Chapter Text
She’s sitting in front of the mirror when her phone rings, and she watches her eyes go wide in slow motion, lets the eyeliner pencil drop from her hand as she reaches for it. This phone has never made a sound before. It’s the phone she keeps on her at all times but never looks at – an international cell only three people have the number for. Either they have Doyle, or something is wrong with Declan. Or it’s a trap. She answers without speaking.
“I’m sorry to call,” Tom says, and she knows it isn’t a dream, because she dreams in French. “You know I wouldn’t be doing this unless it was absolutely necessary.”
She’s already pulling on boots one-handed. “Talk to me,” she says.
“It’s Declan,” Tom says immediately, his voice efficient and clipped but unmistakably rattled. “He called me, terrified, saying there were people in the house and he heard gunshots, and then the call cut out and his phone is going straight to voicemail. I can’t get through to Louise, or the landline. I’m on my way to the airport right now, but I’m about thirty hours’ travel from home.”
A pit opens in her stomach; her vision swims. “I’m closer,” she says. “I’m on my way.”
“Thank you.” She hears him swallow thickly. “Tell me we’ll find him.”
“We’ll find him,” she says. She grabs her ready bag from under her bed, unlocks her safe, slips her French passport into her pocket and tucks everything else into the bag. “Get home safe.”
“You too.”
She spends a minute straightening out the apartment, calling Hotch as she does, cradling the phone between her ear and her shoulder as she gathers everything perishable into a trash bag.
“Hotchner,” he answers, and she feels a moment of relief at the familiarity, gone as soon as it came.
“Someone has Declan,” she says. “I’m on my way.”
There’s the briefest hesitation, like he’s considering telling her to stay put.
“Do not fly commercial,” he says instead. “Tell me your nearest small airport and I’ll have a jet waiting.”
“Le Bourget,” she replies, throwing a last glance around the apartment. Everything is exactly as it would be if she was expecting to be back in an hour. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever see the place again. “Just outside Paris. I’m just over an hour out.”
“Okay. Start heading that way and I’ll call you back in fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you. Are you looking for him?”
“We’re looking,” he confirms. There’s a pause. “Be safe.”
She takes a breath, shrugs the tension out of her shoulders and steps out of the apartment calmly, placing the trash bag down at her feet to lock the door. She exchanges smiles with the old man from the apartment down the hall, walking down the corridor toward her with his little dog yapping at his ankles.
“Bien sûr,” she replies. “À bientôt.”
Emily has landed in DC so many times in her life, and experienced more or less the full range of possible emotions about it – DC has always been home, and home has always been complicated for her. This time when the tyres hit the runway, it’s a corrosive combination of anxiety, guilt and steely determination. She calls Hotch from the taxi and hears the same in his voice, and she knows before she walks into the conference room that it’s going to be horrible.
The betrayal in Morgan and Reid’s faces is devastating. She hugs them like they’re fragile, although they’re rock solid against her, and she feels like spun glass. Penelope looks at her like she’s a ghost, holds onto her with both hands in case she slips away again. Emily asks for an update and tries not to hear how wounded Morgan’s voice sounds every time he speaks, because it’s creating jagged edges in her lungs that make it hurt to breathe, and there’s no room for anything right now except for Declan.
She’s on her way to the interrogation room with the pictures when Hotch falls into step beside her. “Are you sure you want to go in there?” he says.
“Yes,” she replies, without any hesitation. She can hear the objection coming, and gets ahead of it. “This case has been about avenging a death they’ve just found out never happened,” she says. “I’ve changed everyone’s energy, and he will notice. If he finds out I’m alive any way other than me walking into that room. . .” Her jaw clenches tight and she forces it to relax, shaking her head a little. It’s about control, in a way she can’t articulate, and hopes she won’t have to, because this is Hotch. “This way he finds out on my terms.”
