Author's Note: I once read that when writing a story, you should write with one particular person in mind - that is exactly what I did here. Whilst that advice helped to create what I think is one of the most concise and well-rounded stories I've ever written, it also ensured that it sat on my desktop for six years: writing to one particular person is great in theory, but what you don't fully take into consideration at the time is that one day that particular person might read it and realize it was written with them in mind.

After six years, I'm done overthinking the potential end result of that (especially given the context). It's time for this story to be read. I will say this though: if you think this was written with you in mind, you're probably right.

Hopefully I'm not posting this to a deserted wasteland... and if you wonderful Emily/JJ lovers are still out there, I hope this (likely final) fic doesn't disappoint.

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds, nor the lyrics used at the beginning and the end of these first two chapters. Whilst it was Raign's version of 'Knocking On Heaven's Door' that I listened to throughout the writing process, the original, I believe, is actually accredited to Bob Dylan.


Mama, take this badge from me,

I can't use it anymore.

It's getting dark,

Too dark to see...

Prologue: Part I

November 14th 2014, 5:27pm:

There's a shadow inside each of us. It varies in size and opacity, depending on the light surrounding it, but we each possess one – or rather, for some, it possesses us.

JJ focused on the click of her heels as her autopilot guided her through the parking structure of the FBI Headquarters, an ultimately futile attempt to shut out that which never really left her mind these days. She'd climbed so far down the rabbit hole that now, three months after she'd heard them in real time, the same eighteen words had taken on lives and tones of their own, each fighting over themselves to be heard; until they created a jumbled echo that left her perpetually feeling like she was submerged beneath the surface of an overcrowded swimming pool.

You're my wife, JJ. We were going to try again for a baby. How could you do this?

He was right, of course. How could she do this? But it was easy to answer that question when the pivotal question for her for so long had been: why did I do this?

This isn't what I want anymore, she'd told him - purposely leaving out the part where she didn't know what she wanted or needed anymore - and tossed the event into an ever-growing pile of failures.

Her parents had thirty-nine years under their belt, and god knows they'd hit enough roadblocks along the way. But she'd known she hadn't wanted to marry him, had told him that enough times. And yet, caught up in the chaos and the rapture that preceded and closely followed those beautiful seconds in which Emily had cut the correct wire and saved his life, she'd managed to convince herself that caring about someone's wellbeing was the same as wishing to spend your eternity with them.

Marrying Will wasn't the only mistake she'd made in recent years - he was simply the one she could most easily erase.

She'd soon learnt, though, that out-of-sight, out-of-mind didn't always work. His voice, haunting and punishing, still remained. And if she wasn't who she was and didn't do what she did, she could pretend she didn't know why. But she knew exactly why, and it was nothing to do with mourning a marriage that had been wrong all along… He'd simply become her conscience. In the dark little reality that her mind had created to protect itself, a deceiving safe haven that she'd quickly and willingly lost herself to, he was the voice of reason calling her back. He was the voice of reason that she didn't want to hear.

As she reached her vehicle and climbed inside, she found herself missing the, albeit mild, distraction she'd found in the sound of her heels meeting concrete. Without it, all she had was that damn voice - louder than before, coarser than before, more accusatory than before. It seemed to take the empty vessel that was her car and fill it to the brim, weighing it and her down until she was almost – almost – willing to clutch at any lifeline she could see, even if that lifeline was Will's hand.

Maybe she could just… try again, try harder. Maybe if she put in a little more effort, she could love him enough to lie to him – and herself – indefinitely. Or maybe if she just lied hard enough, she'd eventually convince her heart that it's him it wants; that the safety he represents is enough; that making amends with him will somehow repair that which, these days, continuously proved to be irreparable. Maybe-

A somewhat muffled and yet startlingly loud rumble of an engine echoed around the parking lot, bounced off of the walls of JJ's car and plucked her instantaneously from the rough seas of her mind. Navy eyes flicked left to the side mirror and the vision reflected there. OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR played beneath an image of a sleek, crimson machine and an alien-like, leather-clad figure…

Alien was most definitely the word. That was the only term to accurately describe the strangely intense effect that the unknown and largely unseen presence had on her. She was illogically drawn to them by something far simpler than logic, like a raft pulled into the swell of a tsunami. She couldn't see their face through the tinted visor of their gloss-black helmet, couldn't really see them at all for the clunky leather attire they donned… and yet her heart raced with something that, if she were even capable of such authentic emotions anymore, could easily be mistaken for desire. How could she desire that which she couldn't see?

