take me to church (emily prentiss)

4. sixteen

AN: hi guys! happy monday!

long time no see but s4 is the bane of my life so i have shortened it and cut a lot of episodes out, but this is the final chapter of s4 before we get into the mess that is s5

just a few tws:

medical procedures
religious trauma
fear (so valid)
mentions of exorcisms
george foyet mentions
delilah getting stabbed

i hope you guys enjoy and see you next week for season 5! <333

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"listening to the choir so heartfelt, all singing 'god loves you, but not enough to save you'." - sun bleached flies, ethel cain

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Liv never really had medical procedures. It was actually quite rare she found herself in the patient position instead of the doctor position.

She had more medical procedures as a kid and teenager. There was the time she got twelve stitches in her arm after Eli came at her with a knife and caught her before she could run away, and the time she got eight stitches on her chin when she ran down a hill and fell onto her face.

There was the time she fell off a table in college and cracked her elbow, resulting in pins being put into her arm to keep the joint fluid and moving. There was the time she got stabbed in the chest during her internship by that guy with the knife in his head and her entire life turned to orient around neurosurgery.

She'd had more injuries, of course, but they were the only four she ever went to hospital over. She fixed the rest herself.

The fertility tests a few weeks ago added to the list of procedures. The insemination would be added today, too.

They'd picked a donor with brown eyes. Liv won that debate, thanks to Ziggy saying they already had a mini Liv. Emily relented when Liv said they could always pick a blue eyed donor if they wanted another child in the future.

So, donor picked and fully checked by Cece to be healthy and have no genetic health problems, they went forward with the process.

Liv would be inseminated today, and it would be a waiting game to see if it took.

Emily was hopeful. Liv was less so.

Her necklace hadn't snapped, so, she knew nobody was dying, but she also knew this wouldn't take. The first one wouldn't. She knew deep in her bones that the first time wouldn't work, but that was okay. They would just try again in a few weeks.

She didn't know why she knew this. She just knew she had a really sick feeling in her stomach when she woke up that morning, and she'd walked to Cece's office with Emily past the chapel in the hospital, which was the route she always avoided on any other day.

She hadn't even realised she was going that way until she saw the cross above the door almost mocking her. That was how she knew it wouldn't work.

She wasn't going to get what she wanted without giving a little, first, and she refused to give any more of herself to a coward she didn't believe in but still wanted to love her and heal her.

To have a baby with a woman out of wedlock was a sin. To live the life Liv lived was a sin, yet she lived it all the same. She was a sinner. She had been for as long as she could remember, had heard so many priests and pastors say it to her, her own father included.