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JJ sat in her car, staring numbly at the garage walls through the windshield. It wasn’t late, exactly, but she had been sitting there for - for a very long time. She’d lost track. She felt better, at least better than she had when she’d argued with Spence in that storage closet. But Askari’s face was still branded in her mind, and she felt seared through with anger because of it.
Will almost certainly knew she was home, that she was sitting out here stewing, but she couldn’t bring herself to go inside just yet.
She clasped her hands together on the steering wheel and lowered her forehead on top of them. Her chest hurt, overwhelmed with the agony of her stale rage, with the effort it took to act normal when she was sure she was losing her mind. For a brief moment she wished she had brought the file home, if only so she could burn it in the fireplace in an attempt to ease these churning emotions she hated so much.
A vibrating sound from her purse drew her attention up. It was her phone, still set to silent from the drive, and she reached over to tug it out. Her heart jumped, a quick surge of relief, when she saw Emily was calling her for a video chat.
Wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand in the hopes of not looking like a complete mess, she accepted the call just before it went to voicemail. Emily’s face instantly filled the screen and she couldn’t help but smile at her. A weak, tired smile, but one nonetheless.
“Hey,” Emily said, her expression both concerned and hopeful. She was sitting in bed, propped up against a few pillows, and cast in pale yellow lamplight from her bedside table. “Don’t be mad,” Emily continued when she saw JJ’s red-rimmed eyes, correctly reading it as anger rather than sorrow. “Spencer didn’t tell me anything. I just took a wild guess you might want to talk.”
JJ didn’t respond for a second, instead just staring at Emily on the screen of her phone. She wasn’t sure if she did want to talk, but seeing her there helped loosen that tightness in JJ’s chest. “What time is it over there?” she finally asked, voice catching on the words.
“Late,” Emily conceded and JJ saw her glance away from the camera at a clock. “Or early. It’s almost three thirty. I couldn’t sleep,” she explained, a little furrow appearing between her eyebrows. “I was worried about you.”
“Sorry,” JJ mumbled.
But Emily interrupted the apology before JJ could really start it. “None of that, Jayje. No apologies, okay? Now tell me how you’re doing. Please.”
The gentle command tugged at JJ’s heart and she sighed, still unsure how to even explain what was going on in her head when it was all so jumbled together. “I feel like I’m going crazy,” she whispered. “Like nothing makes sense today. I - I, uh, yelled at Spence about it. That’s not me. I don’t - I don’t feel like myself.”
Tears welled again and JJ swatted at her cheeks, pushing them away. Thankfully Emily didn’t comment or tell her not to cry, which JJ was sure would push her over the edge into another angry confrontation.
“I just want to feel normal again.”
Emily chuckled and JJ glanced at the screen to see Emily smiling glumly at her. “When were our lives ever normal?” she asked quietly, rationally. “I think we’d have more of a problem if you weren’t upset, you know? It’s not always a bad thing to remember our trauma.”
JJ just scoffed and shook her head. “Is this where you’re gonna tell me what I went through only makes me stronger? It doesn’t work like that, Em. It just doesn’t.”
“No,” Emily agreed. She fell silent for a moment. JJ could feel her stare even from thousands of miles away, but she kept her eyes glued to the garage wall, refusing to look at her even as Emily kept talking. “I was thinking more along the lines of how our traumas shape our worldviews and sharpen the way we perceive things. Like life experience on an exploding scale.”
JJ still wouldn’t look at her, though she did nod somewhat half-heartedly. “So life experience rather than strength. Okay. Sure.”
“It’s our skin that hardens,” Emily told her, “against the evils we see every day. It’s not our souls, not who we are. The strength is already there, Jayje. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t have survived in the first place.”
It didn’t escape JJ that Emily kept talking about them both together, not singling her or her experiences out, and somehow that helped. Just a little. A reminder that she wasn’t alone, even if their trauma was not shared, nor the same. She swallowed around the lump that hadn’t left her throat for days now and finally looked at her phone again. Emily gave her a small, encouraging smile.
