Chapter 5: Confessions Of An Ex-Special Agent
"Hey, hey, how's the groom this lovely summer morning?" Morgan asked as Jason climbed aboard the plan with the other members of the BAU.
"Better than he was the last time he was called out in the middle of the night." He replied as he lowered himself into a seat beside Hotch and leaned back. "I'm going to have to get some sleep on the way to California."
"Elle keep you up late." Hotch asked looking up from the file in his hands toward the man who had been his friend for the past twenty some odd years.
"I'd forgotten how rambunctious a younger woman can be. She could go for hours and sleep; she doesn't sleep unless she's so exhausted that she can barely stand. We finally set a date for the wedding and she's been all excited and running around asking my opinion about everything. I told her whatever she picked was alright with me and the she freaked out and started yelling and screaming at me that I didn't care and that I didn't really love her. I slept on the couch for four nights before she finally forgave me. Oh, Reid, Elle wants me to ask you if you'll walk her down the aisle, since her fathers dead and she has no one else she wanted to know if you'd do it." Jason watched as the young man stared at him. Disbelief colored his face and made his eyes wide; Jason felt the urge to laugh but held it in. He would normally have never been so open about his life with Elle but this was his team, it was his family.
"I'd be…honored to walk Elle down the aisle." Jason nodded and leaned his head back again. He shut his eyes and sighed. All the shades of pink and green and blue that Elle had been hounding him to look at and pick one of for weeks floated around in front of his closed eyelids making him want to scream. Who would have thought planning a wedding would have been so frustrating? But then he saw Elle's smile when he'd asked her felt her kiss when they'd made love on the new sofa, and it was worth it.
"I didn't know that were so many different shades of pink and blue." He mumbled as he shifted a little in his seat. He heard Emily Pretiss laugh and Reid citing statistics about the two colors and then Morgan and JJ telling him to can it. It brought a smile to Jason's face and with that image he drifted off into a peaceful sleep.
Elle ran out of the house and into Jason's waiting arms six days later. He scooped her up and wheeled her around kissing gently on the lips. She laughed and pressed her forehead against his. She heard someone clear their throat and looked up to see the whole team standing in their driveway.
Letting go of Jason she started forward a smile on her face and a spring in her step. She shook hands with Hotch and JJ, said hello to Emily, gave Reid a kiss on the cheek and enveloped Morgan in a bear hug. When she stepped back everyone just kind of stared at her.
"You all must be tired, come on in and have a seat. I just redecorated a few weeks ago and I've been hounding Jason to bring you all home for dinner. I hope you can stay, I fixed a few things. I have turkey and mashed potatoes and corn on the cob and fresh green beans and um, gravy and stuffing and…" They followed her and Jason up the steps and inside the house as she rattled off all of the things she'd prepared for Jason's return. She usually didn't cook a large meal and she hadn't really felt up to it this morning when she'd woken up. For the past few weeks she'd been feeling really sick in the mornings but it seemed to be going away. She hadn't thought much of it until she'd missed her last menstrual cycle. Elle had always been regular, even when she'd been a teenager; it had been something that was as predictable as taxes. But she wasn't to worried about it thinking that it was probably just stress from planning the wedding.
"Wow, I didn't know you could cook Elle." Reid said as they walked into the house and she went straight for the kitchen. She looked at him over her shoulder as she stirred the pan of turkey gravy on the stove.
"It was one of the few things I learned from my mother. Every woman should know how to cook. Mom always said that if I wanted to keep my man happy to keep him feed." She felt Jason come up behind her and wrap his arms around her. She leaned into him and kissed his cheek. He smiled and she felt her heart skip a beat. It still amazed her that after only a few weeks that they could have fallen into such a comfortable routine and though his constant absence bothered her occasionally she had learned to accept things as they were.
"Well, she must have done something right because it smells delicious." Hotch said as he sat down with the rest of the team at the table in the dinning room just off the kitchen. Elle looked at him over her shoulder and he just glanced at her. She felt her heart twitch and had to clear her throat. She wasn't sure how to feel about him being here. Out of all the members of the team he was the one she was must uncomfortable around. And there was a damn good reason for it. He knew things, things that she'd done that she hadn't told Jason yet. He knew that she had killed that man because of what he was. Btu she let it slid. She didn't want to make a scene about something that wasn't a part of her life anymore. She had moved on and she was happier because of it.
Dinner went by fast and before she knew it she was sitting on the porch with Jason watching as the team drove away. They waved and then the streets were silent again. Turning she glanced at Jason who was leaning back in his chair with his feet propped up on the banister eyes closed and hands clasped together over his stomach. She smiled and turned away from him looking up at the stars. She had just begun to count them when he spoke.
"Reid said he'd walk you down the aisle." She looked over at him and nodded.
"I thought he might. Thank you for asking." He opened his eyes and looked up at her. She could see that he wanted to say something else but didn't know how to word it.
"Well, out with it. I can tell you have something else on your mind." He nodded and looked out across the street at the roses that bloomed in their neighbor's yard.
"I was talking to Hotch today; we had some down time while we were waiting on the plane, and the subject turned to you." She suddenly understood what he was about to say and wished to god she didn't. "We talked about your work at the BAU and our personal relationships with you and then about the shooting." He turned his head and looked her in the eye. She swallowed but didn't turn away, he had to know the truth and she had to tell him that truth. "I understand why you did it." The words came out and Elle had to take a minute to process what he had just said. He wasn't asking her if she was guilty or innocent, he already knew she was and he was telling her he understood why she had done it. He was telling her that he knew and it was…okay.
"How can you know what I've done and still love me?" A smile graced his face and he got up from his seat. He came over and hunched down in front of her. He put his hands on her knees and looked at her. She was so beautiful and the tears that were welling in her eyes only added a layer to that beauty.
"Because I love you with my whole heart and nothing, nothing will ever change that." He bent forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead laying his against her he let her get a grip on her emotions. The words she had wanted to say after the shooting, the reasons she had had for taking the man's life seemed to bubble to the surface and she found herself telling them to him.
"I couldn't let him walk away, couldn't let him get away with what he was doing to those women. I didn't think the system was going to work this time and I couldn't stand the fact that he would be out there walking around, among all those young women picking one and hunting her. I couldn't stand that fact that I had failed at my job and because of that some sicko was going to walk. I couldn't leave it all up to the system and I know that it sounds like a vigilante thing but I had to take care of it myself." She pulled back from him and watched the emotions that played on his face. Love, support, trust, it was all there. All the things she needed from him were all right there for her to see. "I didn't want to lose everything but I couldn't keep it, it wasn't mine to keep anyway. I was chasing after something I didn't really want, something that didn't make me happy. And then you came back into my life and made me question everything. I can't tell you how happy it makes me that you came back and that you where there for me. I love you." She feel forward into his waiting arms and was wrapped up by the love of her man.
"I love you to Elle baby." She cried softly into his shoulder as they sat there on the floor of the front porch. Their lives together were just beginning and he had a feeling there were more things that she had to tell him but all in due time and all when she was ready. For now it was enough to know this much and enough to know that she knew he loved her.
The End!