Author's Note: I've only seen up to the start of season five of this show, and I'm making up things as I'm going along. This fic may reference events in the first four seasons, but I'm blithely rewriting canon as I see fit. If this is going to bother you, then I suggest you don't read. Then again, what are you doing reading fanfic to begin with?

Rated M because there will be frank and graphic discussion of sex and childbirth, as well as references to the type of cases shown on the show.

I should think that it is blindingly obvious that I hold no copyright on these characters and I'm not making any money from this.

The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.

Thornton Wilder

It was not a snap decision. You didn't make snap decisions about stuff like this. In fact, most people ended up in the position Penelope Garcia had decided she wanted to be in precisely because they hadn't made snap decisions, usually about limiting their alcohol intake or remembering to set an alert to remind them about their birth control and you'd really think that someone would have designed an app for that and hey, that's an idea to ponder in the bath later on but….

Okay. That was a little long, even for her.

But essentially, when you broke the situation down to its bare bones, or as she preferred to think, its essential OS code, the reality was this. She, Penelope Garcia, best dressed hacker ever to be conscripted into public service for the FBI, had no family. Yes, she had her FBI babies, but real actual DNA-based family? Not so much. And while that situation wasn't a new one, it was a lonely one.

She blamed JJ for starting it, bringing the cutest child ever into the world. Being Henry's godmother was an honour she hadn't been expecting, and the sheer depth of trust that Will and JJ showed in her had blindsided her. Seriously, after ten minutes of cuddling newborn Henry, she'd had to duck into the ladies' room to strategically reapply her mascara. Thank God she hadn't been wearing her brand new false eyelashes with the purple crystals because they would have been lost in all the joyous crying.

Out of all the people that they knew, they had picked her to look out for Henry's welfare.

Spiritually, well, that was probably best left to Reid as she knew for a fact that he had memorised the holy books of all the world's major religions as well as the Jedi Path handbook. But for everyday things, like how to hack an encrypted database or create an unique style that totally announced your presence to the room without overshadowing it with your inner awesomeness? That was all her.

(There was no way in hell that her godbaby would grow up to wear Reid's preferred cardigan-and-button-down ensembles. Not no way, not no how.)

And, God forbid, if anything happened to JJ and Will, not exactly the least likely thing what with both parents being in law enforcement, they had decided that they would trust her to bring up Henry. Well, her and Reid, but realistically it would be all her because have you seen how skinny that boy is? Knowing him he'd get caught up in some bizarre mathematical equation for three days and forget to feed Henry.

That faith in her had touched her. And got her thinking crazy, middle of the night thoughts, which had become first thing in the morning thoughts and lunchtime thoughts too.

She wanted a child.

She wanted a family of her own, one that didn't disperse at the end of the day to their own apartments and their own lives. She had a big heart, and it was just bursting with love for somebody. So why not have a child? She wasn't getting any younger, and it didn't seem that Mr Right was bounding athletically into view.

But since the invention of the vibrator and the sperm bank, there wasn't that much left for Mr Right to really do, conceptually-speaking.

This wasn't a snap decision. She wasn't stupid. She thought for a long time about it, drew up many, many pros and cons lists and taped them up around her apartment, adding to them whenever a new idea zinged its way through her neocortex. She volunteered for a lot of additional babysitting with Henry, which both bemused and pleased JJ and Will, who finally got to see movies in an actual movie theatre at the time of release, which had been something of a novelty in the last few years. She joined a few internet forums for women in her position contemplating parenthood alone by choice, and actually met up with a few people for coffee to discuss their situations.

"Best thing I ever did," one mother told her proudly, sponging stewed apricot off her blouse as her child gleefully threw it at her with a hand-eye coordination that was pretty skilled for a child of fourteen months.

"You will see caffeine the way you do oxygen," another warned her, bags under her eyes that rivalled Hotch's.

"You'll trade your lingerie for nursing bras and your sex life for four hours of sleep," another told her frankly. "Motherhood is not for the weak."

Penelope had nodded. Caffeine was oxygen, as far as she was concerned. And she had no sex life to speak of, so that wasn't exactly something she'd have to mourn. And she may not know how to fire a gun like JJ or kick down a door like Emily, but she wasn't weak She had survived the shooting. She had survived the deaths of her mother and her beloved stepfather back when she was eighteen, barely more than a baby. She survived staring at the lives of victims of some of the most evil, twisted people in the world, day in, day out.

She could handle motherhood.

But she'd have to remember to wear a coverall when feeding the baby. Best thing in her life he or she would no doubt be, but some of those dresses were vintage, and didn't come cheap.