Chapter Text
Paris is warm.
Emily is glad Paris is warm, because she has felt nothing but cold. A cold that has burrowed deep in her bones, one she cannot shake. It snuck in when she coded in the cramped space of the ambulance and has refused to leave her. So she has filled her days with fake pleasantries, all to ignore the cold. She watches plays, and ignores the fact that the money she uses to buy her tickets is not really hers, but a government fund to keep her comfortable. She drinks white wine and champagne, ignoring the fact that the ID she has to show is not truly her. It is just another alias, another Lauren Reynolds to hide behind, who will be dead and buried when she can finally return to who she was. If she can return, that is.
Emily Prentiss is cold, freezing even, but Paris has been warm.
It is a split second decision to go to Le Mus ée d’Orsay. She had been on the way to the Louvre, for what would have been the third time that week. There was nothing wrong with going a third time, as the gallery was massive, and there was always a new wing to explore. Today however, she was craving an entirely new space, one that happened to house Van Gogh’s gallery. Emily didn’t know much about art, but she was familiar enough with his work. She’s found art galleries to be one of her favorite places. Many others were suffocating, too reminiscent of all she left behind. Too early.
She had loved Paris’ bookstores, but now they make her think of Reid. A cafe’s black coffee makes her think of Hotch and Rossi, always cranky until they had their first cups. Warm, sweet smelling pastries remind her of JJ. Boutiques remind her of Garcia, and she can easily envision which of the blonde’s outfits would go best with the displayed, over-priced jewelry. The street performers, men with bright smiles, remind her of Morgan. Needless to say, she sees them everywhere. She can see pieces of them all in the art. Little reminders of who they are, small enough to make her smile, not large enough to make her hurt.
By the time she slips into Van Gogh’s gallery, the team has drifted from her mind. It is a rare occurrence, but how could she think of them in such a place? The gallery walls are dark, bringing out a vibrance that would otherwise appear faded in the old paintings. Sconces fill the room with soft lighting, illuminating the detailed frames. The place is pleasantly empty, save for two guards who stand against opposite walls of the gallery, and another woman, her back turned to Emily. Perhaps that’s what happens when you show up at nine on a Monday morning. Others are sleeping in. Emily has been having trouble sleeping.
The girl opposite Emily turns around, eyes sweeping over her, lingering for several moments. Then she pulls them away, focusing on another painting. It is strange, as though Emily caught her eye. It is even more strange the way she catches Emily’s eye. Emily has not truly looked at another person with such interest since long before Doyle. JJ had caught her eye initially, but she was with Will before Emily had even caught on to her own feelings.
Emily turns her eyes to the woman next to her. Her hair is a deep brown, half of it tied messily in a bun at the back of her head, the other half falling in loose waves to the middle of her back. A red leather jacket, looking worse for wear is draped over her arm. Her left arm is covered in a half sleeve of flowers. Beautiful, watercolor shapes that start at the curve of her shoulder and end just above her elbow. There are six of them. Her other arm is bare of any marks, save for the freckles sprinkled across her shoulder like stars, twin stars to the ones across her cheeks. Her eyes are fresh honey, rounded around the edges like a doe’s, and her cheeks flush as she catches Emily starring. She is a masterpiece, fitting right in with the paintings on the wall. Perhaps even outshining them.
She is also hauntingly familiar. For the life of her, Emily cannot place the ghost before her anywhere. There is no picture frame she will fill, no crowd she falls into, not even a dream she fills the outlines of. The way she regards Emily assures her they have never met before, but Emily cannot shake the feeling that she’s seen her before, once, if not many times. A light from a sconce captures the perfect curve of the woman's right cheekbone, and Emily tries harder to place the delicate angles of her face.
“Van Gogh.” Her voice is soft as she walks to Emily’s side. Her gait is a kind of trained relaxation common in agents. Have they worked a case together before? No, Emily knows that can’t be it. If she had worked with this woman, surely she would not have forgotten her. After all, she wasn’t the type to slip the mind easily. “Do you know why they think he used so much yellow in his paintings?”
