Chamber music-written for two to ten solo parts featuring one instrument to a part; each part bears the same importance

"Happy birthday, dear Rachel, happy birthday to you!"

Garcia and Rossi brought out a tiramisu cheesecake, complete with eighteen lit candles, and placed it before me. I looked around at the smiling faces of them, Hotch, Reid, Emily, Morgan, and JJ who had just finished singing to me.

I wish that they always come home safely, I wished fervently, drew in a deep breath and then directed my breath with the precision that came of playing a wind instrument until every single candle was smoking.

The team applauded and Garcia leaned over to kiss me on the cheek.

"Happy birthday, sweet cakes!"

"Speaking of, get cutting, that looks delicious," Emily ordered, handing a knife to Rossi.

I laughed and accepted more birthday greetings from my new, unofficial family. We were currently gathered in the private room of an Italian restaurant that Rossi had reserved for the occasion. Miraculously, there had been no last minute call out to a case that would have postponed this party. I'll admit that it had been a concern in the back of my mind when Hotch had brought it up to me weeks earlier. The gods of tragedy were being kind to me for once.

"Two slices for you, JJ?"

The pregnant blonde mock glared at Morgan when he offered the double loaded plate to her, but she didn't turn it down.

"Birthday girl first," Garcia chided.

"Nothing but Torcaso's finest," Rossi said, handing me a slice of the cheesecake and a fork.

I took a bite quickly so that Garcia would allow everyone else to eat. Within moments, everyone was served and the conversation returned to JJ's pregnancy. Just starting her final trimester, it was a frequent topic for the team. I was glad that I wasn't the center of attention anymore.

When Hotch had asked me what I wanted and what I wanted to do for my birthday, I had tried to insist that I didn't need anything. My birthday last year had been dismal at best, coming so soon after my mom's murder and funeral. Considering Dad had left soon after it, I would never remember turning seventeen fondly.

At first, Hotch had accepted my response and my desire to gloss over the day without any special attention. And then Garcia heard about that and all of a sudden, I didn't really have a choice in the matter.

"You only turn eighteen once, chickadee," she had admonished me over coffee one day over the summer. "We are going to celebrate it and celebrate you like you deserve, comprende?"

From there, it spiraled out of my control as Garcia enlisted Rossi to organize dinner and cake while she decorated and ordered everyone to buy gifts.

Honestly, I was a little afraid to open those gifts, however innocently they sat piled together on a side table as we finished the cheesecake. I was positive that I would get embarrassed by them, mostly due to sentimentality. I still couldn't believe that these people would do all of this for me.

But I loved them as much as they loved me. They were my family.

"All right, present time!"

The attentive restaurant staff cleared our plates as Garcia and Reid ferried my gifts over to me. In total, there were five boxes and three envelopes. I got a gift card to nail salon for a full works package (manicure, pedicure, and facial) from JJ, and lottery tickets from Morgan.

"Now that you're legal, see if you're lucky," he told me with a wink.

Considering what else I could purchase now at eighteen years old, I counted my blessings that it was only lotto tickets. Then again, Morgan had to know what would happen to him if he had bought me anything more scandalous in front of Hotch.

Emily had bought me a couple of Mercedes Lackey books, some of my favorites. Rossi was the last envelope with another gift card to my favorite music store. Garcia's gift was a series of boxes, full of clothing she had bought for me. In typical Garcia fashion, they were fun and pretty in bright colors and patterns. The type of clothing that I used to wear until the last year. I smile and thanked her, even if I wasn't sure I would ever feel comfortable wearing clothing like that ever again.

I opened Reid's gift and discovered the first three seasons of Star Trek: Voyager on DVD. He got teased for it more than I did. I had a feeling I would be seeing the rest of the series at Christmas.

My last two gifts were wrapped in the same paper, but labeled differently, one from Hotch and the other from Haley and Jack. Reid had told me once that the team had a rule against profiling the other members. I wondered what they were all thinking about the fact that Hotch and Haley were divorced but they still coordinated my birthday gifts.

Hotch had gotten me a digital camera and Haley a photo album.

"Thank you," I said quietly so that only Hotch could hear me.

My guardian nodded gravely but smiled ever so slightly. "We thought you might want to document your senior year."

I rolled my eyes at that. There was only so much I would want to remember about high school, and not all of it fondly. I wasn't miserable there, but I only really had Michael as a close friend. I was anxious to graduate and move on to the next chapter of my life.

But for the moment, Garcia insisted on taking pictures immediately. Hotch had thoughtfully also included batteries, allowing the tech goddess to bounce around the room and filling it with flashing light.

