a case. Rossi was at the coffee bar, along with Morgan and Garcia. Reid was just settling in to his stack of paperwork when my office door opened. At first, Reid thought it was another hallucination caused by his mysterious migraines, but it didn't fade. Emily was really back, and then Rossi noticed. Garcia gasped and set off on the familiar path to my office faster than I had ever seen her move. Morgan became enraged—he was glad to see her, but man, was he pissed that JJ and I lied to him—that I lied to him every day with my 'fake' grief. My grief was real, but not for the same reason that he had. They called to her, and she came back. For the first time since she was back, she realized that she was home, and that she did not need to stay away—there was no need for another good bye.