Chapter Text
When she and JJ stopped in front of the Goya painting, Emily's mind began wandering down her hallway of memories, unlocking ones that brought flashes of the Ambassador and the weight of her ambition to the forefront of Emily's mind. The painting in front of her, Saturn eating his Son, had haunted Emily since she first saw it decades ago. The darkness, the gore, the wide-eyed paranoia of the once-powerful, now-manic Titan devouring his own flesh and blood- it felt familiar to Emily in a way that might warrant concern if she tried explaining it. She resonated with the child, sacrificed on the altar of a parent's ambition. The myth said Cronos had been warned he'd be overthrown by his progeny, so his wife would hide the babies who would become gods to keep him from killing them before they could turn against him. The fears of a parent materializing as the shape of their child's name - Emily could empathize with the concept.
The older she became, the less she identified with the rebel children, the pantheon who became, themselves, dictators and autocrats, as mercurial and cruel as their predecessors. Perhaps she refused to accept that she shared their fate, becoming the thing they had risked their lives to overthrow.
There was one tragic figure from those myths, Prometheus, with whom she felt a kind of kinship. He loved the humans so much he gave them fire, and as punishment, he was chained to a rock so vultures could come to eat his liver, only for it to grow back each night so they could eat it again the next day. Suffering for what she loved, an ideal, an ideology, was something Emily could admire. There would always be a price to pay. Had she herself not sacrificed everything for this job, this duty she held above all else? To give comfort, to bring justice, to hunt monsters and madmen, Emily had allowed herself to be chained to a rock, giving her body over to the never-satiated demands of the BAU. It wasn't her liver, but it had been everything else - children, a family, the ones she loved, honor, parts of herself, decades of her life. Emily knew what it meant to suffer for something greater, to know your fate would be pain but having the willingness to surrender to it for the chance to do one really, really good thing. That is how Emily defined love - giving. Putting yourself second. Becoming whatever she needed to be, doing whatever needed to be done, without looking at what it would cost her. It always cost her, but Emily would always pay it.
To love is to suffer.
-----------
JJ was standing in front of the same painting, shoulder scarcely a foot from Emily's, yet further apart from the woman in this moment of quiet introspection than they had ever been in 15 years of knowing each other.
Something inside her, lodged under one of her ribs on the right side where she hid the thoughts and feelings she couldn't face in the daylight, stirred the longer she looked. A gnawing feeling began scratching at her chest. Beyond the almost visceral recoil she felt at the scene was an understanding. An identification. Not with the child, but with the hunger -
The insatiable desire to consume.
JJ herself had been consumed early in her life by the acidic stomach of grief, and in turn, she became hungry - for life, for freedom, for the chance to run as far and as fast as she could from the life she felt growing around her limbs like kudzu. JJ felt like she never had enough air in her lungs, never enough light in her room, never enough life chaotically fluttering around her. She was always reaching for more, always looking for something to devour as a way of keeping the hunger at bay.
JJ was no Cronos, and she knew the story was not about hunger in the way she felt it. Still, it made JJ reflect on the sacrifices she had made in an attempt to satiate that which propelled her.
It was the hunger that made her excellent.
It was what drove her to go further and harder than everyone around her. She was a mother, an agent, a wife, a hunter - it was the hunger that let her wrestle the darkness all day without flinching and kiss her sons' forehead each night with a mother's tenderness. The hunger to fight, to win, to protect, to serve, to sacrifice - JJ wouldn't recognize herself without it. It was a strength and a necessity, a weapon and a shield, because if she wasn't consumed with the desire for more, she knew she'd be devoured by the anger burning at her core like a star on the verge of collapse. That's how JJ knew to love - to never be satisfied, to perform emotional alchemy turning sorrow and trauma and anger and pain into the desire to consume.
To love is to hunger.
