In Desperate Need

What follows is a series of drabbles. The prompts come from Facebook's Drabble Song Challenge, with special thanks to Bonesbird. The rules state the entry can not be over 500 words. One prompt a day is given. I will do them in the order they were given, so that will dictate the course of this story.

Fair warning, this fic has angst.

Prompt 1:

Any minute now my ship is coming in
I'll keep checking the horizon
And I'll stand on the bow
Feel the waves come crashing

January 2012

"I'm having a bad day," she had told Hotch, with the slightest trace of tears in the dark depths of her eyes. Crying on the job was unheard of for SSA Emily Prentiss.

At least it used to be.

Things were different since she had come back from being in Paris. She was different, changed in ways that she couldn't explain to her therapist but they were real and profound nonetheless. What she wanted out of her life wasn't the same anymore. That was one of the reasons why she had hesitated for a moment before accepting Strauss' job offer to re-join the BAU.

As much as Emily had known that the team had wanted her back, she also had known this wasn't the right place for her anymore. With everyday that she stayed here she sacrificed one more day that she wasn't a mother.

Just this morning she had taken yet another home pregnancy test. The fourth one in as many months. The minus sign mocked her- reminding her of the painful reality of all the wrong turns she had taken in her life that had left her without a man who loved her, and made her have to pay for sperm to try to conceive.

Sometimes she hated her job. Hated herself. Hated the mistakes she had made in her past. Sometimes it was a very bad day indeed.

When Reid sat across from her on the flight home he didn't say anything, just gave her a knowing look. It was a comfort to have a friend that she could talk to and also to have someone who she didn't have to say a word to and he would know when she was in trouble. That was the one thing he had made her promise before he could forgive her deception: to never again keep her pain a secret.

"I'm going to be okay," she told him.

"I know," he replied back, sounding so sure of himself that she had no choice but to believe it too.