fic: sew my lips shut (Criminal Minds, JJ)
Title: sew my lips shut
Characters: JJ focus; JJ/Will, ensemble.
Rating: PG
Summary: She holds the truth on the back of her tongue.
Disclaimer: Not mine. I own nothing here.
Author's Note: 1, 126 words. Written for femgenficathon for the prompt: Wretch that I am, I can do everything I do not want, and that which I want most I cannot do. -- Clemence of Barking (late 1100s), Anglo-Norman nun, hagiographer and translator. Set in the time between the finale of Season Six and 7.01. Spoilers.
Secrets, secrets are no fun unless they’re shared with everyone.
This sing-song rhyme of children haunts her.
It’s what she sees when she looks in the mirror in the morning, eyeing the distasteful dark circles that will need to be covered up; she never gets enough sleep. It follows her during the day, like a shadow that creeps along at her heels, silent steps that she cannot shake. It’s with her when she eats, when she answers the phone, when she sits in on briefings at her new job with unfamiliar faces that she has no jokes or fond memories or feelings with. It stalks her to her house when she goes to bed at night after putting her son to bed and wrapping her arm around her husband.
It’s a hated thing, this nagging rhyme, and it refuses to leave, a most unwanted guest.
--
“She can’t stay here.”
Hotch’s face is tight, but his eyes are unfocused. He’s thinking, she can read that behind his shuttered expression, thinking what, thinking so many things that they flicker across his lids too fast for her to even guess at.
“Hotch,” she repeats, louder this time. They stand in the medical corridor, away from the team who are gathered in the waiting room. Hotch had left to keep track of the surgeons and what was going on. JJ had followed with the excuse of getting coffee for those who wanted it; such a cliche thing, to get coffee in a hospital at a time like this, but it does help, somewhat.
Now they are in the hallway. There’s a poster behind his head with cheerful faces and bright colors. She thinks about tearing it down.
His eyes snap to her face at the repetition of his name.
“She can’t stay here. Doyle escaped,” he flinches at that, a barely noticeable tick in his jaw but there still. “She has to go.”
He nods. “I’ll take care of it.”
JJ only remembers to get the coffee when she nearly walks back into the waiting room; but really it’s their faces that she doesn’t want to see, and so turns back around.
--
He calls her later.
“She knows.”
JJ stands in her kitchen, wired and unable to go asleep despite the silence of the rest of the house which means everyone else has gone to bed. She tries to imagine what Emily’s face had looked like when Hotch told her that to everyone else she’s dead now. The image refuses to form.
“Okay,” she says, swallows thickly.
They hang up.
--
JJ needs no reminder of what she has done.
When she’d held Spencer in the hospital, put on a mask of grief and sorrow to show the rest of the room, it’d cracked something deep inside her. Secrets and more secrets.
She knows exactly what she did seeing as she had been the one to do it. Lying to her colleagues, her friends, faking a funeral, the list continues. From the moment she had slid the heavy envelope over to Emily, watched her walk away into the Parisian night, she’d cemented the lie.
Her heart is broken, fissured and splintered with no way to put it back together. Well, with no way she can actually choose.
--
She sits in on a meeting weeks later. A headache is forming at her temples, her hair pulled back from her face too tight in the clip she’d secured it with this morning. She picks at her fingers, thumb digging into the skin around her ring finger’s nail. She stops. That reminds her too much of someone else.
There’s the sound of her name, and she looks up to see expectant faces staring at her. If she had been anyone else, a flush may have climbed up her face, but instead she shakes her head and smiles. “I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?”
They do.
JJ keeps her hands flat on the files in front of her. She doesn’t look at the place where she picked her skin away enough to make it bleed.
--
“What’s wrong?”
Will asks her this after dinner one night. They are in the kitchen, and she stands against the counter. From out the window, she can see the neighbor’s flood light come on. A squirrel or a raccoon or something else that moved in front of the garage maybe. She has tried very hard to keep this, what she’s going through, separate from home. Added stress that isn’t needed.
JJ shakes her head, thinks of an empty coffin weighed down to make it feel like a body inside. “I can’t.”
The less people who know the better, she can’t, and she doesn’t know if she could even share this, or if she even knows enough of what she’s feeling herself to be able to tell him.
Secrets, secrets, are no fun.
He, thankfully, doesn’t fight her answer. He does come closer, puts a hand on her shoulder, and then hugs her from behind, head pressed against her own. His hands are warm on her arms.
--
JJ wonders sometimes if she has the right to feel this way.
After all, she knows Emily is still alive, knows that what they’d buried in the ground was false, knows that she’s really somewhere in Europe safe at least from the one who wants her dead; safe from other things, she’s not sure, but hopes. It’s not the same as what the others must be going through. Hotch tells her, at least hints enough at what’s going on after he talks with them all individually, and selfishly she’s happy she’s not there. She wants her old life, but a part of her is happy she doesn’t have to look at them and deal with that too. That she can at least admit to herself.
She does though, look at their faces.
I belong here, she’d said, and meant it. The BAU is where she’s supposed to be, and no position, however nice or lofty, at State could ever change that. Rossi calls, she thinks it over, and really doesn’t need to think at all. It’s hard, the truth pressing against her clenched teeth, wanting to spill out of her mouth.
But at least now there’s only one missing spot instead of two.
--
“What’s this?”
Morgan and Garcia turn to look at her and show her what they have.
They’re talking, but JJ doesn’t hear all of it. Or she hears it, but she doesn’t completely focus on them. She must say something, must give some indication of what they should do because they leave the room.
She reaches out and touches the familiar face on the photograph.
