Emily Prentiss One-Shots

Emily One-Shot

Title: reaper - ameliafuckingshepherd (Ao3)

Summary: Emily Prentiss finally reaches her breaking point, but it's not all at once. falling apart happens gradually.

Rating: Not rated (I would say this is Mature)

Trigger Warning: Self-harm - cutting, excessive drinking, suicidal thoughts, PTSD, Self-hatred.

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Emily Prentiss could deal with anything the world threw at her.

she spent her childhood changing herself to fit other cultures, other people's views of how she should be. she'd lived all over the world. she spoke ten different languages. she wasn't weak.

she lived ten different lives at once during her INTERPOL days. she didn't mind it.

compartmentalize.
repress.
overcome.
how else are you supposed to survive?

every time she shut her eyes, she felt the rod Doyle stabbed through her stomach as if it were still there. she remembered her vision growing fuzzy, the darkness pulling at her, begging her to just give in. just give up. she told Morgan to let her go, but he just held her tighter. tears fell from his eyes, and Emily almost smiled. Derek Morgan, crying over her half-dead body.

that was something no one else could do.

Emily closed her eyes and curled into the concrete. she had been so, so tired.

it would be easy to let go.

Emily woke up with a gasp. she hardly made it to the bathroom before throwing up. blood drenched her hands, lingering from the nightmare. she threw up again and sank to the floor.

before she knew it, she was sobbing. loud, wailing, miserable sobbing.

maybe, just maybe, she was having a little trouble coping.

twelve children had been murdered before they caught the unsub.

twelve kids dead because they hadn't been good enough to save them, because Emily hadn't been good enough to save them. this was her fault.

if she had driven the car faster or interviewed more people or spent more time studying the case, would the outcome have been better? if she wasn't on the team, if there was someone else in her place, would they have caught the man who did it two weeks ago instead of one?

how many lives could be saved if Emily was better?

cuts appeared on her arms like gory tally marks. a cut for the graves crowded in a cemetary that was far too small. a cut for every case file piled on JJ's desk. Emily knew they couldn't save everyone.

That was the job.

But it was still somehow her fault.

last week, two newborns had been kidnapped, their throats slit. she had her gun out, pointed at the unsub's chest. An Asian woman in her mid-thirties whos child had recently died of cancer held one of the babies in her arms, the other dead on the ground behind her.

"Miss Montague, put the knife down," Emily commanded. She woman didn't move. the baby squirmed and cried. his arms flailed, reaching for a monther who was not there. "hurting him won't bring your son back."

"shut up! just shut the hell up," the unsub shouted. "you don't know me, you don't know my life!"

"I know that your son Andrew died last week. I know that he had been fighting leukemia for a long time, but we weren't getting any better. you held his hand while he died, didn't you? it was in the middle of the night, and your husband didn't want to be there. you were angry." Emily watched the woman carefully. she waited for any sign that she was about to hurt the child. "Miss Montague, put the knife down and give me the baby."