Prologue: Part II

November 15th 2014, 1:35am:

Before each case reached full-blown soldier mode, before they touched down in some new location, and before they even discussed their plan of attack… there were seventeen minutes. Seventeen minutes, as the jet taxied along the runway and climbed to its cruising altitude, in which every member of the team remained silent, fastened into their seats, their eyes fixed out the window, watching the world beneath them grow smaller and smaller.

After listening to the briefing she'd heard – and given – a hundred times before, JJ found herself needing those seventeen minutes more than ever. Because though that briefing had been the same general story they heard each time a case was bestowed upon them, this one held a little twist: their good guy had become their bad guy. That twelve year old they'd saved from the devil six years ago, had become the devil. What kind of a cruel joke was that?

Settling into her typical seat on the jet, she turned herself almost fully away from the team and secured her gaze on the porthole-esque window to her left. Her head lolled against the headrest as her eyes fought to keep up with the runway zooming by them, and her mind fought to keep up with the logistics of a case that they'd basically already lost.

The team would be in Wisconsin within a couple of hours, and within three, they'd have a new conference room, in the middle of some small-town police department, surrounded by officers who, more often than not, didn't take too kindly to their toes being stepped on. Within five, they'd have some form of lead, one that would present itself as the catalyst to, in so many ways, guide them into the light. But it was never the light they found at the end of that trail. How could it be when, for them, following the light meant finding more darkness? Sure, they may crack the case, catch the bad guy and save someone's son or daughter…

But they'd find them in the dark, when it was already too late, and their memory of the light had already been erased. What did they really save? If evil won even when good won, what were they fighting for?

The general consensus was that cases involving children were the worst – that wasn't altogether true. Matter of fact – at least for JJ - any case that happened to fall at a time when her personal life was fragmented and open for scrutiny was the worst. There's something about looking the devil in the face that makes you question your own life, and when your own life is already questionable, you find yourself with answers you don't want: perhaps it isn't their darkness you're concerned about, but the irreversible loss of your own light.

Just as the voice inside her head spoke, she felt Emily turn in the seat beside her; subtle enough that, for a moment, she was certain the move had only been made so that the brunette could gain a better vantage point of the view beyond the glass. But when she felt the warmth of Emily's body press gently against her side, and fingers discreetly seeking out and finding her own beneath the table, she realized it was a message in a situation where words would surely shed that dreaded light: you're not alone.

It wasn't the first time she'd felt Emily's hand in hers; it wasn't the first time the brunette had understood that sometimes words don't cut it - or, rather, that sometimes they cut through everything. It wasn't the first time she'd felt like Emily's hand was the only thing strong enough to hold everything together, hold her together. But clutching and holding are two different things, and whereas Emily was holding her, she couldn't help but feel that she was simply clutching at Emily as an attempt to keep one shred of the beauty she'd once seen in this world. Just like she'd clutched at Will. Just like she clutched at this job.

She gripped tighter, even as the voice in her head responded to Emily's unspoken message: I think I wish that I was.


November 15th 2014, 7:38pm:

Seven miles from the Rock County Sheriff's Department, seventeen hours after they'd arrived in Wisconsin, JJ had abandoned Hotch's order to stay close and was in full-scale reckless mode, chasing their unsub through darkened woodland. He'd made a mistake: let down his guard and allowed one of his victims to escape him. She'd lead the team right to him, but apparently he wasn't going out without a fight.

The flashlights of other agents' flickered through the trees, offering JJ brief glimpses of the obstacles up ahead. She ducked and dived and weaved through tree limbs as the unsub and his hostage gained distance on her, and when she tripped and fell, she was so angry at herself that she barely stopped to recognize what she had fallen on. It was only after three more steps, when she noticed that every inch of her front was sodden, that instinct pushed her to turn back and aim her flashlight at the culprit of her stumble – or, rather, culprits.

Body parts. That's all that was left of Danielle Hampton, as they'd later find out was her name. He'd left her outside to rot in the dirt like road kill, a method soberingly similar to the monster that had created him.

