Title: Angels. (Night Minds challenge.)
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Pairing: JJ/Emily
Rating: 15/M ish, I think
Disclaimer: I do not own anything. No copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: isleobubba’s challenge, to Missy Higgins’ song Night Minds on the LJ CMfemslash community. I couldn’t help myself, apparently. It’s a bit angsty though.
Thank You – To my beta reader sofialindsay for reading and encouraging, as she does.

Not that she would have accepted the title, but Jennifer Jareau had been a hero within that moment. She had carried the boy out of his nightmare. She had made it look as though he were weightless. He had clung to her, arms wrapped around her neck with his little disheveled face buried within her shoulder. His savior. She had emerged from that house of horrors, where so many children had met their untimely demise before him. Innocence stolen, their sweet and gentle light extinguished. Her voice and her voice alone had been what he had responded to, her gentle touches as she had removed his restraints he hadn’t flinched at, and he had let her pick him up out of the small wooden box he had been kept in. His angel.

Just lay it all down. Put your face into my neck and let it fall out.
I know
I know
I know.

Not only his angel, but theirs. Tortured parents that had been pushed to their wits end, desperate and hysterical by the loss of their son. She had promised them, even though she shouldn’t have, that she would return him to them. She had promised them that she would not rest until she found their little boy alive, so she could bring him back to them, their world.

Jennifer had been too close. For whatever reason, she had let herself become too involved. It had been her downfall.

I knew before you got home.
This world you're in now,
it doesn't have to be alone,
I'll get there somehow, 'cos
I know I know I know
when, even springtime feels cold.

Emily had watched. She had worried. However, she had remained silent in her concern. Maybe she was too close too. Too close to Jennifer. Too uncertain of how to warn her about making promises and making things personal. So fledgling was what they had, so brand knew like the first ray of sunlight at dawn or the tiny breath of a newborn. It was fragile in the palm of her hand and she had been willing to break it. Instead, she had just watched, waiting to catch Jennifer when she fell.

But I will learn to breathe this ugliness you see,
so we can both be there and we can both share the dark.

It had been too perfect. Too good to be true. They had captured another twisted mind, saving countless future victims. Children that would have fallen victim, experiencing nothing but cruelty and bestiality before their lives were snuffed out, just like that. Receiving no warmth, no remorse. No fairytale hero to save them. Until her. Until this boy. Then she had become the fairytale hero, to him and his parents. People that could not have thanked her enough if they had tried. She was their savior, their angel, their hero.

Emily had been relieved. Only for an instant. Only when she watched, stood in his hospital doorway as the room had been alive with relief and laughter. Jennifer hadn’t needed her to catch her, she had never fallen. She had kept her word. Yet she was never interested in taking credit for keeping it. Selfless as ever, rebuffing every word of praise from them. Emily had smiled even. Jennifer was special like that. Her only reward was the smiling little boy in front of her, thankful for the opportunity to grow up.

How were any of them supposed to know that he never would?

And in our honesty, together we will rise,
out of our night minds, and into the light
at the end of the fight...

The second time they had entered that house, all they had discovered was lifelessness. The stench of slaughtered innocence and spilt blood. Dull, empty eyes had starred up at her accusingly, making her unable to look away. Emily had felt her heart break in that moment, as Jennifer stood motionless over his body, her eyes draining of all that was unique and special about her to become as dull and empty as his. The lack of any emotion in such an expressive woman had startled Emily. Jennifer fell right then and there, past all her safety nets to crash and shatter at the bottom of her guilt and sorrow. Looking at the boy they had already saved. The boy that she had laughed with. He had called her his angel. Told her she was pretty with shiny hair. The sweetness had not abandoned him completely after being trapped in a cruel and unusual nightmare. Now it had been bled from him.

How were any of them supposed to know there was a second twisted mind, when there had been no indication?

If she let it, it would ruin her. And she felt like letting it ruin her. She had looked at no one, not even Emily, as she had walked out of that house. Did she not deserve to be ruined? Had she not failed her ward, if she was indeed his angel? She wondered who he had cried out for. Begged his Daddy to save him, his Mommy to comfort him. His gentle angel to take away his pain and stop the bad man. Where had she been for him then? What did her promise mean then?

You were blessed by a different kind of inner view: it's all magnified.
The highs would make you fly, and the lows make you want to die.
And I was once there, hanging from that very ledge where you are standing.

It had happened before Emily could get there. After absorbing her own guilty shock, she had fled the house, instinctively needing to stop Jennifer. To catch her, now that she had fallen. Or perhaps pick her up, because somehow she knew she had already hit the bottom. She had run as fast as she could, somehow being able to foresee what had come about. Foresee that the despondent younger woman had shouldered the responsibility of telling the parents that their precious little boy had been taken from them. That she had broken her promise, and failed. And they had hated her for it. Before Emily could even get there, the damage had already been done. Jennifer had already taken the brunt of the Mother’s anger, before the woman had collapsed in her arms. Jennifer had just held her, motionless, empty and cold. As dead as their boy.

So I know
I know
I know,
it's easier to let go.

She had spoken to no one. Her voice gone, her feelings frozen. Only one image haunting her thoughts, portraying itself across pale, sullen features. There had still been nothing in those normally glowing eyes, ocean deep and electric blue. They looked like ice. And they had barely blinked as she had stared silently out of the little window at the back of the plane. No one had dared sit with her. Only Emily had kept watch near enough to see, but not close enough to crowd. It would have done no good.

It had been something entirely different, when she had opened her front door two hours later. The ice had thawed leaving a tidal wave of grief in its wake.

But I will learn to breathe this ugliness you see,
so we can both be there and we can both share the dark.

The floodgates had opened, and when Emily had opened her front door she had found her heart breaking for the second time that day. When she saw how lost, how cracked and torn Jennifer was. Looking up at her with overwhelmed, almost childlike eyes, begging for her to give her something to hold onto. Anything. She was so adrift that she wasn’t sure if she would ever make it back again.

Emily didn’t think she had ever been held onto as tightly, as desperately, as she had been then. As Jennifer had clung to her for all she was worth, letting the dam break against the flood that had built up inside of her against her neck and shoulder. Her body had rocked and shuddered with the sobs, and eventually they had crumpled to the floor when she was too weak to stand upright anymore. Emily had had no words to absolve her; there was nothing she could say to take away her pain. But she had held her, gripped her so protectively that Jennifer knew she was protected enough in her arms to fall apart. Her soul was free to crack into a million little shards, and Emily would be there to put them back together again. It didn’t matter how new this was, how delicate and fledgling. What it was based on was an unmovable strength, and she was unwilling to let Jennifer break alone. She would never let her break alone.

And in our honesty, together we will rise out of our night minds
and into the light at the end of the fight.

And after what might have been hours, certainly what pushed into the deeper hours of the night, the sobs had faded. Jennifer’s body had stilled against Emily’s, exhausted and out of tears. All that grief, that failure and anger drained out of her. It left her vulnerable, exposed and burdened with a sadness she knew she would carry forever. But inside of Emily’s arms, she felt like she could stand again. She felt like she had come close to ruin; to letting herself slip so far that she would have been lost. She had been stopped. She had been saved. By her own angel. Her own savior and hero.

Emily never let her go. Not once. She stroked through her hair, rode out the flood and kissed her head softly, breathing into her hair gently as she rested her face close to comfort her. She had let her fall apart without judgment, without being afraid of the enormity of it all. Emily was her rock. Her saving grace. She would live to fight another day.

...and in our honesty, together we will rise out of our night minds
and into the light... at the end of the fight...