Chapter 7: JJ

Emily spent a total of one month and one week in the hospital. It had felt long but JJ was acutely aware of how much longer it could have been. It could've been an eternity in a wooden box beneath six feet of dirt. She had to count them both lucky.

Sometimes, when JJ awoke from a nightmare, she could smell it. The dirt they used to bury Emily always smelled like the choking, dry Afghan sand that had surrounded her when she'd been abducted. It was Emily who had saved her, Emily whose face she'd seen in the dreams that had got her through those terrible times. But in JJ's nightmares, Emily was already gone. There was nothing she could do.

Other times, she'd remember a time she and Emily had been alone together or something private they'd shared and she'd think, I'm the only person on earth who knows that happened now. She tried to keep these thoughts to a minimum but the truth was, whether she admitted it or not, JJ couldn't help but keep stock of everything that had been lost.

The first time Emily returned to her apartment after being released from hospital, she was nervous. She hung back, clutching a few bags of essential groceries in her arms, and it was JJ who turned the key in the lock and led the way inside.

The sun was setting by that time and the view was even more stunning than Emily remembered.

While JJ had been secretly collecting losses, Emily had been accumulating memories. She was at the point now where she remembered a good deal to do with her colleagues and her life in recent years. Mostly, though, they were episodic memories that she had trouble ordering. The timeline of her life remained gappy at best.

Still, when Emily walked into her apartment, she felt a spark of something familiar—a brief inkling of a habit or pattern. She placed her shopping bags on the counter and spent a few minutes carefully putting each item away, while JJ poured them both a drink. When she was finished, she placed the empty plastic bags in a drawer to be recycled and she was gratified to find that she had picked the correct drawer for this purpose on her first attempt.

JJ watched with her bottom lip compressed between her teeth. "You remembered that," she accused Emily quietly. "Like you remembered what type of coffee I drink, right at the beginning."

Emily took the glass of wine JJ was offering and crossed the room to take in her stunning view of the Washington Monument. She was trying to hide how nervous JJ's observation had made her. She'd always known there'd come a time when she had to stop hiding behind her memory loss…

"It's coming back," she admitted. "In bits and pieces…"

"All this time and you didn't tell me?" JJ's voice was close enough that Emily didn't dare turn around. She sounded hurt.

Emily forced herself to shrug. "It doesn't matter. I don't want to talk about it."

"You didn't think I deserved to know?" JJ pressed, raising her voice a little.

Emily felt stubbornly glad. She was not going to be molly-coddled for the rest of her life. Sooner of later someone was going to have to have the courage to yell at her again, to feel upset or hurt or betrayed by something she'd done and blame it on her, not the amnesia. Emily hadn't only remembered the good things about herself. When people treated her like an angel, she felt angry and cheated.

"I remember Morgan leaning over me, begging me not to die," she shot back at JJ. "I remember getting on a plane to Paris and knowing that he'd be going mad with guilt back home. And sitting in a café on the Champs-Élysées, thinking, They're all at my funeral right about now. It's not all fun nights out and private jokes, you know? Some of it I'd actually rather not remember."

JJ felt like she was the one left behind and she struggled to catch up. "Fine," she acquiesced grudgingly. "But do you remember that the reason you almost died in the first place was because of the stupid risks you took to keep the rest of us safe? Or maybe that, when I met you in Paris, you were so overcome with guilt that I took you back to my hotel and held you while you cried all night? You kept a brave face on for everyone else, Em, but when we were alone you broke down. That's how we were. I was the one you let in even when you turned everyone else away."

"Were," Emily repeated and JJ shook her head, confused. "You said were, JJ. You think I'm a different person now, don't you? Well, if you think so it must be true, right? …Fuck! You have no idea how it feels to hear a load of strangers shooting their mouths off like they know you better than you know yourself! And having to act grateful to them! I'm so sick of this!"

"For God's sake, Em," JJ blustered, "That's not just amnesia, that's life! Everyone always thinks they know what's best for everyone else. Like, say, you? Every damn time you pushed us away when all we wanted to do was help!"

I don't need your help!

Emily wanted to say it—hell, she wanted to screamit from the top of her lungs—but she couldn't. She turned to face JJ with angry tears streaming down her face but was too furious even to bother wiping them away. JJ met her gaze—so, so ready to react with coldness and stubbornness. Seeing Emily cry changed that for her.

"Emily," she sighed, placing a hand on the older woman's arm. "We've been here before."

"More than once," Emily admitted.

