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She uses the bathroom three times that night.

 

*** ***

The first time happens just after they land at the airport in Pennsylvania around two in the morning.  The plane had run up against a massive storm and the pilots had decided better safe than sorry. They tell them that they’re likely to be grounded until mid morning.

While Hotch is dealing with finding them rooms for the night, she sneaks off and makes her way into the bathroom.

It’s small, cool and empty.  The last one being the most important one.

She looks up into the mirror, sees her reflection. She touches her cheeks. Pale, a bit ashy. Absent the bright red stuff that had been there just hours earlier.

It’s not the blood that bothers her. Hell, no. She’s seen blood thousands of times over and is pretty much immune to the impact of it. Sometimes – though rarely – if the crime scene is gruesome enough, she’ll feel a wave of disgust go through her. That’s really the worst of it.

This though, this was on her. She tasted it.

 She thinks about life and death often. How can she not in her job? She wonders if she’ll die in this job. She wonders if she can live through it. She knows she can’t walk away from it.

 Will asked her to. They’ve fought…no, to be fair, argued, about it several times. He’s smart enough to know she’s not going to do anything she doesn’t want to do and that includes leaving her team.

He’s tried the guilt trip a time or two. What about Henry? Do you really want him to grow up without a mother?

She left both of those fights by walking out of the room.

She doesn’t always fight – or play –  completely fair, but she always does so with honor and she feels that going for cheap emotion and sentimentality is cheating.

That she loves her son is indisputable. That she would do anything for him is likewise. But there’s a third member to this trinity and that’s the inability to pretend that there aren’t monsters in the world.

She loves her son, but she can’t walk away because she’ll know that they’re out there and she’s doing nothing to stop them.

She has tried to explain this to Will. He should understand being a former cop and all. He doesn’t. Something has changed in him. 

Maybe he’s figured out how to play make believe. 

She looks at the mirror again. She thinks she can still see a faint trace of the blood remaining. She knows that’s absurd, but can’t stop herself from lifting a finger to her cheek and rubbing at it.

She inhales sharply, exhales slowly.  

“Jayj?”

She turns, sees Emily standing in the doorway.

“You keep finding me in front of mirrors,” the blond says with a slight wry smile.

Emily lifts an eyebrow and maybe there’s something that came quickly to her mind that she wants to say, but somehow, she stops herself. Instead, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. What are we doing?”

“Hotch got us…” she stops and smirks. “Well…I guess you could call them rooms. At the Motel 6 down the street.” There's just the slightest tinge of old bred-in distaste in her tone.

If you had asked her an hour ago if she would have been okay with sleeping in a motel room tonight, she would have been vehemently against it. Now, however, it sounds like the greatest thing in the world.

 She forces a smile. She’ll do that three times tonight as well. “Shall we?”

Emily nods and gestures as if to say “after you”.

 

*** ***

The second trip to the bathroom happens right after they unlock the door to their motel room. Hotch had managed two rooms which means the guys are sharing and so are the ladies.

Things have been good lately. They’ve only had to bunk up every now and again, but almost never three to a room. And certainly never a dinky forty-dollar a night room with only one bed in it. Unfortunately, theirs wasn’t the only plane grounded (just the last one) and almost everything else close was booked or unreasonably priced.

On a night when they weren’t so damned exhausted, perhaps a joke or two to the guys about who’s getting the bed and who’s getting the floor would be warranted. Not on this evening, however. This evening, all anyone cares about is sleep.

And so when she disappears into the bathroom with her go bag, she just assumes that her blonde friend is changing into her sleeping clothes.

She hears the sink turn on. She doesn’t think much of it until she realizes that JJ has been in there for ten minutes and the water is still running.

“”JJ?”

No reply.

“JJ?” Again, louder.

Quietly, “Hang on.”

She stares at the door. She’s not surprised by this. Not at all. You prepare yourself for a lot when you strap on a gun and badge. You know you’ll see the worst that humanity has to offer and only very rarely the best.

You become jaded. You expect even the good ones to turn out to be bad guys. This cynicism protects you. It helps you anticipate the turns of a standard investigation. Thanks to it, you’re almost never surprised.

And yet when you are – when a murderous Judge has himself gunned down in a crowd full of people – you’re shocked just about stupid. 

It’s in times like this where she remembers their conversation in the bathroom of Tobias Hankel’s house.

“How come none of this gets to you?”

It does. Oh, it really does.

She just hides it better. Behind a host of sins and vices at times, but mostly behind the feeling that if she lets it dig too deep, she’ll need to stop doing this. She’ll need to walk away. And if she does, if she lets those horrible thoughts and feelings win, then the bad guys do.

She won’t allow that.

The door opens and JJ exits. She’s in flannel bottoms and a female wife-beater. Her face looks freshly scrubbed. Perhaps too much so.

She smiles. “Sorry, I guess I lost track of time.” 

“Jayj, if you want to –“

“I don’t,” the blond interrupts hastily. She’s not at all surprised. JJ is a tremendous speaker, but she very rarely talks.  “I just want to sleep.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” And then JJ forces her second smile. This one is weaker, faltering at the edges. Maybe it’s exhaustion. It’s probably more.

She decides to let it go, let JJ have this moment of self-control.

“I’m going to get changed,” she tells her.

JJ nods and turns to get into the bed. She pulls back the blankets and then over her shoulder says, “Mind if I take the left side?”

“Knock yourself out,” she replies, watching for a moment as JJ climbs into the left side of the bed and pulls the blankets over her. It’s only then that she realizes that the left side is the one further from the motel room door.

