The Waste Land

Part One: The Burial of the Dead

'All men would be tyrants if they could.'

Daniel Defoe

'April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.'

T.S. Eliot – The Waste Land

Author's Note: Betaed by the awesome Windy City Dreamer. JJ fans, tell me how I did with this – I'm not as practiced at writing JJ, so much feedback would be appreciated.

Chapter Five – Small Town Girl (JJ)

Jennifer Jareau would have once said that she had a normal childhood. Now, though… now she knows that really, there's no such thing as normal. The best that she can say is that she didn't have a traumatic childhood, and she has turned out relatively sane so far. Relatively undamaged.

In a way, it's a burden, though she would never go as far as to call it that. It means that she hasn't generated the support mechanisms that her colleagues have. She never learnt how to deal with loss, or emotional pain, or physical pain. Not like they did.

JJ learnt other things. She learnt that the woods can be a pretty damn terrifying place when you're seven years old, and it's the middle of the night. She learnt that if you live in a small town, then the last thing you should do is sleep with the quarterback, because by morning, everyone will know. She learnt to score a goal from eighty yards out, though she hasn't played soccer in a very long time. She's moved on to kicking down doors instead.

The soccer was good for one thing, though, at least. It got her into college, and college got her into the FBI. It hadn't been the most conventional way of getting out of East Allegheny, but it had worked out in the end. Instead of living in that dead-end town that doesn't even have a bowling alley, Jennifer Jareau spends her days deciding who gets to live, and who gets to die.

That's what it boils down to in the end. Choose one case in favor of another, and suddenly you've got half a dozen more bodies on your conscience.

Sometimes, she doubts.

Doubts that she made the right decision. Doubts that she is the right person to assume the role of fate. Doubts that she's even cut out for this job.

But she perseveres.

She has those support mechanisms now. The friends – the family – that are there for her when she's not quite sure she can cope. The family that will give her confidence just by being in the same room. Sometimes she pities the people that don't have that kind of strength behind them. She does her best to help them, but it's never enough. You can only be helped along so far before you have to step out on your own two feet.

That's where JJ is now, comforting the mother and father of Carrie Elliot. Here lived a girl who took every opportunity given to her, stolen away by some narcissist with a point to prove. In some way, JJ feels a connection with the dead girl. Not that she will ever let anyone know that. She may not have skeletons in her closet, but she's hiding far more things than they would ever guess.

Tears flow unfettered down the cheeks of Catherine Elliot.

Since Henry's birth, JJ has taken the deaths of children that much harder. Now she doesn't have to imagine what it's like to be a mother. She doesn't have to imagine what it's like to lose a child – she has that nightmare far too often to forget it.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the stony expression on Hotch's face as he asks Mrs. Elliot about her daughter's usual routine. Through the mother's choked sobs, JJ manages to comprehend that Carrie had not done anything out of the ordinary the night of her murder.

JJ wants to assure the woman that they will stop Carrie's murderer from killing any more people, but that is a promise she knows she can't keep. The best they can do is try their hardest to make sure it doesn't turn into a complete massacre.

Hopefully, it will be enough.

***

They leave the Elliot residence with little more than they started with. With an unsub like theirs, victimology will be tenuous at best. In this case, it was just as much a chance for them to assure the family that something was being done.

They'll go back to the station now, and work on victimology and the profile, though they aren't quite sure either of those things will be of any use. If it's Foyet, then they already have a profile, already have victimology. If it isn't, then they don't have enough to work with. That's what frustrates JJ sometimes. They don't have good cases and bad cases; they have bad cases and very bad cases.

Sometimes they'll get a kidnapping case that doesn't end up completely horrible – instead of half a dozen corpses, they'll just have a child that's traumatized for life. Those cases a few and far between, though. It's no wonder they're all burnt out. The closest thing JJ's had to a vacation in the past five years is maternity leave. She doesn't even want to think about everyone else's history; if she recalls correctly, Hotch might have taken a weekend off, around six years ago.

This is the price they pay for saving the world every day.

Not bad, for a small town girl.

A/N: Things will be picking up a bit soonish. Maybe.