Work Text:
You can let it go
You can throw a party full of everyone you know
The security the moon bought her was something Emily deeply missed about the summer's she spent with her grandfather. Him, so different to his own daughter who only had alway the same thing in mind. Politics. He was the one who showed her how to look closely at the sky, searching for stars. That's why Emily learned to take on the company of nature brought, with each night that she spent alone in her larger, oversized mansion.
She felt alone, the bunch of bodyguards always attentive in that house never made her feel any safer, nor comfortable. She had ached to be held for so many years, that when Jennifer Jareau, her new colleague at the BAU had hugged her tightly she almost broke down crying. JJ didn’t even know her, but Emily learned the hard way that those hugs would be the only constant thing she would have wherever she was in reach of the media liaison.
Emily had tried in her lifetime to be so many different people, so many hobbies, languages and extra curricular activities, all of them chosen carefully, comparing them to her mother's interest, for when they had to be inside of a room, alone together. It was not like her mother cared about her studies. She didn't. But Emily talked about them either way, never missing the little changes in her mother's posture when she reacted to something she disliked. Emily found the path to make her mother care. She destroyed herself, for nothing.
She thought then, that if she wanted to be loved so much, she had to learn to be everything her mother detested. She did it. Emily managed to get under her mother's skin and it worked, the ambassador had come to realize that her daughter, once little familiar, so polite was turning out to be like her late husband. Someone who didn't want to make her happy. Elizabeth had tried to fix her daughter, she had really tried, pointing everything she was displeased for. It didn’t work, so she took more trips to Europe, the necessary measures to leave her daughter alone, apart, something she didn’t see, didn’t happen. She left one night and never came back.
The inability to close her eyes was still there. Emily was not a very good sleeper. Not even when she spent so many nights parting in some unfamiliar kid backyard. No matter how tired she came from that, her body was not ready to rest. Emily had been drained of that lifestyle, the tiredness she felt deep in her home didn't make it for her brain to shut off and sleep. Something her therapist had recommended to her was actually to lay still in bed. Not thinking about not actually sleeping, but resting her muscles and her mind instead. There was something that didn’t let her sleep, after all these years Emily thinks that she had found the answer.
Being lonely was not a problem. It was never a problem, she was used to it. Tonight, it actually mattered, she could not really pinpoint why? Why did she need her mother so intensely? It could not be because of the case. They got kidnappings of children so often that she barely shed a tear when the parents and kids were reunited. It was something more. Something she didn't know where to start looking out for. But still here she was, ringing into her mothers house, talking to the security guards she has known since she was a kid. Moving her car forward to her mothers new house.
Elizabeth Prentiss had never stayed in the same house for too long. Emily’s last bedroom, the last room she had before leaving to the university had been sold out with the house she spent part of her childhood in. Emily was not someone who had sentimental value for things she once lost, for objects that didn't really mean anything to her. She never cried when she came back from the university to her old home and saw another family playing happily in her front yard. It was something she never really could do, she really didn’t understand at that moment how not having done something could make her so sad.
Emily was face to face with the large front door that separates her from her mother, funnily enough, the length of the door might as well be like something that had divide them into two, Emily had tried so hard to climb it, since she was little she had tried and when she thought she was close enough to get to know her, to understand her, something shifted and brought her down, making her bruises that would stay there, not healing, they could not be seen, not by other or even by her own mother. Elizabeth had never focused on her daughter enough time to see, to notice the suffering she was part of.
Her mother had never been one to open the door for anyone, she doesn’t even know why she was surprised when a maid opened it for her, directing her to where her office was located, first asking her if she had an appointment. Later then leaving her waiting, seated in an overspensive chair when she replied a polite ‘no’, her surroundings with drawings of mountains and fields, nature, something her mother detested, what was she thinking in the first place?
How can she be her mothers daughter? They never really had the same interest, never really connected. She had her mothers name as a middle name. At least Emily really thinks they didn’t not like what she did with her grandpa when she was left there in her holidays, maybe that’s why for some time she considered Paris home. Perhaps she could even move there wherever she retired from the FBI, buy his grandpa's old house and live there, solely living off what she planted. But her mother was not the one who named her, his father was.
