like trying to hold a wolf by the ears
Apr. 30th, 2012 12:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wizened_cynicI don't know what this is. I really wanted to write about babies. My co-worker brought hers to work and he was so fucking cute, this happened.
For clarification, this is Criminal Minds gen, with a minor dash of Emily/JJ towards the end. Jesus, you think after 9 years, I'd be better at this.
Five Times Emily Prentiss Was Almost Somebody's Mother
It's like 80% angst, 15% schmoop, and 5% WHAT THE FUCK CYNIC. You are warned. (Seriously, it's like 1/5 Gilmore Girls AU, 1/5 Supernatural AU, 1/5 Doyle-arc which might as well be a fucking AU.)
Now up and ready at AO3 so I can whore myself out for more comments! YAY!
For clarification, this is Criminal Minds gen, with a minor dash of Emily/JJ towards the end. Jesus, you think after 9 years, I'd be better at this.
1.
Emily's water breaks in the middle of dinner.
She's been having contractions the whole day, but somehow she is still surprised by the sudden gush of warm fluid between her legs, signalling This is it, this is the end.
She thinks she might have ruined the rug, which was a gift from somebody important from a country whose name Emily probably couldn't pronounce correctly, but she doesn't think her mother would notice, so she doesn't mention it in her note. All she writes is, "In labor. Went to the hospital. Don't worry. Yours sincerely, Emily Prentiss."
At the hospital, the nurse asks where her parents are.
"At the White House," Emily says bluntly, because it is really starting to hurt now, and the contractions make her feel like a moth in a giant's fist. "Christmas party with the President."
The nurse doesn't blink. "Well then," she says, "would you like us to contact them?"
"No," Emily says.
"Very well then," says the nurse. "Could you fill out these forms, sweetheart?"
The next few hours are a foggy haze of unfamiliar faces, figures in white armed with charts and needles. The pain becomes excruciating, fire in her back that sears through her belly. The Demerol helps a little, but leaves her dizzy and disjointed, almost like somebody else is feeling the pain, but it's still there, looming around the edges. The only thing that makes her feel better is when the nurse (not the first nurse, another one, kinder, with softer hands) comes in and checks the fetal monitor and says, "Things are looking good, Emily."
They are about to wheel her into Delivery when her mother bursts through the door, and even through the contractions and the painkillers, Emily can see her mother's anger, feel it close the distance between them. Emily wonders if her mother found out about the rug.
"Emily Prentiss," her mother hisses, "what were you thinking? Do you know what you put your father and I through when we came home and you weren't there?"
"I left a note," Emily says.
"Yes, you did. You couldn't even have somebody tell us? I had to find out from the housekeeper that my own daughter is in labor?"
"I left a note," Emily says again. She holds her tongue and doesn't add that she even signed it with Yours sincerely. She's not a good daughter, she realizes, and if she has no idea how to be a good daughter, how is she going to be a good mother?
A contraction hits her then, one so strong that even the Demerol doesn't take the edge off, and Emily groans out loud.
"We have to get her to the delivery room," the nurse says.
The Ambassador steps back and Emily sees her father reach out to hold her steady, and her father is saying, "Elizabeth, let's deal with this later." Emily wonders if anybody had ever called her mother anything but her full name. She wonders if her mother had ever been a Lizzie or a Beth, the way Emily was always Em to Matthew and John. Nicknames are important, she decides. Her child should have a nickname, whatever his or her name is going to be.
She doesn't even have a name for her baby yet, what kind of mother is she going to be?
"Fine," her mother is saying, arms thrown up in despair. "Don't think you're off the hook, young lady. We're going to have a serious discussion about this afterwards."
"I'm having a baby, Mother," Emily hears herself saying. "I don't think I'll be off the hook for at least another 18 years."
The delivery room is bright lights and the smell of latex and people telling her to push. "Just a few more, Emily," the doctor coaxes, after what seems like hours, maybe days.
"You're lying," she mutters, but pushes anyway, because her body's not really her own anymore, it hasn't been for the last nine months, and she's starting to think that the baby doesn't want to come out because the baby knows that Emily doesn't know how to be a mother, that Emily never had a real mother to show her.
Something begins ripping through her, she can feel it, a pain so blinding that it almost feels good, because if she can survive this then she can survive anything else in the world.
Then it stops hurting, everything stops hurting, and the baby's cries fill the room.
"There you go," the nurse says moments later, putting a warm bundle of blankets in Emily's arms. "Meet your daughter."
My daughter, Emily thinks. I have a daughter.
Her daughter's eyes are a funny dark color, bluish but not quite, and she smells strange and new and Emily can see her little tongue flickering in her open mouth as she howls, furious at everything in the world. It's a scream that seems familiar, that Emily knows well, and at once Emily knows that everything is going to turn out all right, that it has to be because she is going to make sure of it. It's her job now.
