This chapter: B is for Baby.
"You okay?"
Emily startles, not having seen JJ approach her seat on the plane as she'd been lost in thought, staring out the window. "Mmhmm," she hums, settling back in her seat, smiling at her girlfriend. "I'm okay."
JJ looks skeptical, but doesn't say anything more, instead taking the seat across from Emily and watching her quietly. The case had been hard, like so many of them are when they involved children, but it had a happy outcome, all things considered. They'd caught the unsub, who had been performing Cesarean abductions, selling the babies, and murdering the mothers once he no longer had a need for them, before he killed the last mother. The locals had quickly been able to track down the three babies he'd already sold to be reunited with their families.
They'd all been there at the takedown, JJ herself had called for the ambulance for the mother while Alvez and Rossi apprehended the unsub. But it was Emily who'd discovered the baby, no more than a few hours old, wrapped in an old sheet and lain in a box. And once the mother was in one ambulance, JJ had watched as Emily cradled the newborn to her, had seen the glimmer in her eye as she gently cooed and grasped the baby's fingers, observed the sad smile she tried to hide as the baby was loaded up into an ambulance of her own.
JJ knows how much Emily's always wanted a baby, and she likes to think that if they had had their lives sorted out enough to get together way back when they first met, maybe they each would have carried a baby or two. Her heart aches, sometimes, when she thinks too hard about what could have been, and on days when she's being particularly honest with herself she'll admit there's a hole in their lives where a child with Emily's pale skin, dark features, sarcastic wit, and kind heart would fit so perfectly. But it's no more than a what if now, she knows. Time marched on while they were still busy figuring themselves out, and by the time they're emotionally ready to take that plunge their bodies just aren't anymore.
"I saw you, back at the house, with the baby, Em." JJ looks up, gauging Emily's response. Hard as she tries, she can't turn off the profiler in her, and she sees Emily's eyes light up, sees her pulse start to race, sees her sit up just a tiny little bit straighter, probably imperceptible to someone who doesn't know her as well as JJ does. "You were good with her."
"Yeah. I'm glad she's safe."
"Me too, but that's not what I mean."
Emily raises an eyebrow but stays silent. She knows exactly what JJ means, and she knows that JJ knows that she knows too. They've had this conversation multiple times before, if only through the ability to say everything without actually saying anything at all, a skill they developed over their ten years as friends and perfected during their two years as more.
"You want a baby," JJ whispers, a statement more than a question, and she leans forward and takes Emily's hands in her own.
They've got Henry and Michael, and JJ knows that Emily thinks of them as her own more and more everyday as their lives become increasingly entwined. Michael, at least, won't really ever remember a time without Emily in his life as another parent. But even though Emily would never admit it, JJ also knows that there's a part of her that will always feel like she's raising somebody else's children, and she wants so badly to give her a baby of her own, one that's truly theirs, not JJ's and Will's, and then Emily's too.
"I'm thirty-nine," JJ says quietly, cutting off the protest beginning to form on Emily's lips. "I can't make any promises that it'd even work, and there are risks we'll have to talk about, but we can try, Emily. I want to try, if you do, okay?"
They both know the ship has sailed on Emily having a biological child, but JJ's ten years younger and she's sure they could find a donor who looks like her partner. Emily could be involved in the pregnancy, and present for the birth, and be that baby's mom right from the get-go in ways she'll never get with their other kids. She can picture Emily's warm hand rested on her growing belly as they cuddle in bed, sees the pride on her face as she introduces their baby to their friends, imagines the tears that spring to Emily's eyes the first time their child calls her 'mama.' She feels her heart start to race with excitement, and the gentle butterflies in her stomach flap faster and faster until it feels more like a hummingbird when she remembers again, she's thirty-nine. She was lucky with Michael, she knows, and she'd never felt as old as she did the day she saw her chart at her OB's office labeled as a 'geriatric pregnancy.' But then she looks up again and sees the hope in Emily's eyes and she knows she'll do whatever she can to give Emily a baby.
"JJ…" Emily trails off, the light in her eyes gone almost as quickly as it appeared.
JJ squeezes her hands, standing to go sit at the other end of the plane with Tara and Matt while Emily goes over her paperwork. "Just think about it. Please, Em?"
Emily nods, her heart swelling as she takes in the magnificent woman before her, feeling a surge of gratefulness for her current life. And as she settles back in with the file in front of her, the image of a baby with her coloring and JJ's features dances across her mind, obscuring the words written on the page.
They don't talk about it, not out loud with actual words anyway, for several weeks, but JJ watches Emily during that time. She sees how protective Emily is of a pregnant woman, a victim's wife, they interview on a case. She notices the joy and longing that show up on her face when Henry's friend's mom brings her newborn to their Little League practice. And she sees the tears that spring to Emily's eyes when, one random Friday at bedtime, completely out of the blue, Michael whispers "'Night, Mama," as he hugs Emily before bed.
It's later that night, tangled up in their own bed sheets and lying on their sides, face to face, that Emily brings it up again. "Our family is perfect the way it is," she says quietly, reaching a hand up to stroke gently down the side of JJ's face. "We don't need another baby to make it complete."
JJ feels her heart sink, not even fully realizing until that moment just how much of her own hopes and dreams were tied up in this idea, how badly she wanted to carry another baby, Emily's baby. And she knows it shows on her face because she sees the disappointment reflected in Emily's eyes where only peace and contentment had shone a moment earlier.
"I don't need a baby that's mine, that's ours," she continues, voice wavering where it had been so sure before. "I want Henry and Michael to feel like they're mine too, and if we have a baby together I feel like that changes the relationship we already have. Like the baby is mine, but they're not. I want them to be mine, Jay, to be ours. And I know they have a dad, but it takes a village, right? And maybe I wasn't around in the very beginning but I'm here now. I'm here now."
"You are," JJ agrees, kissing her through the tears trailing down both their cheeks. "You're here now."
And maybe she'll always have a little hole in her heart where their baby together could be, but JJ's pretty sure, given the way her heart swells to plug that hole the next morning when she comes downstairs to find the boys and Emily huddled together on the couch with a Lego creation in progress on the coffee table in front of them and Saturday morning cartoons playing softly in the background, it's going to be just fine.