“Okay,” Hotch says, and the show of faith in her judgment sends a tiny wave of relief washing over her. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No.” They reach the door of the interrogation room, and she turns to him, drops her voice low. “He knows now there’s nothing I won’t do to protect Declan. He’ll want to help me. As soon as I get a name, go back to the team and start working it, and I’ll find out everything I can from Doyle – I’ve got this, I promise.”
He looks at her for a long moment, eyes scanning her face with intense concentration, like he’s looking for a crack in a windshield. “Alright,” he agrees, when he’s concluded she’s not on the verge of shattering; she gives him a tiny smile, squeezes his elbow, then steps through the door and locks eyes with Ian Doyle.
For a second, she’s right back there – his eyes are on hers and there’s blinding pain and impossible pressure deep inside her body, white hot for just the first moments before it starts to dull. She can’t breathe, she tastes blood, and she is falling, fading, and absolutely certain she’s dying.
She squeezes the door handle hard, pushes a breath out of her too-full lungs as she closes the door behind her. A chill runs up her spine, but she holds the eye contact without too much effort – muscle memory, because his eyes have always been magnetic, and the expression in them is a lot like admiration. He’s looking at her as if she’s indestructible. As if she’s Lauren.
She keeps her eyes on him as they talk, concentrating on every word – determined, this time, to just be a profiler. But she knows she’s slipping up – it doesn’t say anything good about either of them that she’s trying to explain the impact of psychological torture to a psychopath, and his pupils are dilating as she does.
She gets up to leave with his list, and he leans forward slightly. “Wait.”
“I need to get this to my team.”
“When you’ve done what you’re doing with that list, come back,” he says, his voice low and commanding. “I have something I want to ask you.”
She looks him over – cuffed and chained and giving orders – and leaves without giving him an answer. She gives herself two seconds on the other side of the door to take a breath and push it all back, then she squares her shoulders and goes back to the conference room.
The rest of the team go to the warehouse in Baltimore and she and Reid stay behind, and he can’t look at her. He stares straight forward, hands stuffed in his pockets, his expression one of intense concentration. She knows how hard change is for him, and how hard this change in particular must be – accepting a friend is dead is one thing; accepting that a dead friend is now alive is on a different scale altogether. So she thinks she gets it, as much as she can, but it stings, feeling the confusion coming off him in waves and knowing he’s masking it. She used to be the one he didn’t hide from.
It’s almost easier to step back into the interrogation room with Doyle. He nods at the chair opposite him, inviting her to sit as if she’s coming into his office to talk business – it’s a grab for control, and she resists reacting to it.
“We have a few minutes,” she says as she sits, folding her hands in front of her on the table, her poker face extending into her voice. “You wanted to talk?”
“If it had been you,” he says immediately, “what would you have done?”
“If what had been me?”
“If you were pregnant,” he says, and she feels her spine stiffen involuntarily, “with my baby. Would you have killed him?”
“It wasn’t about killing him, Ian,” she says. “He was her choice to make.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She allows herself a moment to consider it, his eyes burning into hers. She thinks of the Catholic teenager she can hardly remember being, the choice she always assumed would be a no-brainer, until it wasn’t. She was old enough and had more than enough resources by the time she met Ian to take care of a baby, and she already wanted to be a mother someday. But she still felt like she had all the time in the world for that, and she knew him too – she knew what he would do to hold onto what he thought of as his. She knows exactly what the smart course of action would have been, and she’s almost positive she would’ve taken it. “I don’t know,” she says honestly. “I think I know, but nobody really does, until it happens.”
“You loved Declan,” he says, and it’s not a question, so she doesn’t answer, doesn’t even correct the tense. “He could’ve been ours. Don’t you ever think about –?”
“He’s not a thing, Ian,” she says, a spark of impatience flaring in her chest. “He’s a little boy who deserves to be safe, and free. He doesn’t belong to anybody but himself.”
