its okay little one

JJ was triggered, that's not the word her blurry confused mind would use but it was true. They were on the jet, JJ curled up in her seat, knees pulled to her chest and counting down the minutes until they landed, and he could just be with her mam- Emily, so she could be with Emily.

The case they were coming back from had been hard, eight days of little to no sleep, barely any food and constant work. But it had been worth it, they caught the unsub and saved his last victim, that's where JJ's issue had started, the victim, Katie, was an age regressor. Internally it had made jj smile, she liked seeing other people with her coping mechanism living their lives, except for this time, when there was nothing happy about it. They couldn't really get her talking but JJ was pretty sure she had been regressed while in the hands of the unsub, the thought made her sick, a little girl, a child a baby even, stuck, scared, without her caregiver not knowing if anyone was coming to save her.

The whole thing made JJ feel little, she wanted to be able to not think about it, she wanted to curl up in her mama's arms and follow her breathing until she fell asleep.

And that was exactly what she had planned to do until what happened back at the police station while they were packing up. They had been working silently until Derek decided his opinion needed to be shared.

"I mean I get it, age regression I mean, as a trauma response, but God it would be annoying for anyone having to actually deal with that. Like imagine being a grown adult and pretending to be a kid just so someone who could be doing much better things with their time has to take care of you? I mean that's just selfish."

Nobody knew about JJs regression, it was hers, just hers and Emily's and that was sacred, she kept it under lock and key, it was only something she had recently learned to accept and support herself with and the deep-rooted shame embarrassment and humiliation was still very much present in the for front of her mind.

If Emily had been in the room when Derek went on his little uneducated rant [she was getting a bad coffee from the 7-11 down the street] there would have been hell.

JJ could see a how that scenario could have easily ended with Derek having a broken nose, but without Emily there to quickly wipe the idea from JJs increasingly tired mind, the thought grew over her like mold, maybe she was selfish, maybe she was just pretending to be little for attention? And worst of all maybe Derek really was right. Maybe Emily didn't want this, maybe it was annoying to her, maybe Emily was just pretending to like JJ but secretly hated her for all the difficulty she made. To JJs mind, slipping between headspaces, tiredness and overstimulation, this seemed like a pretty reasonable conclusion to come to.

So here she was on the jet, biting her lip to stop herself from crying, and vowing to herself that she was big, she wasn't going to regress today, or any other day for that matter, she was done, it was stupid and annoying, and Derek had confirmed that. She couldn't do that to Emily anymore. No matter how much she desperately wanted or needed too.

Emily had assumed that JJ would regress after this case, it had been seventeen days since she last slipped and she rarely went more than a week, that plus the victim being a regressor too? Emily hadn't even considered that potential that JJ might stay big once they got home. So, it was definitely a little surprising when she tried to usher JJ to the back seat of the car, only to have her shake her head and wobble uncertainly towards the front seat, shaking hands fumbling with the seat belt until she finally got it to click.

"You alright pumpkin?" Emily asked, concerned by the girl's behavior, and the look of dissociation and suppression behind her glazed eyes was defiantly worrying to Emily.

"don't call me that" it was meek and not at all what Emily expected her to say, JJ usually loved being helped into headspace with nicknames and cuddles. Emily could tell that JJ wasn't all the way big and the refusal to let herself relax concerned her, but she decided to wait until they got home to press the matter. This could end with a pretty upset little and a parking lot was not the best place for that to happen.