It had been a long four days in Louisiana (much to Reagan's dismay considering how badly she was rooting for Texas), for Amy and the rest of the BAU. Each case was undoubtably hard and the fact that it was quite impossible for the blonde to save everyone never got any easier, even with time. Cases involving children, however, proved to be especially harder on the blonde. Maybe it was because of the fact that she was incredibly close to her god daughter and thought of her as one of her own, making it inevitable for her to put herself in the parents' shoes. Either way, it absolutely broke Amy's heart each time, like the last, to think about and to know what some of them had to go through. They were so tiny, she thought, and incapable of fighting back. It even made her question, more than once, if she was indeed cut out for the job, for the FBI.
The team walked into the bullpen one after the other, each of them equally as exhausted as the other. Although they had caught the unsub, they were minutes too late to save the 5 year old boy he held in captivity in his basement. Happy endings didn't happen as often as the movies made it seem they did.
Amy was sitting at her desk, her head hung as she played with her high school class ring, she honestly had no idea why she still wore it. She sighed, feeling defeated.
Reagan walked up behind the blonde and brushed her hair to the side before placing a hand on each shoulder, massaging them lightly. "You were so great today." She whispered into the others ear before pressing a light kiss to her cheek. She hated seeing her best friend like this.
"If we would have left the station even 10 minutes earlier we could have saved him, Ray.." Amy replied in a sad tone.
"I know, baby. I know. But we tried our hardest and you can't keep beating yourself up every time this happens. As much as you want to be, you can't be everyone's hero, Amy. We caught him, he can't hurt anyone else now. You should feel good about that."
Amy stayed silent for a little too long. Reagan didn't have to be facing her to know that she crying, or at least fighting back tears. By now, she knew her better than she knew herself.
The raven-haired girl glanced at the big clock hung on the wall to see that it was nearly lunch time before speaking up. "Let's go back to your place, make some chicken nuggets and mac n cheese and binge-watch Friends.. I know you wanna."
She didn't get much from Amy in response apart from a light chuckle and weak head nod, but hey, she was going to take it.
The drive to Amy's duplex was a quiet one albeit it wasn't awkward. Nothing was ever awkward between the two, except for maybe that one time they woke up both naked, and extremely hungover, in Reagan's bed with absolutely no idea of what had happened the night before. They don't talk about that night.
Reagan offered to drive Amy's SUV as the blonde was in no state to be behind the wheel. She still looked a little shaken up, which was reasonable. Reagan could honestly say she had no idea what her best friend was going through. It wasn't that she was heartless, she was in fact an extremely caring girl, she just refused to let any of it get to her. She had to be strong not only for herself, but for Amy as well and she was more than okay with that.
While Reagan looked back and forth between the road and her best friend, Amy's eyes were glued to her cellphone, she was texting Lauren. She always texted her step-sister when she got back to Quantico after a few days of being away. She never talked much about the cases and what had happened and Lauren never asked, mainly out of respect. Amy rather focused on Brittany. Lauren had really lucked out in the god mother department.
For the past 6 years, since Amy had vanished from Karma's life, the latter and Lauren had managed to work out a pretty good system to keep each other updated. Because Karma wanted to keep the fact that she was keeping tabs on what was going on in her former best friends life from Liam, she was the only one doing the calling. Unless there was an emergency of some sort — in that case, Lauren was free the call her no matter the time of day and vice versa. Up until now, that never happened, thank god.
Karma called Lauren every second Friday around 2 PM and today just so happened to be that day. She grabbed her phone from the coffee table and eagerly dialled Lauren's number. It didn't take long for the other to pick up.
"Has it already been two weeks?" Lauren asked jokingly.
"It has. Time really flies by."
"Tell me about it.. How are you?" The blonde asked hesitantly. She knew about the abuse and everything else going on in the other's life. Time and time again she had tried to get Karma to leave him but she never did.
"I'm good.. Really good." Karma lied. She didn't want Lauren to worry about her.
"I'm glad to hear that." Of course Lauren knew she was being lied to. No one could lie to her and get away with it. It's like she had been trained to be a real life lie detector, but she decided to drop it knowing that if things were really that bad, the redhead would have told her. She always did.
Karma took a deep breath. "Have you talked to her today?" She hated Amy's job. She constantly found herself worried sick. Sure she was no longer a part of her life but Karma had absolutely no idea as to what she would do if anything were to happen to her. Amy was the love of her life and she hadn't realized it until Amy broke things off. It was too late anyway, she figured.
"I was texting her before you called, actually." Lauren paused. "She just got back from Louisiana.. Can you believe Britney Spears is from there?"
The redhead completely ignored that last part, clearly not as fascinated by the pop singer as Lauren was. "And? Is she okay? What happened in Louisiana?" Karma was far too invested into the conversation the hear the front door open and shut.
"Yeah, she's fine. I don't really know, I never ask her about it, you know that."
Karma opened her mouth the reply but her jaw only dropped lower when she saw Liam stagger into the living room, clearly he had been drinking instead of being at work. What was he doing home this early? He wasn't supposed to be.
"Who the fuck are you talking to?" He slurred. Not only did he get violent when he drank, he also got extremely controlling and jealous.
"My mom.. But we were just hanging up." She said with a nervous laugh.
Lauren could hear everything through the phone. The blonde shut her eyes. "Karma, don't you dare hang up, you hear me?" She whispered. She knew what would be waiting for her after the phone call.
"Daddy!" Kailani shouted happily as she ran towards her father only to be pushed away, hard enough for the little girl to fall. Liam had never laid a hand on his daughter up until today.
"I really have to go mom, I'll call you later, alright? Love you." And with that she hung up, fuelled with anger. How fucking dare he. "Go to your room sweetheart, mommy will be right up, okay?" She said as she picked her sobbing daughter up off the floor and kissed her forehead.
Once the Kailani had disappeared, Karma full on charged Liam and slapped him hard across the face. She knew she shouldn't have, by doing so she had just made things worse for herself but she was fucking pissed. Hurting her was one thing, but their daughter? Had he completely lost his fucking mind? "You son of a bitch!" She said through gritted teeth and tears.
The words had barely left her mouth before her back hit the wall, Liam's hand tightly gripping her neck as she tried to concentrate on her breathing and push him away at the same time.
Once again, thank you all for reading! I know things are starting out a little slow but I really don't want to rush this story. There will be some Karmy interactions soon enough, maybe even some steamy Reamy. Next chapter could possibly be up later today, if not tomorrow.
Also, guiltyascharged, thanks for the review. Still can't believe google maps lied to me!
