-MAD WOMAN-
twenty-three!

healing yourself is connected
with healing others
- yoko ono

now - 7x06!

All anyone ever wants is a second chance. If someone screws up, one of the first things they will ask for from the people they hurt is a second chance. And if the action that caused the hurt isn't so unforgivable, that second chance would be granted. Emily Prentiss received her second chance from just about everyone in her life. Most of the team forgave her almost instantly and of the three that didn't, two of them moved on relatively easily. They were able to move on from what happened without much convincing. Hell, even Daria Whitney reached out and said she didn't blame Emily for what happened. Emily was granted her second chance by everyone but one person.

And no one would have been able to tell you that that second chance would be granted sooner rather than later.

Currently, Wren Spader would tell you one thing; she was not interested in talking to Emily. She had no intention of doing so within the next month and did not want to even discuss having the discussion. It did not matter to her that she no longer felt like a ticking time bomb since she talked to JJ. It didn't matter to her that she was lighter than she had been in a long time, but still not as light as she used to be. And it certainly did not matter that all of her problems could likely be fixed if she just had a conversation with Hotch and Emily. 

With Emily, it was easier for her to be in a group setting and talk to her. Things had gotten easier since she and JJ talked. But she still couldn't bring herself to have that one-on-one conversation that everyone was waiting for. Whenever she was partnered with Emily for a case, all she felt was sadness. And she knew that the despair would start to fade if she just talked to her, but she had yet to find the courage to do so.

When it came to Hotch, on the other hand, it was not getting any easier to be around him. In fact, the more time she took to think, the more reasons she had to be angry. And with him, she had no intentions of forgiving him within the foreseeable future. As much as she missed her friend and in spite of the rift in the team that it left, Wren knew that she could not forgive Hotch.

Because as she has stated before, once Wren forgave, the others would forget what was done to them. They would pretend it never happened and she didn't want that. In a lot of ways, she needed there to be a reminder, because if there was someone or something reminding them of what happened, it would hopefully never happen again.

And Wren was okay with being that reminder for the time being. The constant hurt was a good souvenir from the trauma and its everlasting presence on her face was enough to keep the situation at the front of everyone's minds.

So for now, Wren didn't want to have a conversation with Emily. She wanted to take her time and heal bit by bit before she talked to Emily. All Wren wanted was to pace herself and allow herself those baby steps that she and her sister had talked about. But the pacing proved to be harder than she anticipated. Especially since their current case was entirely focused on the premise of death.

The team, excluding Garcia, was in the Angeles National Forest in California working on a case with an unsub who had drowned and resuscitated his victims multiple times. All of their theories pointed toward the unsub wanting to learn about death and that rang true when test results showed that the unsub had blood cancer and would die soon. And after speaking to the mother of the first victim, they came to the conclusion that the unsub wanted to know what happened after someone died. He wanted to know about the afterlife.

"Jake Shepherd saw the light, like literally," Garcia said from her end of the call. "He spoke of a gentle light and a silhouetted figure bathed in warmth who welcomed him but told him it wasn't his time."

Jake's mom told Wren and Rossi that he woke up a changed man, believing in God and the afterlife.

"If this unsub is so obsessed with death, then Jake Shepherd was the perfect person to talk to," Hotch stated once the entire group reconvened in a conference room of the ranger station. "He'd been there and back again.

"But come on, guys. Gentle lights, shadowy figures?" Morgan asked in disbelief. "Those are the lights in the emergency room and the doctors hovering over the patients. We all know that. No one actually sees the afterlife.

"Do we know that?" Wren questioned, her voice littered with doubt about his statement. "I mean, no one truly knows what happens after we die. Belief system or not, death is something we will all go through, and there's nothing to tell us that what Jake saw isn't true to some extent."

"She's right," Spencer agreed with Wren. "Before Tobias Hankel resuscitated me, I had the exact same experience as Jake Shepherd and I wasn't in an emergency room. I was in a shed."

Looks of sympathy and shock were cast toward the genius after he finished speaking. For the ones that were there when he was kidnapped and tortured, amongst other things, his words hit them the hardest. That wasn't to say that it didn't hurt Wren and Rossi to hear that, but how they felt about this new knowledge was nothing in comparison to what Hotch, JJ, Morgan, and Prentiss were feeling.

That didn't mean Wren's heart didn't break at his words. Hearing Spencer actually talk about what he went through, even for a moment, was hard enough for her. It hurt her too much to think about it longer than she had to. If Wren had it her way, he'd never had to have gone through that or have to think about it ever again. If Wren could, she'd take Spencer's pain away in a heartbeat.