"Miss Prentiss?" Her surname was called, not with the same emotions her team called her. Derek teasingly as he passed her the first coffee cup while she arrived at their break room, or Aaron, sternly not letting her go after an unsub unarmed. For the other she was 'Emily', for Reid who never got a costume to call her by uer surname or JJ, who loved to shorten her name and said it with so much care. Penelope who was always happy to see her, "Ambassador Prentiss is ready to see you"
Ambassador Prentiss, the woman who neglected her family, who only thought about politics and made her husband walk out on Emily when she was merely three years old. Ambassador Prentiss, a title that Emily resented so much, for not letting her have the only parent she should at least have. When her father walked out of her house, suitcase already prepared, a letter neatly flowed on their kitchen table, Emily knew. She knew that she was going to never see him again. No matter what, he promised her that he would call her and they would spend time together. She should have known. He never kept a promise.
“Emily?” Her mother's surprising tone should not have bothered her, not now that she knew the probabilities, “What are you doing here? She was standing in front of her desk, her computer opened all the way, papers spread all over her desk. Disorganized, something Emily thinks it's passed down to her.
“I was in the neighborhood” It was not a lie at all, Emily was in fact in the neighborhood, she came from Rossi’s house, who offered a glass before going to her home. Only someone like Rossi would have chosen to live close to her own mother. It was a rapid decision, something stupid, now that she ponders over it, she must have forgotten, she always does.
“Okay” Her mother’s tone hadn’t really changed towards her, she spoke as her daughter was someone she had to win over, Emily was accustomed to it, but somehow she would have wished to have a mother like Derek’s who offered her cookies the time her son was in jail by something he did not commit. Or like JJ’s mother, Sandy, who welcomed her one Christmas when she blurted the first year she was with the team that she didn’t really have any plans.
The silence between them felt heavy, there were so many things she wanted the answer to, that she really didn’t know what to say, what to talk about. Part of the reason she almost went into politics, but that the fear of becoming her mother had pushed her aside to something she had always been curious for. Something that helped her find a family she had always carved.
“Are you enjoying the BAU?” Her mother asks before she has the time to sit, that means that her visit had to be short, if there was something she knew about her mother, was how she treated her guest, who she liked, who she did not tolerate, she was not even looking at Emily as her mother typed away.
“I would not say enjoying” Emily stated, she liked her job, but for it to happen someone had to die, that was the part she did not enjoy from it. The rush she had when they were right and save another victim was enough to keep going and perfecting her skills, “We deal with some horrible things”
“I thought that was what you wanted” Her mother states as she still doesn’t look her way, her tone it’s not really what Emily was looking for in her mother, it lacked warmth, the kind of tone Penelope had.
“It is” She answered, this time she doesn't want to stay much longer, the reason she was here was completely forgotten. Her mother looks up to her and stares silently in her direction, “Then you do enjoy it”
“Enjoying it feels wrong” Emily would use other terms to describe her job she enjoyed hanging out with her team after a case, or the girls night that the job had given her. But her job, she liked her job, but something she wished people didn’t have to die for her to do.
“What would you call it?” Her mother inquired, taking off her glasses, she was tired of the conversation, which meant she was ready to finish it. To throw her out of her office at least. But she would be too impolite to say it herself, she would wait for Emily to finish, that was something she really learned across the years wherever she was forced to accompany her in her Ambassador duties.
“Why do we have to end up like this?” Emily questined, she was tired and really this was not how she planned to finish her day, in mid argument with her mother, she really should not have thought of any other ending to this. She chose to come here, to her mother's house, she knew how it would end.
“Where’s the bathroom?” Emily asks, not letting her mother respond, it would be the same phrase she always uses, one she learned to hate so much. The only thing that was constant was the times both of them were home where the arguments happened almost every time they crossed paths.