Adrenaline rushed through JJ's veins then and she turned and ran, faster than she'd ever ran, and gained on their suspect within seconds. But when that suspect unexpectedly stopped and turned towards her, she stilled so abruptly that the momentum – or perhaps the knife that he now held to his victim's throat – caused her take one full step back.

"It's okay." She held out her palm in a pacifying gesture, holstering her weapon with the other. "It's over now."

"It's never over." The unsub – Silas Mills – responded, something in his eyes that JJ read as that special kind of defeat, the one that only manifests after years of trying so damn hard. "This never stops."

"It does." JJ soothed, cautiously taking one step forward. "It does stop."

Her heart ached, and though she hadn't felt one ounce of humanness in months, she found herself with this intense urge to wrap this kid up in her arms and protect him from the world.

"I get it, Silas." She continued. "Sometimes things happen in our life that change us irreparably, but that doesn't always have to be a bad thing."

She was speaking from experience, of course. In the past two years, she'd lost so much – not least of which was her naïve ability to see the beauty in everything. Once upon a time she'd prided herself on it, been admired for it, even promised herself that, no matter what, she'd never lose it. But that was before she was torn from her job and dropped in an Afghan desert, where her unborn child had paid the ultimate penalty for her failure to put up more of a fight; that was before she married a man she didn't love and inevitably destroyed his belief in fairytales; that was before she was held captive and had that beauty tortured out of her.

The world wasn't beautiful – but wasn't that realization actually the positive that had arisen from the events that scarred her history? Wasn't that lesson, and the knowledge she'd gained because of it, now a part of the arsenal that would ensure she'd live through this soul-erasing job?

"You've seen things." She took another step forward, encouraged by the fact that Silas didn't move an inch. "You've been through things. And now the world looks different. But that's okay."

"How is this okay?" Silas snarled, pressing his knife more firmly into his victim's throat.

"Okay, okay." JJ quickly held out both palms, and then jerked one hand back to stop her team when the rustle of dried leaves and tree limbs told her they were approaching.

They surrounded her like bodyguards, their weapons trained on Silas, but she couldn't help but wonder what they were protecting her from. This apparent monster was once an innocent, a baby, a blank canvas, new to this world that would eventually go on to morph him into an evil almost unrecognizable. But she recognized him. If he was guilty of something, then she was too. They all were. They'd all, at some point, allowed the nightmares that haunt them to affect the way they act in the civilized world.

"This moment, right now, is up to you." She continued, her voice a soft, quiet hum that somehow rang louder than the wind whistling through the trees. "You decide what happens. Not those bad things that happened to you, or even those bad things that you've done. You can change this moment, simply by lowering your knife and letting Stephanie go."

It was then that Silas posed a question that JJ didn't have the answer to: "And the next moment? What about that one? And the one after that?"

JJ faltered, finding instant discomfort in the notions that sprang to mind.

What if good didn't come naturally to you? What if, in order to be good, your entire life was one long fight? Was that fight really worth it, when all you eventually achieve is exhaustion, and possibly a crossroads at which something better than you at subduing their demons comes to collect you? And what if you weren't to blame for your demons, but were inevitably the one to pay the price?

Tivon Askari… Hadn't he once been an innocent too?

Her mind malfunctioned entirely then. Everything in her malfunctioned for a moment – a moment too long. As it dawned on her, not for the first time in her career, that good and evil, black and white, wasn't as clear cut as human-beings sometimes need it to be in order to justify their methods, she found herself, quite literally, face to face with every shade of grey imaginable.

The journey of Silas' blade across Stephanie's throat, and the consequent shots fired from Morgan's pistol and into the kid's chest, took mere seconds, but would go on to play in JJ's conscience for hours. The stark contrast of crimson pooling down a porcelain column of a young woman's throat would forever hang on the walls of her mind. And the sound of senseless death would join the many sounds just like it that each combined to create a lullaby that, more often than not, kept her from sleep.