She sighs, thinks, unless they’re shared with everyone.
Characters: JJ focus; JJ/Will, ensemble.
Rating: PG
Summary: She holds the truth on the back of her tongue.
Disclaimer: Not mine. I own nothing here.
Author's Note: 1, 126 words. Written for femgenficathon for the prompt: Wretch that I am, I can do everything I do not want, and that which I want most I cannot do. -- Clemence of Barking (late 1100s), Anglo-Norman nun, hagiographer and translator. Set in the time between the finale of Season Six and 7.01. Spoilers.
Secrets, secrets are no fun unless they’re shared with everyone.
This sing-song rhyme of children haunts her.
It’s what she sees when she looks in the mirror in the morning, eyeing the distasteful dark circles that will need to be covered up; she never gets enough sleep. It follows her during the day, like a shadow that creeps along at her heels, silent steps that she cannot shake. It’s with her when she eats, when she answers the phone, when she sits in on briefings at her new job with unfamiliar faces that she has no jokes or fond memories or feelings with. It stalks her to her house when she goes to bed at night after putting her son to bed and wrapping her arm around her husband.
It’s a hated thing, this nagging rhyme, and it refuses to leave, a most unwanted guest.
--
“She can’t stay here.”
Hotch’s face is tight, but his eyes are unfocused. He’s thinking, she can read that behind his shuttered expression, thinking what, thinking so many things that they flicker across his lids too fast for her to even guess at.
“Hotch,” she repeats, louder this time. They stand in the medical corridor, away from the team who are gathered in the waiting room. Hotch had left to keep track of the surgeons and what was going on. JJ had followed with the excuse of getting coffee for those who wanted it; such a cliche thing, to get coffee in a hospital at a time like this, but it does help, somewhat.
Now they are in the hallway. There’s a poster behind his head with cheerful faces and bright colors. She thinks about tearing it down.
His eyes snap to her face at the repetition of his name.
“She can’t stay here. Doyle escaped,” he flinches at that, a barely noticeable tick in his jaw but there still. “She has to go.”
He nods. “I’ll take care of it.”
JJ only remembers to get the coffee when she nearly walks back into the waiting room; but really it’s their faces that she doesn’t want to see, and so turns back around.
--
He calls her later.
“She knows.”
JJ stands in her kitchen, wired and unable to go asleep despite the silence of the rest of the house which means everyone else has gone to bed. She tries to imagine what Emily’s face had looked like when Hotch told her that to everyone else she’s dead now. The image refuses to form.
“Okay,” she says, swallows thickly.
They hang up.
--
JJ needs no reminder of what she has done.
When she’d held Spencer in the hospital, put on a mask of grief and sorrow to show the rest of the room, it’d cracked something deep inside her. Secrets and more secrets.
She knows exactly what she did seeing as she had been the one to do it. Lying to her colleagues, her friends, faking a funeral, the list continues. From the moment she had slid the heavy envelope over to Emily, watched her walk away into the Parisian night, she’d cemented the lie.
Her heart is broken, fissured and splintered with no way to put it back together. Well, with no way she can actually choose.
--
She sits in on a meeting weeks later. A headache is forming at her temples, her hair pulled back from her face too tight in the clip she’d secured it with this morning. She picks at her fingers, thumb digging into the skin around her ring finger’s nail. She stops. That reminds her too much of someone else.
There’s the sound of her name, and she looks up to see expectant faces staring at her. If she had been anyone else, a flush may have climbed up her face, but instead she shakes her head and smiles. “I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?”
They do.
JJ keeps her hands flat on the files in front of her. She doesn’t look at the place where she picked her skin away enough to make it bleed.
--
“What’s wrong?”
Will asks her this after dinner one night. They are in the kitchen, and she stands against the counter. From out the window, she can see the neighbor’s flood light come on. A squirrel or a raccoon or something else that moved in front of the garage maybe. She has tried very hard to keep this, what she’s going through, separate from home. Added stress that isn’t needed.
JJ shakes her head, thinks of an empty coffin weighed down to make it feel like a body inside. “I can’t.”
The less people who know the better, she can’t, and she doesn’t know if she could even share this, or if she even knows enough of what she’s feeling herself to be able to tell him.
Secrets, secrets, are no fun.
He, thankfully, doesn’t fight her answer. He does come closer, puts a hand on her shoulder, and then hugs her from behind, head pressed against her own. His hands are warm on her arms.
--
JJ wonders sometimes if she has the right to feel this way.
After all, she knows Emily is still alive, knows that what they’d buried in the ground was false, knows that she’s really somewhere in Europe safe at least from the one who wants her dead; safe from other things, she’s not sure, but hopes. It’s not the same as what the others must be going through. Hotch tells her, at least hints enough at what’s going on after he talks with them all individually, and selfishly she’s happy she’s not there. She wants her old life, but a part of her is happy she doesn’t have to look at them and deal with that too. That she can at least admit to herself.
She does though, look at their faces.
I belong here, she’d said, and meant it. The BAU is where she’s supposed to be, and no position, however nice or lofty, at State could ever change that. Rossi calls, she thinks it over, and really doesn’t need to think at all. It’s hard, the truth pressing against her clenched teeth, wanting to spill out of her mouth.
But at least now there’s only one missing spot instead of two.
--
“What’s this?”
Morgan and Garcia turn to look at her and show her what they have.
They’re talking, but JJ doesn’t hear all of it. Or she hears it, but she doesn’t completely focus on them. She must say something, must give some indication of what they should do because they leave the room.
She reaches out and touches the familiar face on the photograph.
She sighs, thinks, unless they’re shared with everyone.