Author's Note: Thank you guys so much for your reviews and follows. Here is a quick update to show my gratitude. :D
Chapter Two; The Stages of Grief
A tragedy can bring out both the best and the worst in you; it can push you to do things that you never thought that you would. Those things, vary for each individual person. Some people break down, some people lash out, some people play ignorance, some people find themselves extremely numb.
Some people experience all of the above.
And the latter is exactly how Jennifer Jareau found herself as she stood at her son's bedroom door, watching as detectives tore apart everything in sight, searching for every and any clue left behind by his abductor. She wasn't sobbing, she wasn't whaling, she wasn't falling apart - she wasn't anything. She simply stared; stared at Henry's bed as if she was waiting for him to magically reappear, waiting for someone to yell surprise, tell her that it was all just a nasty joke.
"Don't take his penguin. He'll want that when he gets home." She whispered, emotionless, to no one in particular.
"Jay-" Emily startled JJ from her thoughts. "Sorry.. I didn't mean to frighten you." JJ's calm demeanour worried the brunette beyond words. She knew, in intricate detail, just how the human brain worked, so she also knew more than most that sometimes the worse kind of turmoil is silent, and still, and eerily tranquil; very much like the creepy atmosphere that tells you, unequivocally, that a tornado is fast approaching.
Placing a comforting hand against JJ's lower back, she spoke again, softer this time so as not to shock the blonde from her seemingly comatose state. "We should let them do their work, Jay. They'll tell you if they find anything."
JJ reached behind her back and removed Emily's hand before turning for the stairs. "I should be out there looking for him."
And just as she'd predicted, Emily watched JJ's demeanour jump from calm to frantic, from numb to determined, in the blink of an eye. "JJ-"
"Don't Emily! Don't you dare treat me like a victim." The blonde flung back around as she reached the top of the stairs, an anger burning in her eyes that, if she was honest, scared Emily a little.
Emily put her hands out in front of her in a surrendering gesture. "I wouldn't dream of it, love. I was just going to say that I'm coming with you. Garcia is downstairs and she can wait for the rest of the team to get here."
The blonde didn't say a word as she turned once again down the stairs. She knew that Emily wouldn't take no for an answer, and whilst, in any other situation, she loved that about her; it annoyed the hell out her right now. But she didn't have the time to argue, she didn't have the time to fight against the protective nature that she had witnessed win out every damn time; she just didn't have time.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, the young agent turned to grab her keys off of the table beside the staircase just as Garcia came bustling over to her.
"Sweetie.." For once the quirky technical analyst was at a loss for words. In all honesty, she didn't have the right words to comfort her friend, and she was struggling herself to even grasp that her godson was simply, without reason, gone. Having children of her own wasn't, and had never been, a desire of Penelope Garcia's, but she loved that boy like he was her own, like they were bound by blood rather than a piece of paper with a scrawled signature.
Garcia faded out of JJ's mind as she caught a glimpse of the rookie agent descending the stairs. "What's that?" She spoke, a cold tone to her voice as she eyed the clear evidence bag in the young man's hand.
"Oh, um, we found it in the kid's r-"
"The kid's name is Henry." JJ corrected.
"Sorry ma'am, I.." The rookie trailed off nervously. "We found it in Henry's room. It was hanging from the latch on the open window. I'm taking it in for further examination."
"Let me see that." JJ snatched the bag from the rookie without waiting for a response.
"Ma'am, that's evidence. Don't-"
The stare that JJ shot him was enough to silence him instantly.
"What's her problem?" He whispered to Emily.
"Are you serious? Did you buy your FBI badge on Ebay?" Emily whispered harshly as she shot an incredulous and angry look to the kid beside her, who was still seemingly confused.
JJ's face turned a bright shade of white as the contents of the plastic bag fully registered in her mind. She fought the urge to vomit as the reality of the situation dawned on her and a thousand locked compartments in her brain flung themselves open, their contents spilling out mercilessly like a burst dam, with no concern for the destruction that it was leaving in it's path.
Stuffing the bag into the guy's chest as she pushed passed him, the blonde spoke. "I need to find my son."
In an instinctive response, Emily began to follow, only to be stopped by the rookie agent who had now, finally, put the pieces together. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I.. I didn't realise she was the mother."
Emily shot an impatient look towards the front door that JJ had just left through, before sighing and turning back to the kid. "Let me tell you something. Unless you want me to inform your Chief, I suggest you get your shit together. Whether you knew she was the mother or not is beside the point. She is Henry's mom, but she's also a damn good agent and you are lucky to even be in the same room as her. You're here to help find her child. Do your damn job." And with that she followed JJ out into the night.
The rookie watched Emily's retreating form with a look on his face that fell somewhere between confused and terrified, before diverting his gaze over to Garcia; a somewhat 'did that just happen?' look in his eye.
"Don't look at me." Garcia shrugged. "You should learn to treat people with more respect."
She naturally sided with Emily but the implications of the brunette's words hadn't been lost on her. It was true that Emily had always had a protective nature about her, towards most people that were lucky enough to cross her path, but there was a fire in her eyes as she spoke that Garcia had never seen before. The redheaded analyst knew that in any other situation, Emily would never have lashed out at a guy that was simply learning the job, and perhaps it was down to the delicate nature of this particular situation, but she wasn't so sure. In comparison though, it really didn't matter at this moment in time, and she stored it away for later deliberation – once her boy was home safe.
CM-CM-CM
Out in the driveway, Emily caught up to JJ. "Sweetie, what was in that bag?"
JJ stopped in her tracks and pressed her hand to her forehead. "Emily. Leave it."
"I get it JJ. I get that you blame me for this, and that is fine. But if what was in that bag could help find Henry.." Emily faltered as JJ turned to face her, tears clouding her usually bright blue orbs. "Jen.."
