SquidgeWorld Archive

Earnest Victory
by Frogg

Footsteps echoed off the concrete porch, light and feminine and vaguely familiar before shifting to the swish-swish of well-manicured grass.

Emily sank deeper into the slatted bench, letting the warm hardwood take more of her weight in its comforting curves and wishing it had as much effect on the disquiet in her mind as it did her weary body.

"Mind if I join you?"

"It's your house," Emily said flatly, sweeping an arm out to the rest of the bench, the empty one opposite. She wondered idly if Haley were the best person she could have asked to try and coax her back inside, or the worst.

"If you'd rather--"

"No, no, sit. If you go back inside, Morgan'll take it upon himself to drag me back in there."

Haley studied her for a long moment in the dimness, the night brightened only by the reflected porchlight, and the picture windows open to the evening breeze. "You make Derek sound very..." She searched for a word as she took a seat on the other bench, where she could see Emily and the windows both.

"Morgan has a personal rule against profiling his friends," Emily said, hugging herself as if against a chill. "It makes him ignore a lot of body language that even someone without the training would pick up on."

"In other words, he's a guy."

That startled a laugh out of Emily, and she instinctively relaxed. Not entirely, but enough.

"They miss you in there," Haley offered once the amusement faded, leaving only crickets and the distant barking of a dog to cover the laughter and too-loud discussion drifting unintelligible from inside.

Emily tilted her head, smiling small and bitter. "You're supposed to say I'm missing the party."

"Derek tried that one. Penelope told him it was your party, you can cry if you want to."

Swallowing hard, Emily looked down at the grass. Sometimes she wished she *could* cry. "It just...doesn't feel like we won."

Haley remained silent, watching as Emily bent and pulled a handful of grass through her fingers, snapping a few leaves to inspect them closely.

"Strauss is gone," Emily continued, the name spat like an epithet. "But we have no guarantees - none - that whoever replaces her will be any better."

"Better the devil you know?"

Emily nodded. "It's not even...I don't know, I'm not making any sense. She tried to ruin Hotch, and she got to keep her reputation and her good name and, and..."

"And there's no acknowledgement. No punishment. No public outcry."

"Just politics as usual." Emily stood, tossing the blades of grass spinning to the ground as she stepped towards the house, the golden glow through the windows too much a flame to ignore. "I hate politics."

Wood creaked, releasing the stress of weight upon it as Haley rose to follow; she stopped, still behind Emily, and slightly to one side. "Whether or not it feels like a victory, it was one."

"For Hotch maybe."

"No, Emily. For you."

Something fragile and far too close to the surface trembled, something she could not afford to touch.

"Erin Strauss spent decades playing politics, building a career through alliances and favors and backscratching. She has to live with the humiliation of being outmaneuvered by someone far younger, with far less experience, no political ambitions, and who refused to so much as play the game. And she has to do it knowing that if she tries to fight back, her house of cards will fall."

"It wasn't my victory."

"You're here. She's not," Haley argued. "Emily, no one is saying you did it alone. You had help, that's a given. But none of them could have done anything without you. Hell, none of them would have known there was a battle to fight if you hadn't had the courage and the integrity to stand up for Aaron. He doesn't forget things like that. None of them do."

"If Strauss hadn't put me--"

"If it hadn't been you, it would have been someone else. Someone who might not have had what it takes to keep your team in one piece."

Pain knifed through her, sharp and raw; old wounds tore open to bleed anew. The thought of someone, some nameless, green agent betraying Aaron for their own gain made breath catch in her throat, eyes glaze red with fear and rage that anyone, *anyone*, would dare--

"Emily."

Achingly familiar numbness replaced the anger, burying deep the rising behemoth of her own demons, a darkness she could not face. "She put me there," Emily found herself saying, unsure why.

Haley nodded. "She took that choice from Aaron. She took the assurance of it from you."

"Yes," Emily whispered, the s drawing out into a long hiss. Closing her eyes, rejecting the comforting image of her team through the window, she quietly acknowledged to herself what Strauss had done to her, adding all the pieces together: her own having at last felt like she'd earned her place, Strauss' interview, the discovery that she hadn't earned her way at all...

It had been a kind of rape.

The kind she couldn't prosecute. The kind that would lurk in the shadows, making her doubt everything, making her question her position and her strength and the bonds of...

