Since JJ had her chapter of insight, it seemed only fair to do something similar with Emily.
Chapter Fourteen
Walls
"There are moments when the walls of the mind grow thin; when nothing is unabsorbed."
-Virginia Woolf
On the jet Emily watched JJ go to the galley to phone Will. She'd noticed the blonde fiddling with her phone in the car, thinking of making the call but apparently deciding she didn't want an audience. Whatever reaction she was anticipating would probably only be harder to deal with in company. Did anyone else notice the slightly troubled look that flashed across her face when she'd started to dial but then canceled the call? Emily forced herself to stay in her seat, staring at the files before her. Her eyes could stay focused but her mind was determined to wander.
The morning conversation with Henry, so short on the heels of JJ's confession had been the emotional equivalent of a backbreaker followed by a body slam and Emily really wanted to tap out. She compartmentalized her own feelings well. Everyone else's were . . . messy.
JJ returning to her seat pulled Prentiss from her reverie. She looked over to her friend, seeing the full professional façade of cheer firmly in place. It had glints of sincerity in the smile she gave Emily. Perhaps not even the other team members would notice the small lines of weariness around her eyes or the way she rubbed one temple as if to reset her mind.
"Could've been better?" Emily gently inquired. It was ambiguous enough a question and asked in so casual a tone JJ was free to simply brush it off. They had long since perfected a style of conversation that allowed either of them to be as personal or as distant as they needed in each moment.
"Could've been worse." JJ shrugged.
Emily smiled slightly, realizing JJ had absorbed such deflection tactics from herself. Minimize and dismiss; her two favorite coping techniques. Hope she can actually do it. Most people couldn't truly let things go the way Prentiss did. Pieces of thought and feeling lingered behind no matter how unwelcome. It happened to her too but very rarely. She'd minimized and dismissed an entire childhood devoid of stability and affection as a trophy on display in Ambassador Prentiss' traveling showcase. She'd rationalized and excused getting pregnant at 15 – although the abortion still stung like hell when she got anywhere near the memory. Emily could count her scarring regrets on one hand because the rest had been tossed aside. Other people . . .Maybe other people can't because they shouldn't.
"He's upset that I'm going to miss the parent-teacher conference Friday." JJ finally volunteered. Prentiss had to surface from her own deeper thoughts to register that words had been spoken, then rapidly figure out how to respond.
"We don't know how long we'll be gone yet." She pointed out. True, this lead smacked of laborious paperwork and delays; that didn't automatically mean they'd use up the rest of the week.
"I tried to tell him that. He said he'd lost track of how many times he'd heard that right before I disappeared for a solid week. He gets this tone in his voice sometimes, Em," JJ's fist clenched, knuckles white with frustration, "He just sounds like he's too sad to be angry and it's all my fault. He said I shouldn't worry about them, I needed to 'go be with my family.'"
"Ouch." Emily winced sympathetically at the harshness of the words. Unfortunately, it didn't completely surprise her. Will was gentle, non-confrontational; he wouldn't be antagonistic or aggressive. His weapons would be more passive than that; the death by a thousand cuts that can be inflicted with sarcasm, sullenness and guilt.
"I told him it was an important case and before I could even explain he just cut me off. 'Of course it is,' he said," JJ did a remarkably accurate creole accent, "'It brought Emily here, right?' He said that it had to be a serious case because why else would you come back?"
The stab of pain Emily felt at the words was partly Will's accusation and partly the bitterness in JJ's voice. Her eyes were echoing her husband's resentful question but with wounded confusion. Why hadn't she come back? It was the big question both of them had been avoiding discussing. The job offer, returning to the US; hell, even coming for a visit!
Walk the line, Prentiss. Emily took a deep breath. This was her life's tight rope. If she fell there was no coming back.
"JJ, I just couldn't face," you, "the memories." She barely kept the true word from slipping out and hoped it hadn't flashed anywhere in her face because right now the 'no profiling each other' rule had gone out the window and JJ was watching her every tick and twitch.