This was her life, every day – give or take. It wasn't the first time she'd witnessed human slaughter first-hand; it wasn't the first time she'd stumbled over body parts; it wasn't the first time she'd wound up covered in a victim's blood; it wasn't the first time that, no matter how fast her feet carried her, no matter how hard she pushed her stamina and her mind, she'd been too late.

Sometimes, such as now, she had to face reality: 100% of the time, they were too late to save someone. Realistically, they saved no one – the ripple effect would go on for decades, and even bleed into future generations.

And stood in that darkened woodland, a scene of human depravity before her, her whole front soaked through with an innocent's blood… she realized there was no saving her, either. Not really. Because those moments she'd been searching for, those 'just one' moments intended to help her forget, had now created a mountain of moments so grand and intimidating that conquering it meant conquering herself.

What happened in that next moment? Apparently Silas already had the answer.

Out of nowhere, Emily's hand reached for her own, somehow startling her more than the scene still unfolding before her, and she shrugged it away, pulling her sleeve over her hand, as if marking it off limits.

Now was not the time for the beauty that Emily shed on her world, because she'd known better, and yet, for a moment, she'd actually allowed herself to believe the words she'd offered Silas. But Silas was far more in-tune to his demons than she'd ever be, and he was right: it wasn't okay.

Casting her dark eyes to Emily, her words rode on an eerily calm tone-

"A child just found out, in the worst possible way, that the world holds no fairness, no redemption and no beauty or hope. Your efforts at comfort don't fix that, and I'm not your problem to fix anyway. So perhaps you should start minding your own business like the rest of them."

–before she turned to head back to the SUVs, leaving the brunette in her wake with an expression on her face that, this time, she hoped represented an end.

Another connection to reality, another lifeline severed. Four down; one to go.


November 15th 2014, 11:53pm:

That one to go went soon after they'd boarded their flight back to Quantico, when Hotch sat her down in a quieter corner of the jet and enforced mandatory leave upon her. It had been a long time coming, and she couldn't honestly say she felt a loss. In some backwards way, actually, it felt liberating.

Leaving an air of nonchalance in her wake – something that had become a signature trait of hers in recent months – she'd quickly excused herself from Hotch's presence and opted to sit out the remainder of the flight in a mostly unoccupied corner of the jet. No one bothered her – she imagined because she'd shown them enough times what happened to those olive branches they were continually extending. And that was fine with her…

Until they were back on solid ground, and Emily looked at her with an expression she recognized. It was the same one she'd seen back when she was a liaison, etched painfully across the faces of people who, just hours before, had been strangers – people who, during those seconds in which she was telling them that they'd found the body of their son or daughter, probably wished they were still strangers.

That's what she saw when Emily looked at her: unparalleled grief, and a little spark of something that told her Emily wished she'd never met her.

In the air, thirty-thousand feet above the world, she'd felt smug, relieved, free. Back at base, with Emily's face lingering in her memory, her brain felt like a pulsating mass of contradictory sensation, a cancer that had riddled its way through everything good and healthy, until every one of her senses began working against her.

Everything was so loud, so intense, so suffocating. The click of her heels that, just yesterday, she'd utilized as a distraction, now jackhammered through her brain. Those residual images from that Wisconsin woodland, as well as her own personal hells, swirled around her like bullies on a playground, prodding and tormenting her from every angle. And Silas' question, that damn question… My god, she couldn't breathe for that question.

Approaching her vehicle, she scrambled in her purse for her keys, ultimately dropping them to the ground and jumping at the oddly sharp sound of metal meeting concrete.

She stared at them with something akin to defeat in her chest, that small fumble representing a final straw in a weekend – a year - that had drained her; and when she finally slinked to the ground to grab them, the last thing she wanted to do was push herself back up.

With her fingertips brushing against concrete and one leg bent in her crouching position, she looked like a runner taking their mark. And wouldn't that be something? If she could just run and never look back. If she could just run and know – know – that everything she was running from wouldn't follow her. If her failed marriage and her unborn child and her torturous memories would remain in the past, growing smaller and smaller on the horizon until eventually they faded fully from sight and memory.