"I try to get close to you and you pull away…"

Emily nodded. Her throat was too tight for words to pass through. But she didn't protest as JJ lifted her arms around her neck and pulled her close. Instead, she rested her hands on JJ's waist and focused on slowing down her breathing. As she inhaled she could smell the sweet scent of JJ's shampoo and she buried her face deep in the younger woman's neck. Silky blonde hair brushed her cheek softly.

"Why?" JJ whispered. "Will told me he suspected you loved me for a long time. I wanted you too, so why did you push me towards him, encourage me to marry him when I wasn't certain, defend him against all my qualms…? I thought you were making it clear beyond all reasonable doubt that you felt nothing for me. Do you even remember why, Em?"

"You know why," Emily sighed, hiding her face in JJ's neck.

"But do you remember?" JJ insisted.

"Is this a test?"

"Can you not be a smart ass right now and just answer me?"

Emily pulled her head back and met JJ's eyes with a tentative smile. "I wanted you to be happy, JJ," she confessed. "And I knew… I thought I knew that I wouldn't ever be enough for you."

JJ nodded, satisfied, and threaded her hands through Emily's dark hair. The gesture was tender but her expression was serious. "Emily, you need to stop presuming that we'll all be better off without you," she declared quietly. "I know you remember, or you can at least see, how much we all love you. We want to be with you even if it's dangerous, even if it hurts, even if it means learning things about you that'd you'd leave out of your autobiography." She placed a light kiss on Emily's lips then. "But that's not the most important thing," she added with an air of conclusion. "The most important thing, Emily, is that if you ever take a bullet for me again and you don't die…? I am going to finish you off myself. Got it?"

Emily nodded obediently and then smiled as JJ leaned up to kiss her again. She didn't say so but she knew she'd take the bullet every damn time.

Kissing Emily in her apartment was different to kissing her at the hospital. There was no chance of a nurse barging in, no chance of Doctor Carter sweeping through with a cheerfully sarcastic comment, no chance of a member of the team arriving bearing flowers and requiring attention. They could just sit on the couch, listening to cheesy love songs on the radio and making out like teenagers without a curfew. And they did—slowly, lazily, like they had all the time in the world and no doubt of seeing one another again.

"I'm never going to know how much you remember, am I?" JJ asked later, as they climbed into bed.

"I don't know how much I remember," Emily answered truthfully. "I mean, what proportion of my life's events... My memory is filling out but we've known each other for a long time. Obviously there's a lot I haven't specifically remembered. …I can say that I finally feel like myself again, though."

JJ smiled at that. "No more you and the you from before?" she asked hopefully.

"Just me," Emily confirmed, tracing her fingertips down JJ's jaw.

"That's enough," JJ promised. "Emily… I love you."

"I wanted to tell you that," Emily confessed, shutting her eyes blissfully. "The first thing I remembered from before I was shot was a night in front of the fire, kissing your cheek, and smelling chai spice. I remember that whole evening now… We were talking about love, about you and Will. I'd been pushing you for a long time, wanting you to be happy again, the way I thought you were when you first married him. But that night I asked you—for the first time, I think, although I always wondered—if you really loved him. Remember?"

"Of course I do," JJ answered. She placed a hand over Emily's, which had settled on her cheek, and then pulled it down to her lips. She kissed Emily's fingers, one by one, and then held her hand against her chest. "That was the night I decided to leave Will."

"You told me, 'I love my son'," Emily remembered. "You made it sound like that was enough."

JJ smiled sadly. "It was," she answered. "Until you took my hand and kissed my cheek and for a second I was so, so sure that you were going to pull me in and kiss me properly. I was madly caught up in your eyes—dark but shining, reflecting the firelight. Your lips were parted but when I leaned towards you, you pulled away." She stroked her thumb across the back of Emily's hand lightly. "I decided that I was wrong about you wanting me too and yet the way I felt in that moment, when we were so close I thought it was possible… It made me realise that I was never going to feel anything nearly as strong with Will and that the longer I left it to admit that, the more separating from him was going to hurt him and Henry."

"I wanted to tell you a million times," Emily swore, her voice tight with tears. "But I wanted to believe you were happy even more. And if you weren't happy, then I didn't want to give you a reason to run away from me if I could help by being there for you."

"You can help by being here with me now," JJ replied. "Now and… Well—

For as long as that's what you want, Em."

Emily leaned in and brushed her nose against JJ's gently. She closed her eyes and remembered all the passion and desire she'd felt for the woman beside her that night by the fire. Then, without a second thought, Emily kissed her.

"If it's up to me, then forever," she whispered. "JJ, I love you too."

The End