Maybe it was the air of mystery, or simply the power of the machine between her stranger's thighs. They were common fantasies, right? Perhaps. But she'd long ago stopped running on fantasy. Now, instead, an animal instinct for survival. Because fantasy is dangerous, fairytales don't exist - she'd learnt that in the most irrevocable kind of way. And if this stranger truly represented a fantasy, they were quite possibly - in a world where she, on a daily basis, willingly flirted with every danger imaginable - the most dangerous thing she'd ever come face to face with.

As she followed the unknown biker out of the parking lot, she watched as they took a left and sped off into the pitch-black night, before she herself took a right, towards a bar and a scotch and a world where she was the most dangerous thing imaginable. The voice in her head mocking her as she put her foot down:

You're not running on an animal's instinct for survival; you're running on an addict's nonchalance for destruction.


November 14th 2014, 11:03pm:

As JJ looked down to the unnamed guy between her thighs, currently in the process of hooking his fingers beneath her panties, it was difficult to refrain from shoving him away.

Three hours, according to the clock on the wall and the inordinate amount of beer bottles littering his coffee table, had vanished from her memory. The agent part of her, of course, jumped instantly to worst case scenario, until she remembered that this wasn't new. She hadn't lost time because he'd done anything indecent; she'd lost time because she'd wanted to.

When he'd tried to remove her shirt, she'd distracted him in a way she'd long ago learnt could subdue even the most strong-willed of men – she remembered that much. She also remembered her insistence that they don't take this to the bedroom. That was one of the rules, though she had no logical reasoning for it. From there, it was a blur of grey and black, flashes of bright red and streaks of orange. Like fire, hot enough to incinerate everything, including her memories.

As a profiler, it isn't about what, it's about why. As a human-being, you eventually reach a point where you'd rather not know why. And for JJ, that point had been breached a long time ago – long before she'd left Will and, ironically, started on a reckless path of searching for answers beneath strangers' flesh, in those heady kicks of adrenaline when she placed herself in danger, in that redeeming darkness that, the deeper she crawled into it, further relinquished her of responsibility for the events that had lead her there in the first place.

Face to face with the fragility of their mortality, a person learns who they are. But when a person doesn't really care to know who they are anymore, they find the only way to be mortal is to flirt carelessly with life's fragility.

A tongue, wet and warm, circled against her clit, her back naturally arching off of the couch, and despite – or perhaps because of - the semblance of awareness in her mind that knew, logically, this was in no way healthy or good for her, she tangled her fingers in his hair to encourage his ministrations.

Unfortunately, he was done just as quickly as he'd started, and she seamlessly blended her disappointment into the next step of whatever this would constitute. Rule number two: don't invest enough to complain.

With her hand on his jaw, she kissed him wet and greedily. A kiss, though we rarely stop to recognize it, is the epitome of all intimacy. But JJ, like so much else in her life, had figured out a way to exploit that intimacy, taint it, destroy it. For her, it was control in a world where she arguably had none, and as she felt him melt more and more into her, she took great pleasure in shoving him away.

Turning on her knees, she braced her hands at the back of the couch, already anticipating the predictable sound she had heard many times before as he entered her. It never truly got old, of course – there was something incredibly powerful in causing a big, strong man to make such a needy sound. But some deep, buried, forgotten part of her wished, for once, that the script would be flipped for her. So she could stop trying to rewrite that which was already written in stone.

Still, the sound was there, and he was there, and the carnal act of fucking that seemed to be the only human connection she could stretch herself to these days was there, and it silenced her mind enough to ensure she'd sleep tonight.

It was an addiction, she was certain. Most people drank; some pumped their veins full of toxins. Others, like her, used danger as an escape. Because that's really what it was… It wasn't just sex, like pulling the trigger in that freezer two months ago wasn't just 'doing her job'. She lived for the rush, because it was all she had left – it was the only thing that made sense.

It was the only thing that made her human.

Her forehead dropped to her clasped hands as he moved inside her, and save for the gentle whispers of breath leaving her lips, she made no real sound. Outwardly, she resembled a sinner knelt at a church alter, praying for absolution. But behind her eyes she beckoned no forgiveness, no understanding, no clean slate… Only a moment – a moment so blinding and intense that she might just forget her whole existence.

