#baumother

It’d been a Thursday morning when the first letter arrived, an innocent-looking plain white envelope sitting in Taissa’s empty mailbox, with nothing on it apart from her address scrawled in almost illegible handwriting. It’d taken her awhile to decipher what was actually in the letter, but the first couple of sentences were enough to get her stomach churning, the bile rising in her throat. She’d shoved it back into the envelope, tossed it straight into the trash just so she wouldn’t have to look at it, but a couple hours later her Bureau instincts kicked in and she’d pulled it back out to keep as evidence.

Foolishly, she’d hoped it would go away if she ignored it for long enough. Until the second letter came. By the third letter, she’d installed a new electronic lock on her door and two motion sensor security cameras - one in the outer hallway and the other in full view of her apartment. The nights dragged on far too long as she lay in bed sleepless, staring at the doorway and hyper aware of every creak and groan in the building.

If you were to ask Taissa why she hadn’t approached anyone about it - she worked at the FBI for Christ’s sakes - she wouldn’t have known what to respond. That she was too afraid of the consequences? That she didn’t want to trouble anyone with her issues? That she didn’t want her daddy issues dug up and examined under a microscope? The list went on, really.

She’d learnt from experience that sometimes it was better to just deal with these things alone, that it was infuriating how people learnt to treat you like glass and stepped on eggshells around you - which was exactly what she had begun to notice from her team. She supposed she couldn’t expect all the sleepless nights and lackluster work performance to escape their notice; they were all trained agents after all.

@baumother​  said   “I  mean…  I’ve  made  worse  choices  before.”

THERE’S A VERY THIN LINE:    between  vulnerable  and  exposed,    between  too  honest  and  just  honest  enough.    maeve  doesn’t  talk  about  herself,     none  of  them  do,    but  maeve  especially  makes  an  art  of  avoiding  any  topic  that  might  reveal  too  much.    her  constance  impermanence  is  made  easier  by  the  fact  that  the  others  remain  only  colleagues     -     being  friends  would  simply  be  too  much.    but  they  were  bound  to  notice  how  her  engagement  ring  no  longer  rests  on  her  finger,     how  today  she’s  all  the  quieter.

❝   my  mother  will  be  devastated.   ❞     has  she  mentioned  mary  before?    it  feels  odd,     personal,     but  there’s  no  getting  out  of  this  without  saying  more  than  she  has.     the  engagement  with  bobby  is  over  and  all  she  feels  is  so  painfully  hollow.    ❝    I-    it  was  the  right  choice.    not  all  of  us  are  right  for  marriage,    you  know?  ❞

“i’m not good at leisuring,” she says. “i’m good at working, and analyzing.” 

she’s not the worst at it, really: she’s great at it during girls nights, whether that’s at one of their places or some dance studio they stay out too late in. it’s not that she doesn’t know how, it just ... slips through the cracks unless someone forces her to. 

“you’re already making me worry.” 

it’s an instinct at this point. the worry. especially when someone tells her not to. it’s not that she’s irrational, but -- hell, sometimes someone tells them all not to worry and ends up in prison, or in the hospital, or some other horrifying thing. 

“okay. look at me, jayje.” 

reaching out is instinctual, as is the lowering of her voice. so many years on this team, with these friends, and it doesn’t matter that she’s only just back, that the title of unit chief has been hefted onto her shoulders so suddenly - she has known all of them too long for there to be a gap in knowing how to love them. 

emily reaches out to clasp her fingers around jj’s wrist. 

( and suddenly she’s the new girl again, standing in a bathroom doorway of an unfamiliar house, watching a woman with blood-stained sleeves clasp the edge of a sink, because the team’s youngest is missing and compartmentalization is a better answer than i was a spy for years to the liaison’s question. ) 

“we’re not going to lose him. i told him that and i’ll tell you the same thing. we’re going to get that kid back, with the help of the bureau’s lawyers or not. i’ve got a friend, i’m going to give her a call. okay?” 

she rubs her thumb back and forth across her wrist. 

is it even something she can promise? she knows it’s not. maybe if she was an agent, not the head of the unit, she’d allow herself to falter in her own belief in front of others.