Strength and Healing

Chapter 28

AN: Here is chapter 28! Again, sorry for the delay. Updates on this story are probably going to be unpredictable and sporadic from now on because of college and work, but I'm constantly thinking about it, so no worries there. Thank you all for your reviews and your follows/favorites. Always let me know if you have any questions/requests. I do my best to incorporate them all. Each review I get means the world to me, so please continue to take the time to leave me one if you can. :) This chapter is very Jemily centric; I wanted to have Emily find some peace before I move deeper into the storyline with the kids. So those of you who are vulnerable Emily fans, this one's for you! And have no fear, once the twins get settled, there will be an abundance of fluff—and of course, more angst.

Disclaimer: I do not own CM characters. They belong to ABC, CBS, etc., but not me. If I did own them, neither actress playing these women would have been fired and Jemily would be an actual canon thing.

I also want to add that I fortunately do not suffer from PTSD. I don't know exactly how it works, but I want to do my best to treat JJ's situation with care. So, please correct any mistakes I make, particularly involving this subject. TRIGGER WARNING for conversations about rape and violence.

Gabby

"Never be ashamed of a scar. It simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you."

-Unknown

"You've been seeing me for almost seven weeks, Agent Jareau, and you haven't even said the words yet. What's holding you back?"

It took all of JJ's will power not to roll her eyes at the man who called himself the bureau shrink, a middle-aged upper class white man who prided himself in 'understanding the plights of all'. It wasn't that the blonde didn't appreciate his attempt to be helpful to her, but both people knew they were only there because it was bureau policy that any agent who had been compromised during the process of apprehending an unsub see an FBI therapist for a varying amount of time before being cleared for field work. Hotch had recommended eight weeks. It felt like a prison sentence.

Dr. Alexander was nice enough, but….

One, JJ thought to herself in her attempt to avoid the question he had just asked, he was a man.

Two, she added silently, he was straight.

Three, he had never gone through anything as awful as she had. He had told her himself at their first meeting.

He didn't even know her.

"Agent Jareau? You still with me?"

JJ knew Dr. Alexander figured that she had had a flashback. It was almost as if he was attempting to catch her in the act, like a child with his hand in the cookie jar, just so he could have the satisfaction of diagnosing her with PTSD.

The agent looked up at the expectant man. "Yeah," she sighed. "I'm fine. Are we done yet?"

"Jennifer," the doctor sighed, using her first name in attempt to make her more comfortable. JJ knew this trick. She knew them all. She wasn't going to let this man play with her. "It's important that you talk about what happened to you. I'm not asking you to tell me everything. Right now I'm just asking…what do you think is preventing you from acknowledging what's happened?"

JJ knew the only way she was getting back into the BAU was by playing this man's game. It was a sick game, the kind of game that brought bile to the top of her throat and opened a cageful of butterflies inside her abdomen. It yanked her heart down into her stomach, where the butterflies greeted it with more anxiety. But still, she knew she had to play the game before she could win it.

"Shaffer was the fourth," was what she said.


JJ pulled back from the kiss when a thought occurred to her. It was a sudden movement and it frightened Emily. "Are you okay? Did I hurt you?"

The phrase left her lips as a panicked rant, racing towards its recipient as quickly as a beam of light. JJ smiled softly at her worried wife, pondering the ridiculous notion that Emily could have hurt her. She was barely touching her, and even so, that woman was incapable of hurting a fly, unless of course that fly threatened the blonde. Then Emily would be very capable of hurting that fly.

"Of course I'm okay, Em. Sorry I scared you,' the blonde whispered, both in an attempt to get Emily to relax and to make sure the twins didn't wake up. God knew when they last got a decent night's sleep or even felt safe in a house. JJ knew what that felt like, and hid a grimace at the thought. "I was just thinking…are we going to be okay, I mean, financially? With me not working and having two kids in the house."

Emily sighed. "I have about fifty grand in a savings account that my mother set up for me for college. I got a full ride multiple times so I never used much of it. It's totally in my name and everything so I wouldn't even need to tell her, which is good because borrowing money from my mother right now would be a little difficult, considering I just disowned her."

"You didn't have to go that far, Emily," JJ told her wife, adjusting her body to be completely facing the brunette.

"Yes, I did," the older profiler asserted. "She's a toxic presence in our lives and always has been. It's not good for me, for the twins, certainly not for you. She comes around once every few years to tell me how awful I am and how pathetic you are and then ignores me ninety-nine percent of the time. Did you know I called her almost a dozen times when you were missing last year? Not even a text in response…." Emily took a deep breath, fighting tears, but one fell anyway. JJ reached up to brush it away immediately. "I'm fine, Jen, really. She just reminded me of why I hate her, that's all."

