Work Text:
7 weeks:
“How long?” JJ risked asking with a tremble in her voice. It was a question they didn’t want to know, but they needed to know.
“5-6” Doctor Bishop began.
“Years?” Emily spoke as she broke her stare from the hospital window. She knew it wouldn’t be. She could feel it in herself she wasn’t well, that she didn’t have much time left, how exhausted she was. Burnt out.
“Weeks.” The Doctor cleared her throat as she delivered the news.
“What?” JJ held onto Emily’s hand “I think you got your test wrong, you need, you need to re-do that again because that’s not the right time frame” JJ’s voice began to rise, she looked at Emily who was just nodding. “No! Don’t sit there and accept that Emily, we need to get a second opinion, this doctor,” JJ stood up and pointed at Doctor Bishop “You have read the tests wrong or you’ve mixed them up with someone else’s results because this is not it!”
“Jayje…” Emily reached up for JJ’s arm as her own tears began to well in her eyes.
“Why are you just sitting there agreeing with this?! This is your life, Emily! She’s telling you you’ve got weeks to live! WEEKS!” JJ began to pace around the hospital room.
“Can you please come back later, Doctor Bishop” Emily’s tears began to fall down her face. “I need to talk to my partner alone.” She watched as the doctor exited the room. “Jennifer”
“Six weeks, Em.” JJ sobbed as she turned to Emily; her face drenched from tears. “That’s fucking bullshit and you’re just sitting there and letting her dictate your time left?” JJ watched as her Fiancé sat and began crying on the bed. “We were meant to be starting our life together.”
“I know” Emily wiped her eyes and watched as JJ walked to the hospital bed and sat next to her, on the space she made available, a space always available for JJ. “There goes tomorrows plans of telling everyone’s plans of getting married in 6 months”
“We still can.”
“Baby, I know…I know you don’t want to believe the doctor” Emily moved JJ’s hair strand from her tear stained face. “But I know, I can…I can feel it. I know I’m not well my sweet girl.”
“We can get married before…then.”
“I’m not leaving you a widow. Not again, JJ. I can’t do that to you.”
“Don’t I get a say in this? I want to be your wife. I want you to be my wife.” JJ stood up and wiped her eyes on her cardigan sleeves.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” JJ turned back to Emily. “We can do it?”
“I’ve waited twenty years for you to officially be mine, Jennifer. If you still want to marry me, then cancer won’t stop me from marrying the woman of my dreams.”
—————————————
5 Weeks to go
“You just…wow Em.” Tara stood behind Emily who stood in front of a mirror patting down the pants of her white wedding suit.
“Do you think she’ll like it?” Em asked nervously. She had noticed her shrinking frame, her muscle loss, she barely had an appetite these days. She played with her hair a little more, and laughed as Tara swatted her hands away and fixed her hair for her.
“You could rock up in a garbage bag and she would love it.” Rebecca piped up from where she sat.
“Can I do that one day for our wedding?” Tara winked.
Emily smiled at the interaction as the pair continued to banter between the two. She kept it to herself when she realised that she wouldn’t get to see Tara and Rebecca’s wedding. She wouldn’t get to see them live their life together. Hell, she wouldn’t even get to live her life with JJ.
“Fuck” Emily whispers as she feels herself become off balance.
“You okay?” Tara reached for her instantly. Steadying her as she wrapped her arm around her ever declining tiny frame. “Have a seat”
“I’m okay” she lied. “I’m just lightheaded.” Well that part wasn’t a lie. She was always lightheaded these days.
There was a knock at the door followed by the opening of said door.
“You look stunning” David Rossi announced as he stepped into the room. Walking over to Emily who was still sat in the chair. “How are you feeling?”
“Nervous. Guilty.” Emily frowned.
“JJ is ready to marry you, Emily. In sickness and health.” Rebecca offered.
“Yeah, she’s getting the “until death do us part” real quick” Emily ran her hands over her pantsuit.