"Reid, you never told me that," Morgan said softly as Wren gave Spencer's arm a gentle squeeze.

"I'm a man of science. I didn't know how to deal with it," he responded. "There's no quantifiable proof that God exists, and yet, in that moment, I was faced with something that I couldn't explain. I still can't."

"What if this unsub has had a similar experience and this is his way of looking for answers?" Hotch pondered.

"If that were the case, why would he kill them at all? Why not just ask Jake Shepherd what it was like for him and compare?" Wren questioned.

"He wanted to see if he had the same experience as before," Emily spoke up.

"Once isn't enough?" JJ asked.

"Not if Jake didn't see the same thing the unsub did. He wants to know if the experience can change. I can relate to that."

The group looked at Emily, waiting for some elaboration.

"Reid felt a warmth and saw a light," Emily told them. "When I coded in the ambulance, all I felt was cold and darkness. And I would like to think that there's a different future waiting for me."

A beat of silence passed before Spencer spoke. "You actually died?"

While the rest of the team continued to talk about the unsub, Wren found herself tuning out the conversation as she stared at Emily.

Her gaze lasted longer than it probably should have, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Emily died. Yes, it wasn't for long and the doctors were able to bring her back, but she actually died.

Countless thoughts went through Wren's head as she stood there, unable to proceed with this information. And while she couldn't identify what she was actually feeling, she did know that she couldn't wait much longer to talk to Emily. For some reason, the words Wren was dreading to say were now threatening to spill out of her mouth. Her former need to wait was replaced with the feeling that she couldn't hold herself back. And despite the outcome, Wren Spader and Emily Prentiss would be having a conversation.

✦✧✦

The case wrapped up that same day with Emily and Spencer saving the unsub from drowning himself to avoid punishment. Rossi had said his goodbye's to the team almost immediately after they landed in D.C. while the rest made their way back to Quantico. In the bullpen of the BAU, Wren sat at her desk, staring at her paperwork and rubbing the two scars that sat side by side on her upper right arm. The bullet wounds were so close together that even the doctor who removed the second bullet was surprised they didn't overlap. But, there they sat parallel to one another with no chance of interacting unless a third came to join them.

The small, almost unnoticeable, look of discomfort sat on her face as she attempted to massage the ache away, but it was no use. The constant distress went away long before she was even cleared for field duty again, but she still suffered from a reoccurring ache every once in a while. Tonight was no different for some reason.

"You alright?" Spencer asked her as he walked back toward the desks from the coffee machine. Almost all of the lights in the bullpen were off except for the ones that were directly above his, Emily's, and Wren's desks. Hotch was still in his office, too, but his desk was only lit by his desklamp. Emily sat at her desk as well, but she had earbuds in as she worked through her files.

"Yeah, my arm just hurts a bit," Wren admitted quietly as he leaned against her desk.

"Have you seen a doctor about it?"

"It doesn't last long enough for me to feel like I need to go to a doctor," she replied as she stopped massaging her arm and picked up her pen again. "The doctors told me it healed just fine when I got cleared for field duty, but now it's just... it starts to ache whenever I think about what happened that night on the airstrip."

Spencer sighed. "It's possible you could be suffering from some sort of pain memory. Your nervous system has been attacked twice and is holding onto the pain you felt because it isn't sure if that's how it's supposed to feel. Or it might be some type of psychogenic pain, where your mind is manifesting the stress it feels somewhere that's felt pain before."

"You think I'm stressed?" Wren questioned him with a small smile on her face since she already knew his answer. All he had to do was glare at her slightly, as if to say 'of course, you're stressed' for her to be sure what he was thinking. "I'm always stressed, I'm not sure why my brain would decide I'm overly stressed out now in comparison to when I was keeping secrets from the team."

"You hadn't been shot twice then," he recalled for her.

"Yes, but I had been shot," she pointed out, waving a finger a bit to land the point. "And besides, the stress is good for me. It keeps me on my toes."

"Wren, you were given three weeks of medical leave but you never took it," Spencer reminded her as she looked back at her paperwork, hoping to avoid this conversation. "You didn't take your medical leave when you were shot the first time either, you just worked through it. You never take breaks unless you're being monitored in a hospital bed or your badge has been suspended. You keep pushing yourself to work through the stress that you feel, I'm surprised you haven't gotten an ulcer."

