Disclamer: I own nothing, everything belongs to their rightful owners.
AN: Again thank you to everyone who takes the time to read/review/fav. one of my stories. I'm really grateful for that. And a special thank you goes to the amazing clairebare for beta reading!
A Thousand Burned Out Yesterdays
Part II
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They hate her right from the start. They don't trust her and Emily can't blame them. But she owes it to Clyde to make it work and so she plasters a fake smile on her face and tries her best to fit into a team that doesn't want her.
Working for the BAU is different. There's no one telling her who to be or what to do. It's not necessary to give up everything to take the bad guy down. But it's been years and Emily can't even remember her true self anymore.
She knows that they're watching her closely, expecting her to resign, waiting for her to break under the pressure that comes with their job. And no wonder, the life Clyde made up for her sounds ridculous. Who would be crazy enough to allow a person coming from a desk job to go into the field?
She wishes she could just tell them the truth, but of course she can't. It's what she signed up for years ago. But sometimes she still wonders what Clyde really did to get her the job. It must have been much more than calling in a favor.
The first time she takes an Unsub down, she does it all by herself. Jumps out of the dark, not even blinking when she pulls the trigger to safe the victim. It takes her only one shot, straight through the head, to end it. When she lowers her gun, she finds the whole team staring.
"Maybe I compartmentalize better than most people," is what she tells JJ and Hotch, after Reid gets kidnapped. And it's not even a lie. She does compartmentalize better than most people.
What she can't tell them is that it's only because she's already done worse things herself.
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It's her birthday and she's alone in her apartment, staring out of the window and into the dark. Thinking about London.
It's been weeks since she last talked to Clyde, no it's not true, it's been months. So long, she can't even remember their last conversation.
A knock on the door stops her from going down the memory lane any further. She finds him leaning casually against the doorframe of her apartment.
"Happy Birthday, darling." With one soft movement, Clyde pulls her close up against his chest, her body fitting perfectly against his hips. His lips finding hers without hesitation.
For a brief moment Emily thinks about pushing him back, for his own sake. And maybe for hers. But they've done this so many times over the years, it's always been like this. Pushing and pulling, neither of them willing to make a real commitment. In the end they always found their way back into each other's arms.
"They still hate me," she tells him later, when they're lying side by side in her bed. Moonlight kissing their naked bodies, tangled between the sheets.
"Give them time, Em. They'll come around."
She watches while he traces circles on her bare arms, the soft touch of his fingertips enough to make her tremble in excitement.
"I hated you too you know, the day I met you. So sure of yourself."
Emily laughs. "You asked me out for a drink before you even showed me my desk, remember?"
"Well, I definitely remember that desk," he tells her with a wink, before bending down to kiss her neck. Making her forget what they were talking about.
"How long do we have?" she whispers, her hands running down his back.
"Four hours," Clyde tells her between kisses. His hands already buried in her dark hair.
Emily nods, her hands pulling him closer. "Then let's make them count." Clyde doesn't need to be told twice.
When she wakes up in the morning, she's not surprised to find him gone. The bed beside her cold and empty except for a white envelope.
She leans back against the headboard before she takes it into her hands to open it. She finds a piece of paper. The colorful painting of a child. A rainbow under a clear blue sky. A smiling sun, light blue clouds and a dark haired woman. A little blond boy holding her hand as well as the hand of the man next to him. Happy Birthday written atop of it in the unsteady handwriting of a kid.
Even when it's not signed, Emily knows it's from Declan. The little boy who still owns her heart.
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"You don't choose who you fall in love with."
The words leave her lips without thinking, just to calm the victim. But later, when Emily's alone again, she wonders if she even believes them herself.
Could she have chosen to not love Ian? Would she?
She thinks about the colorful painting she keeps hidden in her safe, along with the ring Ian gave her and everything else that connects her with that dark chapter of her past.
The truth is she isn't sure. It's maybe the closest she'll ever get to know.
"You, kids, I can see it," JJ tells her with a heartwarming smile on her sweet face and Emily feels like crying. She knows the blonde on the seat across from her just wants to be nice, doesn't mean to hurt her, but she does. The fact that she looks so much like Clara doesn't help either.
When Garcia gets shot and Emily finds herself next to JJ in the hospital hallway in the middle of the night, she knows she's getting too close. She slips her hand into JJ's without thinking, more for her own comfort than for the blonde's. Fighting the urge to run as far away as possible.