At Emily’s silence, the woman continued. “Foxglove flowers. They were one of the main ingredients in the medication used to treat his epilepsy. At the time, they didn’t know high amounts of foxglove can cause yellow tinted vision.” She regards the knowledge as though it is precious, in a way that reminds Emily of Reid. “It’s only natural it found its way into his work.”
Her accent is clearly American, New York if Emily had to guess. “Fascinating.” Emily responds.
She smiles, dimples cutting into her cheeks. A delicate hand extends before Emily, nails painted red. “I’m Elle.” Elle. She in French. It makes perfect sense, because she seems to be the personification of femininity. Soft curves and pretty lines, but there is a harshness there too. She can take care of herself.
“Emily.” Her real name slips off her tongue before she can stop it. She is supposed to be Clara, a travel journalist if anyone is asking, writing an article on the hidden gems of Paris. She shakes Elle’s hand to distract herself from the brief panic, giving her a small smile. It doesn’t matter. She’s a woman in the gallery, nothing more. What does it matter if she knows her as Emily or Clara?
"Tell me, have you seen Monet's gallery?” Elle asks. Emily shakes her head no. Elle keeps her hold on Emily's hand and turns to pull her along. "Come on, you have to see it!" Emily wants to protest, but she looks so excited, a shine in her eyes that reminds Emily of Garcia, and she can’t say no. Emily catches a smile on the face of a guard as she is dragged past him. Elle is shorter than her, just enough so that Emily can peer over her head as Elle leads her through the museum.
“How often do you come here?” Elle comes to a stop at Emily’s question, letting go of her hand. The cold that wraps around Emily’s palm is sudden, and she nearly reaches out to grab Elle’s hand again for warmth. “Often enough.” Elle casts a smile over her shoulder before walking closer to the paintings. They are beautiful surely, but Emily is more focused on the way Elle’s eyes flicker over them. She wonders what Elle sees when she looks at them.
Something beautiful, hopefully something beautiful.
“Hey,” Elle turns her attention away from The Water Lily Pond , her eyes finding Emily’s. “Would you like to get breakfast?” The question catches Emily off guard. She wants to say yes in a heartbeat. However, Elle is supposed to be nothing more than a gallery girl. Still, Emily can’t say no to her either. All she can say is a shaky, “what?”
Elle dims a little. “Forget I mentioned it.” For the first time in months, Emily lets her guard down. She is in Paris, safe, and Doyle is far away. “No, no I would. You haven’t eaten already?” Elle laughs. “Not unless you count a black coffee as breakfast.” It is then Emily’s turn to laugh, because she too skipped breakfast in favor of a black coffee.
“Should we get going then…? Or did you want to look around more?” Elle asks her. Emily smiles, feeling suddenly bold. “Let’s get going. You’ll just have to show me the rest some other time.” The spark of excitement in Elle’s eyes at the confirmation there will be a next time is dangerous. Emily and Elle begin to make their way out of Le Mus ée d’Orsay, and out into Paris’ now bustling streets.
“So what brings you to Paris Emily?” Elle navigates the streets with familiarity. Emily has forgotten them with time, but they’ve been coming back to her over the past few weeks. “I’m a travel journalist, doing a piece on the hidden gems of Paris. Places tourists will overlook because they’re so focused on the ones you hear about all the time.”
Elle smiles. “Hidden gems hm? You’ll have to show me them sometime.” She pauses to glance at vines slipping down the wall of an old boutique, intrigue in her eyes as she inspects them with her fingers. Noticing the beauty in things most people would pass without a second glance. That, in itself, is a hidden gem.
Eventually, they arrive in a small café. It smells of sugar and cinnamon, everything adorned with soft colors. Elle makes her way up to the counter before Emily can even offer to help her order, and she is pleasantly surprised at the French that slips off Elle’s lips. She orders a croissant and another coffee, though this time she takes a small.