“Don’t think about that now, Emily. Focus on the fact that today you get to marry the woman you’ve been in love with for the better half of two decades in front of your close friends and family.” Rossi spoke as he offered his hands out to help Emily off the chair. “And that you get this handsome fellow to walk you down the aisle.”
For the first time today, Emily laughed. She could always count on the man who was giving her away today to make her laugh.
//
Standing nervously, Emily didn’t know where to look. She had already walked the aisle once Tara had walked down before her. She didn’t want to be left alone with her thoughts. At least not right now, not during her wedding ceremony. She looked to the guests and smiled at Henry and Michael. They smiled back and Michael even wove to her. The guilt began to creep back into her thoughts, she and JJ had been together not even 11 months and now JJ is going to be left a widow once again. How much bullshit trauma is JJ destined to go through in this life?
Emily jumped as a piano began to play in the open outdoor area. She smiled as she seen Penelope Garcia begin to walk down the aisle and join her on JJ’s bridesmaids side. Emily then scanned everywhere until her eyes lay upon JJ. Her Jennifer. Wearing a flowing white wedding gown, a long veil and her hair looked incredible, it was down and curled and looked like Emily could lay somewhere private and just run her fingers through them.
JJ reached the end of the aisles and stood across from Emily, her mother who walked her down the aisle, excused herself and joined other guests.
“You look beautiful, Em.” JJ whispered as she reached for Emily’s hands. They were slightly colder than usual. She rubbed them gently.
“Look at you, Jayje” Emily looked her up and down. “The most beautiful woman in the world”
//
The ceremony had began and both women hadn’t stopped staring at each other, looking at one and other like they had both hung the stars and moon in the night time sky.
“Emily, your vows?”
“Oh, okay” Emily let out a nervous small laugh as she rubbed JJ’s knuckles and let go so that she could hold the speech cards that Tara had handed to her.
“I didn’t know where to start from, and I figured out that I could probably start here because you always tell me how much you love my rambling and my thought process.” She paused for the laughter. “I’ve never had to do this before, sit down and think about my love for anyone. And then it occurred to me. I’ve never loved anyone. Not until you. Certainly not on this level. I can’t stand here and talk traditional vows; we all know that I can’t offer you a future by any means. But I want to thank you. Thank you for choosing to love me the way that you do, thank you for giving us a wedding day with our loved ones around. Thank you for being you. Two decades together doesn’t seem like enough to have spent in your presence, my love. But all the time in the world still wouldn’t have been enough time with you.” Emily placed her queue cards backward for Tara to grab. She watched as JJ had tears rolling down her face. “I love you Jennifer. I always have and I will continue to beyond my journey.”
The officiant cleared her throat and shifted her gaze to JJ. “Jennifer, it’s your time to read your vows”
JJ nodded and wiped at her eyes; grateful for the fact she used waterproof make up today. A given.
“I didn’t write my vows down because I thought I’d remember,” JJ sniffed. “But I guess the jokes on me because I can’t really remember what I was going to say.” She paused and looked down momentarily. “Because what do you really say when you’re marrying the love of your life?” She blinked a tear away. “And I sometimes feel guilty for thinking that or or saying that, especially when Henry and Michael are in the room right now, but god Emily, I’ve loved you from the moment I lay eyes on you.” She smiled. “There was this time where I thought I’d have the courage to ask you to be my girlfriend at one stage, but I was so nervous because I didn’t think it would end well and I thought I’d lose you for-” JJ stopped talking. Forever. She was going to lose her forever.
“Keep going” Emily whispered.
“So I chose safety, I chose to have you as my best friend, as my person I went to for every single thing in life. You’ve known every part of me Emily, no one else has known me this intimately, no one has ever known every inch of my body and my soul like you have. And I’m so blessed to be able to spend however long we have together as your wife. I’m mad because it should have been longer. It should have been a life time. It should have been forever. But I am taking what ever I can get and I’m holding onto it tight and I’m never letting you go Em.” JJ nodded as she watched Emily smile. “Its us against the world.”