"Hi Miranda," she says, leaning down to kiss her daughter's small, sticky head. "I'm your mommy and I'm really glad to meet you."
2.
Emily has never been to a parent-teacher conference before. She would ask her mother, but she is fairly certain that her mother has never been to one either.
"You don't really have to go," Carrie said when Emily found the slip of paper wedged between the pages of her biology textbook.
"I want to go," Emily told her. "I want to meet your teachers."
Carrie rolled her eyes and laughed, a sound so rare that it still feels like a prize, even now, after a year. "You're in for some real disappointment."
Emily ends up running late because of an pedophile in Arizona who decided kiddie porn wasn't doing it for him anymore and he was going to live out his violent fantasies on real children. She would have to spare Carrie's English teacher the details and hopes Mrs. McMahon would be more lenient with tardiness than she is with her students' incorrect grammar.
"I'm sorry," Emily says, by way of greeting. "Work got in the way. I'm Emily Prentiss, Carrie's guardian."
Mrs. McMahon shakes her hand and gestures for her to sit.
3.
Her job is not all that different from before, only now she travels by car instead of private jet, and the monsters she hunts are slightly more varied.
"Saving people, hunting things," Lorelai says solemnly around a mouthful of sundae, and Emily instinctively reaches across the table to catch the drip of hot fudge before it could make its way onto the front of her dress. "The family business."
"She's not family," Alex corrects, staring at Emily with the kind of intensity one wouldn't expect from a seven-year-old. But they aren't your usual seven-year-olds, and Alex has her point: Emily isn't family.
Sam glances over from where he is using Dairy Queen's free wireless to research methods of killing night marchers. "Be nice, Alex," he warns.
Alex mumbles one of the most insincere apologies Emily has ever heard --- and Emily grew up around politicians --- and it makes Emily feel embarrassed, somehow. She wants to explain that she isn't here to take Alex's family away just because she has lost her own.
"How long were you in hell?" Lorelai wants to know. She's smeared chocolate all over her right cheek but doesn't know it yet.
"Ten years," Emily tells her.
Alex is unimpressed. "My daddy was in hell for forty years."
"Alex!" Sam says again, and even Dean chides, "Peanut, it's not a competition."
Lorelai takes everything in stride, blissfully ignoring her sister in favor of pumping Emily for more details. "Did you see Tessa when you died?"
"Who's Tessa?"
"She's a grim reaper," Lorelai explains casually, the same way another seven-year-old might talk about Barbies or ballet class or whatever it is that seven-year-old girls talk about. It's been a long time since Emily was a seven-year-old girl. "She's really pretty."
Dean intervenes with a Wet Nap and a stern, "Girls, that's enough. Emily needs to rest. Go play in the ball pit."
At night they stay in a motel that looks like something Emily's team might have busted once, a fairground for prostitution and budding serial killers. There is a pool in the back that looks safe enough, and the girls beg and beg until Emily agrees to go in for a dip with them. Lorelai cannonballs into the water, but Alex clings to the sleeve of Emily's T-shirt, having suddenly deemed that even though Emily might not be family, she is acceptable as a swimming coach.
Emily flinches when Alex's fingers grab ahold of the scars on Emily's arms.
"Sorry," Alex says, letting go, and Emily wraps her arms around the girl instead, holding her like a protective marsupial, head above water. "What happened? Can I see?"
It's as close as the two of them has ever gotten. Emily knows that Alex's affection is hard-earned, and it reminds her, suddenly, brutally, of when she first started at the BAU, after Elle, how she had to prove herself.
So she proves herself to Alex by rolling up her sleeves and showing her the raised hand-shaped scars, one on each arm, the only scars she has now.
"Ooooh," Alex says reverently, brushing her fingertips over where the angel had grabbed Emily when he pulled her out of hell. "Does it hurt?"
"It's getting better," Emily tells her.
She thinks about Lilith, and what Emily is going to do to her when she finally finds her.
4.
She can't get ahold of Doyle; international arms dealers don't tend to answer their cellphones. It's only one in a long list of annoying quirks that they have.
The doctor said to keep the boy hydrated; if the fever doesn't go down by daybreak, take him to the hospital.
His nanny is in her room, praying to a God that doesn't answer, leaving Emily alone to wipe the sweat off Declan's brow and hold him through his seizures. He jerks once, twice, crying out, grasping at her like he's drowning.
"Shhhhhh," Emily croons, stroking his blonde curls. He looks nothing like his father, and nothing like her. For the first time, she wonders where his mother is, whether she would want to know that her son is burning up, whether she would care.