"Spencer, I'm fine," Wren tried to brush him off, but it was no use. Spencer had been worried about her mental state for almost two months now, and while she had been showing some signs of improvement, they weren't significant enough to keep him from worrying more. "I'm slowly but surely getting over the Emily not actually being dead thing."

"Are you sure?" He asked as she looked back up at him again. "I know you and JJ made up and that's great but-"

"Spencer," she interrupted him, a small but reassuring smile on her face. "I was actually planning on trying to make up with Emily tonight. But if you'd rather coddle me, I can raincheck that."

Spencer sighed before he studied her face. Her features were calmer than they had been in months, he could admit that much. She didn't walk around with as much hate and anger for those around her anymore and she seemed overall a bit more at peace with herself than she did that morning. She was starting to return to being his Wren again. The one she was when they met and the one she was before Emily 'died.' 

"You don't have to change your plans for me," he muttered as his lips turned upward just at the sight of her smile. "I do miss you, though. We haven't hung out much in a while."

"Well, maybe next weekend we can go see a movie or something," she offered as her smile turned into a grin. "And I've missed you, too, I've just been busy."

As much as Spencer tried to resist it, a sheepish grin of his own made an appearance on his face, along with a light blush. He couldn't help it when it came to her. Ever since Morgan and Garcia planted those thoughts of him liking Wren into his head, he couldn't stop thinking about her.

And he wasn't sure if he ever wanted to stop.

"Go finish your paperwork," Wren said with a laugh after a moment of the pair just looking at each other. She shoved him away from her desk and watched as he walked away, shaking her head while the smile on her face never faded.

✧✦✧

A few more hours passed before Wren finished her paperwork. Spencer was already long gone and Hotch decided to go home and see Jack. Which left Emily and Wren, the latter of which was currently busying herself with emptying her desk of any junk that might have piled up. 

If Wren was honest, she had no idea what exactly she wanted to say. She had no clue what she wanted to accomplish with this conversation because she was still mad. Wren was still upset that Emily came back and attempted to act as if nothing had changed. Wren's anger bubbled within her, but she couldn't tell if the feeling of missing her friend was stronger than the bitterness was.

All she knew was that sitting in her anger and not doing anything about it had officially become too much for her to handle. She could hold a grudge if she wanted to. She still planned on holding a grudge against Hotch for a long time. But she didn't want to hold a grudge against Emily anymore. 

"Why are you still here?" Emily asked suddenly, causing Wren to look over at her. "You were done with your work like forty minutes ago and you always make a quick exit."

Wren hesitated for a moment. If she was going to do this, then she had to commit. And committing, well it meant that she had to actually say something.

"I don't hate you," she blurted out before she could stop herself, causing Emily's mouth to sit agape. They were actually doing this. Emily never thought she'd see the day and neither did Wren. The brunette had started the day with absolutely no intention of having this conversation, and yet here they were.

"I know that," Emily responded after a few moments. "You don't hate easily, you never have."

"Yeah, but I was pretty close to hating you," Wren confessed as she leaned forward in her chair. "I wanted to hate you so bad, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Because I know that it wasn't your choice to leave us out of the loop."

"Out of the whole team, you should've been the one to know I was alive. There was no reason you shouldn't have known," the woman replied before Wren looked down at her lap. "You didn't deserve that."

The brunette laughed at the last sentence Emily said. You didn't deserve that. If there was one thing that Wren knew, it was that she didn't deserve to believe that her mentor and closest ally on the team had died. Wren didn't deserve to be lied to by the man she trusted with her life and she didn't deserve the treatment she received from the team after everything. Wren deserved better and she was tired of people saying she did instead of providing it.

"If you had a choice, would you have come back right away?" Wren pushed the conversation forward, not wanting to linger any longer on what she deserved. "If you could've told me, would you have?"

Emily hesitated before she spoke. "If there was nothing keeping me away, I would've come back. But I knew that Doyle was still out there and if I wasn't looking out for my own safety, I was looking out for yours. I stayed away to make sure that you had all the possibilities to find him without getting hurt."

"Answer the second question."

The woman let out a sigh as she gave Wren a sad look, which was all the answer that the brunette needed. "It wasn't my place to tell you."

"You're right, it was Hotch's," Wren agreed. "But if you could've been the one to tell me, would you have told me?"

"Wren, if I had it my way, you would've known from the beginning. You would have never grieved that day and this wouldn't be happening. But we can't keep dwelling on the past. We can't-"

"I still would've grieved that day," she interrupted Emily suddenly, causing her eyebrows to knit together in confusion. "I still had plenty of grieving to do, even if it wasn't for you."

