blue. criminal minds

eight...thats kinda the whole point

During the academy they teach you to hold close to two coping mechanisms that work almost all of the time, so Judes got her Hot Chocolate (with 3 marshmallows and the occasional shot of caramel), and Mason. The applicants were all told that using people as an outlet for emotion was painful for both involved, but honestly who gave a fuck, if her kid ever expressed a distaste for getting gelato at 11 pm then maybe she would reconsider all of her life choices, but for now she was doing a great fucking job.

Speaking of doing a great fucking job, Jude was starting a new one of those in the morning. Was it exhilarating? No. Did she wish she was back home in her own bed? Yes. although she was on a substantially higher pay rate, and that meant a Penthouse Suit with a slide for one fully grown 31 year-old woman and her 9 year-old son. Finding the right apartment had been an all day ordeal, requiring the artistic and highly picky eye of Mason Vaughn-Levy, the name of a kid who while was happy to still be with his mum, was not happy to be moving schools.

Okay, so while the mother and son duo had looked real hard for an apartment with a slide it seemed the entirety of Virginia was vacant of anything fun, so as Jude explained to Mason, if he closed his eyes on the elevator it could be a rollercoaster — and that seemed to keep him occupied long enough for Jude to find a place that would actually be suitable for the both of them, the end result being 'the sutton', a high end apartment complex in a gated community.

The act of looking for an apartment was actually the least stressful thing that had happened in the past three days, see with Jude being in the line of work she's in, she can't exactly just get on a plane without alerting someone somewhere of her presence. Luckly, the CID was prepared for this, because she had her personal travel passport under the name of Ariel Steinfeld, and well Ariel had the most glamorous red hair, so after making sure Mason had made his flight with Finnon Jone (god damn Vera being busy, also something about Jone originally being from Virginia?) Jude had pulled out the red dollar store dye with distaste (silently thanking whatever higher power there was, that her hair was currently blonde).

It had taken two hours, one completely different outfit, two versace suitcases, saint laurent heart shaped glasses and chewing gum for Jude — no Ariel to really feel like her character (which was a bitchy redhead but still).

When she arrived at the airport...well that was where the real test started. The taxi driver from her home had been easy enough to have trick into believing a stupid sob story about some boyfriend that broke her stupid little heart. It helped that she had an alarm system that set when the door was shut, but at the airport they would be going through documents, and it wouldn't matter if they had been government crafted or not.

Security had been surprisingly easy to bypass, all she had done was pulled the heart-shaped glasses to the top of her head, pushed her newly dyed red hair behind her ear and given the male checking her passport a cheeky wink and before she knew it she had been handed back the small file only now with the addition of the man's phone number and a promise to call.

From an outsider's perspective maybe it had been a bit much, maybe going out of her way to paint the nails of the little girl sitting next to her on the flight had been something that 'Jude' would never do, but personas were important, and the little girls (her name was sam) dad seemed happy that he could get a quick nap, even if it was just for an hour.

The flight was over and done with before Jude could even blink her purple lined, black stained lashes, and as she exited the airport having grabbed her bags and popped another stick of gum she could only think about how she had left her favourite yellow nail polish on the plane, or had she left it with that little girl? She didn't know, but it was the only yellow she had found that didn't look like piss, so it would be a greatly missed colour.