A/N I'm sorry for the delay, but it's not for lack of trying. This chapter's seems to have stumped me, and my rascally, scatterbrained muse keeps feeding me all the wrong ideas, and as a result, I've been trying to write this chapter for almost four days now until I decided to scrap it entirely and start anew. On another note, I'm thrilled that this story's now my first fanfic to ever reach 100 reviews! Now I have 100+ reminders of how awesome my readers are! Thank you all for your continued support and occasional reminders for me to get my butt in gear and write!
-Nightshade
I don't own Criminal Minds, and I probably never will. :(
Get Through
Chapter Twenty-One
The frigid black mud sloshed around my ankles, stinging the stony skin hidden deep within my leaden boots. The gunmetal gray clouds meshed with the sodden landscape, until the only way to tell the sky from the ground were the hordes of insect-like forms scuttling about, blackened, hunched over, wearing bulky, impenetrable clothing and once-shiny helmets. A wave of heat fanned my sweaty, sticky hair as the fiery wings of an explosion materialized on the horizon, the sounds of hoarse screaming grating at my ears so violently I worried they'd bleed. The taut, dirt-smeared, ashen faces of men filed around me as they tried to shrink within their camouflage shells. The thunderous smacking of boots against the mud of the trenches was all that filled my mind until the crack of gunfire tore my surroundings in half, shredding with a deafening screech as I watched the faceless soldier beside me slump into the black mire before disappearing completely into the dirt. I hadn't even the time to realize the fallen form was human before it was overcome by rain and chaos. Bodies rushed around me so quickly, blending into one, until I no longer knew who the enemy was, or where I stood. Little bursts of artillery sounded around me like popcorn, sending those around me tumbling to the earth until the ground just swallowed them up, leaving me alone, knee-deep in sucking mud, trapped. I looked around me, scanning the flat surroundings, looking for the threat, listening for the soul-shredding song of guns, yet all I could hear is the harsh rain smacking the all-consuming mud. There was no one but me, me? Am I my own enemy? Is that what I'm supposed to take away from this? The loneliness burned a hole in my wind-beaten heart, and I could see that the watery mud around my legs which was once black, was now an ominous blood-red, reflecting back a twisted image of myself, gnarled by evils and the ripples of the rain. But all I could do is scan the landscape with forlorn eyes, and realize that once again, I was all alone. Alone. Alone.
Alone. I woke up with my delicate sheets twisted into a straitjacket around my ankles, still shivering from the cold of those unfamiliar battlefields when I realized that the other side of the bed was unoccupied. I really was alone. Suppressing a groan of frustration, I shoved my eyes closed and threw my head into JJ's pillow, letting the subtle lavender scent of her conditioner soothe me until I registered the feeling of paper crumpling beneath my face. Sitting up confused, I found a note stuck to my forehead, and upon peeling it off and wiping the sleep from my eyes I tried to focus on the fluid characters that sashayed across the page.
Em,
I'm sorry I couldn't be there when you woke up, but I had to visit the hospital. There's a message on the answering machine, you'll get her room number from there.
Jennifer
Of course, Tegan. As I quickly dressed I ruminated upon the current situation. I couldn't help feeling a slight stab of misdirected anger at JJ for being the first one to see her after the… incident. But the small stinging of that anger was nothing compared to the cavernous guilt I felt towards how I treated JJ the other night, and the fact that she stayed. I banished the poisonous thoughts to the back of my mind as I hopped in the car, completely forgoing breakfast. St. Jude's seemed to have transformed since the last times I was here. The bitter wind of the impending winter had somehow hidden all traces of the snow, leaving the hospital with the dull yet polished appearance of a river rock, lifeless. It was as if the entire building was devoid of energy, a carefully constructed façade that took people in, fixed them up, but could do nothing to heal their real wounds. Within the psych ward especially, everything felt like an act. The cheery bouquet of flowers on the head nurse's desk, or the soft, plush chairs and tattered magazines in the waiting room only served as a front, hiding the true horrors behind layers of niceties and white tiles. In all other parts of the hospital, people were healing, simple physical ills that could be cured. But here, beneath all the polish, was the resting place of the tortured souls that came before, those who had just given up, and let their mental demons eat them alive. I stared at a speck of dirt that stood out from the clean tile, refusing to conform. I wondered why they picked white; did they think it looked clean? Did they think it was a happy color, or that it was soothing? Because white was none of that, white was empty, endless, hollow, devoid of any real emotion or warmth. White made every other color seem dirty and raucous and out of place, just like the way I felt looking into Tegan's room. It was different than the other one, in which it was bare, stripped of any excessive furniture or decoration or comfort. Through the crisscross of safety wire in the glass windows, preventing it from breaking, lay the single piece of furniture in the blank room. The bed was bulky plastic, with metal rails on the sides like it was its own little empire. Tegan lay straighter than a tree beneath the blankets, asleep, yet her skinny arms were ramrod straight and tense, every wiry muscle visible as she strained against the pair of padded restraints that held her wrists to the edges of the bed. JJ looked as if she had once been standing, as she now lay curled up against the tile floor, her one hand gripping the edge of the bed with white knuckles. Despite the fact that her eyes had long since drooped shut from exhaustion and worry, I wasn't sure if she was asleep or not because there were tears still running down her cheeks, dragging trails of day-old mascara alongside them. My fragile heart nearly broke at the sight, seeing the two most important women in my life so broken. I had hardly touched my hand to the doorknob before JJ's eyes snapped open, her head whipping upright. She looked at me with a trembling gaze, her eyes too weak to hold the stare along with all the sadness within their radiant blue depths.