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't just lose you that day," Wren reminded her. "I lost Tsia and I lost Sean. Granted, Sean had died weeks before, but I didn't know until that day. I lost three people that day. So, even if you didn't die, I was still going to grieve."

Emily had forgotten all about the fact that Tsia had died that same day and she didn't know that Wren learned about Sean's death through word of mouth. Wren had lost three people who were there with her at the beginning of her career and believed that outlived all of them. Emily watched as the woman tried to hold back the tears that came with reliving the moments when she learned about each death.

"You know, I compared the team losing me to me not being able to talk to you all, as if those could even be likened to each other. I never even considered how many people you lost that day," Emily muttered as the first tear fell down Wren's face.

"Yeah, you claimed to have lost six," Wren said bitterly, remembering how Spencer ranted to her about how Emily tried to guilt him into feeling bad for her. "I actually lost three people, along with Clyde, who just walked away as if nothing happened, and Morgan, who hated me for weeks after your death. I almost lost Penelope, too. She couldn't look me in the eye for the longest time. I lost so many people because I did what you told me to do. I didn't tell them what we were going through and you couldn't even keep your end of the promise."

Emily furrowed her brows again, waiting for Wren to elaborate.

"I told you that I couldn't lose you to Doyle. I couldn't do it," she continued and Emily's expression softened into one of sympathy. Amidst the chaos that happened the day she faced Doyle, she forgot about the conversation she had with Wren right before. "You said that I wouldn't lose you and then I did. I lost you to him of all people and it nearly killed me.

"And as much as I want to be happy that you're alive, as much as I tell myself that it's good you didn't die that day, I can't help but think of all of the grieving, all of the pain and suffering I had to go through just to come out the other end and see you standing there. Everything I went through was for nothing, Emily, and I don't know what to do with it."

"To you, I died," Emily stated, understanding what Wren was trying to say. "You had to try to move on and all of that progress you made was in vain when I came back."

Wren nodded as she wiped away another tear. God, she hated crying in front of people. "What am I supposed to do? Pretend it didn't happen? Keep acting like you don't exist? I don't want to do that anymore. I want to move on but I don't know where that starts with you and me."

Emily let out a deep breath as she looked at the woman sitting across from her. The memories that Wren was processing were still so raw to her, and Emily wasn't sure when it wouldn't be a delicate subject for her. When the brunette met her eyes, Emily knew that there was truly no perfect fix for their situation. No matter what, Wren would always be damaged by what happened and Emily would have to live with that for the rest of her life.

"Okay, here's what we're going to do," Emily stated after a few moments. "We both know that we can't go back and change the past and we both know that it'll never be what it once was, but that shouldn't stop us from trying to have a friendship again. We can start small. We'll partner up on cases together and if gets too much for you, you'll tap out. If we can do that, then eventually we can go get coffee together or something. We can make the steps we did when we were first becoming friends and hopefully, one day we'll be able to be as close as we once were. It doesn't have to be the same, but that doesn't mean it can't be better."

A small smile formed on Wren's face at the thought of having a better relationship with Emily than she did before. She liked the idea of better and she truly believed that they could have that eventually. All she had to do was do what she felt comfortable doing and hope that she'd be comfortable doing more in the future. Wren could do that. She could remain in her comfort zone for now and push those boundaries as she saw fit.

"We can be better," Wren agreed, watching as the smile on Emily's face now matched her own. "But can we start tomorrow? Because tonight, all I really want to do is go home and sleep."

Emily let out a small chuckle. "We'll start tomorrow."

Wren left the BAU feeling lighter than she had in almost a year. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

heyyyy this is unedited so sorry if it's bad

wremily are cool again who cheered??? (i did)

spotch (spader and hotch) however will remain to be not cool and it will stay that way for a while uh oh

anyway i've decided labyrinth by taylor swift was written specifically for wren and spencer (wrencer <3) . the more i listen to it, the more it belongs to them. it's theirs. i DO make the rules.

also writing their moment was so cute and fun i love fluff... too bad there's not gonna be a lot in this story (i'm so sorry) and if there is fluff it will be followed up directly with PAIN. this fic wouldn't be called mad woman if she wasn't going to go insane for a hot minute before she gets her happy ending

thank you all so much for almost 1k votes on this fic!!! it means so much. i know a lot of you are silent readers and i'm okay with that but remember, if you're commenting, you better be voting too!!

okay that's all, next chapter will see more of spencer developing feelings and wren still trying to convince herself that she's not ready for a relationship <3

with love, robin!