Criminal Minds Oneshots

Till Death Do Us Part

Summary: You didn't expect grief to linger after Emily came back from the dead

Pairing: Emily Prentiss x GN!Reader

Category: angst with a hopeful ending

Content Warnings: (16+ for sexual themes) references the storyline of S6E18 and S7E01, mentions of death and the 5 stages of grief, crying, arguing, religious metaphors, implied sex scene (non-explicit)

Word count: 3.2k

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Denial

Seven months after I dropped a single red rose into my girlfriend's grave, I found her standing in front of the door of where we used to live together. It wasn't completely surprising, considering hours before I had received a phone call from a very excited Penelope Garcia, asking me if I had heard about it yet.

She had to explain to me what it was four times until I slowly started to understand her words. However, they still didn't make any sense. For weeks we had mourned the loss of Emily together, sharing beloved stories and looking at pictures of a woman unlike anyone else. There was no way I could believe her when she repeated the words Emily is alive over and over again until I hung up on her out of desperation.

Now that she was standing in front of me, it was even harder to believe that my mind wasn't playing tricks on me. More than once had I sensed her presence since she had passed, staring at raven-haired strangers on the street if they only resembled her in the slightest. It had never been her, so why would it actually be Emily now?

"Hi, love. I missed you," she cooed with a shy smile on her face.

I took my time looking her up and down, noticing how the depth of her irises was still the same but a few slight wrinkles were framing her eyes now. Her hair had grown quite a bit since the last time I had seen her. Still, nothing about this made any sense, so I closed the door shut in front of her and stepped back to take a breath.

My girlfriend died seven months ago.

Emily is dead.

For a moment I wondered if she would just unlock the door and step in like she used to do after coming home from a case. But Agent Hotchner had given me her set of keys along with her other belongings when he personally informed me of her passing.

Just when I had convinced myself that I was stuck in a particularly long and cruel nightmare, another knock against my door pulled me back into what I couldn't believe was reality.

"Please, open the door and let me explain," Emily pleaded from the hallway.

Stepping closer to the door once more, I considered opening it but decided against it. It was too painful to look at her again, too risky to find out none of this was real and I would lose her all over again. With my back pressed against the door, I sank down to sit on the floor with my arms wrapped around my knees.

"Go away," I kept whispering over and over again until I heard footsteps moving away from me.

Finally, this nightmare was over. For now.

I spent the following day in blissful ignorance until my phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number.

I'm staying at the Rosewood Hotel, Room 241. Let me know whenever you're ready to talk. xx Emily

I didn't even question it when my body started moving, it was so deeply embedded in my subconscious to follow her calling that I only realized that I was standing in front of her hotel room door when it was already too late. Two firm knocks announced my presence.