Once an Agent, Always an Agent

Summary: Emily Prentiss has resigned her position as an agent of the BAU, rather than betray her unit chief by providing his boss, the section chief, with information that might tarnish his record and disrupt the team. She has received several job offers, but most are out of country and she doesn't want to leave DC right away, so she takes some time for herself. What happens when she is witness to a heinous crime, and the unsub decides to tie up loose ends? Will Emily find a new team and a new agency to help her through the chaos, or will she fall victim to a monster so like those she used to hunt? NCIS/Criminal Minds Crossover

Chapter 1: Wrong Place at the Right Time

Emily just couldn't sleep. It had been two weeks since she put in her letter of resignation at the BAU, and she was growing restless. She knew that leaving the team was the only way to ensure Strauss didn't continue to try to use her to damage Hotch's career, and she was at peace with her decision to leave, despite how hard she had worked for a spot on that team. But that didn't keep her from staying up all night thinking about the newest case her former team was likely working, or wondering if they were all ok without her.

She had promised herself that she would take some time for herself before making any decisions about where to go next with her career; she already had offers from Counter Terrorism back at the FBI, several offers from the state department, and even some renewed interest from Clyde Easter at Interpol. She wanted to really evaluate all of her options before giving anyone an answer, and in all honesty, she knew she needed a little time to recover from what had essentially been several years straight of intense work with no real time off.

But now, she was bored, and worrying about the BAU team instead of thinking about her own plans. And it was three in the morning on a Friday night, and she couldn't sleep a wink. Just great…

Emily rolled out of bed, giving up on trying to fight her insomnia for the time being. She needed to run off some of this extra energy. Maybe then she would be able to go back to sleep for a bit.

After putting on her shoes and a light windbreaker, Emily slipped out of her apartment building and took off at a light jog, studiously ignoring the disapproving looks the building's night guard was giving her.

It was a cool night, the beginnings of winter starting to take root in DC, but she liked the feel of the crisp night air on her flushed cheeks as she ran. Made her feel alive.

She let her mind wander as her feet continued their increasing rhythm along the cold pavement. She hadn't spoken to anyone from the BAU team since she left. Which was understandable, given Strauss had likely lied her ass off about why she'd really left. And it wasn't as though she had made any effort to reach out. Last she'd heard, the team was headed to Milwaukee on a case. Had they caught the unsub? Had they all made it home safe? Were they on another case now? Had anyone heard from Gideon yet?

She knew leaving was going to be hard. It always was hard for her when the time came to move teams. But she hadn't expected to miss them so much. JJ and Penelope were her best friends. Reid was like a kid brother who she had come to truly care about despite their shaky start. Morgan was a total flirt, but he could always make her smile; he was her partner. Hotch was like her older brother. He was a thorn in her side most of the time, but she could always depend on him to look out for her and the team. He was her protector, her rock.

At least they all had each other. She felt very alone right now, running through the pitch black streets of the still sleeping city, thinking about her former team, her former friends. But it was worth it because the team was still together. Hotch could keep his job. Gideon would eventually get word to the team somehow, even if he never came back. Strauss would just have to shelve her anti-Hotch agenda for the time being, and the team would stay together. Someone else would be brought in to fill her desk soon enough, and they would go on as if she had never been there. Just like they had when her predecessor, Elle, left. This would be no different.

Comforted by the thought that the BAU team would be ok, Emily turned another corner, picking up speed. Just another mile or two, then she'd go home and sleep like the dead.

Tomorrow, she could finally start really working on planning for her next ste –

Her thoughts were interrupted when a shrill scream pierced the night air. Emily stopped dead in her tracks, startled by the sound that seemed to have come from an alley just a block or so ahead of her. She was in the warehouse district now, down near the docks, and she hadn't expected to see or hear anyone this far from the main city blocks, especially at this time of night.

Honestly, it wasn't the brightest move on her part to be running alone at this time of night anyone, especially without her gun, but she hadn't really been thinking about any of that when she'd left her apartment.

She slowly approached the alley entrance, trying to listen for any clues as to what she was about to walk into.

"No…" a female voice croaked, the sound laced with panic and pain, "Don't… please, no…stop, please God, stop…"

That was enough for Emily. Someone was hurt and in serious trouble, and she couldn't just walk away. She didn't have her gun, and in her rush to leave her place, she hadn't grabbed her cell phone so she couldn't call for help. Crap! But she had to do something.

