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sequinsmile-x · 11 months

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Oizys - Part 2

Part 1

He never brought it up unless she did, small details emerging every now and again, usually after nightmares she would have once let him believe were about a cold floor in Boston, not the lumpy ground of the woods in Utah more than half a lifetime ago.

-x-

Hi friends!

This was only ever supposed to be a one shot, but I had an idea for a follow up and in classic Vic fashion it would not leave me alone so here we are. You definitely need to read part 1 for this to make sense!

I would like to dedicate this to @sapphoe-sun, who allows me to torment her with fics like this at my will. I'd apologise, but we both know I absolutely would not mean it <3

-x-

Words: 4.5k

Warnings: Troubled teen industry, implied/referenced abuse (nothing different to what would be mentioned in canon), trauma/PTSD

Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

Emily smiles as she gets out of the car, something in her chest easing as she walks towards Jess’s front door, excitement at seeing her children for the first time in a few days flooding through her system. Whilst she didn’t work for the BAU anymore, a decision she and Aaron had made a few months ago, she still helped out with cases when the team needed her. They’d spent the last few days in Ohio, the distance between her and her children feeling like she was on a different continent not just a couple of states away, and she was excited to be home.

Around rounds the car and places his arm around her shoulders. He drops a kiss on the top of her head as they step onto Jess’s porch and Emily rings the doorbell.

“I was thinking we should go to the zoo this weekend?” He says, and Emily tilts her head to look at him, “Vi loves the polar bear, Jack loves the lions. It’s one of the few places we can keep them both entertained.”

Emily chuckles and nods, “That sounds like a good idea,” she says, the thought of an uninterrupted day with her family making warmth buzz in her veins, “We may have to carry Vi away from the polar bear though, she thinks he’s her best friend.”

He laughs but any further conversation is cut off as Jess’s front door opens and he watches as something close to surprise flashes across his ex-sister-in-laws face, causing concern to spark in his stomach.

“Oh, hi,” Jess says, leaning against the doorframe, smiling as she looks at Emily, “If you’re here for the kids they aren’t here,” she says, and both of their smiles slip from their faces, “Your mom came to get them a couple of hours ago, she said she wanted to take them for dinner and she’d let you know.”

Any relief Emily had felt as they approached the house was now gone, her chest tighter by the second, “No,” she says, disconnecting herself from Aaron as she digs through her purse for her phone, her stomach twisting when she sees she has no new notifications, no texts or missed calls, “She didn’t call.”

Anxiety spreads through her veins like wildfire, destroying everything in its wake as her brain fills with worse-case scenarios that she knows are ridiculous but she can’t shake off, all of them finding places to hide in her lungs making it impossible for her to take a deep breath. She hated her mother having the kids by herself even when it was a planned thing, every minute an eternity until she saw her children again, but this was worse. The thought that she had no idea where they were enough to make her choke. She sees flashes of the wilderness as she blinks, a familiar chill she’d never been able to shake crawling up her spine, its hand wrapping around her throat.

She’s brought back to the moment by Aaron’s palm on her lower back, his warmth reaching her even through the material of her shirt, and she snaps out of it. She fixes a smile on her face, one she hopes the other woman can’t see through and clears her throat. Despite her panic, she knows Jess has no idea, that she doesn’t know the depth of Emily’s issues with her mother, and all she would have seen was a grandmother fresh back from an assignment in Europe who wanted to spend time with her grandchildren.

“She must have just forgotten, We all know how Vi and Jack can talk anyone's ear off,” she says, grateful that by some miracle her voice doesn’t shake. She looks up at Aaron, “We should just go to my mother’s they are probably there by now.”

She turns and walks away without saying goodbye to Jess, something Aaron covers up with a comment she barely hears about how it had been a long few days and that she was tired before he says goodbye for the both of them. Emily is already in the car, her seatbelt fastened and her thumbnail in between her teeth, when Aaron opens the driver's door and climbs in next to her.