"What memories?" the blonde must've seen something that was worth digging at, like the edge of a scab, "Em, you came back for two years after Doyle died. I'd say those demons were put to rest. Why did you run away again?"
Emily felt the familiar tension beginning to coil all her muscles. There was a sense of being under attack, of needing to defend herself from emotional invasion. The urge to wall everything off and hide behind silence or humor was nearly visceral. Yet, warring against that self-preservation instinct was an even stronger need: she needed to not hurt JJ. Right now, her best friend needed to hear something true, something sincere. She needed to drop a wall and let her in no matter how hard.
"Jen, you know my need to keep things . . .," Emily hesitated for a moment, trying to pick the right word. Private? Separate?
"Repressed?" JJ volunteered, lips twitching in amusement.
"Organized." Emily corrected with a mild glare.
"Sure, we'll use that word and pretend it doesn't mean the same thing." JJ's smirk grew wider but offered no further sarcasm.
"I had a system that worked for me for years to keep my head straight," Emily explained, her fingers unconsciously tracing squares like storage containers on the papers in her lap, "Every thought and memory in its place; nothing too big or too loud or jumbled. That last year with the team? It started to get too hard. I couldn't keep everything tucked away. There was too much and it started to feel overwhelming. Do you know what that feels like? I was losing control of my head. It was only a matter of time before I'd lose control of my performance too and I couldn't let that happen."
"You, Em? Losing control?" JJ stared in amazement at the confession, "What could possibly threaten the steel walled compartmentalization of SSA Prentiss' mind?"
You. Emily pulled her eyes away from the interrogating gaze. Loving you so much it hurt and knowing I could never tell you. The muscles in her jaw twitched as she clenched her teeth; there were some words that absolutely could never be spoken. Some secrets eat us up from inside and I couldn't stand the hollowness anymore.
It had been getting progressively harder that entire last year with BAU. Her erratic decisions mirrored the chaos and pain in her head. Put an offer on a house, panic, buy a house, regret, escape - she was caught in a mental squall of fight/flight responses to the strain of keeping her feelings in check. Commit, don't commit. Keep JJ, lose JJ. In the end it seemed easier to give up JJ on her own terms, much as she had seven years before when she locked off those same emotions. She made peace with her decision, watched the woman she loved marry someone else and quietly slipped away.
JJ reached over and took Emily's hand, silently begging her to not shut her out.
"You can tell me anything, Em. You know that." JJ gently encouraged her again. No, I can't, but I can tell you something. Emily forced herself to quell the nerves bubbling in her stomach. She mentally squared herself (because her posture was already perfect) and faced the probing blue eyes. Damn, she's beautiful.
"I just started to care too much." She explained, more truth bleeding into her words than she had intended. That was probably for the best. She didn't want to make it sound minimized or simple. There was nothing simple about how complicated her life got the moment she realized she couldn't shut off the feelings anymore.
"Is that even possible?" JJ objected. Of course she would. Someone like JJ, with a heart big enough to love the whole world and try to save it, couldn't understand the terrifying side of emotion for someone raised on ration. Emotion was for other people.
"For me it is," Emily hated admitting the weakness, "Caring at all means there's something that can be lost. Something that can hurt. Caring too much means living in terror of the moment it's gone."
JJ watched the intensity of emotion across Emily's face. Not visible by movement but by the absolute stillness. She knew that her friend had tried to pull the martyr act before, not once but twice. First with Strauss, then with Doyle. JJ had thought it noble, impetuous, selfless and above all – stupid. Here, however, she was seeing a different side to the decisions. Emily would rather walk away and take the punishment of her choosing rather than stick around to fight what she saw as inevitable. She didn't trust them. Not on a conscious 'you are going to betray and hurt me' level but on the unconscious 'I have been abandoned and hurt and broken too many times to believe you'll stay.'
"I'm not going anywhere, Em." JJ wrapped her other hand around their joined fingers, squeezing tight and wishing she could pour her own conviction into the other woman. Even if Emily thought she could lose everyone else, JJ would fight her way through hell and back to prove at least one person was worth hanging onto.
