"I'm having a bad day..."
She hated the way her voice trembled and broke, hated how absolutely pitiful she sounded. She hadn't planned on breaking down like this, on letting her emotions come bubbling up to the surface, but when she'd gotten on the plane, she'd gotten a text from Erik – a picture of Isadora sleeping with her little bum up in the air – and she'd felt like her heart had been ripped from her chest, she missed her so badly in that moment.
Hotch nodded, almost knowingly. "What's happened?" he asked in a gentle murmur. When he'd made the deal with her, he hadn't expected her to fall apart so soon, but was glad she'd come to him nonetheless.
She let out a shaky breath, tongue flicking out over her bottom lip. "I, umm... I'm missing my baby girl," she said, which was as good a place to start as any. "I never realized how hard this was all going to be. I thought I'd come back to work and everything would feel the same, but somehow, having a baby changed everything."
"It isn't easy," he agreed.
"You didn't give birth," she snapped, "You don't know what it's like!" Then, realizing she'd just shouted at her boss, she blanched, clapped a hand over her mouth. "I'm so sorry," she apologized, voice muffled by her hand.
For his part, Hotch understood her outburst completely. "You're allowed to fall apart sometimes," he assured her, "We all need to lose it from time to time. It's part of being human, especially humans who do what we do."
Blinking too hard, too quickly in a battle against the tears threatening to spill over, she admitted, "Lately, it feels like all I do is try to pick up the pieces of the person I used to be..."
"What makes you say that?" he asked, almost clinically.
"All I wanted was to be with my husband – I was fine with blowing apart the life that I'd built for myself because it was never supposed to be permanent anyway. But I never intended to shatter everyone else's as well...
"And sure, I got my daughter out of it and I wouldn't trade her for the world, but God..." She paused, shook her head. "Now Reid is angry with me, Morgan doesn't trust me, Garcia is so afraid of losing me again that she can barely look at me without crying, and I feel like a hypocrite talking to someone like Regina Lampert – it wasn't supposed to be like this. Sometimes, I can't help but think that it would have been better if I'd never come back at all."
"Do you really believe that?" he asked. "That things would be better if you weren't here?"
She shrugged, the gesture saying everything and nothing.
He reached over to extend his hand across the table, waiting for her to accept the gesture or not. "Emily, you survived," he said as if that answered anything at all.
"But why?" she asked, nearly begging. "Why did I survive?"
He shook his head slowly. "You can't ask that – you'll drive yourself crazy trying to find the answer." He tried to offer a genuine smile. "The answer is in the beautiful smile of that baby girl waiting for you at home. She's going to make your hair turn grey, don't get me wrong, but she's going to make every single day worthwhile. That's all you need to know."
She nodded, mentally chewing over those words.
A beat of silence passed between them. "You're not going to stay," he said eventually. It wasn't a question.
She offered a smile, but it was a sad one, not quite reaching her eyes. It was answer enough.
When Emily walked into the bedroom, she found Erik splayed haphazardly across the bed, the light of the TV flickering across the planes of his face as he dozed. Next to him, Isadora lay, also dozing.
She padded silently across the room, leaning down to kiss first the baby, then her husband.
Her lips on his forehead startled Erik awake. "You're home," he mumbled sleepily. He pushed himself to sit up, yawning widely. "You look exhausted," he added.
She shrugged, not really feeling like getting into the finer points of her emotional turmoil at such a late hour, simply glad to be home...or, at least, as much at home as she could be living in Rossi's house. "Has she been sleeping long?" she asked, settling beside Isadora and smiling to herself as she watched the baby sleep.
"Long enough that she's probably due for a feeding," he answered. "I'm surprised she didn't wake up the moment you arrived – poor thing's been missing her Mama since you left."
Sadness washed over her face. "I missed her too," she confessed. "I don't know how JJ does it... I thought my heart was going to break clean in two." She rested a gentle hand on the baby's tummy, feeling it rise and fall with her heavy breathing. For a few moments, she just enjoyed the stillness of the moment, before carefully jostling her awake and watching her eyes light up as she recognized her, little arms reaching for her.
"You don't have to do this, you know," he said gently.
She nodded slowly, cradling the baby in her arms. "I know," she whispered. "I know..."
The turmoil of her decision was clear in her eyes and he knew her well enough to read it. "But if this is what you need to do, I support that," he assured her.
She attempted a smile. "I don't want to think about it right now," she said, shaking her head. "All I want is to hear about all the trouble my baby girl got into while I was gone..."
Erik chuckled quietly. "Trouble is the right word," he agreed. "I put her on the floor for tummy time and she rolled away and got stuck under the crib..."
She just shook her head and laughed. Looking down at the baby, she murmured, "You really are going to make my hair turn grey, aren't you?"