“It’s a shame,” he says, and there’s honest regret in his voice. “You would’ve been a great mother.”
“You mean Lauren,” she replies, keeping her voice light even as her heart rate doubles and her stomach lurches, her entire body suddenly screaming at her to get out of there.
He smiles, a quiet little smirk with sparkling eyes as if they’re sharing a secret. He leans forward, drops his voice lower. “Not that different, from what I can see.”
She taps the table once as she gets calmly to her feet, feeling her heart in her throat. “Goodbye, Ian.”
She’s almost made it to the door when he stops her. “Emily.”
She turns, her name jarring in her ears after seven months as someone else, doubly unfamiliar in his voice. “Yeah.”
“Find him.”
“We will.”
Back on the other side of the door, she stands beside Reid, and he doesn’t react to her presence at all – he’s staring at Doyle through the glass, frowning. She bites down on her trembling lip, folds her arms across her chest and follows his gaze, watching Ian staring down at his clasped hands. She wonders if he’s praying. She’s painfully aware of every breath, every heartbeat; adrenaline races through her veins, and she holds her body completely still, stuck in fight or flight with nowhere to go. “Anything from the team?” she asks, surprised to find her voice still sounds solid and confident when she feels anything but.
“Nothing yet,” he says, without looking in her direction.
She blinks away tears, forces her burning lungs to take a slow breath, in and out. She’s just starting to think she’s going to have to shut herself in a cubicle somewhere and let herself fall apart when Reid’s phone rings, and falling apart isn’t an option anymore.
Ian Doyle dies, and Emily wraps her arms tight around Declan. She looks around at the flashing lights and the bodies on the ground, at the team’s faces, and Ian’s blood on Declan’s fingertips, and it’s a huge, overwhelming mess. There’ll be suspensions at minimum, and a hearing – it’ll be a miracle if she hasn’t lost somebody their job, maybe all of them. But her arms are around Declan, who is alive and safe by the narrowest margin, and right now he has nobody else.
The team start filtering away, ready to get some sleep before facing the consequences in the morning, until there’s only Hotch left. He drives them back to Quantico and signs them in as visitors, lets her collect her bag from the conference room. He offers Declan his own wash bag and shows him to the locker room, and then he and Emily wait outside while Declan showers.
“When does Tom land?” Hotch asks.
“Should be early tomorrow afternoon,” she replies. “I’m keeping Declan until he gets here.”
“Do you have someplace to stay?”
She hesitates. Declan’s home is a crime scene. Emily doesn’t have a home. She knows her mother is away at a conference all week – keeping tabs on her was one less-than-smart move she allowed herself in Paris. She’s sure if she went to her mother’s home she’d find the same housekeeper from fifteen years ago and she would let her in, no questions asked, but she doesn’t know if she’s willing to risk her mother finding out she’s alive from one of the staff, and she doesn’t feel anywhere near ready to call her.
“Jack and Jessica are away for the weekend,” Hotch says. “If you need somewhere to stay tonight, Jack’s room and the sofa are both free.”
“I’ll get us a suite at a hotel,” she says, deciding as she says it. “It’s the closest thing I can give him to some privacy.” She shoots him a little smile. “Thank you, though. I appreciate it.”
He nods. “If you’re sure.”
She’s not sure of anything, and it’s a deeply uncomfortable feeling. She feels absolutely unmoored. The cash from her safe is now in her bag, in three currencies – much more cash than it’s smart to carry around, but she doesn’t have a lot of choice on that front, until she figures out exactly what JJ meant on the jet all those months ago when she said she had dealt with her bank accounts. She doesn’t have a car, can’t hire one because she also doesn’t have her license. Does she even exist, legally? She starts chewing her ragged cuticles, coming up with more stressful logistical issues by the second. She knows getting her home was always the goal, but she never allowed herself to think about it beyond the abstract. And god, what a mess.