“Ronnie will help you get there” Elizabeth responds as Emily hands her the purse she came with, she wasn’t going to let her mother go away so easily, not now that she just arrived and had her full attention.
Emily splashed some water, completely ignoring the make up she applied this morning before going to the bureau. She was anxious and at this point in the day she didn’t care much about her appearance, she just wanted to have answers to the questions that kept haunting her. She wanted to make peace with the part of her childhood she knew she was never going to recover, but she needed closure for that, an answer that her mother was the only one that could give her that.
When Emily comes back she takes a seat in front of her, she needs to be as close as possible, to have her attention if she wants answers, "why did dad leave?"
"Because of you" The response was not supposed to sting so much, she barely remembered him, but she thought that between her parents he was the only one who had loved her. She was wrong.
"What?" She felt tears picking in the corner of her eyes. Her mother, or in this case the Ambassador, it was the persona she was talking about wherever they talked. The shadow of what her mother had been was long gone.
"He was tired of taking care of you" Her mother chuckled nervously, "I never wanted to be a mother" Elizabeth paused looking at her daughter, she was sure that Emily already knew that," I did it because I loved your father, until the moment he chose to walk out, leaving me with you"
Emily felt angry, angry at her mother for laying the blame on her. If she had known, she would not have felt so overwhelmed by the case they had weeks ago where an unsub was killing high powerful women, when they found the last body Emily could not help but visualize her mother or even herself laid in the cold morgue of the state they were in. To think that for a moment she had been afraid of losing her mother. The only parent that she had around. "I didn't even chose to be born"
Her mother doesn't tell her that she is sorry, Emily knows that she can't really can be "You made my life hell Emily, it tried so hard to love you, but I..I wasn't meant to be a mother"
"Are you telling me that it was my fault? Your inability to love me was my fault?" Emily chokes out, she should know better than this. She was a grown up adult. She knows how to be more composed than this.
"I'm just saying that-" the door opening forcefully stops her mother's words. Emily didn't really need to hear more, this was everything she never thought she would need to cut the ties with her. This was the last time she would ever come back here.
"Enough" JJ's stern voice cut through the air, Emily tuning around and her gaze landing on her colleague. The FBI liaison stood there, arms crossed, she seemed to be angry. Perhaps she was angry at her. She had promised to hang out with her as soon as she left Rossi’s house. She should have messaged her at least to let her know her change of plans.
"JJ" Her name turned out like a desperate sob, JJ knew partly why Emily had come inside, why she wanted to face her mother. She opened her eyes as Emily came crashing into the hug, clinging into her, JJ placed a kiss on her friend's hair. Eyes still firmly looked into the person she was enraged with.
“Let's get out of here” JJ guides her out, just like the maid explained to her, Emily’s purse already in her left hand as the other arm was cautiously over the brunette waist. Emily stopped in her tracks when her eyes scanned over the vacant parking lot, searching for her own car, but could only locate Jennifers. “Where…How did you know I was here?”
“I called Dave” JJ states as she opened the car door for her, going towards the drivers side, she turned the car into life and put the heating on, “I had a gut feeling that I would find you here when Rossi claimed that you we gone for about an hour”
“I’m sorry” Emily apologized,leaning into her friend, she knew that JJ would not start the car until she was good enough. Jennifer shakes her head, “It was not your fault, okay”. Emily nodded rapidly, how it could not be her fault?
“I did have to cancel your surprise party" JJ lightened the conversation disclosing what she had been preparing for weeks, “Seeing as the birthday girl wasn’t going to show up. I had to sent the guest home”
“I ruined my own birthday” Emily muttered, she was 35 freshly turned, “I just wanted to…I wanted for my mother to wish me a happy birthday” Emily paused sniffing back tears, “I don’t know why it hurt so much, she didn’t even remember the other ones, what did this one have that it would be special to recall?”
"My birthday has never been significant for her," Emily paused looking out to her mother's home, "I don't know, it has been irrelevant. I have been irrelevant for her"
“Buckle up” JJ stated as she started driving, she was determined to make Emily’s 35th birthday as memorable as possible, Emily needed to remember her birthday with something good. That was exactly what she was going to do. JJ was going to turn this into the best birthday Emily has ever had.