Emily shook herself, raising her head, knowing she couldn't show weakness. Not here, not to Haley.

Haley moved forward, stopping beside her to watch through the window at Reid, Garcia and JJ on the couch, Hotch and Gideon standing behind it. Morgan sat on the floor, Reid's legs trapped behind him, a children's book in the hand not clutched in Jack's as the toddler leaned against his chest. "I knew before I married him that Aaron built family out of his friends. He's the kind of man that 'Friends are the family we choose for ourselves' was written for. When he was studying to be an attorney, I knew he'd be the difference between a victim being lost in the system, or continuing the cycle of abuse, or becoming a criminal, and rebuilding their life, being a reason why Aaron had to keep doing his job. I knew he'd be the shoulder they'd cry on, their first line of defense in the courtroom."

Listening, both to Haley's quiet description of everything she already knew about Hotch, and though she could not understand the words, to Morgan reading to Jack, Emily held her tongue.

"The courtroom wasn't enough for him. There was too much fluidity for him to find the kind of support he needed, the kind he still needs. He spent too much of himself trying to repair damage that couldn't be, and joined the FBI instead."

Emily watched as Gideon put a proprietary hand on Hotch's shoulder. Hotch looked up and smiled, lopsided and relaxed. It was a punch in the gut, hearing Haley narrate, and seeing things she had no right to even consider.

It made too much sense, answered questions she hadn't been aware of having, and she couldn't even say for certain she wasn't...

"Haley?" Her voice rasped in her throat, scratchy and thin; she couldn't bring herself to turn away from the window, couldn't look Hotch's wife in the eye. Any more than she could bring herself to ask if she was seeing something real, or just a figment of her imagination.

"Aaron and Jason and I have an understanding. It works for us."

Not her imagination. And not something she had to hide, or even deal with. The shadows at the edge of her vision receded a little.

"Aaron has too big a heart to only have me, or me and Jack."

"I--I don't, he's not..." What was Haley trying to say?

"Aaron's made a family for himself, the kind he wanted as a child and never had. He's turned friends into siblings, aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews. He even brought home a son."

Emily had nothing to say to that, could not refute Reid's place in the Hotchner household. Any more than she could deny her jealousy.

"I don't know what Aaron is to you, Emily."

Only everything I ever wanted to be.

"I don't know what happened to you to make you close yourself off."

Something small and desperate started clawing inside.

"If I'd had to guess, it probably has something to do with politics."

Emily couldn't breathe.

"I don't know how to make you believe me, but you have a family here. They can help you, but you have to let them."

"Why are you--" Emily croaked out.

"Because I look at you and I see Aaron, years ago, hurting and lonely and breaking. Because he came to me and told me he'd found his soul's reflection, and he didn't trust anyone else to help you piece yourself back together." Haley paused. "Because Aaron doesn't give his trust and loyalty lightly. He doesn't take just anyone into his family. And whatever the circumstances were in your joining the team, you earned your place in his heart."

Emily wanted to argue, but couldn't. She'd once seen Haley put the entire team in their place, Gideon included.

"I don't know if the voice that drove you out here tonight told you that you don't belong in there, or that you don't deserve it, or something else entirely." Haley sounded entirely too knowledgeable about it. "But I can tell you it was wrong. I can tell you that you're missed, that the people in there won't feel whole until you go back in and join them."

Hollow and aching inside, Emily watched as Morgan closed the book, Jack looking up and asking for another. Jack squealed happily and picked a book from the proffered stack, then said something that Emily couldn't understand, but made the rest of the team laugh and Morgan look chagrined. A moment later, Hotch nudged Gideon gently and slipped away.

"You look like a homeless orphan watching Thanksgiving dinner," Haley said softly.

The comparison was entirely too apt. Everything Emily had ever wanted, everything she couldn't have was in there. The jealousy and envy tearing her apart were enough to chase her away before bitterness took hold. Between Morgan and Reid, and Hotch's picture-perfect marriage, and the chance she couldn't bring herself -- couldn't afford -- to take... She swallowed hard, again wishing she could give in to the urge to cry.

A hand landed on Emily's shoulder, broad and masculine; she nearly jumped out of her skin.

Hotch's voice was pitched low, almost intimate out of respect for the open windows. "Why don't you ask her out?"

~~~the end~~~