The tension in the car is palpable, the air thick with everything she wants to scream but can’t. It had been eight months since the case that had made her accidentally admit her deepest secret to him and the team, a shared experience with an unsub that had briefly knocked down one of the walls she’d built when she was young. Aaron had been nothing but understanding since then. He agreed to not to her mother about it despite the fact Emily could so clearly see that he wanted to protect her from something that happened years before they had even met. He never brought it up unless she did, small details emerging every now and again, usually after nightmares she would have once let him believe were about a cold floor in Boston, not the lumpy ground of the woods in Utah more than half a lifetime ago. She wishes she’d told him years ago. That she’d set free the part of herself she’d locked up so tightly long before she had, his comfort and his warmth the balm she should have known she needed.

She can feel his gaze burning into the left side of her face as she purposely stares forward, sure that if she looked at him she’d burst into tears.

“Em-”

“Can we just go?” She asks, cutting him off, her voice harsher than she means it to be. She sighs and places her hand on his knee, squeezing tightly in a silent apology, “Please?”

There’s a beat of silence and for a moment she worries he’s going to argue with her, but then she hears the click of the key in the ignition followed by the start of the engine. He links one hand with hers and she holds on tightly, needing the connection she still wasn’t entirely sure how to ask for even after all this time. Affection he always seemed to know she needed before she did, always waiting at the sidelines ready to hand it out without being prompted.

They drive to her mother’s in silence, the only sound the repeated attempts of Emily trying to call her, the phone going to voicemail each time before she hung up without leaving a message before trying again.

Aaron holds her hand the entire way.

___

“Where the fuck are they?” Emily asks, her arms tight over her chest as they stand in her mother’s driveway after being told by her housekeeper that she wasn’t home yet and that the kids hadn’t been over at all.

“Have you tried calling her again?” Aaron asks, doing everything he can to keep calm himself despite his own anxiety rising. He needed to stay level-headed, something that Emily usually did herself, but the kids were, and always had been, her Achilles heel. The chink in her armour that made a woman who had faced death without blinking the nervous wreck in front of him.

“I haven’t fucking stopped trying, Aaron,” she shouts, her jaw tight as she grinds her teeth, “How does she not know that she can’t just take them somewhere? Who the fuck does she think she is just disappearing with them?”

Aaron knows that there isn’t an answer to that, and that whilst there was likely an explanation for all of this, no matter how flimsy, which Elizabeth would deem as a reason. He doesn’t say it though as he watches his wife pace back and forth in front of the house she had once lived in, her nerves shot as she tortures herself with scenarios he knows he won’t be able to talk her out of. The only thing that would calm her down would be seeing Jack and Violet.

He’s about to risk his career by abusing all of the systems he has access to, his phone in his hand to call Penelope to ask her to put out an APB on Elizabeth, when he hears the familiar churn of the front gate. He turns at the same time as Emily and the relief he feels is palpable when he watches Elizabeth’s car pull into the driveway.

Emily swears she doesn’t have control of her body as she walks towards the car, her legs shaking underneath her as her mother’s driver gets out of the car and opens the back door, lifting Jack out and onto the ground. She takes a breath so deep that it hurts, catching on every rib as she sucks it in when she sees Elizabeth climb out of the car, Violet already in her arms from where she’d removed her from the car seat. She turns away for a moment so the kids can’t see her, and she tries to catch her breath as she wipes her cheeks, pushing away tears of relief that had escaped past her lashline.

“Mom, Dad!”

She blows out a breath before she turns back to face them as Jack calls for them and she smiles widely, wearing it like a mask, as she crouches down as he runs over. She wraps her arms tightly around him and kisses the side of his head, the smell of his shampoo calming her down.

“Hi honey,” she says, pulling back to look at him, “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” he replies, squeezing her once more before he untangles himself from her to hug Aaron. Emily briefly watches the two of them together, before she’s distracted by her daughter.

“Mama!”

She looks over at her two-year-old and beams, purposely ignoring her mother as she takes Violet from her and pulls her into her arms.

“Hi sweet girl, Mama missed you,” she says, placing repeated kisses against her little girl’s dark hair, “Mama missed you so much.”

“Grandma took us for pizza,” Jack says, his voice full of excitement, and Emily looks at her mother, her eyes cold whilst neither of her children are looking at her.

