advent calendar fic: day 05
The Distance Between
Criminal Minds | Emily Prentiss | 1,249 words
Happy Holidays, abvj!
When the plane lands in Paris, it is daybreak. Early morning light beckons from the row of oval windows as the other passengers slowly wake from their night of restless slumber. She squints, accustomed to darkness.
Unlike the others, she does not wake. She never closed her eyes in the first place.
The woman sitting next to her takes out her compact to touch up her makeup, and Emily catches a glimpse of herself. It’s the first time she’s seen her reflection since she left the hospital. She does not recognize this stranger’s reflection; not her short hair, not the dark circles under her eyes. Pale as a ghost, the saying goes, and that’s exactly what she is. A ghost.
Emily Prentiss is dead. She knows because she was there when it happened.
---
The thing is, she actually does die. At least momentarily.
The only thing she remembers is a deep overwhelming blackness. Vast and cold and empty, it threatens to swallow her up whole. It would be easy to let go, but she has never in her life done something just because it is easy. She isn’t about to start now.
If that’s all there is waiting on the other side, she isn’t ready to go yet.
---
Paris is the perfect place to disappear.
It’s been years since she last visited the city, but she remembers it well. She spent her teenage years trying to disappear in cities all across the globe. Meeting JJ to receive her new identities is merely a formality. Everything is already arranged -- JJ’s State Department resources are unparalleled -- so when she leaves the small café for the dimly lit city streets, there is nothing for Emily to do but get on with her life.
Or, what’s left of it.
---
When she wakes up at the hospital, Hotch and JJ are waiting for her, and the decision is already made. She understands the predicament that they’re in, why they had to make the decision and why they had to make it so quickly; indecision would have helped no one.
Even so, the life sentence is hers to serve. She wishes she had been able to decide for herself.
“We have a plan to keep you safe,” JJ assures her soberly. “Doyle has to think you’re dead, or he’ll stop at nothing to come after you.”
Emily nods weakly in agreement. Her fate was sealed a long time ago.
“Can you tell the others --” she asks. The strain in her words reflects ailments that are not only physical, and her voice, usually so strong and true, does not sound like her own. It is the first moment of her disappearance.
“Can you tell them that I’m sorry?”
The look on Hotch’s face is all the answer she needs. His words are just a formality.
“We can’t tell the others anything.”
---
She restricts her movements to a set radius around her flat, including an area that is just wide enough to allow her some freedom while she gets her bearings. She buys her own groceries and builds up her strength by walking in a park nearby. On a good day, she even sits at one of the local cafés, sipping coffee as she browses the newspaper to keep up with current events.
She never lingers for long; always sits with her feet planted firmly on the ground, ready to run at the first sign of trouble. She spends every waking moment looking over her shoulder, wondering when it’s all going to catch up with her; her nights are equally restless as her dreams are plagued with even worse fears.
In sleep, Doyle doesn’t come after her; he wages war on the BAU instead. It makes no sense, of course, because she has always been Doyle’s target. But nightmares don’t have to make sense to tear her from sleep, still panting for breath.
Each time she is able to check in with JJ, relief washes over her in waves. She left them to keep them safe once before; she will never forgive herself if something happens to them now.
---
It takes a few weeks for her to heal enough to be able to fly, and in that time, she stays at a State Department safe house. It is lonely and isolated, but she has been lonely and isolated before. Here at least she has occasional visitors: the doctor comes twice to check her over, JJ comes as much as she can without arousing suspicion. Even her mother visits once, in an uncharacteristic display that almost resembles affection.
“We’ll find him,” JJ says late one night. “We’ll find him, and then it will be safe for you to come back. This isn’t forever.”
And then what? The question echoes in her head, sharp and insistent as it taunts her, but she lets her concern go unvoiced. Her friends have put enough on the line for her sake, and they’re the ones who have to live with the consequences.
When JJ leaves, she hands Emily a plane ticket and a new passport, the first of many.
“I’ll see you in Paris,” JJ says, and then she is gone. And Emily is alone again.
---
Sometimes she allows herself a few minutes to get lost in the anonymity of the crowds swarming the Parisian streets. They are loud and boisterous, and they remind her that she was once a part of that. As she dodges the families with crying children, the young couples in love, the students with their books, she wonders if she will ever be a part of it again.
Her new identity is second nature to her now; she slips into it easily and wears it as a second skin. But sometimes when she hears a stranger call out ‘Emilie’, she turns as though she is supposed to answer.
She walks around with this secret held close to her heart, that she once betrayed a father to save his son’s life. That she would do it again, no matter the consequences. It is almost enough to forget the empty grave and the tombstone with her name on it.
Still, as she climbs up the stairs to her flat, each lonely footstep reverberating off the faded brown walls, she thinks that there has to be something else out there because living like this is no life at all.
---
Months pass like this. Each day blurs into the next, a never ending cycle of hopelessness and futility, and she starts to remember time only as a marker of the things she’s missing. JJ relays what she can through code, tells Emily of the birthdays and dinners and holidays that pass without her, and the people who are changing while she sits still.
Then without warning, she gets the phone call and she comes back to life.
As she boards the plane to come home, there’s a spring in her step that’s been absent for months. And then what? she asks herself, remembering all the uncertainty of her departure.
She is still contemplating the answer while the plane descends over DC, but all her worries become irrelevant -- or at least inconsequential -- the moment the plane touches down on the runway.
She is home and she is alive, and there is still work to be done.
She allows herself one slow, wide smile before she sets out to finish what she started.