She already knows much more about her colleagues than she ever wanted to. Colleagues have become friends and friends have become family. A family she never had. It scares her to death.
The closer they get, the higher she builds up her walls. Hides behind her flawless face, the mask she learned to wear as a child. She thinks about leaving more and more often, even when she isn't sure where to go. There's still Declan she has to protect. It's not like she could just walk right out of the life Clyde made for her.
At least not without a plan.
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"Me. It's me."
The words spill from her lips without thinking twice. She doesn't fight Cyrus even though she knows she could. She gives Reid one last pleading look before she gets dragged away.
Every blow to her head, every punch in her gut makes her want to scream in agony. Yet, she's never felt more alive.
She tastes her own blood in her mouth, feels glass cut deep into her skin. The physical pain, such a sweet release.
She tells her team that she can take it, knows they're already listening in. The compound long surrounded. But what she really means is that she needs it.
Hours later, she sits down across from Reid and tries to make him understand that there's no reason for him to feel guilty. But of course she can't tell him the truth and everything she can tell him makes him look even more heartbroken. So she gives up. Stays silent for the whole flight back.
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They're in Vegas, the whole case horrible enough to make even Emily Prentiss flinch. She's glad when Hotch decides that they should stay the night, before heading back to D.C.
She meets Layla in the casino. A young woman from Portland with ebony curls and the same sparkling green eyes as Clara's. It doesn't take long before they end up in a dark hallway. Emily's hands buried in Layla's dark hair, far too drunk to care that one of her team might see her.
It's between kisses that she catches the glimpse of someone watching her. When she looks up, she finds Rossi looking at her from across the room. His dark eyes meeting hers.
And for a split -horrific- second, Emily feels like he's looking right through her. She blinks, but when she looks up again, he's gone.
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Watching JJ with Henry brings Emily to her knees. There, right in front of her, everything she gave up. Everything she lost. Everything she'll never have.
No one notices when she slips out of the room, almost breaking into a run for the elevator.
She makes it out of the building before she realizes her car is still in the parking lot of the FBI. She closes her eyes in frustration, before she sinks down on the nearest bench. Her gaze lost somewhere on the horizon.
When they ask her to play the bait to get their suspect to talk, Emily just stares. Tries hard to suppress a laugh, wonders what Clyde would have to say about this. He sure as hell wouldn't be amused.
When she's done dressing up, Morgan looks surprised and Reid flushed. And Emily doesn't understand what the fuss is about until she looks into the mirror and finds Lauren staring back at her.
For a split second she thinks about telling Hotch that she can't do it. But where's the point? And for the first time in what feels like forever Emily allows herself to give in to the need to be her again.
Later, when she's back at the police station, it feels impossible to become Emily ever again.
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With Matthew's death, Emily hits rock bottom. Finally tumbling down the edge of the cliff she'd been hanging on for years.
Suddenly she's back in a time she needed years to forget, a time she never wanted to look back to. But yet here she is. Another person who had fallen for her, dead and gone, a life destroyed by her own terrible decisions.
When Rossi asks her, she tells him. Spills her secrets like a high school girl talking to the guidance counselor. And it's exactly how she feels, like a fifteen year old. Alone, broken beyond repair.
As soon as she knows John will be fine, she takes a cab to the airport. Leaves Hotch a message that she needs a few days off.
She spends the whole night in the departure hall because of the snow, biting her lip furiously to keep herself from crying. When she finally ends up in front of Clydes apartment in London, god knows how many hours later, he's not even there. She scolds herself for being so stupid, for not calling him first. By now the battery of her phone is dead.
She leaves him a message pinned to his door, before taking a cab back to the airport. Maybe it's for the best.
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She falls back into old habits far too easily. Glad that Clyde isn't around to stop her. She should feel guilty, she knows. But she doesn't.
She's at a crime scene with Reid, when she loses her cold facade for the first time. They're in Philly, standing in the pouring rain in a dark alley, listening to the police officer stating the facts. Telling them about the dead boy they found.
The second Emily catches a glimpse of him, her knees give out from under her. She's falling and if it hadn't been for Reid she would have hit the ground.
But it's not Declan. The dead boy on the ground at least three years older, his eyes a grey blue, instead of the color of the sky. She's relieved and shocked and disgusted by herself at the same time.
She stumbles out of Reid's hold and manages a few steps away from the crime scene before she starts to throw up.
