These Dreams
By Fewthistle

Author's Note: From Emily's POV, just a few musings about love and dreams. Unbeta'd, so all mistakes mine.

She stood on the sodden bank of the stream, the trees above her just beginning to show the small, tender buds that signaled new life. On the opposite bank, the tree-line broke and beyond it she could see the flat stretch of field, still brown in the late afternoon sun. She could feel a trickle of sweat slip down the hollow of her back, into the waistband of her pants. The hike up here from the house had been partly uphill and the sun was blessedly warm after a long winter, the slight breeze ruffling her hair as she walked.

She watched a maple leaf, freed suddenly from the gathered mass along the far bank, twist and tumble in the icy waters of the stream. Once green and burgeoning with life, bending gently in the soft caress of a summer breeze, then flaming to red, a banner of crimson against the blue of a perfect October sky, now a brittle brown, freed from a winter of imprisonment, it rose and fell in the swelling rush of water, a swimmer fighting valiantly against the pull of the tide, rising for an instant, only to plummet beneath the chill surface of the crystal water. It disappeared out of sight around the mossy, muddied bank. She wondered idly if it would float as far as the Black River and from there into the mighty Connecticut. She wondered if it would eventually flow with the snow flooded waters into the bottomless expanse of the Atlantic.

She doubted it would.

Chances were good that it would simply snag on the slimy edge of a toppled tree, get caught against one of the millions of rocks that littered the streambed, be pulled with the flow of water into the morass that littered the bank. It would never escape the slender tributary that held it, never know the wonder of the sea. That wasn't the way things worked, for fallen maple leaves or fallen FBI agents. Too many stray branches to snag on; too many rocks littering the way; too much mess to slog through, no matter how hard you tried. The ocean was nothing more than a dream of water.

Not that she was fallen, not really. Floundering, perhaps. Stumbling, definitely, although not from anything solid in her path. The thing that had tripped her up was as ephemeral as mist, as capable of being held as the icy waters that flowed through her fingers, leaving them stinging and red and numb as she knelt in the sucking mud of the bank and dipped her hand in the fast running current. She had a moment's thought that it would be nice if she could feel that way all over, feel the now liquid snow and ice rush over her body, washing away all feeling, all thought; feel her pulse slow, hear her breath growing shallow in her ears, a stuttered percussion to the melody of the stream. Frozen, numb, empty.

Not confused, not conflicted, not overwhelmed with emotion. With love.

The part of her brain reserved for objective scrutiny had realized that she was falling months ago. Unfortunately, the compartment that contained her heart chose to ignore the rather pointed memo suggesting in no uncertain terms that she get a grip on herself before it was too late; it was already too late.

All it took was a glimpse of blonde hair, a flash of a brilliant smile, a sparkle in vivid blue eyes and her breath caught in her throat like a sputtering engine. So she had run away. Well, not run. Walked. Flown. Ended up here in Vermont in what was Spring when she left D.C., but was now merely Mud Season. No longer winter, but not yet the nascent growth of life. The snow had melted, rushing down mountains, trickling down hills, swelling streams and rivers to overflow their banks, leaving the world a soggy sea of mud. She had known that her family's home here would be empty. Her mother didn't do mud, after all, and she had needed a place to think, a place to pull herself out from under the sheer weight of her confusion.

Emily had always considered herself to be quite self-aware, but the moment that Jennifer Jareau had shaken her hand for the first time, all the things that Emily thought that she knew with absolute certainty suddenly were as uncertain as the possibility of life in outer space and whether the Cubs will ever win a World Series. Now the only things that Emily could honestly say were true and concrete were the singing shivers of electricity that ran along the skin of her arm where JJ's fingers had brushed, and the dreams that had taken up residence in an empty corner of her mind; dreams of slow, sweet kisses and the warmth of a slender body beside her in the echoing hollowness of a dark night.

Dreams no more likely to come true than the drowning leaf's dream of the ocean, its dream of water.