As the rest of the ceremony continued in a bit of a blur, Emily watched as JJ carefully slid her wedding band onto her finger. Her hands shook as she did. She stared down at her ring and cried; realising this is the moment she had been waiting for since she first ever laid on Jennifer Jareau.
———————————————
3 weeks to go
“You’re okay, love” JJ hushed as she helped her wife out of the bath tub. “I’ve got you.”
Emily was beginning to look unrecognisable in some ways; she was thinning out, she was losing strays of her hair at any given moment, and her lips were forever drying out - relying on JJ to place lip balm every now and then.
“Thank you.” Emily thanked JJ as she finished dressing her. She shivered for what felt like the umpteenth time today; her body unable to regulate temperature anymore. She groaned as she shuffled up the bed, her breathing becoming increasingly difficult over the previous few days. She knew her time on earth was getting close to an end.
“You can’t have your pain relief until 5,” JJ looked at her phone, smiling briefly at the wedding photo of her and Emily that was displayed as her wallpaper. “So you’ve got roughly an hour” she felt Emily nodded against her. “Hey, I picked up these cards today called “How Well Do You Know Me?”, you ask the question and I have to tell you what I think your answer would be. Want to try?”
“Let’s do it” Emily reached and put the light on, she picked up her black framed prescription glasses on and made herself comfortable, making space for JJ who pulled the little deck of cards from her jeans And gave the deck to Emily.
“Ah okay.” Emily read. “If I had to live in a very cold place or a very hot place, which one would I choose?”
“Ha! Well, you my polar opposite beautiful wife of mine, you would choose to go to a snow resort over basking on a beach in the heat! So you’d choose the cold place.”
“Well I mean, I may potentially choose the beach now I have a wife who would wear a bikini to said beach” Emily laughed as JJ rolled her eyes and reached for the next card.
“How would I describe your ideal day” Emily paused. “We would wake up, naked and cuddling in bed. You’d want me to get coffee so I would throw on underwear and a nightgown and I would go downstairs and I’d not only turn the coffee machine on, but I’d prepare you some scrambled eggs on toast, because it’s a Saturday and no one is interrupting us on this day. I eventually get you out of bed, carry you down the stairs and we sit across from each other while eat breakfast and drink our big cups of coffee and steal glances at each other and just keep on smiling because we are in a happy bubble, it’s just us. So then we go for a shower and I lather you with soap because you deserve to be looked after like that. and you still probably smell like sex from the night before. And now it’s just after lunch and we are heading out the door to pick Henry and Michael up from your mums, because they’re our boys, we love them, and they are an important part of our life, so they’re included because they deserve to be. And then we go to an amusement park because everyone knows you love going to amusement parks. And I sit back with Hen because he doesn’t do heights like you and Michael do. And then, we would come home, you’d choose a movie that Hen complains about but secretly likes it, one that Michael is all for, and then theres you, watching a movie, but not really watch it because you catch me staring at you. And we smile at each other. And your ideal day ends with us being happy, it ends on forever tomorrow’s, and no cancer.”
Emily spoke the last of the sentence softly. She dared to look over to JJ and regretted her choice. “Jayje”
JJ had sat up with tears flowing down her face. “We deserve that. All four of us. We deserve to be able to live with each other. This isn’t fair Em,” JJ wiped at her face. “I’m sorry, I try so hard to be strong, but sometimes it’s so fucking hard”
“There’s this part of me that wishes I could turn back time and stop myself from telling you to go after Will.” Emily pauses and watches JJ for her reaction. “And I know that if I did that then Henry and Michael wouldn’t be here and I love them so much, Jennifer, I always have.”
“I know” JJ smiled.
“But we’ve been together for 11 months now. We won’t even make a year,.”
“We wi-“ JJ interrupted
“We won’t. I can feel it in my body, Jayje. And I’m spending these last weeks thinking about ifs and maybes and what I could have done to have you in my life longer.”