“Qu'est-ce que tu veux?” Elle looks over her shoulder at Emily. Emily would protest, but Elle already has the euro’s in her hand, and the worker doesn’t seem to have the patience for girls arguing over who will pay. Emily simply answers that she’ll have the same. A few moments later she is following Elle to a table, coffee and croissant in hand.
“I didn’t know you knew French.” Emily feels stupid as soon as she says it. Elle is a stranger, Emily doesn’t know anything about her. Nothing except the fact that she’s got an eye for paintings and is gorgeous. “Enough to get around. I’m assuming you know French?" Emily nods. She nearly tells Elle that she is fluent in five, almost six languages (her Russian could definitely use some work) but decides against it. Elle doesn’t need to know any details, it’ll be better for them both if this ends after breakfast.
Of course, it doesn’t end after breakfast.
By all means it was supposed to. But, as Emily had learned through her life, things rarely turn out how they're supposed to. Once she and Elle are back on the street, Emily remembers the promise of a next time. It feels cruel to make Elle walk away, because as far as she can tell Elle is just as alone as she is. There's something about straying souls being drawn to each other, the ease with which they settle into time together, strangers or not. So Emily asks her to walk, and Elle agrees.
They slip into a bookstore, one Emily remembers frequenting when her mother was stationed in Paris. Emily raises her eyebrows as Elle picks up a Spanish copy of Camilla, flipping through the pages delicately. “My mom’s Cuban, I grew up speaking Spanish with her.” Elle says after catching Emily staring. Elle smiles at Emily, waving off her apology for staring as she picks up a copy of the turn of the screw from the same table.
A table dedicated to Spanish translations of gothic literature was one of the last things Emily expected to find in a Parisian bookstore. Then again, she would have never expected to find a woman as seemingly wonderful as Elle. Paris, it seemed, was full of surprises for her.
When they made their way to the front to pay, it was Elle's turn to raise her eyebrows at the Italian copy of The Iliad resting in Emily’s hand. “My mom wasn’t Italian. She just had high expectations.” Emily is glad Elle doesn’t push for more. Her days in Italy are not filled with the same happy memories as those in France. All Elle does is nod and slip the book from Emily’s fingers. She walks to the register, greeting the cashier with a dazzling smile.
‘You didn’t have to do that.” Emily points out when they’re outside of the shop. Elle just gives her a smile. “I know.”
Once again, Emily finds herself thinking it should end there. But, Elle makes a good point when she says the weather is too nice to not take a stroll through Le Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. The air is too fresh to not settle into shade beneath a tree and read, Though Emily is finding it much easier to focus on Elle than the italian words in front of her. The concentration on Elle’s face, the way she is soaking in every word just like the paintings they saw earlier. Elle doesn’t notice as the wind tousles her hair, and Emily almost reaches out to fix it. Almost.
Emily is grateful when Elle slips her book closed, plucking a dandelion from the grass to use as a bookmark. Emily slips hers closed as well, but doesn’t bother with a bookmark, because she wasn’t truly reading anything. Recently she’s been craving any way to escape into a world that’s not her own, but there is something different about today.
Elle lays back in the grass, her hair fanning out around her face, and points up to the sky. “What do you see?” Emily follows her gaze up to the clouds. Inwardly, she panics. Emily has never been the best visionary. She sees a cloud, nothing more. Lauren Reynolds might have been able to play along with Elle, but she is long gone. “Hmmm..” Emily tilts her head up, unable to make out anything more than white blobs. Beautiful, but blobs all the same.
“That one kind of looks like a starfish, and it’s reaching out as far as it can.” Emily follows the sweep of Elle’s finger, the shape clearer with her guidance. “What makes you say it’s reaching for something?” At Emily’s question, Elle gives a sheepish smile. “Because we’re all reaching for something, aren’t we? Something more, something that will make us feel better.”