JJ’s apartment was full of balloons, presents scattered all the way to her living room. That was the first thing Emily noticed when Jennifer turned on the lights. Emily felt so overwhelmed, more so when she noticed at least ten glasses set up in the kitchen sink. Ten people. She ruined ten people's night for not showing up to her surprise party. She even ruined her own day. JJ’s hand was firmly pressed against her back, warm against the fabric of her shirt as she guided her towards the couch.
“Look at this mess” JJ muttered under her breath as she noticed how Emily gaze flickered down at the champagne glasses from her previous guest, “I’m not going to clean it up now, we can use it for tomorrow”
The remains of a party that she didn’t get to enjoy. Her own surprise birthday party, she never had one, she had thrown a lot during the years and had confided in JJ that she didn’t have one. Her best friend made it true, but at what cost, she didn't get to be in it. Instead she was getting answers.
“My mother…there must be a point in my life where she has loved me right?” Emily inquired, JJ’s gentle fingers in her hair, massaging her scalp, it calmed her, “If I had followed her footsteps maybe she would tolerate me more”
“She wouldn’t” JJ’s voice was firm, as if she believed herself, maybe she did, Emily could not focus that much, a grief that she had inside for too long, was devouring her. Mourning for a father and a mother that she never had. A family that she wished so hard to have, but that she never had.
“How can you know that?” Emily inquired turning around, completely pressing their bodies together, she needed to feel close to something, to somebody, she needed to see that she still had someone to lean into. Because JJ always let her, she let Emily bury her head in the crook of her neck, warm skin pressed against her check as she heard the liaisons heart thum thum thum, beating, alive. Emily hopes that she could somehow never lose this.
“Some mother’s aren’t meant to be mothers'' JJ's simple response makes Emily have to take a deep breath, she needs to calm herself down. It was done. She had closure with her mother. Still, she was sure that wherever it would be her turn to leave, that she would cry, like she did with her father. Like she would do for anyone she once loved.
“What a perfect day” Emily muttered, “I went to my mothers house, for her to wish me a ‘happy birthday’ and she didn’t even know” JJ’s movements stop completely, she notices that the liaison tenses for a few seconds, her heart picking the rhythm up for a little. Emily lifts her head with caution.
JJ swallows, changing her position, so she is seated in her couch, “She knows” JJ pauses as the words register in her best friend, “I called your phone before going towards your mothers house and she picked it up”
“What did she say?” Emily inquires, she knows that it would not be good. She recalls JJ’s entrance, how she entered the room, the quickness she had to keep her apart from her mother. JJ knew, she had to know that their mother daughter relationship could not be nothing more than professional, “please”
“No” JJ’s voice was soft, like it always had, “I’m not going to let you hurt yourself like that” JJ walked away from the couch. Emily felt relieved, she didn’t want to know, but part of her wanted to understand how her mother could have learned to hate her so much, “Was it my fault?”
“None of that was your fault” JJ turned off the lights as the candles, Emily’s birthday candles illuminated her way into where her best friend was seated, “You were not the issue, Em, you tried to please someone who was solely born for politics. Politicians can never be pleased, you know that”
“Now, I believe that it's still your birthday” JJ announces, placing the cake in her little coffee table in front of the couch, Emily positions herself next to her, her body pressed to hers. Without any space in between, they have always be like that, “Wish something before blowing out the candles”
“Would it be too much to ask for her love?” Emily inquires, blurting out her wish, she knew that it would be impossible, she had asked that same thing wherever she had a cake in front of her, and nothing happened, there was no magic that would make her own mother love her or even care about her daughter.
“It wouldn’t” Emily feels how JJ holds her hand, the movement so familiar for them, their fingers interviewed like most of the time are, in New years wherever they have to count back the second to welcome in a new year, they always find each other. Emily can’t really say that she didn’t even think how JJ’s lips would be on her own.
