- Digging into not only Erin and Jay's past together (because I so wish we would've gotten to see more domestic moments on the show) but their childhood has been such an interesting journey while writing this and I can promise there's more coming. Here is next Erin-centered piece and I hope you all enjoy. Please leave me reviews as I love to hear what you think.
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When she was little, she'd used to have dreams of living up in a tower. A tower much like the story of Rapunzel that she'd once read during story-time when her mother still cared enough to send her to school, with her long golden hair and her perfect, handsome prince who came to save the day and whisk her off to a happily ever after. She used to squeeze her eyes shut and clench her hands into tiny little fists and thought maybe if she wished hard enough, if she believed hard enough, she'd wake up the next morning away from the punches her father delivered to her gut whenever she didn't bring him another bottle of beer fast enough, or the burns from his cigarette butts all the way up and down her arms she'd earn whenever she complained about being hungry. And maybe, if she was really lucky a fairy godmother would replace her real one, who spent more time in a drugged up daze lying on the tile of the bathroom floor than signing up for parent teacher conferences or packing a sack lunch or kissing her daughter's cheek goodbye before she stumbled over her shoes that were far too big for her feet to get to the bus on time before it left her and her raggedy clothes, and her ripped-up plastic sack of a backpack in the dust.
But looking out over the New York skyline from her shiny and sleek twenty-third floor office, she realized she had gotten her tower. A room in the tower of the FBI field office in Manhattan to be exact, with a sleek job as a special agent in counterterrorism and plenty of cases to choose from at her fingertips as to what bad guy she wanted to see burn first- but her tower wasn't all that she had thought it would be. Perhaps the appeal of it was lessened by the uniform of a scratchy pinstriped pantsuit, or her own personal quality coffeemaker perched on the corner of her desk that didn't brew quite the same as the fussy one back in Chicago, where if she bumped it just right she could get the thing to dribble out a few ounces more, or maybe it was the way no one really raised their heads out of their computers to say 'hello' or 'good morning' or to even answer her question as to where to find the damn restroom.
She felt like a fish out of water, like she was already drowning and it was only her first day and four hours in and normally she would've dialed up her favorite blue-eyed ex-Army Ranger for a pep talk and a few reassuring words and maybe even an 'I love you' but they were nowhere near that anymore and hadn't been since he shoved a handful of t-shirts into a duffel bag and ignored her pleas of 'I can handle it' and so she tossed her phone into the back of a desk drawer with perhaps a bit too hard of a thud, because she was really and truly on her own and her fingers kept hovering over his name as if she'd somehow work up the nerve to call him and to hear his voice on the other end. But she knew somewhere in the back of her head that she wouldn't, that she couldn't- because she'd left without a goodbye on purpose, because one word out of his mouth or one glance into his sky blue orbs would've kept her there with him and without a job and standing right there on the sidelines because the board's decision more than likely hadn't gone in her favor as much as she had hoped and prayed for otherwise.
"Lindsay."
She averted her steady gaze from the window, from the bustling city going about its business far below her feet to the woman standing in her doorway, Agent Jennifer Spencer- the woman who had flown all the way to Chicago to recruit her and though she had her sneaking suspicions she hadn't bothered to voice yet, hadn't bothered to inquire why Spencer had appeared at just the right moment when she was floundering and needed help and needed out. Besides, it wasn't as if she had anything left to fall back on. Her life in Chicago was in shambles.
"You're needed in the boardroom. Time to hit the ground running." The woman flashed a wink and what was more than likely supposed to be a comforting smile but it just made Erin's insides twist. Here a case meant controlling WMDs and stopping a sick soul from blowing up an entire city and though her hands shook with anticipation the weight of it all hadn't quite hit her until this very moment, standing two steps away from the wooden oak door that would open to reveal a room of uniformed agents trained and lethal and far more intense than anything she'd ever experienced before. And she would do anything right then and there to hear Hank's gravelly murmurs of assurance or the squeeze of Jay's hand wrapped in her jittery fingers but she'd broken at least one of those bridges and she'd been the one who shoved the gun into the bastard's mouth and standing here with no one to lean on wasn't anyone's fault except her own.
They busted the home of Marcus Hemmings by lunchtime, a hacker becoming well known in the city for continuous breaches of the security of major banks and businesses, slowly working his way up to the government buildings as they'd found blueprints and a list of top secret codes for the state capitol building. The FBI had been monitoring his contacts and had tailed him to an undercover meeting in some alleyway with a man from overseas though Erin hadn't learned exactly from where- though by the way Agent Spencer's jaw remained tight even after the hacker was hauled away in an armored vehicle she figured there was more to the story than anyone was letting on.
"I can handle it-"
"That's not the issue here, Erin. Drop it." She cast a pointed look into the rearview mirror and Erin began to nibble on her bottom lip because maybe she'd gotten in over her head and maybe she suddenly missed hearing his mumbled complaints from the passenger seat because she'd almost always insisted sitting behind the wheel instead of being shoved to the back like a scolded child like she was in this very moment and she knew that it was only her first day and perhaps she was being unreasonable and irritable because homesickness had eaten away at her all night long instead of the sweet escape of unconsciousness but she was also under the impression she'd been brought here for a reason and this felt nothing like any sort of inclusion. She caught the man in the passenger seat trying and failing to hide his smirk and it took everything in her not to blow it, not to lose her cool and rip him a new one because if there was one thing she hated about working on this side of the law and this high up on the totem pole it would be the constant belief that men were better equipped to handle it than females, as if she wasn't competent or qualified enough to be carrying the badge. Damn did he have another thing coming. She made a mental note to stop in and introduce herself later in the day, to find his office and to look him in the eye and put a name to that atrociously smug expression and wipe it right off of his features.
But when they returned to the field office, he went one way and Agent Spencer dragged her another, her brisk pace never faltering and her mouth not moving once in any sort of an explanation and so Erin did her best to follow, weaving in and out of the crowd milling in the opposite direction until they finally came to rest at the elevator, the light above the door signaling they had quite a few floors left to wait.
"I can't help you if I don't know what's going on, Spencer," Erin hissed through her teeth, realizing blowing her top wouldn't be the best first impression on her superiors but she was through with taking a literal back seat on this case. It just wasn't how she had been taught to operate.
"There's been a bigger breach in national security than we had anticipated," Agent Spencer murmured, her eyes remaining trained on the descending light and her voice remaining barely above a whisper and Erin had to lean in close to catch the strain of words falling past her lips. And though they sent her reeling, she kept her features collected, realizing they were out in the open and that this may have been the FBI building but suddenly she was questioning if even that was keeping them protected.