CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

EVOLUTION

16x05 Oedipus Wrecks

"Yeah, well, you made that bed, you can lie in it." JJ said roughly as she walked past her. Emily furrowed her brow in confusion and anger. JJ's frustration seemed to come out of nowhere. But it hadn't. It had been building up for a while. She just got good at masking it.

"Excuse me?"

JJ spun around, facing her again. "Well, what did you think would happen when you took this job? Because it - it's all about politics, which is not your strong suit!"

"I'm just trying to do my job! I'm not worried about that."

JJ threw her arms up in the air. "Are you? Because - because it seems like you're more worried about your boss than you are about Jessica!"

"Actually, what I'm more worried about is the future of the entire BAU. I'm worried about Rossi, who yeah, has moved out of the hotel, but is now living in his office. I'm worried about catching the most prolific serial killer of our careers!"

"You know what, Emily? Everyone is worried. We're all nervous, we're swamped! Because the BAU has and always will be understaffed and undervalued!" JJ yelled across the office. Emily fell quiet. She thought they were beyond this arguement. Apparently not.

"So, that's what this is about. That we came back? This was my shot, I had to -"

"No! No," JJ yelled, pointing a finger at her. "You didn't have to. You wanted to! And I -" JJ laughed bitterly. "I followed you…"

"Do not put that on me Jennifer," Emily said back sternly. "We agreed."

"Yeah, we agreed," she bit back sarcastically. "What about when you appointed yourself Unit Chief again? Did we agree on that too?"

Emily's eyes dropped and she huffed out a soft breath. No. They hadn't. Emily never even ran it by her… "I know it was an impulsive decision… but it was the right one, Jay."

"Yeah, okay…" she muttered bitterly. She turned and reached for the door handle.

"Where are you going?"

JJ turned quickly to glare at her. "Out." She turned the door handle and left the room. It slammed, and Emily flinched. She didn't move for a couple moments, staring at the place where her wife had been. Finally, Emily meandered her way over to the door of her office. She felt multiple pairs of eyes quickly look away from her. She watched her colleagues quickly go back to work, trying to mask the fact that they had clearly been eavesdropping on their argument. Tara didn't. She looked Emily in the eye and gave her a questioning look. Emily wondered just how much of that the squad room had heard. JJ and she always tried to have their personal conversations outside of the office for precisely this reason.

Emily turned and saw Dave sticking his head out of his adjacent office. Yeah… he had heard all of that too. Emily looked away from them. JJ was probably already out of the building. Emily set her sights on the interrogation room she knew Luke was in with Benjamin.

Emily knew that on some level, JJ was right about Jessica. Emily had lost sight of the fact that she was a victim and started seeing her as bait. It wasn't her finest moment. As she walked towards the interrogation room, she glanced over at the elevators and saw Director Bailey arrive on the floor. She breathed a sigh of relief - at least he hadn't witnessed their fight.

"The fu- wh - what are you doing?" Bailey asked. He looked hilariously scandalized.

"Giving him what he wants - mommy." It took everything she had to stop from laughing at the look on Bailey's face.

"No, no, no. Prentiss, don't do that."

But Emily pushed past him and opened the door of the interrogation room. Luke gave her a knowing look and a sly smile as he passed her. She was in no mood to deal with any nonsense.

"Benjamin. You've been a bad boy, haven't you?"

"Who are you?"

"Emily Prentiss. FBI."

"I haven't done anything wrong."

"See, nobody else could figure out about the hair. But I get it. Because when I stopped dying mine, it felt so good. Like, uh… like I was finally freeing who I really am. There's this idea, about women of a certain age, that we're not relevant anymore. Sexually. But I have gotten so much attention. My kid doesn't like it, but whatever. Fuck him, you know?"

"Wait, does she have a kid?" Bailey asked Luke.

"Shh. Yeah, three. Watch what happens next."

"That's how you talk? About your son?"

"That's how you were spoken to, isn't that right? That's why you turned those women into your mother. So somebody, anybody wouldn't see you as the pathetic waste of space you are -"

"I'm not pathetic."

"What are you gonna be remembered for? Besides being a footnote in your mother's obituary?"

"Well, they'll remember Derrick Sesper. That's who I used the Sicarius spiders on."

Emily felt her stomach drop. And by the look on his face, he knew it. "You wanna impress me, tell me something I don't know."

He smiled sadistically, "Whitfield County, Georgia."

"Luke and I will go," JJ said, quickly moving into action. Emily opened her mouth to argue but decided against it. She didn't want to show favoritism and make JJ even more angry than she already was. She let them go.

It was late into the night when she got the call she knew she was going to was the worst thing that could've happened. Just as she was getting her things together to go home, she got the call. Emily quickly dialed another number. She wasn't going to make it home tonight. And with JJ already on route to Georgia, she needed to ask another huge favor of Sandy Jareau. Had Bailey just listened to her, then none of this would be happening. She gave him one last glare before walking out of the room and returning to the BAU.

JJ took her phone out of her pocket and opened it. Her finger hovered over Emily's contact. She felt bad that they had fought earlier. Emily was right about one thing - they had agreed. At the time, she thought they had. But slowly things had been stacking up. She and Emily were more busy than ever. They barely had any time for each other. And now that they were back, it was more clear than ever that the BAU was chronically underappreciated in the bureau. But the last straw was Emily's complaining about Director Bailey. In the limited time they had together, she didn't want to hear about why Emily was frustrated with her job. Especially because her job was the main reason they moved back.

JJ locked her phone and shoved it back in her pocket. This wasn't the time to talk about it. She wasn't even sure Emily would pick up. Or worse - they'd end up even more angry with each other.

As she and Luke slowly descended into the buried shipping container she got an eerie sense that something was wrong. Maybe it was just that this was the closest she'd ever been to Sicarius - it was as if she could feel the heaviness of the air. As if she could feel the people who had died there. They inched towards the back of the small space. That's when she heard the whirring of something in the corner.

Emily's voice came over the intercom in her ear.

"Get out of there, now!"

Luke turned and shoved JJ back in the direction they'd come.

"JJ, it's a bomb! Run!"