Emily blows the candles, the fire dissipating with a single puff, letting the darkness surround them, but she knows JJ, she could make her whole silhouette in the dark, she had studied her blonde colleague so many times, that if she wanted to, she could locate her lips, lock them with her own, Emily was sure that with the action she would still find nothing but love beneath.
"What did you wish for?" JJ inquired, her voice a little bit farther since now, a low light was hanging above them, the soft lamp JJ had purchased when she first moved in. Emily remembers how the two of them spent that afternoon, with glasses on wine, encircled by the instruction papers.
"I can't exactly reveal my wish can I?" Emily said as she drank from a glass of water JJ had bought her when they first came here, her gaze flickering between her colleague's lips. It was not the first time that happened. Emily was sure that it would not be the last.
JJ agreed with a nod, "I hope you like the cake I've picked for you" She had grabbed two plates, "the birthday girl usually does the first cut". Emily takes the knife and slowly gets a piece of the cake out. Like herself, she had lost so many pieces trying to become a better version for those who didn't even tolerate her, that now she feels incomplete, she doesn't even know who she is.
"It's a great cake" Emily teases, she profusely picked the side where the writing was not engraved, she liked to hold onto the message JJ had chosen for her, she places a lingering kiss on the cheek of her best friend, "thank you"
JJ breathes in, she tries to regulate her fast beating heart when she feels Emily’s lips in her skin, she should not be reacting to her touch like that. She shouldn’t be reacting to Emily like that, not today. Not after the day the brunette girl had. How can her heart be so selfish right now and lean in a little more as the kiss lingers more than ever?
“How does a mothers love feels like?” Emily mutters, her head lowered in JJ’s shoulder, a position she took upon wherever they seated together, side by side in the jet, moments before sleeping, the familiarity in everything that surrounded them was so calm, Emily thinks that they belong with each other. But perhaps she doesn’t have the energy to confess it today.
“A mother’s love is really no different from a mother’s hate” JJ responds, a chill running down her spine, she had experienced two types of childhoods, she knows, “The intensity between the words, the rage, everything is exactly as the love they hide” JJ pauses reflecting back to something her own mother told her, back when Ross was gone, “Did you ever heard the phrase, grief is all the love you could not give?”
Emily nods, she reminisces back to when her grandpa died, how she felt full of rage rather than sad, she was angry at him for leaving her so soon. For leaving her forever tied with her own mother, with nowhere else to go, but back to what she had a hard time calling ‘home’, where her mother and her resided.
Only one of her teachers had noticed her low academic declinment and forced her to go to talk with the school counselor, who cracked her open in two sessions with her. That woman had been kind and honest with her. She had explained to Emily that indeed it was normal to feel angry at him for leaving, but in the end all the anger would dissipate and the sadness would come in strongly, without her noticing. The sorrow would try to swallow her down, the memories and happy times would not have the same impact they once did. Most importantly she told her that it was okay for her to feel sad.
“Your mother” JJ takes in a deep breath, she was in no way a profiler, but she had her own share with grief and unrequited love with people from her own family, “Your mother, all she can feel right now is rage, but her feeling enraged or angry towards you is something good”
“How so?” Emily inquired, a yawn escaping lazily within her, she looked at JJ’s living room clock, it was late for them to be talking, her birthday was coming to an end and her wish was still not fulfilled
“Emotions are a complex thing” JJ states, her hair was already messy enough and no matter how much she brushed it, there was something there incapable of staying still, “That your mother feels something towards you even if it’s rage it’s a good thing” JJ drinks a little bit of water, her throat becoming dry in the process, maybe it was for the truth the words carried, or how much they hurt when her mother explained them to her when she was merely eleven years old, “A mother feeling something towards her child is better than if she feels nothing. It means that deep down she cares”
“I’m grieving for the mother that I had?” Emily was confused, she understood that her mother feeling something for her rather than not caring about her meant something, that Elizabeth still was attentive wherever she called, enough to call her back, showed her that maybe down the road there could be something there, even if it was insignificant.