“You always had me. Maybe not physically. Not intimately. But god Em, I was yours. I yearned to be yours some days, most days.” JJ moved closer to Emily and kissed her gently on her forehead. “No more worrying about what we could have done, okay? From both of us. You’re my wife. And I love you entirely.” She watched as Emily smiled a tired smile. “Let’s get you ready for sleep, okay? You can have your pain relief soon.”
————————————
6 days later
Emily had began to deteriorate faster than they had hoped, and JJ had to make the tough decision to admit Emily into palliative care in the private hospital closest to their home. She was grateful for both her mum and Will’s mum for having the boys during the last week.
“I thought you might like this”
JJ looked up as Penelope entered the room with a coffee cup in her hand and extended her arm for JJ to reach out for it.
“Thanks Pen.” JJ forced a smile. She looked tired. She was showering at the hospital, eating at the hospital, and sleeping at the hospital. She refused to leave her wife’s side.
“How’s she today?”
“She’s barely spoken today” JJ stared ahead. “Although she kept telling me “my 7 minutes” and I have no idea what she means by that, but that’s all she can manage.” She took a sip of the coffee. “That and “I love you” has become “luffu” and it took me a few moments to understand what she was saying. But I know what it is. I do.”
“Of course you do my sweet girl, and of course Emily is still saying she loves you. Nothing in this universe would stop her from saying that to you, not while she’s still here.”
“I don’t know how to do this, Pen.” JJ shook as she began to cry. “I’m watching the love of my life die in front of me, how do I function again after this?”
“You have all of us. We are here to help you”
“I know. I know after everything I’ve always had you all. But this time it’s different.” Her eyes began to well again. “I don’t have Emily this time. She’s the one that I always relied on the most. The one who helped me through the hardest parts. The one who kept me above water.” She cried harder as Penelope pulled her into her shoulder. “How do I do this without her? Without my wife?”
Penelope held her close and swayed gently with her. Promising to herself that she would be there for JJ and the boys again, no matter what. She wouldn’t let anyone down.
————————————
The Day Of
01:37 am.
The sound of Doctor Bishop’s voice echoed in the room as she pronounced Emily Prentiss’s death out loud”
JJ sat holding her wife’s left hand, staring at her identical wedding band. She waited for the medical team to leave the room before allowing herself to cry a heartbreakingly loud sob.
“You can’t be gone.” She held onto Emily’s hand a little harder. “I can’t do this without you Em, come back to me. I still have so much love to give you. I still have the rest of my life to give you.”
//
It was 5 am when she pulled into the driveway. How she drove from the hospital to the house was a question to anyone. She blacked out most of the journey. Images of Emily and memories together flooding her mind.
She walked over to the door and went to knock.
“C’mere” Penelope answered and pulled JJ into a hug. JJ wrapped her arms around her friend, but didn’t have it in her to cry. She smiled as Dave walked up behind them and ushered Penelope to allow JJ to come into his home.
“Is it stupid to ask how you feel?” Penelope asked.
“Yeah” JJ nodded and made her way to sit on Dave’s lounge.
“Don’t take it personal, Penelope.” David assured her.
“We’ve been looking at some photos over the years” Penelope explained as she noticed JJ had seen the photos spread on Dave’s coffee table.
JJ nodded again and sat down. She felt tired. Her head hurt. Her body ached. But nothing in comparison to how her heart felt right now.
Penelope walked over and sat next to JJ and placed her hand on her lower back. “I’m going to go to bed, okay? And I think you should think about it too, chicken.” She kissed JJ on the forehead. “Love you sweet pea”
“Good night Pen” JJ pushed through a smile.
“Should I retire myself or would you like some company?” Rossi asked kindly; having been in this position before.
“The last few days, Emily kept saying to me “my 7 minutes” and I don’t know what she meant Rossi. I didn’t get it. She couldn’t explain it. But she just kept telling me”
“Ahh mio cara amica!” He smiled and waited for her attention to turn to him. “When Emily and I were sat down talking about the wedding, she came across this little poem if you will, and I quote - “After death, the human brain lives for 7 minutes to replay the best memories of your life.”” he paused. “Your wife was telling you that you were the best memories of her life, kid.”