So she quickly rounded the corner and took off running down the alley towards the woman who was still pleading with her attackers, and yelled, "Hey! Get the hell off her!"

As she took in the scene before her, she felt sick to her stomach. Emily had seen just about everything at this point, and a large part of her profiler brain was taking it all in and cataloguing it for future reference, but a part of her was still just horrified.

The woman was a young, pretty brunette in what looked like a torn Navy uniform. There were three men around her.

One of them was on the ground behind and beneath her, holding her arms in a tight hold behind her back in one hand, his other arm, wrapped tightly around her neck, cutting off her screams. He loosened his hold and looked up in shock as he saw Emily barreling towards them.

Another stood behind him, leaning casually against the wall of the alley, watching with a smug grin firmly in place. A look which slipped momentarily when he registered Emily's voice echoing off the walls.

The third was leaning over top of her, his shirt discarded beside them, his pants around his ankles as he thrust into her relentlessly. Emily had seen the aftermath of this crime a thousand times over in her work, but witnessing it first-hand made her blood boil with uncontrollable rage. And this sick bastard didn't even flinch, completely oblivious to her approach as he continued his violent assault.

That is until he was ripped off the poor woman by a very pissed-off Emily Prentiss…

Thug one had released the woman and crawled out from under her, and was now standing beside thug two, both of them taking up defensive posture. Thug three, the bastard, was now sprawled on the pavement at Emily's feet, his pants still around his ankles.

The woman was quickly losing consciousness, and it was obvious to Emily she wasn't going to be any help in this fight. Three against one… Fantastic…

She'd faced far worse odds and come out ok, but she had to defend the other woman which would make this far more complicated, she was unarmed, without so much as a switch blade to defend herself, and thanks to her lack of forethought earlier, she had no means to call for back-up.

Thug three was on his feet now, his pants hung undone around his waist, and the three of them were circling her and their victim. "Well look at this Paul," thug three drawled out in a thick Southern accent to thug one, Paul, "We got ourselves a little hero. Pretty little thing too…" his voice trailed off as he made a grab for Emily's arm, which she quickly dodged.

"Now, don't be like that darling," the one she now knew was Paul chided her, approaching from the opposite side, pulling a small knife from his jacket pocket, "We're all just gonna have a little fun, that's all."

Emily knew exactly what they meant by fun, and she had no intention of letting them touch her or the Navy woman, "I would leave now if I were you," she warned them, preparing to strike Paul since he appeared to be the only one with a weapon.

"I don't think so," thug two responded, reaching behind his back, and pulling out a gun, which he quickly leveled right in her face. Well, shit… That complicates things…

She slowly backed down, putting herself right in front of the injured woman, whose tattered uniform she noted read Collins. Emily was more than capable of getting a gun away from a punk like this, but with two other men there ready to back him up, and an innocent that might get caught in the line of fire, she had to be very careful how she handled this situation.

"You don't have to do this," she tried to reason with them, hoping to at the very least distract them enough to make her move.

"You hear that John," Paul asked thug two, John, laughing, "We don't have to do this," he mocked, getting right in her face, his blade resting against her throat with enough pressure to draw blood. "Thing is darling, we want to."

And that was when she saw her opening. Paul looked back at the other two, easing the pressure on his knife just slightly, and she struck hard and fast. First his right arm, causing him to drop the blade and grunt in pain. Then two quick jabs to his gut, and a quick cross right to his jaw.

The other two only hesitated a moment in their shock, but it was enough. Emily spun away from Paul, kicking John hard in the right shoulder, causing him to drop his gun and fall backwards onto the pavement much as thug one had earlier.

She lunged for the gun, but thug one grabbed her from behind before she could get her hand around it, swinging her around him. She landed hard on her hip and her head cracked loudly against the ground, momentarily stunning her. All three men moved in one her, completely forgetting about the other woman in their growing fury with her.

She crawled back away from them, to the opposite wall, farthest from the Navy woman, as she tried to reorient herself. Paul had retrieved his blade, but held it in his left hand now, obviously still feeling the effects of her well-placed blow to his dominant arm. Thug one had the gun, but John wasn't unarmed, evidently pulling his own knife after dropping his primary weapon. She was so screwed… Why the hell hadn't she brought her gun with her?