-----------
The older woman beside her shifted, and JJ's mind began focusing on the sharp features of her profile out her periphery, the salt-and-pepper hair framing her strong jaw, her soft brown eyes analyzing the painting in front of them with a profiler's eye and a woman's lived experience.
What was she thinking?
JJ never found herself unconcerned with the answer to that question. She had always wanted to know, had wished more times than she could recall that she could open up Emily's mind and crawl inside it. Would she be scared of what she found? Maybe. JJ didn't care about that as much as she wanted to finally find the pieces to Emily that would make it all make sense. Not just make Emily make sense, but would also make JJ's reaction to her make sense, make this strangely intense desire to know the other woman, to once again feel close to her make sense. Emily was one of the few people that JJ had never been able to see all the way through to the bottom.
A thought flashed in her mind.
"If only I could consume her," JJ heard something inside her say.
She shoved it into the locked box of hidden things under her rib, but not before it called out, "I bet she'd be enough. You could eat your fill and still have more of her left to discover."
Desperately pretending she had never thought anything at all, she began scanning their surroundings, the reason they were in this art museum on a Tuesday afternoon coming back into focus. They had reason to believe their unsub was so obsessed with art, he believed he was creating his own form of it with the elaborate staging of his kills, and where else would an "artist" be when searching for inspiration?
A hand slipping around her waist startled her, momentarily, before she remembered their cover, before Emily's perfume gently wafted under JJ's nose and the warmth of her body made JJ feel something she couldn't name. She turned to look at her as Emily flashed her an easy smile, and JJ had the distinct impression one of the artist's represented here would have immortalized Emily if they had the chance. JJ smiled back at Emily, and it was too easy like this. Too easy to let Emily lead them down the next hall, a Van Gogh tribute, so they could discreetly follow the young man matching their profile as he continued admiring the art with a notebook in his hand. Too easy to let her own arm slide around Emily's waist, leaning into her, as if they had been walking astride through art museums for years.
It was so easy that it was cleaving JJ's chest into two halves - one half relishing in the closeness of her once-best friend, feeling the solidness of the body next to hers, whose deaths and absences, both real and illusory, had punctuated JJ's life with such emphasis that JJ marked chapters of her life by them; and one half of JJ was hurting and confused as to why there was such a distance between them in all the moments outside this cover, why it felt like Emily was back but still gone, why they were okay and still so broken, why JJ looked at those beautiful brown eyes, now crinkling with excitement as she explained the history of a new painting in front of them, and saw them look away from JJ at the BAU after the briefest glance with an indiscernible emotion in them.
Sensing JJ was somewhere else, Emily turned to look at her. She didn't turn away this time as her eyes met deep blue pools, searching Emily's eyes for something. Emily wondered if the coastline ever felt vulnerable to the ocean as crashing waves surged towards it. Emily wished she knew what JJ was looking for, always feeling in these moments, under the weight of JJ's scrutiny, that Emily was being asked a question she couldn't understand. Knowing by now that she most likely would never know what JJ was looking for, Emily settled for humor.
"You know Jayje, you see me every day. You're supposed to be looking at the once-in-a-lifetime art here."
JJ blinked at her slowly for a moment before breaking eye contact and ducking her head, chuckling softly.
"Sorry, just thinking."
"I know, I could hear it all the way over here." Emily smiled softly, which JJ returned.
Emily reached up to delicately tuck a stray strand of blonde hair behind JJ's ear before bending down so her lips were directly beside JJ's ear, a hairs breadth away from touching the sensitive skin there.
"My 12 o'clock, dark brown hair, 6 ft. What do you think he's writing in his notebook?" Emily whispered, and JJ couldn't suppress the involuntary shiver she felt at having Emily's lips so close to her, how her breath ghosted along her jaw and the side of her neck, how fucking good she smelled.
The hunger spiked inside her, and JJ snapped into focus.
Leaning forward to mimic Emily's previous motion, her lips accidentally brushing lightly against the shell of Emily's ear, JJ whispered back, "Let's find out.”