This chapter contains spoilers for 3x16 "Elephant's Memory."

April 16, 2008

West Bune, Texas

Emily Prentiss had always considered herself a very logical person. She could compartmentalize quite nearly better than anyone else she knew, and everyone knew that Spencer Reid was more logical than her by half, almost to the point that it was a fault of his. A cute fault, maybe, but still a sort of fault none the less. So even though he was obviously emotionally invested in this case centered around their teenage unsub, Owen Savage, Emily accompanied Reid to the Sheriff's Office when he said he thought that they would be able to find Owen there. And sure enough, the genius was right. There was Owen now, coming around a bend in the asphalt Main Street.

Reid saw him too, and what he did next was by no means logical, or even safe - or even sane, for that matter. This - this had to be one of the stupidest things she had ever seen a human being do.

He handed her his gun and headed out to meet an armed Owen in the middle of the street, saying, "Prentiss, cover me."

"What? Wait… Reid!"

Emily didn't like the hysteria in her own voice - though it was the least of her worries - as Reid looked back at her for a second and ordered as seriously as ever, "Do not shoot."

"Reid!" she repeated helplessly, just watching him go.

But he wasn't stopping, so she slipped into the shadows of the brick building that was the Sheriff's Office and held her gun at the ready, Reid's "do not shoot" already long forgotten. Momentary relief coursed through her as Hotch, Rossi, and Morgan pulled up in one of the team's black SUV's and climbed out, their own guns also already poised to shoot. Still she watched, too tense to even blink, her gaze was so riveted upon the duo in the street.

And then it was finally, finally over. Owen walked towards Reid and laid the gun in the space left between the agent-doctor's feet and his own. As soon as Owen stood up, Morgan and Hotch jogged towards him, their guns still in their hands.

"Don't move!" Morgan ordered sharply. Owen looked at him wildly for a second before he put his hands up in the air as Morgan repeated his order to stay still. In a few seconds, Owen was securely handcuffed with all of his weapons having been removed from his person and safely under Derek's watchful eyes. And still Reid kept a hand on the teenager at all times, trying to help him in some way.

Emily leaned back against the brick exterior wall, feeling herself nearly go limp as Morgan and Reid went inside the building with Owen between them. During the time that the rest of the team was inside the Sheriff's Office with Owen and his girlfriend, Emily remained outdoors, trying to gather her wits back around her and quite literally catch her breath, not to mention calm down.

As quickly as her terror had turned to relief, it had turned from relief to an unusual amount of anger. Yeah, she understood what he had done, and she pretty much understood why, but still…

"What the freaking h***, Spencer Reid!" she seethed absentmindedly under her breath as she paced back and forth on the sidewalk.

Judging simply by the look that Hotch had given the team's youngest agent, Reid had it coming from their unit chief, but Emily was building up quite a few words that she wanted to say to him as well. The idiotic genius could have gotten himself killed, for pity's sake, and he full well knew it too. Did he just not care?!

But then… She stopped dead in her pacing when the thought hit her for the first time - why was it that she cared so much? Yes, Reid was like family to her - so was every other member of the team - but this didn't feel the same for some reason. Heaven knew Morgan had done stupid things on the job before, and, yeah, sure she had been mad at him for doing those things - for purposely putting himself in harm's way - but this - the fact that it was Reid who had almost died yet again felt different… worse somehow.

The anger drained out of Emily, replaced by a mystification at her own swirling emotions. She looked at the cement under her feet and took a deep breath, forcing herself to rationalize, compartmentalize. That way she was in control of her own world again.

Rationally speaking, this excessively emotional response could easily have stemmed simply from being the only one to have seen the whole standoff go down from start to finish, from having been the one to let Reid walk into the danger zone. Surely that was it.

Yeah, Emily literally nodded her head, trying to put the matter to rest in her own mind. That has to be all that there is to it.

Within the next minute, the other members of the BAU team made their way out of the Sheriff's Office, half of them already in various stages of getting ready to head back home to Washington D.C. Rossi was calling Section Chief Strauss, telling them that they had wrapped the case up. Hotch was calling Haley, asking if he could stop by to see Jack for a few minutes. And JJ, sweet, unsuspecting JJ whose expectations of her coworkers must've been remarkably low, had her head bent over her phone as she shot off a quick text to New Orleans detective, Will LaMontagne - not that JJ thought any of her coworkers knew who she was texting, of course. That was a supposed secret. Reid wasn't doing anything in particular, just heading quickly towards the SUVs and trying to keep a low profile while avoiding the angry-because-they-cared-about-him-and-their-jobs glares of his coworkers.

Poor guy looks miserable, Emily observed silently from across the street. She shook her head free of any sympathy for him and purposely tacked on the thought, And it serves him right!

But still, in the past half hour something in her had switched gears when it came to Spencer Reid, and she wasn't entirely sure what sort of a change it was, let alone how she felt about it. Experience said that it would probably be best to just sleep on whatever it was, that it would most likely all be gone and back to normal in the morning after a good night's sleep.

But for some reason, her intuition was telling her a different - and rather disturbing - story.

Oh well, she knew how to handle that. Emily sighed one last time, shoved the thoughts roughly away into one of her mind's filing cabinets to think about later, and then walked across the street, seating herself in the middle row beside Morgan for the ride home - a ride that Emily had a feeling was going to be depressingly quiet and tense, thanks to today's hair-brained actions of their resident genius.

This is a challenge from the ever-wonderful Challenge King; you guys should really go take a look at his stories and ideas forums, they're pretty awesome. I hope you guys enjoyed this first chapter, because this story is probably going to be at least around fifteen thousand words. R&R and make my day, please and thanks!:)