Shaking her head and swallowing back the tears, JJ spoke. "I should have figured it out sooner. I'm so stupid!" The blonde flung her hands up in defeat and slumped down onto the ground, resting her arms on her knees as she leant against her car and cradled her head in her hands.
Emily knelt in front of her, instantly placing two comforting hands against JJ's own and pulling them away from her face. "Sweetie, you are not stupid. Whatever it is, we will fix it and we will find Henry."
Shifting her gaze from the genuine face of her lover, the blonde fixed her eyes to the ground. "You don't understand Emily."
"I will." Emily promised.
JJ looked back up to Emily, her eyes screaming a silent question. Will you? Swallowing hard, the younger agent looked down again as the sympathetic look in the brunette's eyes wrapped her in the courage that she needed to speak. "There's a ribbon in the bag. A blue one." JJ looked up at Emily, as if that one sentence was supposed to answer all of the questions swirling in the older woman's eyes.
And somehow, it did. Somehow, those simple words had lead her exactly where she was struggling to. "What happened to you, JJ?"
A conflicted look contorted JJ's usually soft features; she looked like a child who was trying intensely to make the decision between peanut butter and jelly and pizza, and at the same time, like an adult who was longing for such respite as seeing things as perfectly and untainted as a child. "I've seen a ribbon like that before, when I was ten years old. He used it to.." JJ swallowed back tears and fixed her eyes on something in the distance. Perhaps this would be easier if she didn't have to make eye contact with Emily. "He used it as a gag. He'd stuff it in my mouth and cover it with duct tape to ensure that I.. that I wouldn't make any sound that could possibly alert anyone that happened to be close by. I guess he didn't wana get caught. I wouldn't have made a sound though, even without it. Everything about him was the perfect accumulation of my nightmares and I wouldn't have dared piss him off."
Emily brushed her thumbs over JJ's knuckles as her mind raced with the blonde's admission. Her heart was breaking and she wasn't certain that she could stand to hear another word, but this wasn't about her. So instead of speaking, she let the soft gesture of her fingertips say everything that she needed to and waited for JJ to continue.
"We lived not too far from here for a short time when I was a child. Only for a month or so. We moved back to East Allegheny right after.." She took a deep breath. "He took me from my yard one day when I was playing and my mom was inside making lunch. I still remember the feel of the sun against my skin, Em. I remember that the air was filled with the scent of freshly cut grass, and I could hear my mom singing along to some Elton John song as she danced around the kitchen. I remember every detail. Every detail. Before that day, my life consisted of rainbows and pony's and Barbie dolls. And after, from the moment that he crept up behind me, put his hand to my shoulder and told me not to make a sound, that my mommy would die if I did, rainbows stopped existing."
Looking up purposefully to meet Emily's gaze, JJ spoke again. "You say all the time that I'm a natural born profiler. When you're thrown into a situation where your life could depend on gauging someone's mood correctly, where you're certain that your life depends solely on you because you've been told repeatedly that no one is coming to save you, you learn a lot about the human mind."
"How long.."
"He had me for just a few days. I think his plan was to skip the country with me but he never got that far. I dread to think what his plans were after that.." JJ trailed off, a shiver visible creeping down her spine.
There was one question burning in Emily's mind and though she longed to ask it, she wasn't certain that she should. For all of the years that she'd spent as a profiler, for all of the years that she'd spent before that with Interpol, she still couldn't seem to work out if the implications of JJ's story were simply that, or if they were facts that the blonde couldn't bring herself to verbalise.
Noticing the look on Emily's face for what it was, JJ answered her unspoken question. "He didn't.. ya know." The relief that washed over Emily was more than visible to JJ, and for a moment she was grateful; grateful that she was able to provide that relief with honestly, rather than because she couldn't bring herself to confirm Emily's fears. "He didn't get the chance to. He spent most of his time arguing with someone but I never met this person. And then one day the arguments stopped. He came into the room, and even though the sudden light was blinding me, I could see the anger on his face clearly. I assumed that he'd killed the guy and that he was about to kill me too. But he just stared at me. Just stared. We kept our eyes locked like that forever. Well.. huh.. every amount of time not spent playing seems like forever to a kid." JJ laughed humourlessly, before flicking her once again serious eyes back to the distant object that she had mentally clung to just moments before. "It was like a battle of wills. A test. Or something. I'm not really sure what he was waiting for, but before I knew it he.." She swallowed again. "He was coming towards me, unzipping his pants as he did. And that's when the police turned up. Almost out of nowhere. Like knights in.. navy blue."
"Jay.." Both relief and pain washed through Emily. It was brilliantly overwhelming to know that the guy hadn't managed to do anything to JJ, but the fact that that wasn't altogether true still cut excruciatingly through her mind. He hadn't taken her innocence, but he had. He hadn't taken her childhood, but he had. He hadn't taken her life, but in many ways, he had.
"It's okay, really it is. I dealt with this a very long time ago. I had to, if I wanted to live my life. And I really thought I'd put it behind me.." JJ trailed off as Henry came to the forefront of her mind once more.
"Sweetie, look at me." Emily cradled JJ's face with her hands. "We are going to find him. I promise you that right now. Whatever it takes. Okay?" She knew better than to make promise in this field of work; but she also knew that there was absolutely nothing that she wouldn't do to bring Henry home, and more than that – JJ needed the hope that she herself was struggling to keep a hold of.
Entwining her hand in Emily's, JJ responded with as much of a smile as she could force right now.
Seeing the still present uncertainty in JJ's eyes for what it was, Emily rose to her feet and held out a hand for the blonde to take just as the rest of the team pulled into the drive way. "You're gona have to tell them, Jayje.."
JJ simply sighed. "I know.."