"Looks like we've got a fighter here boys," John said sarcastically just before kicking her hard in the ribs.

She continued to move away, until she was sitting up, her back firmly against the alley wall. She tried to stand, but Paul's fist connected with her jaw then, knocking her back to the ground with the force of the impact. "Not so brave now are ya?" he asked her, grabbing ahold of her hair and dragging her back into the center of the alley, as the three of them surrounded her.

Emily knew that if this kept up for much longer she would end up in much the same position she had found the Navy woman, or worse, but she couldn't keep fighting all three of them by herself without a weapon…

Of course that was when thug three knelt down, straddling her waist, despite her efforts to buck him off. He pushed the muzzle of the gun into the meat of her shoulder as he grabbed her forearms in his other hand, and held them down against the ground above her head. She hated being in this vulnerable a position, and was desperately trying to find a way out of it.

He lowered his face, so that their noses were almost touching, and looked straight into her eyes, meeting her glare with his own, before he spoke, "I'm going to enjoy putting you in your place."

But he never got a chance to make good on his threat because just as the words came out, Emily threw her head up with all the force she could muster, colliding it with his own. As she expected, the surprise of the blow caused him to pull the trigger, and the bullet tore through her shoulder, causing her to cry out, but it also caused him to release his hold on her arms and ease some of his weight off of her. And that was enough.

Fighting to ignore the pain in her shoulder, she swung her other arm around, meeting her fist with his jaw, before flipping them over on the ground. Once she had him pinned beneath her, and had wrestled the gun from his hands, she fired two rounds into his chest.

Emily then rolled off of him, just barely missing the knife as Paul lunged for her. From her place on the ground, she fired another round into Paul's thigh, just above his knee, causing him to stumble and fall, before John kicked the gun out of her hands. She expected him to attack her then, but he surprised her by rushing to thug three's side, and dropping to his knees to apply pressure to his wounds.

"Come on Chris," he said to thug three, Chris, "Don't you dare die on me, brother." But there was no response. Chris was very clearly dead, and while that meant there was one less of them to content with, Emily also feared that might be the thing that pushed John over the edge, and she didn't think she would be able to fight him off much longer.

While John was distracted, Emily retrieved the fallen gun, and then moved herself along the ground, back to a defensible position in front of the still unconscious Navy woman.

The movement caught Paul's attention and he made a move toward her, but stopped when she leveled the gun at his chest, "Don't make me shoot you," she warned him, "No one else needs to die here tonight."

She realized as soon as the words left her lips that it was the wrong thing to say, as John stood and wheeled around, visibly shaking in his fury. No one else needed to die, but John's brother was already dead…

He took two steps towards her, and she swiveled the gun's sights to his chest, pulled the trigger, and then cursed loudly as it clicked, empty. Goddamn it! The morons hadn't even used a fully loaded clip! And now both John and Paul were moving toward her, both wielding blades, and both seriously pissed off.

What the hell was she supposed to do now? She had a bullet lodged in her shoulder for goodness sake, and her whole damned body was covered in cuts and bruises. Plus, she was fairly certain she had a concussion. And, of course, Collins, the Navy woman she had gotten into this whole mess to help, was still out cold.

And that was when she heard the best sound in the world…

Police sirens.

Someone had evidently heard the gun shots. The sun was beginning to peak over the horizons and someone must have arrived for the morning crews somewhere on the docks, and called the cops. Thank God!

"Shit!" Paul bellowed, grabbing John's shoulder to steady himself as blood continued to run freely from his injured leg, "We gotta go man. Cops will be here any second!"

John looked seriously torn in that moment, but evidently valued his life and his freedom above avenging his brother, at least for the moment, because he tucked his blade in his pocket, threw Paul's arm over his shoulder, and helped him to the end of the alley, where their car was waiting.

Emily took note of the make and model, and tried to memorize the license plate number, though her head was pounding enough with her evident concussion she suspected that wouldn't be much help later.

She was slipping into unconsciousness herself, sliding to the ground beside Collins, as the sirens grew louder in the distance, but she registered one last thing before she blacked out, John's voice as he yelled, "This isn't over bitch! You'll pay for killing Chris!" And then the two men drove away into the night and she passed out.