“You are not grieving for the mother you have” JJ closed her eyes, she took herself a moment to get her point across, “You are grieving for the moments you wish you had between the two of you”, she noticed Emily had her eyes closed as she heard her.
“I already grieved for my childhood” Emily explained to her, “I grieved for my lack of stability and the places that I wished so hard I could have stayed when I finally got myself comfortable there. There is nothing more I can grieve from there”
"Teenage years?" JJ inquired, Emily had not let her too much inside her life, not her and no to anyone in the team. Emily had always been a guarded person, JJ had known it the first time she had hugged her, the first time they met. Her new coworker had been tense as she wrapped her arms around her. JJ did not give it too much attention, until some years later.
"Came back from my university to see that my mother had sold out the house she barely stepped a food in" Emily chuckled sadly, "I went to my car and cried my eyes out" Emily moved her position, this time looking up to JJ, who was calmly staring to her switched off TV, where they had see so many movies together, alone or with Penelope.
“And what about now? What about today?” JJ acknowledge, she knew that Emily could not bury what happened today to her so easily, she needed to have some sort of catharsis to get it out, she needed to talk
“What do you want to know?” Emily announced standing up, she was tired of being still, she needed to move if she was going to talk about the urge she had to go to her mothers house, why she stood thirty minutes in the street parked in front of her mothers house before getting the necessary courage to enter.
“Why you appeared there out of the blue” JJ wanted to underst her, she wanted so hard to get to know Emily’s reasons, deep down she knew that it was because she cared too much about her, that she was asking, instead of letting her go to her own home, but something was telling her that she needed Emily to stay. JJ needed her tonight.
“I guess that if I appeared there and comforted her so that I would have a reason” Emily admitted, she really should have seen it coming, her mother was never going to do it, she didn’t know why she ran away after work, after all her coworkers wished her a very ‘happy birthday’ towards the only person that didn’t care enough to know.
“A reason for what?” JJ inquired, Emily pacing in her living room was making her uneasy, she had never seen Emily so unsettled during the years she had known and loved her, Emily was everything to her, the last person she wished to see sad or even distressed. A person she confided nearly everything to, Emily was who she went to when she felt like the word was out of perspective for her.
“A reason for being unlovable” Emily chokes, with the words trailing out of her mouth. She spent so many years trying to ignore that feeling, the feeling that maybe she was not made to be loved. That she was not made to have stability during her life, and much less her love life. So many relationships because she was so intense and emotionless towards her partners.
“You are loved” JJ’s voice soothes her, Emily could not really believe her, how could she? After everything her mother said, how her father walked out of the house because of her, how could she be worthy of even someone's love, when her own mother didn’t even love her?
“My wish hasn’t been fulfilled” Emily announces as she sees the clock hit midnight, her birthday finished, she could leave this birthday behind, the story with her mother buried deep between her wounds. She notices how JJ walks towards her, she grabs her face, softly her fingers caressing her cheek, her lips so close to her own
“I love you” Is everything that JJ mutters as she locks her lips with Emily’s, her heart lowering, the muscles relaxing as she notices Emily pressing herself more into the kiss, into her, lips bruising against each other, as they both try to hold onto this moment, without letting go. It was everything both wished to do, and it was happening, it was finally happening, after years of unrequited love from their relatives, they found that love in one another.
Emily had lost part of herself every day she saw her mother look away from her, every minute she had to spend alone, by herself, with nobody around, the ambassador so deep in her work, her grandpa dead, she had nobody to lean into, until JJ. JJ who had changed that loath she felt to contact. JJ turned all of that into love, something she was sure she was going to cherish forever. JJ had been unknowingly a vital part of her growing up.
Emily really could not think about a better birthday than this one, her best friend or maybe something more by her side, candles already condensing into the melting cake, the remains of a party already forgotten surrounded them as JJ lead her to her bedroom, sleep came in easy to her wherever she was with someone she trusted. Jennifer made her want to take care of herself and it was something she would have to learn to do, something her mother neglected to do. But she was not alone. Emily had her and she knew that no matter what, she would never have to be alone again.