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if someone were to ask, JANE DONOVAN had a picture perfect childhood. her father had an office job, a fancy attorney of some sort. her mother was a happy housewife, always humming as her two daughters went about their young lives in childish whimsy.
jane would tell people that her mother was the nicest person on the planet, and she'd give a stranger the clothes off her back if they asked for it. she'd tell them that her father was a doting husband, always spending nights in with them and playing board games, or a riveting game of hide and seek with his daughters.
she'd smile while she told people, and she'd take in their envious words, their comments on how their parents were drunks, or their parents should've divorced; she'd listen with sympathy, always offering a drink and a shoulder to cry on. taking a page out of her mother's book, she'd tell them.
they'd call her saint for the way she took care of her little sister, the way she raised her despite only being eleven when her mother and father died in a 'tragic home break-in' that the police never solved. they'd applaud her for picking up the pieces of her broken family, and making a life for herself and a future for her sister to grow up into.
jane would take all of the praise with a thankless smile, and an offer of, 'you would've done it if you were in my shoes, too,' even though she knows it's not true.
because, the thing is, jane was telling the truth, to an extent. her childhood was happy, for a short while. but when people ask, they don't want to know the harsh reality. they don't want to know that jane's mother hummed so happily because she was too drunk to know what day it was, and they didn't care that her father was always home hours after dinner with a different shade of lipstick on his collar, and a war raging in his blood.
they didn't care to know about the pills that rattled in their cabinets, or the loaded gun that her father kept beneath his side of the bed.
jane never told them about the things her father did to her or her sister, or the things that jane had to save them from. she didn't tell them that it wasn't a stranger who broke into their home and shot her mother, it was her father, who was just so angry all the time that he finally crossed the line you couldn't come back from.
jane never told anyone about the blood she'd tasted on her tongue when paramedics and police officers rushed her to an ambulance alongside her sister, or the way she watched her father's unrecognizable form be zipped into a black bag just like her mother's.
that's the thing about life- nobody wants to know how bad you've really got it. and after a while, it becomes easier to live in the lies and placating half-truths.
jane's spent the better part of nine years pretending that her life had never happened the way it did, and it's gotten her far. but all of that is threatened when a vengeful serial killer targets aaron hotchner's loved ones, and the walls she's carefully crafted around her past threaten to come tumbling down.
and just because there's a few familiar faces sprouting up in her new life doesn't mean she's going to give it all up without a fight.
after all, nothing is worth jeopardizing her life over. not even spencer reid.
𝘾𝘼𝙎𝙏 dakota johnson - jane donovan beth riesgraf - maeve donovan matthew gray gubler - spencer reid diego boneta - calvin bell john francis daley - benjamin pierce criminal minds cast - themselves
𝘾𝙊𝙉𝙏𝙀𝙉𝙏 𝙒𝘼𝙍𝙉𝙄𝙉𝙂 murder, ptsd, childhood trauma, criminal minds cases, stalkers, domestic abuse (physical, verbal), gone girl-esque revenge arcs, i take full creative liberties with maeve's storyline because i do what i want. eventual pregnancy, general domesticity. real idiots to lovers type relationship. slowburn as is to be expected from me. also i suppose slight AU in some spots bc let's be honest here..... trying to understand the criminal minds timeline is a feat that i've yet to accomplish. no smut. don't comment about not getting smut or you'll be blocked.
