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JJ sits next to Hotch in the holding area of the prison. He’s stoic, as usual, but for once she’s not the one fidgeting. He keeps sliding his thumb over the wedding band on his left hand, his anxious tell, and once he reaches up to run his hands over his hair before he stops himself. JJ doesn’t move. She doesn’t fidget. She doesn’t so much as glance at the delicate watch on her wrist.
She wonders if he was surprised. Derek and Penelope were, and Spencer too, all for different reasons, but she can’t imagine that Hotch didn’t see it coming. Derek had underestimated her, Penelope saw the very best in everyone, and Spencer was so blindly devoted to her that JJ thought he might have believed her innocent if he had seen it with his own eyes. Of course, he hadn’t. Nobody had, except Elle herself, but JJ knows it’s true. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t fidget.
A guard appears at the door, and they both stand. Hotch clears his throat, but before he can speak the guard points at JJ. “One at a time. Just her.”
Hotch’s carefully composed features explode into anger and worry, but JJ smiles reassuringly at him. She was hoping for this. “It’s fine,” she says. “It’s only Elle.” He presses his lips into a thin line, but nods his consent to the guard. He sits reluctantly, and JJ is escorted away. Hotch’s worry is unfounded. After all, she knows Elle. There is nothing Elle wouldn’t do to keep her safe.
JJ sits down in the little cubicle. Only one other visit is happening, and the man is all the way at the other end of the room. She’s unused to speaking to inmates this way, but because this isn’t technically FBI business, she can’t conduct an interview the way she normally could. She waits patiently as another guard walks Elle into the opposite side of the room and seats her across the table before backing off to supervise from the wall. As JJ picks up the phone, she is glad to see that Elle isn’t handcuffed, but she looks tired and irritated. When she meets JJ’s eye, though, her features smooth. She doesn’t allow herself a smile, but when she picks up the phone and opens her mouth to speak JJ’s name, there is an undeniable warmth in her voice. JJ forces her own voice to sound cool and formal, but she knows that Elle understands. The team knows each other well, but JJ and Elle have always understood each other more, from the moment they met. She knows that fact is why Hotch pushed for them to visit. He thinks that JJ will be able to catch Elle in a lie. What he doesn’t know is that Elle never lies to JJ, even when the words she says are different from what she means. JJ is suddenly a little grateful for ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ It is because of this policy that she and Elle have developed a language all their own. They know how to say what they need to when other people are watching. They know how to cover their tracks. It’s been harder in the past months. Elle can’t stand to be alone since she was released from the hospital, and she’s all but moved into JJ’s apartment. The past year and a half has been a tense game of hide and seek, but nobody’s found them yet.
They exchange trite conversation. It’s a nice day outside, the food is fine in here, are you sleeping well? JJ has bigger questions, but she has to ask them carefully. The answers are for her ears only.
She knows that Elle shot William Lee. Everyone knows it, but that’s not why Elle is here. Her claim of self-defense was perfectly orchestrated. Elle is here because, it seems, Lee was not her first victim. She’s been indicted in the murders of five other men, all rapists, pedophiles, murderers themselves. A victimless crime, JJ thinks, but maybe her time in the BAU has jaded her. What she wants to know, what she didn’t have the time to ask before Elle was arrested on Sunday, was how many it had really been. Elle kept her out of all that business. It doesn’t make for good dinner conversation.
“Before you left your house on Sunday,” she asks, “did you run any laundry?” It’s a variation of a code they use at work, the answering number being their time to meet. Perhaps it would be easier to find a quiet place to talk, but there are cameras everywhere and Elle has always been hyper-vigilant. Normally, JJ might ask how many files she had to work through, but Elle had been placed on leave now and it might seem suspicious. It takes Elle a moment, but JJ sees the moment it clicks.
“Yes,” she says. “Four loads.” Four men. JJ doesn’t have a way to ask if she’s including Lee in that count, but it doesn’t matter. It means that Elle is innocent of at least one of the murders, and she’s sure that she’ll be alright.
Just to be sure, she asks, “Clean?” It doesn’t entirely make sense, but Elle understands and nods. And that’s that. Hotch will find her a good lawyer, regardless of his belief in her innocence or guilt, and Elle will be fine. JJ is sure of it.
——
Elle is never charged. JJ never doubted her for a moment, but she’s still relieved when the judge reads the verdict. Guilty on one count of involuntary manslaughter. Innocent on five counts of murder in the second degree. Elle knows how to clean up after herself.
She and Elle go straight home as soon as she’s released. Hotch raises his eyebrow when Elle heads to JJ’s car, but JJ looks at him with that wide-eyed innocence that serves her so well at work.
“Someone should take her home. Let’s not forget what happened last time you sent her alone.” She doesn’t break eye contact. Hotch has the good sense to drop it.
As soon as they’re home, JJ runs Elle a hot bath. She sits by the tub and swirls her fingers in the water as Elle gets in. It’s scalding, just the way she likes it. Elle bathes, and JJ flips idly through a magazine. They don’t speak, and the silence is comfortable. When Elle is done, JJ puts a kettle on the stove. She’s just pouring the boiling water into mugs as Elle emerges, wrapped in a soft robe. They sink into JJ’s big green couch. JJ passes Elle a mug and pulls her feet onto her lap. The normalcy is relaxing, and JJ takes a sip of her tea.
“So,” she says, letting the hot drink scald her tongue. “Four?”
Elle smiles, just a little. “Four,” she verifies.
“How did you choose?” JJ asks.
“The ones we couldn’t get.” Elle looks up at her through her lashes. It’s the closest to self-conscious JJ has ever seen her. “The ones whose victims reminded me of you. Reminded me of your story about Roslyn.”
JJ wonders if she should feel upset by this. She wonders if perhaps she should feel scared of Elle. She looks at her for a long moment. Her skin is flushed from the warm bath, and tendrils of steam from her tea curls up past her cheeks. Her cropped hair has just grown past her collarbones, and for the first time since before she was hurt, JJ thinks she looks whole again. She thinks of the unsettled feeling of being face to face with a killer, thinks of the way her stomach flips when they speak, thinks of the way it feels to know someone wants to hurt you. She thinks of every man who has ever hurt her, grabbed her or hit her or spit at her. She thinks of all of the times she and Elle have sat on this couch together, this exact way. She thinks of their shared hotel rooms on work trips, of the days in the hospital after Elle was shot, of every one of her secrets that only Elle knows. Elle is the only person who knows about Roslyn, who knows about the man who made her kill herself. When she looks at Elle, JJ feels calm. She feels unafraid. After all, there is nothing Elle wouldn’t do to keep her safe.
——
Elle’s leave at the BAU is over, and she can have her old position back, but she resigns instead. The air between her and her old coworkers is brittle and tense now, and besides, Elle is exhausted. Justice is difficult work. She and JJ settle into a new routine. JJ makes enough to support them both, and Elle has always been good at saving. She recovers. They drag the big green couch into a new house, and they paint the walls. JJ doesn’t talk about Elle at work. The others don’t want to, she finds, even Spencer. She doesn’t know how much they know, and doesn’t ask.
There are no more murders, except one. A year later, Ethan Howard, East Allegheny High School’s guidance counselor, is found dead in his home with his wrists slit. “So tragic,” JJ’s mom says to her over the phone. “Just a few days after you and Elle visited.”
JJ has the phone tucked under her ear, and she’s doing laundry. “How awful,” she says, scrubbing at the stained sleeve of Elle’s shirt with a Tide pen. “Was it a suicide?”
“That’s what they think.”
The cuff is red, then pink, then white.