“That was nice of her,” Emily says carefully, her eyes locked with Elizabeth’s as she makes her feelings clear despite her choice of words.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen them so I thought I’d surprise them,” Elizabeth says, and Emily has to suppress a bitter chuckle, creating a lump in her chest that hurts, and she shakes her head.

“It was a surprise for everyone,” Emily mutters, and Aaron steps closer to her, his hand on her back as he takes Violet from her, kissing the toddler's forehead as he says hello and settles her on the ground simultaneously.

“Jack,” he says, turning to look at his son, “Take your sister and get in the car,” he pulls his phone out of his pocket, “You can play music on here or watch some of those videos she likes on YouTube if you want.”

Jack looks back and forth between them, his eyes flicking from Emily and Elizabeth who were in a silent standoff, and Aaron who was still looking at him, and he nods. He reaches out for Violet's hand and starts to lead her to the car.

“Come on Lettie,” he says, using the nickname only he used for his little sister, “That means the grown-ups have to talk.”

Violet, mercifully unaware of the awkwardness her brother had picked up on, follows gladly, always happy to be wherever Jack was. The three adults wait until they hear the car door open and then close again, the silence that follows the slam of the door loud and uncomfortable.

“Where the hell were you?” Emily asks, her anger barely restrained now the anxiety was gone and she knew her children were safe, “You can’t just take them somewhere without telling us.”

Elizabeth sighs, “I told Jessica where we were going.”

“I am their mother,” Emily grits out, her hands tight around her arms as she crosses them over her chest, her nails digging in through her shirt, “You need to tell me where they are. Via a phone call, or a text at least.”

“Emily, you’re being dramatic-”

“I tried to call you,” she says, cutting Elizabeth off, “Dozens of times. Why didn’t you answer your fucking phone?”

If Elizabeth wants to reprimand her for her language she doesn’t, instead she sighs, shaking her head at what she clearly still thinks are dramatics from her daughter.

“You know what I’m like with my phone, and I thought we’d be here before you.”

Emily laughs bitterly, well aware of Aaron standing just behind her, “That’s not good enough.”

Elizabeth crosses her arms over her chest, defensive in a way Emily doesn’t think she deserves to be, “You’re acting like you don’t trust me with them.”

Emily scoffs, “That’s because I don’t,” she seethes through her teeth, keeping as quiet as she can despite her fury because she knows Jack and Violet are in the car and that no matter how loudly Jack played music on Aaron’s phone, they’d still be able to hear them, “I don’t trust you with them.”

Elizabeth visibly deflates, her arms dropping to her sides, and it only stokes the fire in Emily’s belly. Her mother’s surprise an accelerant to her anger, because the fact she was shocked, that she couldn’t think of one reason why Emily wouldn’t trust her, hurts more than she cares to admit even to herself.

Anger had always been easier than acknowledging how much power her mother still had over her even now.

“Emily-”

“Why would I trust you?” She cuts her mother off before she can say anything, not interested in hearing any of it, “I was taken from this house in the middle of the night when I was 16 years old,” she says, pointing at the place she had never quite been able to call home, “I woke up terrified to two men standing at the end of my bed and I thought ‘if I can get Mom’s attention this will be ok,’” she hates how her voice cracks, and she hears Aaron take another step closer to her, “But then I saw you standing at the door, watching it happen.”

It hangs between them for a moment, the weeks that neither of them had ever spoken about, and she watches as Elizabeth looks past her, her eyes clearly fixed on Aaron, before she looks back at Emily.

“That was for your own good,” Elizabeth replies carefully, “You were out of control.”

“I was a child. And don’t for one second pretend it was done for anything other than protecting your reputation.”

If those weeks in the woods had taught Emily anything, it was that she had made the right call not telling her mother that she was pregnant the year before. She knew that her ability to make her own choices would have been pulled out from under her and she would have been sent away. Forced to live in hiding under a shelter built by shame and her mother’s disappointment until she returned 9 months later without a baby, doomed to live as if nothing had happened.

She hoped that if, god forbid, something similar happened to Violet in the future she would come straight to her. That her daughter would know she was a safe space and always would be, and that she’d hold her hand through it all no matter what her decision would be.

“Emily,” Elizabeth says, as if speaking to a child, “Why don’t we go inside and talk?”