Criminal Minds | Emily Prentiss | 1,249 words
Happy Holidays, abvj!
When the plane lands in Paris, it is daybreak. Early morning light beckons from the row of oval windows as the other passengers slowly wake from their night of restless slumber. She squints, accustomed to darkness.
Unlike the others, she does not wake. She never closed her eyes in the first place.
The woman sitting next to her takes out her compact to touch up her makeup, and Emily catches a glimpse of herself. It’s the first time she’s seen her reflection since she left the hospital. She does not recognize this stranger’s reflection; not her short hair, not the dark circles under her eyes. Pale as a ghost, the saying goes, and that’s exactly what she is. A ghost.
Emily Prentiss is dead. She knows because she was there when it happened.
---
The thing is, she actually does die. At least momentarily.
The only thing she remembers is a deep overwhelming blackness. Vast and cold and empty, it threatens to swallow her up whole. It would be easy to let go, but she has never in her life done something just because it is easy. She isn’t about to start now.
If that’s all there is waiting on the other side, she isn’t ready to go yet.
---
Paris is the perfect place to disappear.
It’s been years since she last visited the city, but she remembers it well. She spent her teenage years trying to disappear in cities all across the globe. Meeting JJ to receive her new identities is merely a formality. Everything is already arranged -- JJ’s State Department resources are unparalleled -- so when she leaves the small café for the dimly lit city streets, there is nothing for Emily to do but get on with her life.
Or, what’s left of it.
---
When she wakes up at the hospital, Hotch and JJ are waiting for her, and the decision is already made. She understands the predicament that they’re in, why they had to make the decision and why they had to make it so quickly; indecision would have helped no one.
Even so, the life sentence is hers to serve. She wishes she had been able to decide for herself.
“We have a plan to keep you safe,” JJ assures her soberly. “Doyle has to think you’re dead, or he’ll stop at nothing to come after you.”
Emily nods weakly in agreement. Her fate was sealed a long time ago.
“Can you tell the others --” she asks. The strain in her words reflects ailments that are not only physical, and her voice, usually so strong and true, does not sound like her own. It is the first moment of her disappearance.
“Can you tell them that I’m sorry?”
The look on Hotch’s face is all the answer she needs. His words are just a formality.
“We can’t tell the others anything.”
---
She restricts her movements to a set radius around her flat, including an area that is just wide enough to allow her some freedom while she gets her bearings. She buys her own groceries and builds up her strength by walking in a park nearby. On a good day, she even sits at one of the local cafés, sipping coffee as she browses the newspaper to keep up with current events.
She never lingers for long; always sits with her feet planted firmly on the ground, ready to run at the first sign of trouble. She spends every waking moment looking over her shoulder, wondering when it’s all going to catch up with her; her nights are equally restless as her dreams are plagued with even worse fears.
In sleep, Doyle doesn’t come after her; he wages war on the BAU instead. It makes no sense, of course, because she has always been Doyle’s target. But nightmares don’t have to make sense to tear her from sleep, still panting for breath.
Each time she is able to check in with JJ, relief washes over her in waves. She left them to keep them safe once before; she will never forgive herself if something happens to them now.
---
It takes a few weeks for her to heal enough to be able to fly, and in that time, she stays at a State Department safe house. It is lonely and isolated, but she has been lonely and isolated before. Here at least she has occasional visitors: the doctor comes twice to check her over, JJ comes as much as she can without arousing suspicion. Even her mother visits once, in an uncharacteristic display that almost resembles affection.
“We’ll find him,” JJ says late one night. “We’ll find him, and then it will be safe for you to come back. This isn’t forever.”
And then what? The question echoes in her head, sharp and insistent as it taunts her, but she lets her concern go unvoiced. Her friends have put enough on the line for her sake, and they’re the ones who have to live with the consequences.
When JJ leaves, she hands Emily a plane ticket and a new passport, the first of many.
“I’ll see you in Paris,” JJ says, and then she is gone. And Emily is alone again.
---
Sometimes she allows herself a few minutes to get lost in the anonymity of the crowds swarming the Parisian streets. They are loud and boisterous, and they remind her that she was once a part of that. As she dodges the families with crying children, the young couples in love, the students with their books, she wonders if she will ever be a part of it again.
Her new identity is second nature to her now; she slips into it easily and wears it as a second skin. But sometimes when she hears a stranger call out ‘Emilie’, she turns as though she is supposed to answer.
She walks around with this secret held close to her heart, that she once betrayed a father to save his son’s life. That she would do it again, no matter the consequences. It is almost enough to forget the empty grave and the tombstone with her name on it.
Still, as she climbs up the stairs to her flat, each lonely footstep reverberating off the faded brown walls, she thinks that there has to be something else out there because living like this is no life at all.
---
Months pass like this. Each day blurs into the next, a never ending cycle of hopelessness and futility, and she starts to remember time only as a marker of the things she’s missing. JJ relays what she can through code, tells Emily of the birthdays and dinners and holidays that pass without her, and the people who are changing while she sits still.
Then without warning, she gets the phone call and she comes back to life.
As she boards the plane to come home, there’s a spring in her step that’s been absent for months. And then what? she asks herself, remembering all the uncertainty of her departure.
She is still contemplating the answer while the plane descends over DC, but all her worries become irrelevant -- or at least inconsequential -- the moment the plane touches down on the runway.
She is home and she is alive, and there is still work to be done.
She allows herself one slow, wide smile before she sets out to finish what she started.