If she could run so far and so fast that maybe, maybe, she wound up crossing over worlds and into one where flowers didn't die on a whim, and light didn't lose itself beneath a blanket of black, and a belief in fairytales was more than a facade to make it through the day.

She closed her eyes, and pictured an ocean in her mind. Her friends, her marriage, her career, her convictions, her sanity, were the buoys to cling to when she'd ventured too far, the markers yelling at her to turn back to the safety of the shore… But the waves were majestic and uncharted and captivating, and the beach seemed too far away now. So she'd cut the rope to those buoys, so they too could drift out to sea without remorse: first her convictions; consequently her marriage; then her friends; now her career. Her sanity had cut itself free.

Now, with nothing weighing her down or pulling her back, she could drift; and quite possibly, inevitably, drown.

The beginnings of a smile curled at her lips for the end in sight, a backwards but intense sense of relief soothing her like a cold compress on a hundred degree day. She could breathe again. But as she lifted her gaze to the large exit that lead out of the parking lot and into the pitch-black night, she was met unexpectedly with a leather-clad hand reaching down for her own.

Shocked into stillness, she eyed it for a moment, before slowly looking up and finding herself locking eyes – if such a thing was possible through a dark-tinted visor – with her elusive stranger.

For five, six, seven seconds, the hand lingered, but taking it didn't seem like the obvious option. Shoving it away, strangely, did. And even stranger was the fact that that was the very reason she eventually did take it.

An instant and familiar sense of ease washed over her as their hands met, but when she was back on her feet, she took an instinctive, but stumbled, step back. Her eyes narrowed and she whispered, "Who are you?"

She received no response, and it quickly occurred to her that, at least to the stranger, the question, specifically its quasi-accusatory tone, was entirely out of context. He had no clue of the effect he'd had on her on the only other occasion she'd seen him.

"I mean…" She shook her head at herself and frowned. "Thank you. I guess."

The stranger nodded in response, before turning back towards and mounting the motorcycle sitting two cars over from hers. And with the rumble of the engine suddenly bursting to life, and a further nod that JJ read as more chivalrous than acknowledging, he drove out of sight… and left a trail of mystery in his wake that ignited a memory within her of the beauty she'd once seen in this dark, dark world.

Except it didn't stop at a spark. It burnt and burnt, until it wasn't the memories of her history that were illuminated, but just the parts of her history that she truly had been in control of.

You can change this moment, rang in her ears. Every sound from every recess of her memory rang in her ears, to the point where her instinct almost pushed her to place her hands over them. It grew louder and louder, harsher and harsher…

Until she was back in that ocean.

She'd reached the horizon now, could barely see the shore anymore, and the sharks circling her weren't what she was most afraid of – it was the fact that she relished the prospect of their teeth puncturing her flesh, tearing her limb from limb, swallowing her whole until there was literally nothing left. That's why she hadn't had an answer for Silas – because she didn't want there to be a next moment, just like he hadn't. He'd purposely provoked his own death… just like she, essentially, had.

Face to face with their mortality, a person learns who they are. And face to face with her mortality, JJ found there was nothing left.

On shaky legs, she stumbled towards her car and climbed inside; left the slamming of the door to ricochet around the large parking structure. The sound was strangely hollow, its mere existence reminding her of that vast and largely empty ocean she was lost to. She'd ventured too far… God, she'd ventured so far.

It followed her home, that empty sound, prodding and relentless, clung to her like a leech until it was all she could hear, all she could see, all she could feel.

And behind a closed blue door of a nondescript house, in a harshly lit, tiled bathroom, with varying-sized bottles and pill containers lined up like little toy soldiers… JJ found a way to make the sound stop.

To make the whole world just stop.

Mama, put my guns in the ground,

I can't shoot them anymore.

A cold black cloud is comin' around,

And I feel I'm knocking on heaven's door.