 

*** ***

The third time she gets up to go into the bathroom is around four in the morning. A couple of hours have passed since she put her head down against the too fat pillow and not even five seconds of sleep have been achieved.

She can feel it on her.

The blood.

Him.

He’s all over her.

She makes her way into the bathroom and shuts the door. She thinks to lock it, but her hands are suddenly shaking and she can’t seem to turn the damned little tab on the doorknob.

She backs away from the door and stumbles over to the shower. She can feel the tears on her cheek and hates herself for this.

She can’t do this. She simply can’t.

Because they aren’t.

And if they aren’t, she shouldn’t be.

And yet she finds herself inside the tub, clothes still on, her hands fumbling to turn on the water. It takes her a minute because the handle is complicated and counterintuitive. The work idiotic is actually more apt.

The water starts out icy cold and the quickly goes scalding hot. She doesn’t feel the temperature. She falls forward and presses her hands to the wall. Her chin hits her chest and she begins to sob.

It hurts.

She feels her body shaking. Quaking. Vibrating.

She can’t remember the last time she cried like this.

And really, it wasn’t all that much. She wasn’t hurt. Not at all. Just scared a little. 

Like the dogs.

Those had only been a mild bite. Uncomfortable, but not really painful. She hadn’t even taken any painkillers for it.

And yet those fucking dogs had scared the living shit out of her.

Made her seen shadows everywhere.

Death.

Maybe Will was right. Maybe it was selfish to stay in a job that could easily end in Henry without a mother. What did her own self-righteous need to play cops and robbers really matter?

She thinks maybe she can have the letter drawn up in two minutes.

Dear Hotch, I’m out. Take care. Love JJ.

Or something equally short and to the point.

He’ll understand.

He’s been thinking about doing the same thing ever since his run-in with the Reaper. Ever since the Reaper almost made Jack grow up without a father.

And yet he’s still around. Still unable to walk away. She figures he’s having the same fight with himself that she’s having with herself. But she knows him; he’ll never be able to give it up. He can’t. And he knows it. He’s accepted it.

But maybe she hasn’t. Maybe she can walk away. If she can just stop crying. Just stop…

She’s about to fall to the ground when she feels something around her.

Arms?

No, that doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t.  It does….

“Shh,” she hears. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.” She knows the voice.

Emily. 

What? How…

The confusion is overwhelming.

Everything is right now.

She feels herself being pulled tight against Emily. She doesn’t know if they’re still in the shower.

“Em?” she whispers.

“Yeah, Jajy, I’m here,” comes the soft reply, close to hear.

Her face cracks and it’s kind of like her third smile of the night, but it’s more of a pained grimace. The tears are still coming and another sob breaks loose before she can stop it.

“Shh,” Emily says again. “I’m going to get you out of here, okay?”

Here? Where’s here?

She turns, trying to gain her bearings and suddenly she and Emily are in the same space.

There’s the briefest moment of confusion and then everything happens quickly after that.

Hands. Mouths. Clothing. Walls. Bed.

Or some assortment of that.

It’s nothing like anything she’s ever done before. It’s madness. It’s incredible.

She shatters and rebuilds repeatedly. She doesn’t bother to stop the emotions surging through her.

She hears, “I’ve got you” over and over and over.

It’s what she holds on to. It’s all she holds onto.

 

***

She wakes up to find herself alone in the bed. She’s not surprised. She is wondering what the hell came over her.

She knows better. 

She feels a lot of things. Mostly excitement mixed with guilt.

She gets up, heads into the bathroom and showers quickly. It’s not nearly as exciting this time around.

She notices that there are no clothes lying about. They’ve all been picked up and packed away.

Like nothing happened.

Well maybe nothing did?

She turns and looks at the bed. Sees how wrecked it is.

She can’t stop a small smile forming. She wipes it away quickly, grabs the bags and leaves the room.

She finds the others sitting around a table in a small coffee shop. It’s full of weary looking travelers who had been forced into the same arrangement.

 “Morning,” she says right after she takes a healthy swig from her cup of coffee. She’s greeted by the same from everyone including JJ. She notices the bags under the blonde’s eyes. Unable to quite stop herself, she cracks, “Looks like we all had a long night.”

Morgan rises to the bait. “Oh yeah, what were you guys doing?”

“You first?” she shoots back.

Neither Hotch, Rossi nor JJ look all that amused with this line of exhausted humor.

Before Morgan can reply and dig them both in deeper, Hotch’s phone rings. He answers it, turning away from the group. They hear him say his name and then a quick, “Got it, thanks.” When he turns back to the others, he says, “Ready to go in an hour.”

“Thank God,” JJ murmurs.

“Tell me about it,” Rossi says, “They both snore.”

There’s expected laughter and then silence as they all sip from their coffee cups.  She lets her eyes stray over to the blonde, hoping to whatever God is listening that whatever happened last night didn’t ruin one of the best friendships that she’s ever had.

But then JJ smiles at her.

Tired, but fully. Seeming almost like herself again.

She lets out a sharp breath that she didn’t know she was holding.

She has no idea what it means, but decides that it can’t mean anything bad. And if it means something good, if whatever the hell that was actually helped, actually clotted JJ’s wound, well then she’s perfectly all right with that.

Because it means JJ isn’t going anywhere.

She glances over at Hotch, watches him take a piece of the newspaper from Morgan. He’s not going anywhere either.

This is in them. In all of them.

The bad guys will always be out there and they know it. They’ll always know it. They can fool themselves every now and again, pretend that it will be okay if someone else does the haunting, but they know the truth.

Sometimes it just takes a little blood and water to get there.

-FIN