The increasingly unapologetic grip of his fingers against her hips and the bruising they would undoubtedly leave ignited life within the depths of her soul. The sounds he made, like he was still so sure he'd gotten lucky tonight, splashed against the walls of her mind, a memory of a high that hung alongside many just like it. His every relentless thrust soared her through oblivion, like she was onboard a rocket ship, gladly leaving the world behind…

Perhaps the sweet and innocent and wholesome woman who had once existed would have required or hoped for something a little more attentive, but that woman had perished in the heat of an Afghan desert, had been eviscerated in a DC warehouse, and buried in a grave as endless as a black hole that she, herself, had dug. She could rot in that grave for all JJ cared, because it really wasn't about the why anymore, or even the what. It was about how – how she made it through each godforsaken second.

And then her phone rang.

It was like someone had flicked a switch in a darkened room, casting an instant air of judgment over her. But where it should have made her feel self-conscious, offered her a point of enlightenment, it instead intensified certain shadows. Those ones caught in the crosshairs of the wrong side of the light, their sources standing strong like statues in the depths of her conscience, telling her with their unwavering stance that she could project all the light she wanted onto them, but from this angle, it would only serve to create more shadows.

Stilling the guy inside her with a simple wave of her hand, she reached over and grabbed her phone from the coat tossed over the arm of the couch. "Jareau."

Her voice was firm, her breathing steady, her silence alert rather than guilty. And when Garcia told her exactly what she'd expected, she promptly ended the call and eased herself off of her latest fix.

"Are you serious?" The guy threw out his hands as JJ pulled on her panties and jeans and gathered up the rest of her belongings. "Oh, come on… I was so close."

"You have hands for a reason." She responded plainly as she departed.


November 15th 2014, 12:14am:

Absentmindedly locking her car over her shoulder, JJ strode purposefully towards the elevators, the events of thirty-minutes ago already fading into the far recesses of her mind.

Making this journey during regular work hours was a whole world different to making this journey because she'd been called in. Being called in warranted a different level of warrior mode, and that level-one stealth demanded nothing but focus - something she fortunately, but inexplicably, still possessed. Apparently what Emily hadn't told her all those years ago was that, if you're lucky enough, compartmentalizing skills came free with most weighty mental strains. Score one for the human brain – and, arguably, the two Xanax she'd tossed to the back of her throat on the journey over here.

Alighting the elevator, she threw away the now-empty coffee cup she'd acquired on her drive, and headed immediately towards the break room for another. Thankfully the pot had already brewed, and she poured herself a cup before taking two steps forward and abruptly stopping.

There's nothing like wearing sunglasses in the dead of night, inside, to invite unwanted attention. She promptly removed them and slipped them into the pocket of her overcoat.

"Woah, JJ…" Morgan's face dropped as she entered the conference room. "You look like hell."

"Thanks, Morgan." She responded evenly, looking swiftly to Garcia and dropping herself heavily into a chair beside Emily. "What we got?"

The analyst's eyes saddened, but dropped purposely to the tablet in her hand - she knew better than to mention the deteriorating state of her friend these days.

One by one, they'd all learnt that you can't help a person who doesn't want to be helped, and more than that, sometimes offering that help can actually further encourage the monster. Now, they stood on the sidelines like lifeguards, waiting for that inevitable moment when JJ finally went under and they were permitted to rescue her.

But Emily was done politely looking away, and as Garcia explained the case, she – much to the blonde's awareness – took in JJ's appearance.

She'd tried to refrain for months, but during those months, JJ had somehow morphed into something unrecognizable. In her effort to preserve the blonde's privacy, she'd missed the transition, and now, in her memory, it seemed that JJ had changed overnight - from the skirt-wearing, always-bright, a-whiz-with-words communications liaison, to the wears-nothing-but-black, vacant-eyed, clipped-word profiler. But Emily knew it was nothing to do with the shift in career status, and instead a shift in something far more fragile.

Even the way she sat right now was different. There was a challenge in her posture, and yet an expression in her eyes that told Emily JJ was only challenging herself – quite possibly to irreparable levels. She wasn't going to stop until there was nothing left.

It scared her. It scared all of them. And unbeknownst to the rest of the team, some days, it scared JJ too.


Author's Note 2: I'm almost certain my use of the word 'compartmentalizing' in this chapter is incorrect, but for the life of me I can't figure out the word I should be using. If any of you know, please shoot me a message/review and I'll correct it.