Essential reading: Conscientious Objector, by Edna St Vincent Millay
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"What's wrong with Pearce?" Morgan asked, frowning over at their resident Brit.
Usually, she was irritatingly perky of a morning, particularly given how little coffee she drank, but today she was hunched over in the kitchen area in an attitude of abject despair. There was a newspaper on the table in front of her and she looked like she might actually have been crying.
Garcia was sitting next to her, looking distraught at not being able to cheer her up.
"Her country just voted to commit social and political suicide," Prentiss explained, sadly.
Rossi gave a low, slow whistle. "I thought they were smarter than that."
"51.9% of it did," Reid clarified. "That's still one hell of a lot of people who didn't."
"Yeah, but what will be recorded is that the Leave campaign won," said JJ sadly.
Across the room, Grace got slowly to her feet and carefully dropped the newspaper in the recycling. Everyone tried to look like they hadn't been spying on her, quickly taking their seats, picking up files, pretending to be busy – except for Rossi, who didn't give a crap about stuff like that, and Hotch, who had only just joined the little huddle around their desks.
"You okay?" the unit chief asked, as she slumped into her seat, Garcia still hovering behind her.
"I'm British," she said quietly. "We endure." She paused and shook her head, looking haunted. "I just never thought I'd be enduring us advertising to the world that we were a bunch of infantile, tin-foil hat wearing bigots, who apparently swallow every lie they're told."
The team exchanged wary glances. Clearly Pearce had gone through the extremely angry stage and come straight out into despair. She wasn't even cursing.
"Cheer up," Rossi advised. "We've got Donald Trump."
Grace looked up and narrowed her eyes at him. "Yeah," she said. "But I live here too!"
