Emily Prentiss One-Shots

Emily/Hotch

Title - built a home and watched it burn - CriminalMindsGoneWrong (Ao3)

Summary - Emily and Aaron are getting divorced.

Rating - General 

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Emily paced nervously around their bedroom. Her bedroom, she corrected. There was something so devastatingly lonely about that that she didn't like to think about. Sun was streaming in through the white curtains, but she felt cold. Emily was always cold, nowadays. She shook her hands, trying to rid them of the numbness that always seemed to settle there now, and distract herself from the strange sense of wrongness that came with no longer wearing her rings. Her left, fourth finger felt light, naked almost. She folded her arms, to stop herself from fidgeting. He would be here soon and she needed to calm herself, she needed to be collected when she opened the door. She needed to compartmentalise. Emily sat down on the bed, which sank comfortably under her weight. What she wouldn't give to climb back beneath those covers and sleep for a few days. Restless nights weren't a new thing to her, not by a long chalk. Sleepless, anxious ones were.

She wasn't scared. It wasn't that kind of anxiety. It was the kind that came with an extreme change. Since Aaron had moved out, everything was quieter, tidier, now that there was less stuff in the house. That was so unnerving. Having the bed to herself was a strange feeling, too. She didn't like it. In fact, she hated it so much that for the past few nights, she'd been allowing their six year old, Ava, to sleep in her bed. Ava missed her father so much, that sleeping on Aarons side of the bed, wrapped up in one of his shirts that he had left, which Emily hadn't washed yet, was comforting her. It was a secret she would always keep close to her heart, but having his smell so close was soothing for Emily, too. She could hear Ava banging around in her bedroom, packing a bag to take to her fathers, and, raking the hair back from her face and using the hairband around her wrist to tie it up, she made her way down the hall.

Ava's room was a mess. That was nothing new - Ava seemed to have completely avoided the neat gene that both of her parents had passed down, and she had a storage system all her own; a non-existent one. Emily wasn't as strict as Aaron, when it came to keeping things in order, but she liked things neat. Ava had no such issues. Her bedspread was awry, her teddy bears scattered around the room, along with all of her toys. There were clothes everywhere .

"Remind me never to let you pack your own bag again," Emily smiled, walking into the room and scooping the dark-haired little girl up into her arms, "At least, not until you know how to fold." She tugged a scrunched up dress out of the backpack Ava had filled. Filled was a loose term. The butterfly adorned bag was overflowing with frills and bows. Ava certianly hadn't inherited the girly gene from her mother; Emily had always insisted that it was Auntie Penelope rubbing off on her. Aaron was inclined to agree.

"I want to take toys to leave in daddy's." Ava told her mother, matter-of-factly, as Emily sat down on the bed, settling her daughter on her lap. She dug through the bag and found, buried underneith what turned out to be very few items of clothing, an array of toys. Barbies, a baby doll and bottle, stuffed animals and a few of pieces of her play make-up; a present from Auntie Pen, of course. The sight of her daughters little treasures all packed into a bag made Emily's stomach turn. They were some of her favourite toys, and she was going to take them to Aarons. Best not to look too much into that.

Emily nodded and gave the bag to Ava. "Put some more toys in there, sweetheart, I'll get you another bag."

She left Ava's room and headed to the closet at the end of the hallway, next to their stairs, in which she kept towels, suitcases, backpacks. Anything that didn't really fit in a bedroom or living room, she shoved in there. She opened the door and stopped. It was like looking into a mirror of the past, as she stared at her wedding photo. She had hidden it away in here when Aaron had first moved out. It had been too painful, and three weeks later, it still choked her up and would, she imagined, for the forseeable future. She grabbed one of Ava's little suitcases and closed the door. She was going to have to do something about that. But, what? She couldn't throw away ten years of memories simply because they were painful.