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uberniftacularFandom: Criminal Minds
'Verse: Instead of My Saints
Characters/pairing: Emily, Spencer, JJ, Hotch
Rating: PG
Summary: Random character moments
Warnings: none
Author's notes: Unbeta'ed.
1. Emily doesn’t cry when Dad leaves.
Penelope and Jenny both sob inconsolably, Derek hits things, Spencer won’t talk to anyone for days. Emily compartmentalizes, like she has always compartmentalized. When her mother died, she was dry-eyed at the funeral, almost successfully blocking out whispers from some of the other attendees (“Such a strange girl. You wouldn’t even know Elizabeth just died, the way she behaves.”). The feelings are there, of course, but she’s trained herself to hide them, to not let them interfere with her life. When Dad leaves, she watches her siblings react, watches Mom react, but she can’t cry. She compartmentalizes, tries to hold the kids together during that awful week, and gives Mr. David Rossi the Ambassador’s Daughter smile when they come home.
2. Spencer still sleeps with his teddy bear at age fifteen.
It isn’t like he absolutely needs to hug the bear to fall asleep or anything anymore, but it’s still a comfort to have Malory around. Malory was a gift from his mother, for his second birthday, and has been his companion ever since. One of the first major arguments that Spencer and Derek ever had was about the bear (“Malory is NOT a girl’s name!”); once that was resolved, though, Derek would defend Malory’s honor almost as fiercely as Spencer would. He’s careful to leave the bear under his pillow when he gets up in the morning, in case someone comes to visit him (though being a fifteen-year-old college senior, getting ready to graduate with two degrees, living in a single dorm since freshman year doesn’t exactly invite visitors), but the knowledge that it’s there is a comfort nonetheless.
3. JJ’s phobia of dogs is definitely not an unfounded one.
hen Jenny is five, the family moves out of Mommy’s apartment and into a house. It looks HUGE to the small girl, and she takes great pleasure zooming from one room to another, playing hide-and-seek with Daddy. After a few weeks, Daddy decides to meet the neighbors one day while Mommy is at work, so Jenny comes along with him. The grownups seem nice enough, but they’re boring, so Jenny wanders around in their backyard while they talk to Daddy. She’s cheerfully picking dandelions when the dog comes running around the corner, and tackles her. The dog thinks it means well, thinks it just wants to play, but when you’re five years old and suddenly have a Great Dane pinning you to the ground, its open mouth inches from your face, well-meaning doesn’t really translate. Jenny screams, and Daddy comes running, the neighbors close behind calling for the dog to get off. Daddy scoops Jenny up, shouldering the retreating dog out of the way, scowls at the neighbors, and leaves without saying good-bye. It takes two hours to get her calmed down, and afterwards, she never can be near dogs comfortably.
4. Jason’s toy trains stay on a shelf in the house long after he leaves.
The trains were Stephen’s, first. Jason kept them as a reminder to himself; now, they keep the trains as a reminder of Jason. The first time Hotch tries to pack them away, Spencer finds the box, picks the lock on the office door (a trick learned from Elle), and climbs on a chair to put the trains back in exactly the same place they had been. The next morning, Aaron opens the office door, sees the trains, and walks to the kitchen. He stands in the doorway for a moment, surveying his brood. Spencer looks right at him, defiance in his eyes, and Aaron simply nods once and leaves the room again. The trains stay on their shelf, and gradually it becomes less and less difficult to look at them. Then one day, twenty years later, Jason is home again, and the look in his eyes when he sees that the trains are still there makes words unnecessary.