Author's Note: Thank you every for the kind reviews; I really do enjoy writing this story. My updates will most likely be weekly now; I work in a National Park and am frequently away from the Internet. Hope you enjoy it!
She doesn't quite know how she's ended up here.
She's sitting at the kitchen table, in a house that is not quite familiar. There's a distinct lived-in quality to the rooms around her, the sense of a well-cared for residence. A cup of tea, still warm, sits in front of her, two of her fingers laced around the handle.
She can hear the sound of soft voices, then louder laughter. Her ears try to pinpoint the source of the sound, and she turns in her chair to see an open screen door leading outside. Leaving her mug behind, she stands and strides over to the open doorway, enjoying the feel of the light breeze wafting in and the cool sensation of the morning air on her cheeks. She passes thru the door and out onto a small pavilion set in the middle of a large, well shaded back yard. There are toys littered all around: small red and blue blocks, a pink tricycle, a large yellow beach ball. Near the back fence line, there is a man lying on the ground, holding a squirming toddler above him.
She can't help but smile at the scene, looking out at the little girl held up in the air. The girl's face is lit up with a blinding smile, her eyes wide with the thrill of being airborne. Emily's eyes meet hers, and the girl suddenly begins to squirm even more, her small hands pushing down at the hands supporting her so high up off the ground.
"Down!" she demands, and the hands comply, bringing her down to the ground slowly and safely. Suddenly she is a blur of pink and white, as she runs forwards as fast as her legs will take her across the yard and over to Emily's waiting arms.
"Mama!" she exclaims, held tight against Emily chest.
"Good morning, my love," Emily says in reply, though there is a nagging feeling that remains in her heart, a persistent sensation that something is not quite right here.
"Went flying!" her daughter exclaims, pulling her head away from the crook between Emily's shoulder and neck and pointing out to the man who was now walking over to them, his hands tucked casually into his pockets, a smile already spread across his face.
"Well, more like suspending, but the basic principle of escaping gravity's clutches is the same," says Reid, grinning openly now. "Good morning," he says, leaning forward to both ruffle their daughter's unruly brown curls and to place a kiss on Emily's cheek.
As his lips brush her skin, she tenses, suddenly aware of the perversion of reality, the improbability – impossibility? – of the moment acutely evident now. As Reid gently takes the little girl from her now frozen grasp and the two return to their playful adventures in the yard, Emily is left breathless by the realization that this cannot be real, this is too perfect, too idyllic, too –
And then she wakes up, legs tangled together with the jacket she'd thrown over herself as a blanket, on her makeshift bed in the back of her vehicle. Her heart is beating furiously in her chest, as the veil of confusion left from her dream pulls away from her, slowly but firmly placing her back in the land of the conscious.
There is light streaming in through the windows; a pale and earthy light consistent with the early morning hours. Her back is cramped from the last few hours crumpled up in the confining backseat, and she winces as she straightens up into a sitting position, rubbing at the layers of skin and tissue in the vain hope of soothing her aching sacrum. Her stomach rumbles hungrily, demanding attention, and she decides to remain motionless for a moment, just taking a moment to process everything before her "day" actually began.
She'd called Garcia last night after her mad dash away from the parking lot and away from a certain FBI agent. She knows how close things are to coming to a head, and she can't keep running like this, not with her old team behind her, at least. She left in order to protect them, to keep them safe from the consequences of mistakes she'd made long ago, but now it's all been in vain; they are all in just as much danger as her.
So she told Garcia to relay a message to the team, to tell them to just hold off on their pursuit for a moment, to just wait for her to relay more information. To be quite honest, she'd only really said that to buy some time, to give herself some time to just rest, albeit briefly, while she attempts to figure out what to do in order to keep everyone safe.
And now, to top everything off, her emotions and her thoughts are further muddled by this dream she's just awoken from, a dream where the future was perfect and inviting and warm and loving. A future where she has a home, and a daughter, and a man that loves her. A future she desperately wants, but is finding it harder and harder to believe will ever be a reality. She can barely see herself living out the rest of the month, let alone long enough to deliver her baby into the world safely.
Emily places her head into her hands, leaning forward into the back of the front seat's head rest. She's just so tired now, so tired of this running and fighting and killing and lying. Most of all, she hates the lying, she despises having to conceal the truth and having to make up new histories and alibis all in order to simply stay alive.
The phone rings in the front seat of her car, and she grudgingly opens the side door of the vehicle, stretching out into the surprisingly warm morning air. She opens the front door and reaches in to grab her phone off of the seat, remarking with latent surprise the flash of the time (5:23am) as she flips the phone open, knowing it could only be Garcia.
"Hi, Penelope," she says, leaning back against the hood of the vehicle, attempting to straighten out the knots caught all along the base of her spine.
There's a brief pause, and then an all-too familiar voice rings in her ears. "Uh – hi, Emily."
She braces herself against the frame of the vehicle, her legs buckling in an instant. She takes a moment to regain her composure before answering, "Sp-Spencer?"
The voice sounds so far away, though she knows that less than two hundred geographical miles separate them. "Garcia put me through to you; she said you told her no one was to have your number."
"Mmm," she replies vaguely, still too shocked to form coherent sentences.
"I know it was you, in the parking lot, last night. We checked the security cameras. I – I thought you were long gone, Emily, I thought – I even thought you might be dead. I even fainted when I saw you on the screen, fainted right away, like Morgan's ever going to let me live that one down, he still hasn't let me live down the time at the diner, you remember the one, where I mistook the bottle of-"
"Spencer –" she interrupts, recognizing his habit of nervous rambling.
He stops abruptly, and a silence hangs between them, palpable even across the telephone line and the distance between them. "You're pregnant," he says simply, whispering it across the line like a sinner might in confession, murmuring to a priest.
"Yes," she breathes, her voice barely audible, even in the empty silence of the early morning.
"I – I don't what to say."
She can feel the mounting pressure behind her eyes, and she mentally curses herself, knowing that the combination of her shifting hormones and the residual emotional baggage from her dream is making her feel so much more emotionally compromised than usual. "I had to leave," she says simply.
"Without saying goodbye," he says, and she can hear the pain in his voice.
"Yes," she breathes, blinking hard to keep the tears at bay.
"You- you used me," he murmurs, and now the hurt is tangible, she can practically feel his pain, and the waves of guilt she'd pushed down and hidden way rise up again, overwhelming her. She knows he's right – she did use him, knowing him like she does (or did). She knows about the greatest fear he holds in his heart, the fear born of and nurtured by the abandonment of his father, of Gideon, and now her.
"I'm – I'm sorry, Spencer, I'm so sorry."
There's a moment of silence, and then his voice comes back again. "Come home," he says simply, and her heart skips a beat at the request, at the possibility of making her disappearing dream come true.
"I can't. I'm sorry."
"Let us help, then, Emily, please. I don't-" he starts, then pausing, as if weighing his next statement carefully. "I don't want to lose the chance to meet my own child."
Emily chokes back an involuntary sob, catching it in her throat before it has the chance to escape into the world. "I'll be in contact," she whispers, before sliding her finger across the screen and ending the call.
In the pale morning air of Montana, Emily Prentiss leans back against her vehicle, and wills herself with all her might not to cry.