Emily is unsettled. It is almost as though Elle were able to read how desperately she was searching for something, anything to make her feel better. “Are you an artist?” She thinks back to the gallery this morning, the way Elle regarded the paintings like they were priceless. The way she seems to regard everything that way, in some manner or another. Perhaps that explains Elle’s odd familiarity. Surely Emily could have seen a picture of her and her work somewhere.
“No, I’m just an admirer.”
-
Emily pays for lunch to make up for breakfast.
She and Elle are halfway to Montmartre when she decides she’ll pay for dinner as well, to make up for the books. Emily is fighting the urge to reach and grab Elle’s hand again. Eventually she doesn’t have to, because Elle gravitates closer and loops their arms together.
They stroll through Montmartre like that, heads bent together to muffle their laughter and arms interlinked, looking more like careless teenagers than a pair of grown women hiding from their pasts. They gaze at flowers and run up and down staircases. When they come across a carousel, Elle is pulling Emily to a shining blue horse after buying tickets. The ride is loud, complete with flashing lights and squealing children. On any other day it would be an annoyance to Emily, but seeing Elle to her left, legs draped across an ivory horse, head thrown back with laughter, she can’t help but smile.
When the ride draws to a stop, it is Emily’s turn to grab Elle’s hand and drag her along. She is surprised how well she remembers the streets of Montmartre. Elle leans closer, their shoulders brushing together. “Where are we going?”
Elle does not have to wonder long. Le Consulat sits just down the street. Emily feels an odd sense of nostalgia as she takes the place in. It is a small restaurant with a cluster of tables in the front. There is a red and green overhang that somehow manages to avoid looking like Christmas, and fairy lights twinkling in the glass windows. A bell chimes over their head as Emily opens the door, and a woman behind the counter smiles at their entrance. “Bonsoir mademoiselles!”
They decide to eat outside, and busy themselves with assigning stories to passing strangers. Elle suggests a pretty blonde is a princess on the run to find her true love. Emily suggests that the clumsy man is a magician, who just ruined the biggest show of his career. They mutually agree the couple who walks past holding hands are immortal, and spending their 300 year anniversary in Paris.
When the meal and passing strangers come to an end, Emily pays. Elle insists, but Emily just rolls her eyes, and soon they are walking back towards the museum. Emily’s feet are starting to hurt from all the walking in her day, but she has the view of the Seine to distract her. It is peaceful in the coming dusk, the water whispering softly as they pass. Her and Elle have their arms interlocked again Emily knows neither of them truly want this day to come to an end. It was a needed break from the loneliness and the memories she’s been running from.
She suspects it has been for Elle too. Emily hasn’t pried, but she's taken notice of the haunting look that creeps into Elle’s eyes, before she whisks it away with a smile and a shake of her head.
“What are you gonna wish for?” Elle’s voice draws her gaze away from the river, and up towards the sky. The first star has appeared in this sky. “I think I’d wish for more hours in the day, especially on days like this.” Emily says, and Elle slaps her shoulder gently. “They say if you tell others your wish it won’t come true.”
“I don’t think it would have come true anyway, but that’s alright.” Emily says softly. If only she had more time. More time with the team. More time before Doyle came back. More time before she had to leave her old life behind in the blink of an eye. More time with Elle. More time.
“You could...You could always sleep at my place tonight, if you wanted. It’s pretty close.” Elle offers. Emily look’s to find Elle’s eyes, and when she does she wants to look away. There is something dangerous there, what Elle is truly offering her. Emily should say no. Emily should thank her for the day, hold the memories close, and walk the other way. But she can’t. She can’t leave her gallery girl standing alone by the Seine in the city of love. Not after Emily has been lonely for too long. Maybe they both have.
There are a million reasons Emily should say no. But she doesn’t. Instead, she slips her hand into Elle’s. “If it’s any farther than a few blocks, can we get a cab? My feet are really starting to hurt.”