Stars
She's running as far across the galaxy as possible…
#
The man addressing her is the kind of rough she recognises. It comes of not trusting people for too long a time, and she checks every morning for it on her own face.
"Nice boat," she says. "It's a YT-1300 light freighter, right? Same as the Millennium Fal—"
"Something you need, ma'am?" Everything, from his dark hair to his cold eyes, says 'go away'. She focuses instead on the badge on his shirt: Captain Hotchner.
"Yes. I hear you're in the business of shipping breakable items." His eyes narrow, just a flicker, but she takes a chance and shows the grip of her lightsabre from where it's tucked inside her loose shirt. "Well, I'm breakable. And I need help." It's as simple as this, she tells them when he takes her aboard his neat-as-a-pin ship. She wants a ride and she doesn't care where; she's willing to fight for them, if they'll take her.
"Why should we trust you?" she's asked by a woman with alien blue eyes and unsettlingly human features. Whatever she is, Emily doesn't recognise her. "We can't afford strays."
"You can afford me," Emily says. "I'm Senator Prentiss's daughter." They know that name. She sees Hotchner's hand flicker to his blaster, the mercenary behind him eyeing her warily at the startled whistles of the shy astromech droid they'd introduced as 'Reid'.
"You running from her or towards?" she's asked.
"From. As far across the galaxy as possible."
"Well then," Hotchner says after a beat of quiet. "Welcome to Nelson's Sparrow."
Pretending
In the time after she dies, he does a number of things…
#
In the time after Emily dies, he does a number of things. This is one of them:
He starts going out at night. Not to the kinds of places he likes, libraries and science fairs and quiet cafes attached to bookstores. No, he goes to places Emily had liked: bars and nightclubs and jazz lounges. Anywhere with that little edge of spice, a hint of danger, of possibility and mystery and fun. He goes to these places, and he looks for a face.
There's a woman across the club from him and he doesn't know anything about her except for her clothes and her face, but tonight he's pretending to know her anyway. Know things about her like the fact that she has a black cat and a tough job and an open heart, and that she loves him for him and that's something he never cherished enough.
He keeps pretending until she turns around and he can't any longer: on the cover, she's Emily, his friend, but the story she's living isn't the same.
And there's no amount of pretending that can change that.
Identity
Did anyone really think she wasn't going to her own funeral…?
#
Honestly, did anyone who knows her really think that she wasn't going to attend her own funeral? She really, really shouldn't be; JJ had warned her that this whole thing will collapse if anyone so much as catches a single glimpse of her, but when has Emily Prentiss ever done what's right, or smart? If she did what was right or smart, she wouldn't be dead to begin with.
It's not like she's rocking incognito chic. Dying does that. It really reduces your fashion choices. Every item of clothing she owns now is either in the apartment of a dead woman—her—or in a bag of bloodied belongings Hotch had grimly taken as 'evidence' of her murder. All she has left to her is the hospital-issued pyjamas she's been quietly existing in. Not really 'rocking up to your own funeral without being seen' attire, unless she wants her book to close with 'the haunting of Emily Prentiss'. So, she'd improvised. She's in a pair of loose flannel pants from the hospital physio's gym and a college hoodie some nursing student had left behind in the lost and found, now overtop her pyjamas with the hoodie pulled low over her eyes. She thanks whatever absentminded student who'd left it behind for being an XXL, easily hiding anything about her that's recognisable. This is how she is as she watches them bury her.
Her sore gut where that bastard impaled her is nothing compared to how much it hurts to see them like this. They all look shell-shocked, except Hotch, who just looks sad. It hits her how strange it is to see him openly grieving her—JJ too—despite them both knowing she's very, very alive. But, then again, maybe they are grieving something. The people they were before she made them into liars, likely, or the person she'd been before she'd forced them to become so.
When Reid starts crying, she struggles to breathe through the nauseating pain of it. When Rossi follows, that guts her. She can't look at Penelope at all, or Morgan. Morgan, who'd held her and begged her not to die.
When her mom cries too, she leaves. This was a mistake. Emily Prentiss, egotistical to the end.
And, honestly, what comes next isn't a surprise.
"You're an idiot," says Hotch from his car as she sits by the bus stop wondering if they'll let her ride without a fare. "Get in."
She does.
Spoonerism
He's tongue-tied and verbally erroneous…
#
Rossi's determined to show JJ how very, very happy he is that she's finally tied the knot with Will, swooping down on her and spinning her into his arms. Sadly, words don't seem to be currently working for him this late into the night. "It's kisstomary to cuss the bride," he tries, seeing her laugh. That one doesn't land, so he gives up on words entirely, kissing her cheek and enjoying her beaming smile.
"I'm happy for you," he tries again, and this time doesn't mangle the words at all.
Bildungsroman
His journey has never been easy…
#
When Aaron is five, he makes his first friend. She doesn't last very long; before the summer is out, Ally's parents have figured out something that Aaron's not really going to realise for a few more years yet. Ally is told that she's not to speak to him anymore, and the pitying looks begin.
He doesn't really understand that.
By the time he's ten, he does. He's quieter than he was before with a temper that's incendiary. He fights because violence is an out and broods because silence is safe. Despite his failing grades, his path is uncertain. There's potential there, under all the heartbreak and bruises.
When he's fifteen, someone notices. Aaron's at boarding school because he's taken the misery his family have heaped on him and run with it, making sure he causes as much damage as he can on the way out. It's not a teacher or a peer or anyone he'd expect: instead, it's a lawyer.
"You know," he says to Aaron on the day he's there to talk to the principal about one of Aaron's friends setting a fire, Aaron narrowly avoiding being involved. "There are better ways to make a mark on the world than burning it to the ground behind you."
Aaron just stares and thinks this man knows nothing and that he himself deserves nothing.
"Just saying," continues the lawyer in a voice that suggests he cares a lot less than he actually does. "Wouldn't you rather be the one putting the fires out than starting them? God knows, I wish there were more heroes in this world. I'd be happy to be unemployed."
Aaron always remembers that.