Her Mother's Daughter - Hotchniss

chapter seven: secret for the mad

"And there will be a day / When you can say you're okay / And mean it"

-

Henry couldn't really understand why any of it was happening, or what made her so sad. "My mommy gone sometimes, too, when she go work. But she always come back!" Henry gave Bridget a sweet kiss on the cheek and smiled. He couldn't say her name right. "Bidgie, you can call your mama! No, don't cry!" He tried to dry her tears. She smiled at him.

"C'mere, buddy." Bridget hugged Henry and he gave her kisses.

"Is okay! My mommy make me happy when I sad, I go get her! She help you too!"

Bridget nodded and tried to calm down. Everything was numb in the most painful way. She leaned against the bed, as she was sitting on the floor of her room. Her elbows rested on her knees and her forehead in her hands. She registered the sounds of their voices but not the words being said.

'Mama, Bidgie sad! You gotta help her!'
'Oh, buddy, Bridget's having a rough time, why don't you just let her be, okay?'
'But she sad, Mama, come on!'

Henry pulled her by the hand and JJ apologized silently to Bridget, who shook her head, knowing the boy had meant so well. "Mama, see? She sad, you make her happy?" JJ kneeled down to the kids' eye level and held her son.

"Yeah, bud, I'll help. Go play with Daddy, yeah?" Henry ran off and JJ leaned against the bed next to her. "Hey." Bridget responded with a heaving sigh. "Yeah, sounds about right. Listen, Bridge, I can't even imagine how just awful this is. And I can't ask you to talk about your feelings, I know that's not a strong suit of the Prentiss family." Bridget chuckled. "If you ever want to, though, I will always listen, alright?"

The team was always checking in on Bridget, and Spencer spent much time with his own grief at JJ's. Bridget couldn't leave her room when Spencer was over; it upset her too much. JJ would let her spend time with Hotch sometimes, but Penelope came over to see Bridget a lot. She knew how to help with grief from murders or violent crimes, she ran those support groups.

"I thought...I really thought she would come home. Y'know, in the letter, she said she did everything in order to protect me. So she went after Doyle to protect me. She...she did this for me? I was the reason she was in the situation in the first place?"

"No, hey, Bridget, no," Garcia said firmly. "Listen to me. No part of this is your fault, honey. You cannot blame yourself. If you blame yourself now it's going to stick with you, and—and fester, and the longer that guilt is there the harder it gets to get rid of it, trust me. Get that out of your mind right now. You did not get your mom killed. Do you hear me?"

Bridget's eyes were wide and Garcia hugged her. "How am I supposed to act like it had nothing to do with me?" she asked, her voice small. Penelope smiled sadly.

"You don't, honey. You have to tell yourself that...that you're not to blame here. Ian Doyle is the one who hurt your mother. You did not. Okay?" Bridget nodded. "It's not your fault,"

"It's not my fault," she echoed. Both of them were crying. "I don't know how to deal with this,"

"No one does." Garcia shook her head and took Bridget's hand. "I know how hard it is to lose a parent when you're a teenager. It feels...completely crummy, and..." Bridget laughed at word choice and Penelope smiled that she could make this poor girl laugh. "And it might feel like that for a while. And that's okay. But that feeling of everything being terrible and life being hell without them? The just...god-awful, gut-wrenching, exhausting pain that feels like it controls your entire body and being?" Bridget couldn't look her aunt in the face. "It never really goes away. But, at least in my experience, it gets smaller. It doesn't drown you. It's this little ball. Sometimes it's bigger, sometimes it's smaller. Some days it could be really hard, and others it might not hurt so bad. But it's not your entire world anymore. It's just a part of you. Not the be-all, end-all." Bridget hugged Penelope and they sobbed. "We all love you so much, Bridge,"

"I love you,"

"And on any day when your grief ball tries to start shit with you, you can always talk to me. I just need you to do one thing for me, okay?"

"What,"

"Tell me a story about your mom. Not something sappy or whatever, just something really funny that she did. Like once, she came into work the day after Halloween and said, 'Bridget didn't want to go out this year, so we just bought candy for the kids in our building and ate the leftovers.' And she gave Reid Smarties and Rossi a 100 Grand. Everyone else got candy, too, but those were so clearly targeted."

For what felt like the first time again, Bridget laughed.