“Why?” She asks, “So the neighbours don’t hear? So no one else finds out you send your kid to a behavioural camp when all she wanted was for you to love her,” she says, purposely making her voice louder towards the end of the sentence. “I slept outside for weeks in a crappy tent full of holes and a sleeping bag that was probably older than I was,” she says, wiping a tear away furiously from her cheek, her knuckle rough against her skin, “We were barely allowed to eat. What did I do that deserved that?”

Elizabeth doesn’t flinch and Emily hates that she can’t tell if thats because she already knew or because she was just so good at never showing how she really felt. She wants to see a reaction across her mother’s face. She wants to see horror, or sadness or guilt. Anything other than the same expression that had always made her want to scream.

“You were drinking, partying, getting up to all sorts with who knows-”

“I was a teenage girl,” she says, chuckling humourlessly, “It doesn’t take being a profiler to know that all I wanted was your fucking attention,” she feels the fight drain from her and turns to look at Aaron, almost colliding with his chest he was so close now, “Let’s go home.”

“Emily, you can’t just walk away,” Elizabeth calls after her.

“Yes I can,” she replies, not even looking back, “I’m done.”

“You are not a child-”

“Do you want to know what I thought when I didn’t know where you and the kids were?” Emily asks sharply, turning to look at her mother and taking a step back towards her. She waits until Elizabeth nods, and she shakes her head, “I thought you’d taken them somewhere like that.”

This time, horror does sweep over Elizabeth’s face, and jealousy that makes Emily feel guilty swoops through her belly.

“Emily,” Elizabeth says, shaking her head, “I would never do that to them.”

She feels something snap inside of her, any control she had over her emotions is gone in an instant. Everything she’d thought ever since those long weeks in the Utah wilderness coming out as she shouts at her mother.

“Then why did you do it to me?”

Her words echo around them, the accusation wrapped up as a question rippling outwards in a way Emily isn’t sure will ever stop. She finally tears her gaze away from Elizabeth’s and briefly looks at Aaron before she walks away, the car door opening and shutting quickly.

Aaron looks up at his mother-in-law and has to remember every promise he has ever made to his wife to stop himself from saying something. He’d stayed silent throughout the argument, well aware that as much as he wanted to intervene Emily did not need him to protect her. She needed him to love her, to comfort her, and that is exactly what he intended to do.

He stares at Elizabeth, his eyes stern as he stands in place a beat too long before he turns in silence to walk the short distance to the car. When he climbs in Emily is just settling back into her seat after clipping Violet into her car seat in the back and the only sound is a song playing on his phone that was still in Jack’s hand. He starts the car, and drives away, the gate still open from when Elizabeth and the kids had arrived.

Emily reaches out for his hand and he takes it, squeezing her fingers together in a silent promise that everything would be ok.

___

It’s bedtime before they have a moment alone.

If he hadn’t known Emily as long as he had, or hadn’t seen her ability to keep up appearances so many times first-hand, he would have been taken aback at how normal she had acted all evening. The switch between baring her scars to her mother outside the house where it had all begun, to helping their kids with homework and bath time with a smile on her face when they could home, was almost jarring. She laughed with Jack as he tried to teach her how to play one of his video games, the little boy unaware that Emily was already very good at it, but acting as if she wasn’t for a moment of mother-son bonding. She paced back and forth in Violet’s bedroom, the toddler half asleep against her shoulder as she demanded another lullaby, her mother’s singing voice one of the few things that could get her to sleep ever since she was a newborn.

He’d always been impressed with his wife’s ability to compartmentalise, even back when she was just a member of his team, but tonight it made him sad. His awareness of where it came from, that it was one of the things she shared with her mother, the woman who had let her down so spectacularly, a kick to the gut.

They are both sat up in their bed, the door slightly ajar for when Violet inevitably joined them in the night, and their backs against the headboard before Emily says anything.

“I don’t…I don’t know how to fix this,” she says, her focus on her hands as she rubbed cream into them, something she insisted on doing every evening, “I don’t know if I want to fix this.”

