fic post: ruins of eras past
Title: ruins of eras past
Characters: Emily Prentiss, ensemble
Rating: pg-13
Summary: It’s a pity to feel so alone while surrounded by so many people.
Author’s Note: word count - 1,789. Spoilers through season seven.
It doesn’t take most people 35 years to find a home. Emily Prentiss isn’t like most people.
- -
She’s an outcast, she always has been. Always thought she would be. She can read people and behaviors better than most, not because of training on the job, but necessity.
A few school transfers and traumatic adjustments too many and she learned the trick to fitting in is pretending like you do. It’s not hard to fool people who aren’t looking for an imposter.
It’s not really so hard to fool yourself after so long.
- -
She knows what she has to do to pass in almost every situation. To any given set of eyes, she’s a natural fit.
Only she knows the truth: It’s an act.
Perfectly crafted yet unrehearsed. She’s nothing if not a natural.
How fucked does your life have to be before acting as someone you’re not becomes second nature?
Being recruited to be a part of JTF-12 was a relief. An escape. It validated all she’d done to survive until this point. Because if it’s a necessity of the job it doesn’t indicate any gaping failures in her life. Her inability to find a place to belong.
They want her to be someone she’s not for this job.
What they don’t know is that she's pretty sure she already is.
- -
She got closer to Doyle than she’d ever imagined she would. Her expectation - to be detached on the inside.
After all doesn’t it take a monster to fall in love with a monster?
Sometimes she’s not sure she’s not a monster. Sometimes she can’t even recall if she did love him.
Most of the time she doesn’t want to know.
- -
Joining the BAU was like any other venture in her life so far: Be who they want you to be.
In this case a competent, intelligent, consummate professional manifestation of the FBI.
She exceeded their expectations in every way. As they did hers.
This is what she didn't expect to find: a home.
- -
They came into her life at a time when what she needed more than anything was a family.
A grounding force. Somewhere to belong.
Coming off the Doyle case, she needed to know that she wasn't the cold, detached spy who was used as bait for a dangerous arms dealer. A spy who might have fallen in love with that same man.
This is the solace she found here: Glimpses of clarity as the alarm clock buzzes in the new day. When JJ brings her a coffee, a token of their friendship, with a smile. Or when she and Morgan tease Reid on the plane.
Sometimes she's not sure that the SSA Prentiss they all know is actually her at all. That it's not just who she desperately wants to be.
She's not sure she can tell the difference. She knows no one else can.
- -
She thought being back would be easier than this. That having the team all back together would make everything okay.
That it would make her okay.
It's not the first time she's been wrong.
- -
She’s tired of being let down. It wouldn't sting so much if this wasn't the one group of people she'd come to believe she could count on.
They don’t expect her to need help, she’s used to this. But it doesn’t take a profiler to realize no person would be okay after enduring what she has this past year.
An intense undercover op, one that drifted into consuming more of herself than she’d care to admit. One that required shedding everything she knew of Emily Prentiss for months.
Saying she was in too deep is an understatement.
And then something she never let herself consider the possibility of. The return of a man whose life she destroyed. A man whose son she'd taken away, now reemerged and fixated on revenge.
This world she’d built for herself at the BAU was going to be torn apart. That was inevitable. So she chose the only thing she could - self sacrifice.
Better to go down fighting alone than to risk the lives of the people she loves.
She couldn’t take the risk of them getting involved.
She couldn’t take the risk of losing them.
In this reality, months after a fake funeral, she’s walking death. And she’s not sure she didn’t lose them anyway.
- -
It's funny that the team was so taken aback by her ability to play a part when that's what they've asked of her over and over.
Viper. Karl Arnold. The list goes on.
And now, again. The Piano Man case.
When she leaves the interrogation room after being stalled by Scobie, she knows what must happen.
And for a second she feels sick. Disgusted. Because she thought this was in the past, that she wouldn't have to shred her identity over and over for this job.
She thought coming back here - to this job - that she was done with this.