JJ ignored the end of her statement. "I can't even imagine what you went through that day, and the weeks afterwards. I will never forgive her for what she did to you, Em. Never." JJ maneuvered herself so she was all but sitting on Emily's lap, moving to wrap her arms around her wife as the two sat against the wall in the hallway. "I just, I don't want you to be abandoned, Em. With your dad being gone and now your mom…."

Emily sniffed. "My dad didn't choose to leave me."

"I know, I just…I know what it feels like when a parent just leaves, and I just want you to talk to me, to acknowledge what you're feeling."

"I wish she would just leave," Emily was finally able to articulate. "I don't want her to hang around like this anymore! I wish she would just cut the cord!" The brunette gently pushed her wife off of her and zoomed down the stairs, a wordless plea for JJ to follow left in the air.

When she got to the bottom of the stairs, the blonde saw her wife standing in the living room, looking out the window. This proved to JJ that Emily was really, really upset. JJ stepped gingerly towards her and wrapped her arms tightly around her from behind. "I'm here, Em," she whispered softly into the brunette's ear. "I'm safe. I'm not going anywhere."

Emily lifted her hands to rest them over JJ's hold on her, squeezing her forearms gently. "How dare she say those things about you? About those kids?" the agent whispered angrily.

JJ kissed Emily's cheek. "Her life doesn't have meaning like yours does, Em. That's how people like that comfort themselves, baby. You know that. People with no love in their lives try to deny it to others. You taught me that."

"I know," the brunette sighed, twisting herself to make eye contact with her wife. "But she…she never even tried to know you. And then I almost lost you…and I blamed myself and…it's a mother's job to comfort you, to tell you everything will be okay, and all she ever did was tell me the opposite." Emily took a deep breath, resting her forehead against JJ, drawing strength from the connection. "I almost lost you, and she didn't even care. My own mother."

Over the preceding year, Emily had allowed JJ to see what she had faced the day she was abducted very few times. And she revealed only guilt to her. Never loss. Almost never fear. JJ could tell that after all this time, the Ambassador had brought these emotions to the surface and her wife was finally exploding the box she had trapped herself in for almost eighteen months. JJ pulled Emily to her and wrapped her arms securely around her.

"I'm here, Emily. Let me take care of you. Please."

And the brunette finally let go.


"Jennifer, will you explain to me what you mean by that?"

JJ didn't realize the path that revelation would take them down. For the first time, she was going to have to acknowledge to reality of the first years of her 'dating life' to someone who wasn't her wife or mother. "Before my abduction, I was in three abusive relationships," she choked out, fighting to remember that Emily was sitting right outside that door and a scream loud enough would have her bursting in the room in less than a second. She had her knight in shining armor. She was safe. "I was assaulted by all of them. Shaffer was the fourth."

"Does your wife know about these attacks?" Dr. Alexander asked, calculated.

"She knows the basics about all of them. I can't tell her any more right now. She already has to much to deal with." The blonde agent, who knew she was not going to be cleared after this visit, began to spill her deepest worries to a man who knew nothing about her other than what was in her file and what she had just told him. "She can't know the details. She won't be able to handle it. I'm the reason she breathes, Dr. Alexander. It's not always like this, but when she learns something about my abduction or about my past relationships…it's like she has this bottle of love that fills more and more each time she learns about my trauma, and I'm afraid one day the top is going to blow. I mean, she's the reason…she's the reason…." JJ sighed, knowing a lot of what she said had not made much sense, but she had to stop talking, because if she finished that sentence, she would never be able to go back to work. "It's just really hard to share things with her. I don't want to hurt her anymore."

"Agent Jareau, do you ever wish that you didn't survive your abduction?"


Eventually, Emily was able to speak again. "Everyone talks about how I saved you, but the truth is you saved me. You save me every time I look at you. Being able to love you means more to me than anything in the world, and the fact that my mother can't recognize that…."

"It hurts. I know, Em. I'm so, so sorry. I've been through some horrendous things, Emily," JJ acknowledged, "I know that too, but that doesn't mean you're not allowed to feel pain. My struggles do not invalidate your struggles, my love. It doesn't have to be that way."