“Emily,” Hotch says, so gently she knows her spiral must be showing all over her face. “We’ll figure everything out. Just get through tonight. Get some rest, and then we’ll tackle everything else.”
She blows out a breath and nods, wrapping her arms tightly around herself, staring at the locker room door.
“When Declan’s back with Tom,” he says, “call me, and we’ll talk about what comes next. I’ll talk to JJ – she handled a lot of the logistics, and she made sure nothing was done that couldn’t be undone. You don’t need to do all of this by yourself.” He catches her eye with the tiniest hint of a smile and adds, “I’m expecting to be suspended by ten a.m., so I should be free all afternoon.”
“Hotch. . .” she begins, guilt gnawing through her stomach to her chest, crawling up her throat.
He shakes his head. “You and Declan are safe, and nothing else matters. I’m prepared to justify every action we took.”
“Thank you,” she says softly. She turns to meet his eyes, trying to make him understand that she means thank you for all of it. For putting so much on the line to keep her safe, knowing the pain it was going to cause. For visiting her in the hospital every moment he could, sitting in the quiet with her when neither of them knew what to say. For never asking her what the hell she was thinking going after Doyle alone with flashbang grenades and automatic weapons while the team tried to build a profile she already knew by heart.
“It’s alright,” he says. “Just let me drive you to the hotel, and promise me you’ll call tomorrow.”
Something squeezes tight in her chest when she realises he’s honestly worried this will be the last he sees of her. Tighter, when she realises it’s something she could do – she could run. She has a bag full of cash and two other identities that are still clean. Her heart races briefly with the possibility. It would be so easy compared to this mess.
“Emily,” he says. “Promise me.”
The fact that he still values a promise from her at all is what does it. After everything he now knows she’s capable of, he still trusts her enough to want to hear those words. It makes her feel strong and brave and whole for a second – it makes her feel like Emily Prentiss is alive, and someone worth being.
Her eyes find his and she smiles weakly. “I promise,” she says.
She dips into the bag of cash for a pizza and a two bedroom suite in a nice hotel. When they’ve eaten, she clears away the empty pizza box, grabs two bottles of water from the fridge and comes back to sit beside Declan on the sofa. “It’s late,” she says. “Are you ready to sleep?”
He shakes his head.
“Me neither,” she admits, and passes him a bottle of water, which he accepts with a quiet thanks. “You want to watch TV?”
“Sure.”
She hands him the remote and he flips through channels until he lands on a rerun of Will & Grace, something she knows Tom watches, and turns the volume up just loud enough to hear, quiet enough to comfortably talk over. They watch for a few minutes, then he turns to face her. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” she says. “Anything.”
His answer is immediate; he’s been working up the courage to ask. “Was that woman really my mom?”
“Yes,” Emily says – she was expecting this. “Her name was Chloe Donaghy. I don’t know very much about her, but if you have any questions, you know I’ll do my best to answer.”
He pulls his legs up in front of him, wrapping his arms around them, and stares straight past her for a moment. “And the man in the handcuffs,” he says. “That was my real dad. Ian.”
“Yeah,” she says softly.
“Louise is dead too,” he says, almost a whisper.
“She is,” she says, her heart breaking for him, her stomach rolling with guilt. Declan was never supposed to see people die. And Louise deserved the world for all the love she gave him, and instead she wound up dead in a closet. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. She loved you so much.”
He’s quiet again, big blue eyes staring across the room as he thinks. He’s been like this for as long as she’s known him – smart, thoughtful, endlessly kind, with a lot of empathy and a lot of questions. It always seemed like a miracle that a kid like that could come from Ian; the effect is doubled now that she knows who his mother was.
“My mom didn’t love me,” he says. “I know some people can’t feel love.” Before that fully sinks in, his eyes meet hers and he says curiously, “Do you think my dad did?”