There's no time to dwell on it, so she steels herself in preparation for what's to come. Flip a switch and it's nothing to buddy up to a suspect. She wonders where it ends. Where the line is that she won't cross. It's a wasted effort because she knows. From past experience, she knows.
She wishes she didn't.
- -
"I miss the old me." Hushed words uttered to Hotch on the vacant jet pre take off.
The old Emily Prentiss. Sometimes she's not sure she even remembers who that is. She'd like to think she does.
Before this mess with Doyle she was certain: This is who I am. There was no doubt.
Even then select things without fail, like stimuli, would jar loose mementos from the past and she'd remember:
This is who I was. These are the things I have done.
Flirting with Karl Arnold at Red Onion. A case where victims are forced to play along to stay alive.
All sent her hurtling back to times past. All too close for comfort.
Now Hotch tells her: "Yes, the old you is gone. But you are here."
She lets herself consider it - wonders who he means.
- -
Not half a year after her return she gets shot.
And it's okay, it really is. Add one more scar to the ever-expanding collection.
The pain isn't intolerable (she's felt worse), and the doctor said there'd be no lasting effects. Soft tissue injury. Clean through. No damage to the bone or ligaments nearby. In a couple of weeks they can all forget it ever happened.
But for now - she must impart on them that she's here - she's okay.
Fine.
That's what she tells Morgan that night on the plane when he comes to her seeking comfort. Assurance that she's alive and well: "I'm fine."
And she is. Physically: yes. Mentally: just barely. Even that is a force of sheer will.
- -
The secret to selling an identity is believing it.
Today her identity is this: the same Emily Prentiss they've all known for years.
Sometimes she fools even herself into thinking she's okay.
- -
The team does treat her differently now. They'd deny it if she called them on it, but it's a fact. They do.
Reid looks at her like one might a skittish deer - at any moment he expects her to disappear.
She knows it's a symptom of past experience. His father. Gideon. People leave - family leaves. And now she's cemented that expectation further. It doesn't matter that it wasn't her choice. Not really. She still left and that's all he can see.
Morgan is still uneasy (to say the least) about her presence in the field. He insists the extra training is for him - and maybe it is, but on some level it still amounts to extra training for her. She thinks it means one of two things: he thinks she needs it. Like if maybe she'd trained a little harder than it would have been Doyle with the stake through his abdomen instead of her. Which would be laughable if it wasn't so goddamn ridiculous. Or he's still wary of her judgment. That, she thinks, is justified. She's not sure she'd trust herself either.
And for all the change in how they treat her now - they are all still so afraid to address what happened to her.
Hotch is willing to face it head on. He knows what it's like to be hunted and, in the end, caught. He's got so much going on already, to take too much of his time feels criminal. Though she knows he'd do it without hesitation.
She feels like Dave would too, if she reached out. That at the very least he'd listen, provide a nonjudgmental ear. But he's dealing with the aftermath of Carolyn's death.
And while she knows it's not likely, She can't bear the thought of trying to breech the subject - the chance that her concerns might not be given weight.
Both injury and exile go unmentioned.
It's fine with her. She'd rather forget it ever happened too.
The broken eye contact she's grown accustomed to from them now won't let that happen.
- -
Sometimes she's afraid she's always been this way. That there wasn't a time when she could vanquish all remains of herself in favor of becoming what is necessary.
She knows that's not true.
But there's no way around it any longer. Being here - at the BAU - doesn't bring the same calm that it used to.
She flashes to the moment when she first realized this place was going to be more than she'd ever imagined. More than she could let herself hope for. Discovering that Morgan shared her enthusiasm for Vonnegut. The elation and relief that these people will accept her as who she is.
A phrase spoken with a new friend: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
He really had no idea.
- -
It's a pity to feel so alone while surrounded by so many people.
- -
Emily Prentiss as she exists now - rather, the new Emily Prentiss - can't flourish here. She can exist. But that's not enough anymore. It's hollow. Unfulfilling.
It pales in comparison to the things she found here seven years ago: These people - their love. Acceptance.
Of all the things she knows this one she will never doubt: The love she has for these people is limitless.
- -
And now she knows something else for certain - Sometimes love isn’t enough.