"Lauren," Declan murmurs into the crook of her neck. His breath is hot and sour and Emily has never been afraid for anyone else as much as she is afraid for him at that moment. "Lauren? Lauren?"
"I'm right here, honey," she says, reaching out for a fresh, wet towel to cool his head with.
Two hours later, his fever breaks, and when Doyle finally comes home and takes Declan out of her arms, she knows that when this is all over, it won't be Doyle who is going to break her.
5.
Will insists on stopping to get flowers for JJ, which chagrins Henry to no end, because he wants to see his new baby sister, and he wants to see her now.
"I have present for her," he tells Emily soberly, holding out his favorite stuffed elephant, the one that is missing a ear and both eyes and probably slathered with the germs of his nursery school classmates.
"That's really generous of you," Emily tells him.
"I see baby now," he insists, stomping his yellow Spongebob crocs.
"Just a few minutes, okay? We'll be there soon. Daddy wants to get some pretty flowers for Mommy."
Henry considers this. "Pink flowers," he says stubbornly.
Yep, he's JJ's son all right.
Will ends up opting for some calla lilies, which Henry begrudgingly approves, but not without asking, glancing greedily at the balloons, "We have balloon too? For baby?"
"Congratulations!" crows the store owner, a plump elderly woman who looks like somebody's grandmother in a Disney cartoon. "You must be a very proud big brother."
Henry beams. "Me big brother. Big."
"That's right, buddy," Will says agreeably, patting Henry on the head.
"Congratulations to you and your wife, sir," the woman adds as she hands Will the bouquet.
Will lets out a small laugh --- it's not a comfortable laugh, but one that's almost there. Henry takes it upon himself to set the record straight. "Not Daddy's baby," he tells the woman. He reaches for Emily's hand and squeezes it. "Mommy's baby. And Mama's baby. My baby."
The woman is immediately flustered and fumbles through an apology, which Emily brushes off, because she's used to this kind of miscommunication by now, and frankly because she doesn't care. She still needs to get diapers and she's been awake for the last forty-two hours, not that she could complain because JJ has been a champ for thirty-eight of those, and what's left of her energy is quickly being expended by smiling so much and keeping herself from telling complete strangers what an amazing wife she has and how beautiful her new daughter is.
"Congratulations, ma'am," the woman says as they make their way out of her store.
"Can we see baby now?" Henry asks as soon as the door behind them closes. The balloon is tied to his wrist, and he watches it warily as it bobs in the spring breeze.
"Sure we can," Emily tells him, and Will says, "Race you to the car?"
She gives them both a ten-second head start before she takes off, running after her son.
It's like 80% angst, 15% schmoop, and 5% WHAT THE FUCK CYNIC. You are warned. (Seriously, it's like 1/5 Gilmore Girls AU, 1/5 Supernatural AU, 1/5 Doyle-arc which might as well be a fucking AU.)
Now up and ready at AO3 so I can whore myself out for more comments! YAY!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2012-04-29 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-29 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-29 04:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-29 04:50 pm (UTC)Thanks, pilgrim. I also take virgin sacrifices and offerings of free smartphones.
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Date: 2012-04-29 07:24 pm (UTC)Now, you go write some Alex in Stars Hollow or Chad (I'm a new convert) and I'll see about those smartphones.
(Do you still watch SVU? Please say you do! In the last episode I saw Olivia was out with the new (male) ADA and he said he had kids, and asked her if she had any, and she went, "Oh, it's a long story". That was their first fucking date. And then they broke up, apparently, because it isn't decent.)
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Date: 2012-04-30 11:39 am (UTC)I finally quit watching SVU --- the ones without Alex. She has one episode left so I'll watch that one, but seriously. Enough is enough. I derive my pain from elsewhere now.
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Date: 2012-04-29 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-30 11:40 am (UTC)Glad you liked! Thank you!
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Date: 2012-04-29 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-30 11:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-29 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-30 11:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-30 06:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-30 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 03:08 am (UTC)How are you? Good, I hope, despite the hellpit that is your job?
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Date: 2012-05-01 08:29 am (UTC)Glad to hear you're doing well! I'm ... stressed, overworked, victimized, discriminated against, but fairly well-paid for all my pains and troubles. I suppose that evens out? I'm seeing a new therapist who is helpful. I think.
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Date: 2012-05-02 12:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 01:00 am (UTC)Love the Supernatural one, i always love seeing young Alex and Lorelai being themselves. And Emily, having discovered the world has monster monsters, of course becomes a hunter too.
Thanks for the classic JJ/Emily wish fufillment, too.
Why isn't there more fic where Emily adopted Carrie?
I'm so glad the baby mood hit you. Thank you!
