"You want me to come back?" The words taste sour in my mouth, and I honestly can't think of anything worse. I want to go back to the desert, to people who don't know me, and places that she's never walked. The thought of being here everyday, the place we used to exist together, without her here? I don't know how the others are doing it.
Seeing her desk empty, without the few personal touches she had put there over the last few years, hit me in the gut like a fist as I walked through the bullpen. I'd thought I was ready for it, but my steps faltered as my eyes found the surface of the desk completely cleared, as though they wanted to erase her very memory. The thought of seeing that everyday…I'd rather be dead, too.
"I do." Hotch nods, solemnly. "Strauss approved it."
It seems all of my transfers are approved by people other than myself. I don't understand how he can ask this of me, and I shake my head.
"Hotch, I-"
"Please don't say you can't." He closes his eyes and I think it's out of impatience. "You never wanted to leave in the first place."
"That was before." I say it quietly, I don't need to elaborate. He's quiet, then, studying me. I can barely meet his eyes, and it's not out of fear.
Eventually, he says, "This team needs you."
I close my eyes against his words, and give my head a shake, looking away from him, out of the window that looks out on the bullpen. I see Morgan and Reid sitting at their desks, but no Emily. It'll be someone else's desk, one day, but for now it's just another reminder.
I huff out a breath, angered by his words. Angered by the way I feel like he's using this team, my friends, against me.
"They don't need me." I say, but he cuts me off.
"They need you, JJ-"
"They fucking don't." I practically spit it at him, and watch him clamp his mouth shut. His brown eyes are steel as he stares me down, empty and unfeeling, and I'm glad, because otherwise they would be way too fucking much like hers. His large hands are clasped together on top of his desk, on top of a file that I'm pretty sure has my name on it. It's likely full of contracts. Contracts I'm very familiar with, since it was once my job to deal with that kind of admin. He probably printed them this morning and expected me to sign on without hesitation. How the fuck he thought I could ever come back here, I don't know. That chapter ended with her death. The moment she stopped breathing, I was done with this place. Honestly, I don't know how he's still here. How any of them are. They disgust me. "They don't need me, Hotch." I repeat, and though my next words are entirely unnecessary, because we both know what I'm going to say before I say it, I force them out because I want to see them hurt him. Twisting that knife feels so good. "They need Emily."
He flinches. Well, he closes his eyes, but it's as close to a flinch as I've ever seen from the indomitable Aaron Hotchner. It feels good to see someone else hurt by her loss. I've felt so alone in my grief, because I know, I know that nobody misses her like I do. Not Elizabeth, who hadn't seen her for two years when she died. Not Morgan, who was so angry at her when she left that I wanted to hit him, and I've barely spoken to him since. Not Penelope, even though she was the third in our little trio. The only person who comes close is the man sitting in front of me, so when I see his throat bob, the vein in his forehead prominent and pulsing, and watch him run his finger around the collar of his shirt, as though it's suddenly too hot, too tight, I feel vindicated. I feel like I've finally hurt somebody the way I hurt.
I learned about that whale once; the 52-hertz whale. The one that sings on a different frequency to all of the other whales. It's been calling out for years, probably its whole life, on a soundwave that none of the other whales can hear, let alone respond to. I think this is how that whale feels, as it calls out into the dark, cold, endless ocean. I wonder if, eventually, it stopped trying, or if it's still out there, calling out for a reply that will never come. Hotch is that reply. He's the only one who knows.
"JJ?" I blink, and I'm back in Hotch's office, not out there, under the waves. But the feeling of loneliness hasn't gone away. "Will you at least think about it?"
He's desperate. I tell him yes. I'm lying.