A shaky sigh signaled to JJ that she was getting through to Emily. "You saved me too," JJ reminded her. "And I'm not talking about when you barged into that basement wielding your gun, all the while whispering words of comfort to me. I'm talking about your patience when we first started dating. I'm talking about your dedication to learning me and my triggers and my boundaries. I'm talking about those first few weeks after the abduction. When I was in my darkest place, you reminded me of why I wanted to survive it all in the first place. What your mother tells you is not true. We both know that a survivor is only a part of who I am, just like 'married to a survivor' is just one of thousands of accurate and descriptive titles you have."

Emily sniffed, deciding to be the one to lift the heaviness slightly. "Are you saying that this is an Elizabeth problem, not an Emily problem?"

JJ chucked slightly. "Pretty much."

The blonde pushed a sweaty strand of the brunette's hair behind her ear. "I'm not as good at this as you are. Do you need to cry some more or…?"

Emily laughed. "I'm okay. I'm just glad we're reaching a point where we both can acknowledge what we're feeling, ask for comfort, and move on."

"Do you remember when I was seeing the bureau shrink?" JJ asked.

Emily nodded. "Of course. You hated that guy."

JJ smiled. "He wasn't that bad. I just hated everything about my situation. Well, I spent the whole time I was seeing him trying to manipulate his tests, which I saw as mind games, so that he would clear me, and I feel like it would have been easier for me to actually have tried to cooperate. So basically, what I'm trying to say," JJ continued, knowing it was never a bad idea to clarify, "is that instead of telling me that you're okay, knowing that I'm aware it isn't true, just tell me the truth. Dr. Alexander cleared me the week I decided to actually answer his questions. He just wanted to know that I could acknowledge what I was feeling. And it took me a year to figure it out. Hindsight is 20/20."

"Does that mean that now is a good time to acknowledge that I should have literally kicked my mother out of the house?"

"Stop deflecting, love," JJ pointed out.

Emily nodded. "Duly noted. And this is not me deflecting by the way, but what did you and Francesca talk about before?"

JJ grabbed Emily's hand and led her to the couch. "You're not going to like it."

"Good thing we're not censoring ourselves anymore."

It was an almost carbon copy of many conversations they had had before. It was unhealthy for the couple to hold things back from each other for fear that it would cause distress. In reality, the truth was usually easier to take than the fact that they had been lied to. Both knew this logically, but a reminder was necessary periodically because their protective instincts often overpowered logic for the two women.

"Francesca was wondering if we were married."

"And you told her yes?" Emily clarified.

"Of course. But when I asked her why she said it, she asked me if you ever hit me."

Emily froze for a moment. "What?" she breathed. The thought itself knocked the air out of her lungs. "What made her think that?" the brunette questioned, fearing that her yelling at the Ambassador had made a worse impression than she originally thought.

The blonde sighed. "Her dad hit her mom. Her foster dad hit her foster mom. She put the pieces together. Married people hit each other."

"What did you tell her?"

"Well first I told her the truth," JJ started, placing a comforting hand on Emily's knee. "That you wouldn't lay a hand on me if there was a gun to your head." Emily raised her eyebrows. "That's not exactly what I told her, but basically…." JJ knew that nothing disturbed Emily more than the mere notion that she would hurt her wife physically. When JJ had the nightmare of Emily raping her, the brunette was torn up for days. When Brittany accused the brunette of being the very thing that JJ was most scared of, she had almost vomited. This was no different. "Em, she's not afraid of you. She's just afraid in general. I was too."

The brunette nodded, but she still wasn't completely present.

"I promise, Em. We're going to get her and Tony through all of this. They have scars, physical and emotional, but we'll teach them, we'll help them. Whether it's as their parents or whether it's as temporary caregivers, we'll do it. I already gave Francesca a quintessential Emily speech. It was pretty good, actually."

Emily nodded again and smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "I would never hurt you…." She whispered, a reverent tone gracing her voice.

"I know, Em," JJ whispered back softly. "I know." The blonde wrapped Emily in a hug and the brunette hesitantly returned it after a few moments.

They stayed in the hug for several seconds until the doorbell rang. "Who could that be?" JJ asked, noting that it was not quite noon.

Emily pressed a quick kiss to JJ's forehead, still shaken up by her foster daughter's question and then stood to answer the door. "Is my mother back already? I swear to God, I will literally murder her!"

Emily yanked open the door.

AN: So who's at the door? Is it the Ambassador or someone else?

I'm not very proud of this chapter, I feel like it's pretty jumbled, but I wanted to make sure I could update tonight, so please let me know what you think!-Gabby