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Date: 2012-05-01 02:00 am (UTC)The Supernatural one was always going to be a longer fic, but I am too lazy to write it. I HAVE HOURS TO BILL, OKAY?!?!?! (I hate my job so much)
I didn't really like Carrie, and Emily's hair was kind of weird in that episode. I think those are the inherent reasons for a lack of Carrie fic.
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Date: 2012-05-01 06:35 am (UTC)1) Loved Emily's smartass line about being on the hook for the next 18 years. The name Miranda reminds me of All My Children, their lesbian named her first daughter that.
2) I imagine Emily would be kind of awkward in parent/teacher meetings but everyone would like her anyway because she at least shows up and tries.
3) I am inexplicably charmed by your Supernatural AU. I don't even watch the show! But I read your fics for it and almost wish I did and then remember your AU is not show canon and decide I'd rather keep your version as my canon.
4) On one hand I appreciated them giving Emily a backstory, on the other it came way out of left field. But oh, I did love her being a badass.
5) I hate Will but I would love to see him squirm uncomfortably over knowing Emily got the family with JJ that he wanted.
Basically I love whenever and whatever you write. Angst, schmoop, wtf, love it all.
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Date: 2012-05-01 08:25 am (UTC)1. We had a whole discussion on Twitter about what to name the baby. The final contenders were Alice, Sophie, and Miranda, and Miranda won because of the "brave new world" context. NOT because of the lesbians on AMC!
3. I LOVE MY SUPERNATURAL AU! Although this one is really an AU of my AU which is an AU of two other AUs. I'm really confused. But it is great fun to write and I'm glad that somebody else actually enjoys it as well!
(PS. The show really sucks these days, so don't watch Supernatural. Seriously.)
4. I pretty much refuse to accept anything past Season 4 as canon, and even then in my head the whole JJ pregnancy storyline never happened. My mind is a much more awesome place than reality.
See, i would tell you that I'd write more often, but ... that would be a lie. So I won't. Super thrilled that you are still reading though, thanks again :)
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Date: 2012-05-02 01:20 am (UTC)But it took me a while to get over my shock of, oh, this isn't going to be soul destroying.
It was actually nice!
(I mean, the Emily/JJ stuff at the end made me throw up a little in my mouth, but there is a bit of yay, Henry! I like Henry. I feel the urge to go and write about him being a little incipient gay boy and dressing up in Emma's shoes now.)
The Declan one was awesome! And is totally in my Doyle-headcanon! (yeah, the Doyle stuff was such a crazy AU. I don't even know. But seriously, the idea that there was some bond of affection between gunsmuggling douche and Emily is much less convincing than Emily and her canon weakness for small children.)
I loved the idea of Emily at a parent-teacher conference!
And the first one is so cool. Especially after comment-perusal which helped the world make sense. I'm thinking Miranda is a good name, and probably better than the whole Naming Your Kid After Yourself, which the original source material tried not to make as creepy and weird as it should be. (How do you manage to write Emily Gilmore so scarily well? I just want to hit her with a shoe.)
But my favorite was the SPN AU one!
Emily in hell! And small Lorelai and Alex twins! And Dad and Daddy failing at parenting. And awesome scars. :D
And then, the last line, and I'm just like, ooooooh. Killer.
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Date: 2012-05-02 02:19 pm (UTC)I won't like; #5 is my least favorite and basically something I threw in because I had no idea how else to give Emily a kid, short of her finding a DUMPSTER BABY or something. I like Henry though, and I like your Henry, especially when Didi is tormenting him.
In my head, the show's canon stopped being canon upon the whole JJ pregnancy arc (because she's a HUNTER and she and Dad and Daddy work together on the Angel Maker case and pregnancy! gets in the way of that!) (obviously my Supernatural AU is more canon than canon) so the whole Doyle thing didn't bother me that much. Young Declan was cute but not so much older Declan. Good god, I'm shallow.
The Miranda 'verse came out of a random tweet in which I pondered why there wasn't any Gilmore Girls AU with Emily as Lorelai? And they call her M from time to time, so it's like Em! I don't know. I really just want Emily to have a baby to make up for her EMPTY WOMB ISSUES and everything. Like, fuck shipping, I just want Emily find a dumpster baby and make peace with her demons and maybe talk to her mother again. There is, like, NO decent Emily babyfic save and except for ours, I swear to god.
(Leave it to us to take a show about serial killers and MAKE IT ALL ABOUT BABIES.)
I love my Supernatural AU too; originally I had JJ down as a hunter, from a hunter's family, but then I decided to have Lilith wipe out the entire BAU, Castiel raise Emily back from the dead, and they form some sort of weird extended poly family with the Winchesters. Who the fuck knows what goes on in my head, I certainly don't. But this is something I want to write more about, because Emily!!! Small children!!! BABIES!!!
Holy shit thanks for the long comment and hope you don't mind my even longer response.