I turn down Reid's offer of a coffee, mostly because her empty desk draws my eyes like a violent and fiery car crash and I can't sit there with them and pretend it isn't boring into the back of my skull. I already felt sorry for whoevers desk that becomes; joining this team, stepping into someone's shoes, was hard enough when that person wasn't dead but an agent who has died in the line of duty becomes a martyr, something that Emily, ironically, would have hated. It's inevitable, though, and an impossible legacy to live up to. You know, unless you also die. I know how these things go; the next few people to join the team will do so fleetingly, buckling under the weight of Emily's reputation, under the grief of the team, who will look at them as an outsider, because their presence is only possible because our friend has died. A living, breathing reminder that she's not. Poor them.
And, suddenly, as I'm walking out of the bullpen, I realise why Hotch wants me back so desperately.
"Son of a bitch." I mutter, realising he didn't ask me to come back in my old capacity, as media liaison. He had asked me to come back as a profiler. He wants me to step into her shoes because I'm the only one who can do so without upending it all. I turn, my eyes fixed, once more, on her desk. For a moment, I see the back of a blonde head, chewed fingers tapping away at the keyboard. It turns my stomach; it would be like climbing into her casket beside her. Anger erupts in my chest. How could he ask that of me?
I'm about to turn on my heels, head right back into Hotch's office and give him a piece of my mind, when I hear the whir of a powertool. I know that sound. I've heard it only a few times during my time with the bureau. It was always a sad sound, a solemn one, but it was never personal. Now, it makes my blood run cold.
My anger towards Hotch all but forgotten, the bullpen door swings closed behind me, my fingers trailing on the glass. I'm headed there before I can stop myself, because I need to see her, because I don't know the next time I'll be here, because I feel like I should be there, to pay my respects. Some random caretaker is drilling her photograph onto the wall; someone who loves her should be there.
The random caretaker's name is Joel, and we've been exchanging pleasantries for years, but when he sees me all he can do is give me a tight-lipped grimace that I think is supposed to come off as a smile, but I'm glad it doesn't. He pauses, like he feels he should stop, but I shake my head, and he finishes drilling the last corner.
As the last screw grinds into the wall, Rossi rounds the corner at the end of the corridor. He's had the same thought as me, then. He looks old, finally. Old and tired and sad. Loss has aged him, and I know the feeling.
I look at him, not her, as he approaches. His eyes flit from mine, to the wall, and back again, then close, for a long moment. He turns his whole body towards the wall before he turns his head, and I'm still staring at his face as he looks at her picture, properly, for the first time. It's as though I need to see his reaction before I gauge what my own should be; what is the appropriate level of anguish?
"Oh, Emilia," he croons, softly, sadly. I don't know how many more breaks my heart can take.
I haven't seen her face since the funeral, and the photographs Elizabeth chose didn't look like my Emily. This does. She's dressed in a black suit, with a crisp white shirt. Her hair is pin straight, and she's got that fringe that she cut a year or so ago. Her lips are pressed together, but there's the slightest curve to them, so that she's almost smiling, but not quite. Her eyes…those warm, fathomess eyes. They held a thousand secrets and, staring at her portrait, I wonder how many of them she took to her grave.
She was alive. When they took this photograph, she was living. Her chest moved with breath, her shoulders rising and falling smoothly. Her blood was hot in her veins, her skin soft and warm to the touch. Her heart beat, strong and steady, inside of her ribs. She blinked immediately after they took the photo, perhaps she had a laugh with the photographer about how awkward it was to sit so rigidly, to not be able to smile properly. Maybe she commented that it was like taking a passport photo; that's what I did, because it was. I wonder when it was taken, and rake through my memories of her, for that outfit. It's impossible; Emily's closet was extensive, but not outrageous. All of her black pantsuits faded into the same one in my mind. Somewhere in the database, there's a photograph of me that's meant for this wall. Just in case. How morbid. I never for a moment imagined that photo would ever be put up, even on the day it was taken. I'm sure Emily didn't, either. But, then, there were more demons in Emily's past; she spent her life looking over her shoulder, never settling, never relaxing, never really feeling safe. Perhaps she anticipated it more than I ever have.
"I miss her." I whisper. But when I turn my head, Rossi has left me alone with her. A fleeting visit, then. Maybe he's alone in his grief, too. Maybe we all are.