She chews her lip for a second, thinking about it. She’s always answered Declan’s questions honestly – he never asks anything he can’t handle a carefully calibrated answer to – but it never gets easier. “I think he did,” she says. “But his brain doesn’t work like yours and mine – he feels love, but he doesn’t feel it the same way we do.”
“Didn’t,” Declan corrects.
She winces. “Right. I’m sorry. Didn’t.”
“It’s okay,” he says, giving her a little smile. “Just being pedantic.”
She smiles back and reaches for his hand, and he shuffles closer to let her take it. For the first time, she notices a red welt on his wrist from a zip tie, and a surge of hot anger races through her. She lets it pass because it’s no use to her right now, focusing on his hand – soft and small, still a kid’s hand. His eyes are heavy; he buries a yawn in his knees before looking back up at her.
“I can’t imagine how you’re feeling,” she says softly.
“It’s complicated,” he agrees, sounding a hundred years old. She runs her thumb over the back of his hand and his eyes find hers. “They told me you were dead,” he says. “Not Lauren, I mean – Emily.”
She sighs deeply. “That’s complicated too,” she says.
He keeps looking at her, waiting for an explanation, and she gives his hand a reassuring squeeze as she tries to measure out how much to tell him. Tom and Louise always trusted Emily’s judgment when it came to answering Declan’s questions, and they’ve discussed this a few times over the years – how much they want to protect him from Ian’s world, how inevitable it is that he’ll need to know some of it. And now he’s been dragged back into it, the line has moved again.
“Ian and I had a fight,” she says eventually, “and he got away before my team could catch him. He hurt me badly enough that he thought he had killed me – I was really lucky he didn’t. So we had to let him keep thinking it until my team could find him. Everyone had to think it. Only three people knew I was alive, and only one of them knew which country I was in.”
“Wow,” he breathes. He moves to sit right beside her, leans his head on her shoulder, and she holds his hand in both of hers.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I know this is a lot to take in. I never wanted you to have to know about any of this stuff.”
“I feel like I should say I’m sorry,” he says. “For him hurting you. Is that weird?”
“No, honey,” she replies, a swell of love for him making her voice soft and sad. “It’s okay to feel however you feel, it’s not weird. But you’re not responsible for any of this.”
“Were you scared?” he asks.
It catches her completely off guard, the devastating simplicity of it knocking the air out of her lungs, and before she can catch herself, there are tears prickling in her eyes, aching in her throat. She nods and pushes out an mmhmm, not trusting her voice.
“Were you fighting about me?”
“Kind of,” she says, and her breath catches a little on the next inhale. She clears her throat, pushing past the emotion. “He thought the people who captured him had killed you – do you remember –?”
“The photos,” he says immediately. “With the gun. I remember.”
“He came here to find me,” she says, “to punish me for letting that happen to you.”
He’s quiet for a long time, and she worries for a minute that she’s said too much, told him something he didn’t want to know. “Hey,” she says softly. “How are we doing? Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he says thoughtfully. “I was just wondering. . . How did he feel love? You said he didn’t feel it like you and me, but I don’t know. . .” He sits up straight and looks at her, frowning. “I don’t know how else to feel it, you know?”
“It’s. . . it’s not easy to understand,” she says, hesitant. “For anyone. Trying to understand is part of my job, and it’s still hard for me. . . I don’t think I know a good way to explain it.”
“Can you try?”
She takes a breath and releases it slowly, uncomfortably close to a line she’s not willing to take him over. She touches the raised outline of the brand through her shirt, thinking about ownership. Thinking about how the love Ian had for Declan had burned so brightly it had taken her breath away, and how she had known immediately she had to get him as far out of reach of the consequences of it as possible. “It’s more like the way people love things,” she says carefully. “Not the way we love people. Does that make sense?”
“Kind of,” he replies, and leans against her again. “Your job sounds hard.”
She laughs, caught off guard by the understatement. “Yeah,” she says, resting her head against his. “Yeah, it is. But it’s worth it. And I was a terrible waitress.”