"'We promise according to our hopes.'" Emily smiled, grateful for the effort JJ was making. She couldn't possibly understand how achingly ironic her words felt on the foreign agent's conflicted heart. 'But perform according to our fears.'
"You know, I'll let you get away with this for now," JJ's arched eyebrow communicated how clearly she knew Emily was still hiding things, "But we are going to talk more about this after the case is over. I'm not going to let you just keep running away from me."
The brunette forced a small chuckle. JJ's humor was skirting dangerously close to the edge of truth. How long could Emily hope to keep her secrets?
"I hope I don't have to." Emily sighed.
Across the plane and several seats away Garcia and Morgan were watching JJ and Emily have yet another almost embarrassingly intimate conversation. Did they know that their heads always moved closer together when they spoke? Obviously it helped keep their voices down and prevented any lip-reading (not that Penelope wasn't trying anyway) but it seemed that the more serious or personal the conversation, the closer they had to be to share.
"Maybe they came to some kind of understanding." Garcia suggested, watching as whatever serious moment the two had been sharing segued to some more comfortable topic. Their body language changed subtly, a little less tension and a lot more teasing. Tablets and case files were opened even while quips and jibes were being traded. At one point Emily stuck out her tongue and JJ retaliated with a poke to the ribs. They were like kids. Sisters. Garcia realized. Somewhere between sisters and lovers.
"Like what?" Morgan had seen that Emily forced herself to tell JJ something but it couldn't possibly be what he suspected. Prentiss was holding back, he was sure of it. His girl didn't give away anything emotional unless a life was on the line. A life more important than her own.
"Like, they want to be together but know they can't because of Will and Henry." Penelope elaborated. It seemed like the sort of rational decision the two women would make. They would sit down and honestly communicate and share their feelings and promise to feel the same forever but never act on it. They could be close and intimate on every level except the one anyone else would care about. Penelope hadn't shared the revelation of the burner phones with Morgan but it seemed redundant at this point; it was obvious the two had a secret relationship. The only question that remained was the extent of it.
"Right, they just decide to eye shag constantly and never go more than three minutes without touching but agree to never actually cheat?" Morgan rolled his eyes. Garcia missed the gesture but not the sarcasm.
"You don't think so?" she looked back at him, loathe as she was to take her eyes off her two friends because she was convinced at any second she was going to get the clue she needed.
"Baby girl, that right there," he nodded to the women who were both absorbed in the case files like always else except for JJ's fingers absently stroking back and forth over Emily's hand, "Is denial. Pure and stubborn."
"Oh come on. They're profilers! You can't really tell me they don't know what they're doing." the tech analyst adamantly objected. There was no way two women versed in reading behavior, body language and facial expressions couldn't recognize the signals they passed back and forth like flares.
"Oh, they probably do," Morgan acknowledged, "They just don't know what it means."
Derek was sure that all the times he'd spotted Emily watching JJ it was absolute adoration. He was positive that every touch JJ initiated (and it was almost always JJ that initiated touching) was an expression of a physical desire. The teasing and flirtations were a constant reassurance of the mutual attraction (much like himself and Penelope). HE knew all of that. The problem was that neither woman seemed to get it.
"You really think," Garcia hesitated, barely able to wrap her mind around the thought, "That they don't know they love each other?"
"Oh no, sweetness, they know they love each other. They just don't the other one feels the same." he chuckled softly, seeing so clearly the endlessly elaborate contortions they were putting themselves through to avoid admitting the truth.
"Ah-ha!" Garcia gasped in understanding, "They're in an emotional Mexican standoff!"
"And neither of them is going to be the first to pull the trigger." Derek concluded with a shrug. It was getting a bit frustrating to watch but the two women had their dance perfected to an art. Each saw only what they allowed themselves to see and neither one dared to hope for more.
"Well," Penelope settled back into her seat, fingers forming a steeple in front of her curling smile, "That just means someone else will have to."
Again; feedback, reviews, criticisms, random quotes and moments of lucidity or insanity are all welcome.