Chapter Text
There is dust on the mirror. It makes sense, given the fact that it’s angled slightly up and dust would more easily settle on the surface that way.
She thinks having the mirror angled this way makes the fine white scar on the apple of her cheek less obvious. If she hadn’t picked at it, it would have healed like nothing ever broke the skin, like most facial wounds.
Skin picking was a bad habit that her cuticles and hangnails usually took the brunt of, though with the tight skin around the scabbed-over wound from when the butt of a gun collided with her cheekbone, she couldn’t help but peel away every scab that formed, and now there was a permanent mark left on her face.
She looks past the flecks of dust, eyes following the lines on the edges of the deep hollows under her eyes.
“My name is Emily Prentiss.” She says to herself- her reflection -gripping the edge of the sink in a hold so firm it blanches her knuckles white.
“Lauren Reynolds is dead .” She says in a hard, firm voice, leaning just a twitch closer to the dirty mirror.
“She is dead.” Emily insisted to herself, “Lauren is dead and I killed her.”
///
JJ hasn’t known Emily Prentiss for very long, but even after only a few months, she knows it’s entirely uncharacteristic of her to be so quiet. Emily is chatty, talking to Spencer and Gideon as if unaware of the fact that they don’t seem to like her at all.
They were mean to her, JJ would go as far as to say, and she can’t help but wonder if their offhand comments and general standoffishness is actually getting to her.
JJ observed Emily across the cabin of the jet, watching her worry at her fingernails, chewing them down to the quick and peeling hangnails back with her teeth until they came off and bled.
With a glance at the rest of her team to ensure that they weren’t watching, JJ went over to Prentiss.
When Emily doesn’t immediately acknowledge her presence, JJ knows something is up. She isn’t offended, it’s just that, if anyone even comes into the same room as Prentiss, she will always notice and look up from what she was doing to check who it is.
JJ is a little perturbed by the lack of reaction to her sitting right beside Emily, and though she tries to dismiss it as her mulling over the particularly gruelling case they are just coming back from, she came off a desk job, after all. Despite all that, in the months she’s been here, not a single one of the brutal murders, rapes or kidnappings has phased her in a manner such as this.
“Prentiss…?” JJ taps her lightly on the elbow.
The second her fingertips make contact, Emily flinches, a wild, panicked look flashes in her eyes before she forces it away, playing it off with a scarily convincing smile and a: “God, you scared me, JJ!”
If it wasn’t for what she’s been noticing about Emily’s behaviour for the past few days, JJ would have believed that she was actually perfectly okay.
“Sorry, I just wanted to ask you… are you doing alright?”
Emily looks somewhere between confused and unsettled, that little furrow between her eyebrows makes JJ want to reach out and smooth it over with her thumb.
“I’m fine.” She replies quickly, like she’s uttered those two little words so many times that it’s become a reflex, “…why do you ask?” Emily says slowly, the furrow between her brows deepening ever so slightly, her face displaying an emotion that the English language doesn’t have the words to describe.
JJ swallowed nervously, and if Emily noticed, she didn’t show it.
“I don’t know,” JJ replied, “you just seem… quiet .”
“I’m just thinking, Jayj.” Emily says, pulling at a hangnail that fills the groove between her nail and the skin on the side with blood when it rips free.
JJ quickly, gently pulls her hands apart to stop her skin-picking, “talk to me, please, Emily.”
JJ doesn’t miss the glance Prentiss spares the other members of the team, “I can’t.”
“Why not?” JJ asks, squeezing Emily’s hands to keep her grounded, “is it because of them?” She drops her voice lower than it already was, giving a small not towards the rest of their team.
“No.”
“Why not then?”
Emily stands, removing herself from JJ’s side.
“I don’t know you, Jennifer.”
///
JJ tucks pieces of dark hair behind Emily’s ear.
“…I’m happy you’re back.” She climbs into the bed next to Emily, careful not to disturb Sergio, who gives a quiet mrrp to display his brief discontent at being jostled, though he doesn’t move more than flicking his tail.
Although still curled up into a loose ball, Emily cups JJ’s hand in her own. JJ is careful not to touch her raw and picked-at fingernails as she gives her hands a comforting squeeze.
“I’m happy I’m back too, Jayj.” Emily traces around JJ’s knuckles with her thumb distractedly as she speaks, “I missed you.” She adds shyly.
“Me too- so much .” JJ squeezes her hand again.
“…are you still having trouble eating?” JJ asks, acting casual and stroking Sergio’s silky black fur as he padded up, meowing for pets.
Emily pauses for a few moments, scratching the cat behind his ears before answering: “Yeah, I can deal with it, though.”
When Doyle stabbed her, he’d perforated her stomach, and the doctors had to cut out a lot of it in surgery for it to be salvageable, and she’d had trouble eating ever since. Whenever she ate she would have trouble keeping it down, and when she could, she’d have bad stomach pain.
“Have you eaten today ?”
Emily nods, “this afternoon.” She replied, scratching Sergio’s jaw distractedly, not looking at Jennifer, hoping she wouldn’t catch her in her lie.
///
JJ had left hardly an hour ago, and already Emily is staring at herself in the mirror, chanting the same mantra to herself over and over.
“My name is Emily Prentiss.” She says slowly, though it feels more like she is speaking to her reflection than speaking to herself, and for some reason, she and the person in the mirror feel like two different entities.
Her fingers pull at the ends of her hair as she continues her mantra, “Lauren Reynolds is dead- she is dead .”
“Lauren is dead and I killed her.”
Through her tear-hazy vision, Emily can only blindly clutch at the edges of the sink as she begins to repeat herself, “my name is Emily Prentiss.” the tremor in her voice far beyond her control now, “ I am Emily Prentiss.” it felt like she was becoming someone she wasn’t again, taking on an alias, a story and a name that didn’t belong to her. But she wasn’t Lauren Reynolds or Beatrice Angelopoulos or Ava Babineux or any of the other countless identities she has been, she is Emily Prentiss, even if she feels as if she’s been too many people- has lied and deceived far too long to still be Emily Prentiss.