Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Then I.
She had taken up smoking again.
Her mother would be so disappointed.
Emily looked at the cigarette that rested between her fingers, raised it to her lips and inhaled the sweet smoke. Looking at the world seemed better through a haze of nicotine.
Emily knew that she should have stayed put in Paris, that she should have kept the brown file filled with the new identities that JJ had provided for her, but she couldn’t. Emily could not trust that the identities given to her weren’t known by anyone but JJ. Emily knew that the identities given to her by JJ could be tracked and as soon as Emily had gotten off that train, all she wanted to do was disappear. Besides, did JJ even have the correct contacts to get her what she needed? The ability to get what she wanted without alerting any and every one?
No.
Emily needed to get them for herself or have someone she trusted whole-heartedly to get them for her. It should’ve been Tsia that she went to, but Tsia was dead and so was Sean, so Emily went to Clyde and in return got a whole host of new ID’s and an excuse to not get rusty in the many languages that she knew. Emily could’ve gone to her father for help and hid, gone underground where nothing would be able to get to her but again that was not possible. Instead he reached out through Clyde and got her anything and everything that she needed – just like when she was younger.
Emily could not stay in Paris and remain sane; Emily could not sit in Paris like JJ and Hotch wanted and do nothing. Clyde had known that, and her father had known that.
Emily had to do something and that’s why Clyde had offered her an out – travel around Europe, be a covert operative again, dismantling Ian’s network, one country at a time. If she happened to get a little bloody from time to time, Emily knew that no one would care, she had the green light to do whatever she wanted.
Sometimes, Emily thinks that she is too far gone. That the ‘Emily Prentiss’ her BAU family knew and loved was gone; killed and buried under the resurgence of all her past aliases and the creation of her new. Not just Lauren Reynolds, Sasha Wagner, and Amelia Blackburn but Molly Hennings, Josie Pritchard and so many countless others.
Sometimes, Emily thinks that she is drowning. Like she is treading water in the middle of the ocean, holding a massive weight in her hands, struggling to keep her head above the waves.
Emily is good at a lot of things, but she is the best at two, compartmentalising and staying alive. Emily knew that she could get through this alive and she hoped that she could make sure that her family and Declan stay alive. Emily would do anything for them, especially Declan. That little boy had stolen her heart and even now he kept it within his grasp.
Emily would kill for him. Emily would go back to Ian for him.
If you knew the right places to go to, the right people to listen to and if you put your ear to the ground and stayed silent, there was a leak or a fountain of information that had sprung up. It was full of whispers and rumours. Apparently, Ian was back in Europe. Apparently, Ian was feeling nostalgic, he had gone home, he had gone back to Ireland, to the home they had once shared together. The whispers told her that he was looking for Lauren Reynolds, there were rumours that he was mad, that he had finally cracked, after 7 years locked in North Korea. Chasing after a phantom, a ghost.
Her father had told her to stay put in Cologne and continue shutting down his network and so had Clyde. But Emily did not think that she could, she had to see him and then she could go back to doing what she had to do. The need to look him in the eyes, confront him, was like an itch under her skin. She wanted to see his face as she appeared in his bedroom, she wanted to see the look in his eyes as she drove a stake through his stomach.
“Sorry dad,” Emily muttered, as she stubbed her cigarette out on the railing of the balcony where she stood. “Looks like Lauren isn’t a ghost after all.”
Obviously, Lauren would only be alive to Ian, she couldn’t assume that moniker anymore. Lauren Reynolds had been dead for 8 years now, but it still wasn’t time to put her to rest.
Maybe she could start dropping some hints, things she knew that only he would understand, to get him to understand that she was coming, that he wasn’t safe. Emily knew that she wasn’t ready to see Ian Doyle, but as always, Emily Prentiss does what she wants and what she wants to do.
Emily headed back inside her flat, grabbed her packed bags and left a note on the table for her father or Clyde or whoever would come looking for her, saying she would be in touch.
Emily grabbed a new passport.
“Cathy Green,” Emily breathed, “Time to get into character, I wonder who you will be?”
Emily tells herself that Cathy wont last long, she wondered how long it would take.