“I just hate that I remember it all so clearly,” she murmured. “I want the memories to stop. I want to forget it all.”
Emily watched her, eyes dark in the dim light of her bedroom so far away but still sharp, like she was staring right into JJ’s mind, seeing all of her secrets. Suddenly Emily put her phone down, the camera taking in the shadowy ceiling for a few seconds before she propped the device up against folds in the duvet, her face coming into view again.
“Look,” she said, unbuttoning her sleep shirt to expose the top of her chest. JJ felt a blush color her cheeks as more skin was shown than she was used to seeing, but she stared as a flash of color caught her eye. It was a tattoo, still red and fresh, over the brand seared into Emily’s chest. A small bird, perched on a thin flowering branch. It was a -
“A blackbird,” Emily clarified needlessly, pulling the shirt aside so JJ could see it unobstructed. “Just like we talked about on the flight to Paris. I was going to show you when the swelling had gone down, I only got it done last week. I had to wait for the, you know, the scar tissue to heal enough before I could cover it, but I thought the timing was right.”
JJ’s eyes watered again, but not from anger this time. “You remembered.”
“Of course I did,” Emily said, eyebrows knitting in a familiar expression of concern. She picked up her phone from the bed again. “Did you think I would forget?”
JJ knew she was referring to Askari and her torture, to their conversation on the jet, to the safeword that saved JJ’s life - all of it. She shrugged, sniffing and rubbing the back of her hand under her nose. “I guess I just assumed everyone did,” she muttered honestly. “Or at least pushed it out of their minds. It was a year ago, so much has happened since then.”
“No one forgot you, Jayje,” Emily whispered, just loud enough for JJ to hear her and to hear the sweetness in her voice. “None of us would ever forget you, never. We’re all in this together.”
We will always be there to save you, she didn’t say but JJ still understood. She nodded in acknowledgement. “I miss you,” she said softly.
“I miss you, too,” Emily replied, just as soft. “You know I love you, right?”
JJ’s heart jumped, a quick beat with a small pierce of adrenaline, and she stared at Emily’s kind, concerned face. She nodded again. She did know. She did. It was both reassuring and painful to hear her say so out loud. “Yeah.”
“We all do,” Emily continued, giving her another small smile. “Spencer, Garcia, Will, me. All of us. Let us help you when you need it, lean on us for support.” As if knowing how much she was asking, she added, “Will you promise to at least try?”
“Yeah,” JJ repeated, mirroring Emily’s little smile the best she could. “I’ll try.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Emily about the lost pregnancy, the explosion - her suspicion she might be expecting again. But it was all too raw and she bit the words down despite the promise she just gave. Emily’s eyes gave away that she saw JJ was holding back even if she didn’t say so, and JJ was grateful for both the recognition and the silence.
“I love you, too, Em,” JJ said instead, a peace offering for her lie by omission. “Look, I should go inside. Will is making a late dinner, I think. Or he will be as soon as I ask him to.”
“Sure, okay.” Emily’s smile faltered just the slightest bit, barely enough for JJ to notice. But she did, and a tiny, familiar ache in her chest came back for a brief moment. Not the anger she felt before, but a tight sadness this time.
Emily hid her dismay quickly and said, “Tell Will and Henry I say hi. And call me if you need anything. Bye, Jayje.”
They finished their goodbyes and JJ ended the call, watching with a bit of melancholy as her phone’s screen went black, wishing Emily was there with her instead of on the other side of the Atlantic. She saw her reflection in the glass and immediately shoved the phone back into her purse. She felt better, she really did. Between Spencer giving her information she had been unknowingly craving and Emily’s familiar understanding, she no longer felt as if she were on the precipice of madness.
Instead she just felt a little lost, like someone had pushed her out to sea without a map.
But Emily’s words bolstered her, and she finally gathered her things and went inside, leaving her anger behind.