He turns to look at her, his eyes lingering on her side profile, every bit as breathtaking as she was the day they met and more. She sometimes lamented getting older, her nose scrunched up as she looked at herself critically in the mirror. He thought, and made a point of telling her, that she had never looked more beautiful. Every change to her body, every laugh line on her face, a reminder of the life they shared together.

He wondered if she hated getting older, if she rubbed cream into her hands that supposedly slowed down ageing, because there was part of her that worried she’d turn into her mother. Something he knows simply isn’t possible.

“It’s not up to you,” he says, reaching out and tucking her hair behind her ear, smiling softly when she turns to look at him, “I think the ball is firmly in her court, sweetheart.”

She nods, humming softly before she leans into his side. She sighs as she wraps his arm around her shoulders, his comfort enveloping her in the way she needed it to.

“She’ll never apologise,” she muses, reaching out for one of his hands, half smiling when she doesn’t miss how he grimaces at the feel of her slippery skin but holds on to her anyway, “Even if she realises what she did was wrong she won’t…and I guess I have to find a way to be ok with that if I want to continue to have a relationship with her.”

He wants to tell her that they never have to speak to her mother again if she doesn’t want to, but he knows it won’t achieve anything tonight.

“Well,” he says, hooking his finger under her chin and making her look at him, “you don’t have to be ok with it tonight. Or even tomorrow,” he leans in and stamps a kiss against her lips, “Or the day after that.”

She chuckles softly, and kisses him once more before pulling away, “Or the day after that?”

“We can take this at whatever pace you want,” he assures her, “We’ll figure out what you want to do and go from there.”

She smiles at him, her eyes shining with tears she doesn’t want to shed and she rests her forehead against his for a moment, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he says, cupping the back of her head, “Now we should try and get some sleep, we’ll have a little monster in our bed in the early hours of the morning demanding your attention.”

She chuckles but lightly slaps his chest as they lay down, “Don’t call our daughter a little monster,” she says, and his only response is to pull her into his arms. She curls around his side, seeking out the warmth she would have once thought didn’t exist as she settles down, her head on his shoulder, “The kids love her.”

He sighs and runs his hand up and down her back, his fingers catching on the notches of her spine, “I know they do,” he says, kissing the top of her head, “And I know whatever you end up deciding will be the right thing.”

She scoffs, unsure how he could be so sure when she felt so adrift, his love for her the liferaft she was desperately clinging onto. “How do you know that?”

“Because you love them, and you’re the best mom on the planet,” he says, holding her impossibly closer when the praise makes her tense in his arms just like it always did, “You always put them first.”

She hides her smile into his t-shirt, her eyes closed as she tries to hold off tears. It’s all she’d ever wanted - to be the mother she had craved when she was a kid herself, and she liked to think that’s exactly what she was. She was the one both Jack and Violet sought out when they were sick or upset, just like their father did, and she was the one they both came to when they needed help. She hoped that would continue, that it would change from helping them with homework or opening up a new toy to helping with problems with friends at school and their first love and heartbreak. She always wanted to be the first person they called, that they’d know she would always be there ready and waiting.

“Let's get some sleep,” she whispers, already being lulled into relaxation by her husband’s hand dragging up and down her back as the exhaustion of the day finally takes over.

“Love you, sweetheart,” he says, his lips against the top of her head as she gets heavier against him.

“You too,” she mumbles, her words slurring together.

He’s still awake, keeping a vigil over Emily, her soft snores filling the room, when Violet sneaks in several hours later, her eyes bleary and her hair a mess as she drags her toy polar bear behind her. If the toddler realises he’s awake she doesn’t acknowledge him, instead walking around the bed and climbing onto it, crawling to her mother’s side. She’s barely laid a hand on her, her tiny fists grasping at her mother’s t-shirt when Emily stirs, turning to face Violet with her eyes half open.

“Hi Vi,” she mumbles as the little girl lays down next to her, curling up in her mother’s already waiting embrace.

“Mama,” the toddler mutters, already mostly asleep again now she was in Emily’s arms.

Aaron watches the whole thing with amusement as his wife starts snoring again and he's not sure she was ever fully awake. He settles onto his side and wraps his arms around the two of them, finally allowing himself to drift off to sleep, safe in the knowledge that whatever happened next, they’d all be ok because they had each other.

-x-

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