criminal minds oneshots

✧ missing p1

You felt the rose petals between your fingers, soft and fragile. It reminded you of her hands. Multiple people stood around the black casket, rimmed with gold but you grimaced. Your mum didn't like gold. The black outfits fluttered in the light wind, reminding you of rotting butterflies. Your heart ached.

JJ left your side, stepping closer to the coffin. She set her rose on top, muttered a few words under her breath and walked back to your side. Next was Hotch, then Reid and eventually - it was your turn. Yet you couldn't quite move. Your legs refused to move closer to your mother's dead body lying in a box. You let the rose shake in your hand and the steady tears running down your cheeks turned blood red from the reflection. If you let the rose go, then you say goodbye officially and you weren't ready for that yet. How did you even say goodbye? You felt weak at the thought, unable to receive the words - the thoughts. Emily was everything to you. Your mother. You had her eyes, her smile, her raven hair.

A few days later, you headed into JJ's kitchen. Immediately, she claimed custody of you which you were thankful for because it was your family but you couldn't help but feel so unbelievably empty. It hadn't settled in yet that she was gone forever. Your brain hadn't accepted it yet your body felt empty. You were missing. Your mother made you, raised you and loved you with every fibre in her body and suddenly that love had left. You were scared, you felt alone and as if no one would ever be there for you again.

Although JJ stood in front of you, wiping your stream of tears that never seemed to end. There was no beginning to your pain, no end to it either and as JJ wrapped her arms around you, pulling you into her arms, all you craved was your mother's. JJ didn't fit you right, you didn't slot together like jigsaw pieces. It was wrong letting another woman hug you - the way a mother was supposed to.

You walked away, crawling back into bed. Curling up under your mother's blanket, you clung to the smell. You held your breath, hoping that if you kept it in long enough, it'd enter your bloodstream, never leaving you. You shut your eyes tight and saw her smile, bright and wide with pride. You covered your ears, stopping her voice from escaping. She told you she loved you, told you she cared and would always be there for you but it was an empty promise.

Here you were, lying without her. Living without her and you didn't know how much longer you could do it. How do you survive with a giant hole inside your chest? You felt like you were being stabbed in the heart, over and over. Like someone had their hand wrapped tightly around your heart - squeezing the life from it. You were weak, sad and unable to comprehend anything but pain.

A few months passed and you still hadn't smiled. Your blanket no longer smelt like her, it left like she did. You were forgetting the sound of her voice, no matter how hard you covered your ears. You couldn't even see her smile in you because it was impossible to conjure one up. You'd lost weight, looking like a skeleton, feeling like death itself. Your hair was beginning to fall out, you lost that too. That last connection to your mother. You constantly curled yourself up, whether it be in the shower, in bed, or on the sofa. You did it to try and feel her hold again. You were the closest you'd get to her touch so you didn't stop holding yourself but your body was weak. The natural charge had faded. You had faded and no one could see you anymore.

You no longer laughed or spoke much at all really. Every time someone did speak to you, it covered up your mother's voice in your head. Your mum's voice. The first voice you ever heard. The one to dry your tears, the one to make you laugh or sometimes the one that caused you so much anger. But it was your mum's voice and you shut yourself off from the world so they couldn't take it.

Piles upon piles of work were heaped on your desk. You didn't understand it. Your mum would, she would help you like in the old times. She'd sit beside you as you worked through the math or practised your spellings. But she couldn't now. You couldn't do your work because she wasn't here to sit beside you.

Your body was always cold, shivering because part of you was now a ghost. A reminder of what life does to someone and even ten months after her funeral - none of you had returned. The pain never stopped. JJ held you, she rocked you and held you as you sobbed and screamed from the overwhelming feeling of pain but it never left.

You cried til your eyes were swollen, they were swollen permanently. You scratched at your skin, hoping the pain would go like that but it always came back. The pain never left, it clung to you like a child to its mother - unable to depart. Your body racked with sobs, pain, and screams and you tried everything. You just wanted it to stop, you wanted it all to stop and leave you alone. Because although your mum left, the memory of her was incessant. Nothing could pull you away from the ghost of her and ever day you hoped and prayed and dreamed she'll come back, just to stop the pain. She never returned.

Until she did.