The second phone call.
It was a hot and sticky August night and Jennifer Jareau was having trouble sleeping again. Standing on the small bedroom balcony stargazing she turned back and checked the red blaring numbers of her alarm clock from across the room, only to come to the conclusion that it was her birthday. She had no doubt that throughout her much needed day off, she would get phone calls from friends and family, maybe even a card or two in the mail, most likely a visit from a certain all-knowing, all-seeing best friend.
Except JJ didn t really care, because none of them would come from her.
There would be no sleep in; there would be no waking up to her son jumping on the bed yelling Happy Birthday and Emily carrying in a tray with breakfast; there would be no Emily full stop. JJ was thankful that she still had one person from their little makeshift family: Henry. As a tear slid down her cheek, her home phone began ringing. There was no way Garcia was calling this early at three am just to wish her a happy birthday. She prayed that it wasn t another agent from the BAU requesting that she call the team in on their day off to work a case. Thankfully Henry was with his grandparents for the weekend, so there was no chance of him waking up to the inconvenient call.
"Jareau." There was an overwhelming sense of familiarity and guilt when she was met with silence. Her mind jumped back to the last late night phone call she had gotten. 'I'm sorry'. "Is anyone there? If you don't have anything to say, I'm going to hang up."
Her ears strained, waiting for something to be said, for anything to be said. Starting out innocent, the emotional tone surrounding the small piece of technology changed dramatically. To JJ, it was almost as if she could sense the tension and anxiousness on the other end of the line. 'Happy birthday,' came and went quickly and quietly.
The line went dead and her attention went back to the night sky outside, a shooting star flying past only to disappear just as fast. Then it clicked. The way JJ saw the whole screwed up situation was negative; Emily was gone and she wasn't here.
"Make a wish," she said to herself. There was a soft breeze through the open window as her mind seemed to be stuck in reverse every time she tried to think of a wish other than that one. But for the ten minutes she spent procrastinating over making a wish that in all seriously wouldn't actually come true, JJ would always come back to Emily. The thought that whoever had called had known her date of birth somehow didn't scare JJ at all. She decided to try seeing though different eyes. Maybe there was a reason to make a wish. "I wish you would come home."
Chapter title from As Long As You're Mine from Wicked the Musical.