JJ looked at the ceiling and began to cry. She held herself and cried into her hands.
“It’s okay” Dave pulled her close and gave her a gentle hug.
“It’s not okay at all Dave” JJ pushed off and stood up angrily. “None of this is okay! If Emily had taken her health more seriously maybe we wouldn’t have been in this situation! Maybe she wouldn’t be dead and maybe I wouldn’t be without the love of my life! Everyone I love keeps on dying and I can’t fucking take it anymore!” She yelled and kicked the coffee table over. “She left me here without her and I don’t know how to be me without her! Because even when we weren’t together, when I was with Will, she was still my everything, she was my rock, my person! My safety. And now? Now who do I have? I don’t have it in me to pick myself up. I loved her so fucking much. It actually physically pains me to think about how in love with her I was. And to think we were 8 days away from being together for one whole year? Life is fucking cruel David. It is fucked, and it is painful and it is just so damn fucking hard right now.”
Dave watched as JJ walked out his back door and slid the door shut behind her. He knew not to follow her for now. Having lost a wife himself. He knew when to let things be. To let one have a moment alone.
//
JJ stood staring out into the back yard, watching as the birds flew around and the sun continued to rise. She thought about how lovely it would be right now to be stood with her arms wrapped around her wife and watching a sunrise with a morning coffee. She shook her head, it hasn’t even been 5 hours without without Emily.
“You know,” she spoke out loud. “You didn’t even say goodbye to me” her lips quivered. “Am I being naive to think this must mean you’re coming back to me?” She paused. “Fuck Em, I just want to pick up the phone and talk to you, pretend that you’re out on a case. That you’re coming home tonight.” JJ could feel herself shake as she began to cry. “Please come back to me.” She sobbed loudly. “Come back to me!” She shouted.
“Oh my sweet girl” Penelope had been woken by JJ earlier, she ran over to where JJ was crouching. “Oh come here, I’ve got you. We’ve got you”
“I can’t, I can’t do this Pen” she sobbed so hard that it began to make her feel sick.
“Let it out, let it all out.” Penelope rubbed JJ’s back as she continued to cry.
————————————
A Few Days Later
You never really know where life is going to take you. One day you find yourself blushing profusely as your best friend flusters as she asks you out on a date the week after you casually drop that you’re bisexual, the next day you’re actually dating, having sex for the first time, never leaving each others side. Feeling so safe and loved and just genuinely cared for. Watching another woman love your children just as much as you do, and watching those children love her back.
You moved in together 3 months into and then came the proposal 1 month later. It wasn’t rushed. Nobody seen it the f way. Not when you’ve spent nearly 20 years of knowing each other on so many different levels. Their love never was never an issue for work. They had declared it, made sure it wasn’t hidden, but they worked together as they always had. It’s just the way they always managed to get shit done.
And then there were the few months where Emily fell unwell. Exhausted. Constantly Tired. No appetite. Followed by confusion and difficulty walking, to the point that JJ called an ambulance for her from their home. She knew something was wrong.
Then one day, you wake up and the love of your life has gone. She’s no longer with you. Not in person. Not for you to hold in your arms, not for you to melt into theirs. Just gone. You’re left on your own to grieve the woman you loved with your entire being.
Today, you roll out of bed. The bed where you shared with your wife. On her side of the table lay her phone, her watch and the matching wedding band to the one you wear. But you get up. And you put your hair up, and you walk downstairs and meet your boys down there. Henry is quiet. You noticed his phone wallpaper has changed to a photo of him when he was younger with Emily, they’re both making silly faces. She remembers Emily sending it to her at the time. And even Michael is quiet this morning. He stirs his spoon in his cereal as he stares out the door. No one speaks. Words too heavy. Today they will have a day of feeling the deep grief.
And where there is deep grief; there was great love.