After that, Reid looks at her differently. She's surprised when she realizes he hasn't told anyone what had happened at that crime scene that night. But instead he's watching her from a distance, hovering one step behind her as if he fears she might fall apart.
They're on their flight back from a case in Texas when she's had enough and finally snaps at him.
"Just spill it, Reid!" She's standing in the small kitchenette, a cup of coffee in her hand. Fighting the urge to throw it against the wall.
Reid looks uneasy and Emily remembers a time when she'd been the one trying to talk some sense into him. It seems a lifetime ago.
"Let me help you," he finally tells her. His hazel eyes eyeing her carefully and Emily wishes she could run away. But she's trapped with nowhere to go and so she just stares down at her coffee. Slowly shaking her head.
"I don't need help."
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Flirting with Carl Arnold to get him to talk feels wrong and right at the same time. She's good at it, always had been. Knows exactly what she's doing and the way Hotch keeps looking at her makes her wonder if he knows about her work at Interpol after all.
She pretends to be shaken up by her own performance, but the truth is she feels better than she has in a long time.
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"I want to come back, Clyde."
She's sitting in her bedroom, her phone pressed against her ear. Staring out of her window into the darkness.
He's silent for a long time and she knows exactly what he's thinking. What he's not telling her, not over the phone, not when neither of them knows who's listening.
"Alright," is all he tells her in the end. "Let me see what I can do."
I miss you too, is what she reads between the lines.
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By the time Sean starts calling her she already knows that Ian's on his way to Washington.
The dead bodies piling up left and right, make her wonder what went wrong. Because Emily knows something is wrong. Knows it isn't Ian's work, knows for sure when she hears about the dead kid. It can't be Ian. It just can't be.
"He's a terrorist, Emily," Clyde tells her. His blue eyes finding hers, his warm hands close around her trembling ones. "He thinks that his son is dead, murdered. For him there's nothing to lose."
Emily nods, closes her eyes and wishes she could tell Clyde that she left a message hidden in those pictures. But she doesn't dare to tell him the truth. At least not yet.
In the end Ian shows up out of nowhere, just like he always had and when he does it's like a single moment hasn't passed between now and then.
Neither of them says a word, they're just staring at each other from across the table, an unbearable need rising inside.
She takes him home with her, back into the security of her apartment. They barely make it through the door before they tear off each other's clothes with trembling fingers. And she feels guilty. Horribly guilty. But it's not enough to make her stop.
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When Ian tells her that it had been Tsia who betrayed them all, everything starts to make sense. Emily knows what it means, knows what he's telling her. Knows that Tsia has to die.
She doesn't try to stop him when he leaves her apartment at sunrise. She doesn't warn her either, helps Ian lure her into a trap instead.
The only thing she does is to make sure that Clyde is safe. It isn't his war to fight after all.
When she looks down at Tsia's dead body a few hours later, reality hits her full force. There's no going back now. Not now, not ever. Not for her. Not for anyone. Not anymore.
She made a deal with the devil, sealed it with blood. Her soul lost.
She rushes out of the building, stumbling past police officers before, throws up all over the sidewalk. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, she grabs hold of an iron gate to hold herself upright.
She knows Ian is watching. Knows he'll think she's weak. And maybe she is. Maybe she's not meant to live the life he wants her to. Maybe she never was. Maybe they both have been wrong all along. Now it's too late to go back, too late to change what she's gotten herself into.
She does what needs to be done without blinking. And it pains Emily to find her team doing exactly what she expected them too.
Coming right after her.
She can't help but wonder what they would do if they knew the truth. If they knew her part in this. If they knew who she really is.
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When she ends up on the cold ground, blood soaking the floor underneath her, she already knows that it looks much worse than it is. And she can't help but wish that it was worse, that the wound would be fatal.
That everything could come to an end.
Death, the only way out.
It's a split second decision. With all the strength she has left she grabs the wooden stick and shoves it deep into her body. Deep and deeper until the pain becomes unbearable and she starts to scream.
Morgan comes barging in a moment later and when Emily tells him to let her go, she means it.
She closes her eyes and hopes that Clyde will find her message. That he will understand, and that he'll help Ian and Declan leave the country. That she owes Ian that much.
And she hopes that Clyde will forgive her. Because Clyde would know that Ian wouldn't have left her to die.
There's a voice whispering her name, a familiar hand reaching for hers and then there's nothing but silence. Nothing but darkness.
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to be continued
Disclamer: I own nothing, everything belongs to their rightful owners.
