03

                                    

                                          
Somehow we walked all the way to my apartment and winded up drinking while sitting on my couch.
"Drunk enough to share now?" Emily giggled cutely.
"I suppose. Promise you won't tell anybody?" I shifted my position to now be facing her. She nodded. "I think I was 8 when I noticed something was wrong. It was around the same time my brother Russ would come into my room and do his best to distract me. From what I know my father started out as a hitman." I rested my head on the top of the couch as I kept my eyes locked in hers and she did the same.
"I think he began to enjoy the kill. Or most likely he always enjoyed it but needed more than just doing it for hire. He'd be gone most of the time, sometimes for days straight. My mom wasn't happy about this, I don't think she knew about any of it. When I was 9 she accused him of cheating on her and well he snapped." I looked away from her and back to the almost empty bottle of wine on my coffee table. 
She slid her hand in mine and squeezed tightly, encouraging me to continue. "It was a rough night for me and my brother. Nothing could distract me from the screaming, he tried reading to me, playing cartoons but I just couldn't stop sobbing. It came to a point he had to place his hand over my mouth because if my dad heard me crying he'd come in and do god knows what." Tears began forming in my eyes as she rubbed the back of my hand gently with her thumb. "We call it the day everything changed. Mom never came back, he told us we were to blame but neither of us believed that. She was buried in the backyard."
I rested my head gently on her shoulder. "My brother was the one to raise me from that point. My father was never around, only coming back to dig more bodies in the backyard. Russ stole food, books for me to read, anything he could do to take care of me. This lasted for 2 years. Sometimes my father would take breaks, he'd come back and those were bad days. We couldn't make a noise. We had to pretend we didn't exist and we only did to listen to his orders. It wasn't fair, none of it was."
She nodded and kept rubbing my hand. "Then the FBI and police circled the home. I was in my typical place, hiding besides my bed but my father forced Russ to stay with him. He told me he handed him a gun, told him to shoot any cops that came on the property. He was 14. Russ didn't think twice about it, he shot our father. Then everybody came in and yeah. We went into foster care and were lucky enough to not be seperated because truely I don't know what I would do without him." 
"Shit." Emily replied as I remained laying on her shoulder, hand in hand. We didn't say anything afterwards for a few minutes. Mainly because I had to relive it all and she had to digest it. However it did feel good to let out. Nobody really knew except Russ and we never talked about it. "How did either of you get over that?"
"Unhealthily." I laughed. "Russ is a drug addict and alcoholic, lost custody of his daughter but he obviously got the worst of it all so you can't really blame him. And well I decided to push myself all the way to the FBI in spite of it all, but it was the reason for it. I didn't want this to happen to anybody else. But as you know I don't trust a soul, I don't believe in love and I'm probably 50 shades of fucked up." 
"Probably?" She snickered and I pulled my hand out of hers to shove her leg. "I think this all just proves how strong you are. Don't think of it as a weakness." She smiled down at me. "You overcame it all, even if there are days you don't think you did." I remained silent but nodded into her shoulder, keeping my eyes on the blank tv in front of us. "Can I ask you one more thing?"
I sighed before pulling my head off her shoulder and settling back into the couch, looking straight at her. "Go ahead."
"Why don't you want any of us to know?" She tilted her head at me curiously. 
"I didn't want to be looked at differently." I smiled slightly at her. "Hotch tried to reassure me that it wouldn't be like that but still. I didn't want to be doubted, I could handle it and I knew that."