"I-I came in this morning to see her, to explain. When I got here, she freaked out, she just kept screaming and cussing and nearly broke her arms she was pulling at her restraints so hard. Even when I left she kept going, you could hear her voice echoing down the hallway. They had to sedate her." She explained in a quiet voice, almost as if she was frightened at how I would respond. I moved as if I was surrounded by water, invisible currents tugging at my limbs while clouding my vision. I managed to slip my hand inside that of my daughter's, closing my eyes so I wouldn't see the bruises or the scars or the restraints. I welcomed the illusion of darkness for a few futile seconds, because it sweetly postponed the agony of what was really going on.
"I came back because I didn't want her to be alone. I know she's probably fuming mad at me, you probably are too, and you two have a right to be, but it's scary here, and I figured that it would be less scary to have someone by her side." The soft tone of her voice dissolved any anger I held towards her, it was just impossible to hold any animosity when she was so vulnerable. I knelt down in front of her, only opening my eyes when I knew I would only see JJ. As soon as I looked at her she turned away from me, hiding the hurt written all over her face while shattering my heart a little more.
"Jennifer?" I placed my hand on her shoulder while moving to kneel in between her legs.
"Look at me Sweetie." I crooned, rubbing the delicate muscles and tendons that flexed where her neck met her shoulder. She still remained silent, tears flowing like a spring.
"I'm not mad at you, I promise." At the sound of those words, something unlocked within her, and she slowly turned to look at me.
"You're not?" surprise lit up her eyes, and I wanted to hide away for ever making her feel that way. She shouldn't be surprised that I'm not upset.
"I'm not. I'm mad at myself. I'm disgusted and angry, and if I could, I'd be giving myself the cold shoulder. Because no matter how bad it gets, no matter what happens, I had no right to treat you the way I did last night. I can hardly look myself in the mirror; I don't recognize who I've become. But the only place that I can see my reflection and not flinch away, where I don't feel like the lowest bag of crap on the planet, is when I look into your eyes. I couldn't be mad at you because you're like the air I need to breathe; you're like the sunlight I need to see. I need you in my life Jennifer, because without you I have no idea how I'm supposed to move upwards from all this. I love you, I love you, and the last thing I ever want to be is angry at you." her cerulean blues, heavy with emotion, bored into mine for a second before she seemed to deflate. I took her in my arms in an instant, letting her cling to me as I clung to her, both of us needing the support, neither knowing who was supporting whom. She pulled away to look me in the eyes, giving me the chance to take a tissue out of a box laying abandoned in the sea of white, and gently wipe the blackened trails from the delicate, warm skin of her cheek. She looked away, full of self-consciousness.
"I must look like a wreck. I feel like a wreck, I feel like I haven't stopped crying for days." She choked out, the sentence fractured by a childlike little sniffle.
"You look beautiful, I'm endlessly lucky to have you." I was about to kiss her forehead until she moved, angling so I met her ready lips beneath mine. We pulled away, limbs still intertwined, foreheads gently touching.
"C'mon Jen, let's go home." I whispered, my voice filled with a fresh conviction. Tegan laid silently, resting in her drugged sleep, and I took in how JJ looked at her. The way she gently adjusted the restraints on her wrists so they weren't too tight, the way she brushed away the messy strand of hair that had been resting in front of her face, the way she whispered goodbye. And within this clean room, this sea of white, these blank pages of walls, I could see the first sketches of my own family starting to form. My family, not one that would desert me for political agendas, but one that I knew I could not live without. I was no longer chilled by the icy winds and frozen mud and unforgiving rain in life, because dysfunctional as they were; I was no longer alone.
A/N yes I'm back! For all the time and brain-wracking it took to get this chapter out, I'm pretty satisfied with it! Now tell me what you think of it! Read and review, please show me some love (or love in the form of constructive criticism)!