Finally, the party started to break up just as I was about to put a kibosh on Garcia taking more pictures. JJ, Morgan, and Emily were the first to leave, with each woman hugging me one last time and Morgan gallantly kissing my hand like he was my champion. Rossi and Garcia were next, after Rossi had presented me with the leftover tiramisu cheesecake wrapped up and ready to go.

While Hotch took an armful of my presents out to the car, I stood next to Reid to say good bye.

"Thanks again," I said. "I know it must have been difficult to get me Voyager instead of Next Generation."

For all both Reid and I could be easily classified as "Trekkies" we each had a different favorite series.

"Not difficult at all, it was your birthday," Reid pointed out.

I reached up and hugged him, holding on for a couple of moments. In the past couple of days, I had received a birthday card with fifty dollars in cash from my brother John and a postcard from Alan who was currently working as a doctor on a repurposed cruise ship of all things that sailed up and down the African coast. Nothing more than that. I would never stop appreciating having someone who actually knew me and stuck around when I needed him.

"Happy birthday, Rachel," Reid said quietly in my ear, hugging me back easily. "I hope it's everything you wanted it to be."

I hummed neutrally. As wonderful as it had been, I would always be missing both my mom and my dad. When I pulled back, Reid must have read that in my eyes because he pulled me in again for a second hug, whispering, "I know."

"Good night."

"Sweet dreams."

Reid watched until I got into Hotch's car before he went to his own. Eighteen years old and he was still looking to make sure I was safe. I grinned at myself; I could be fifty and Reid and the rest of them would probably still act like I was under their protection.

"Did you have a good time?" Hotch asked when I slid into shotgun.

"Yeah," I answered with a small smile. "I'm glad Garcia talked me into it."

"You're lucky she didn't make you wear the birthday hat," Hotch told me as he drove us home. He went on when I frowned at him. "It's a pink felt cake, complete with candles. She always brings it out for birthdays at the office."

I didn't even need to ask him if he was kidding. One: Hotch rarely joked. Two: it was such a Garcia thing to do.

"Instead I now have about a hundred pictures of myself on my own camera," I countered. "Despite that, thank you. I'll call Haley tomorrow to thank her for the album."

"You're welcome. I'm only sorry I didn't think of it last year for your band tour."

I shrugged. "Well, no offense to yours and Haley's intentions, but I'll probably use the album for something other than school memories."

Ever the profiler, Hotch probably knew more of how I felt about high school than I expected he did.

"I'm sure you'll find something to do with it," was all Hotch said.

Scrolling through the preview of the pictures just from tonight, I started thinking about an obvious choice of theme. But telling Hotch what it was would probably embarrass him, so I didn't.

"So, are you actually going to use the lotto tickets?" my best friend, Michael Garrett, asked me the next day at school.

"Something tells me that my luck is not going to work in my favor," I answered dryly.

"What's the worst that could happen?"

"You realize you just doomed me to actually winning the lottery and then have someone come after me for the money," I pointed out.

Michael grinned. "You have a very vivid and paranoid imagination, you know that?"

"You know that better than anyone."

"Doesn't mean I don't wish it weren't true."

We were in a practice room during our shared lunch period before I went off to French and Michael went to auto shop. To most people, our friendship made little to no sense. Despite the recent events in my life, I was a good student with good grades who used to be able to claim I had a good family life—even if it was infinitely more complicated than other good families, of course. And even though my parents had never been married, I had had a mother and father who played active and supportive roles in my life.

Michael's mom had disappeared when he was a kid and the best thing to be said about his dad was that he wouldn't hit him if he wasn't drinking. The problem with that, of course, was that he was steadily drinking more and more all the time. This led Michael to avoid his home as much as possible and try to work a full time job under the table to save up enough to move out when he was legal. With those hours, Michael had to prioritize his studies, leading to poor grades and GPA held at the average mark because he tested well.

Moving into his own apartment had changed a lot for my friend, but there was only so much he could do now to salvage his education. He still had to work at the car repair shop to pay for rent, utilities, and food, but at least he was much happier this year than I'd ever known him to be.

But where our friendship came from was much simpler than anyone thought: we listened to each other and we never judged. For me, that meant I had been the only one who knew about the abuse Michael suffered from his father. In return, Michael was the only person I had ever told the full extent of my nightmares which were fueled by imagined and very real horrors from Dad's job and Mom's death. With Hotch as my guardian, my price for living with him, being supported by him, was a continued source for those nightmares with new material.

Michael knew about those, too.

And it wasn't all angst and drama between us either. For the most part, we were able to just sit around and talk without deep and heavy emotions coming into the conversation. Whatever geekiness Reid had initially fostered in my from my earl teens was supplemented by Michael's. His sense of humor was catching as well.

"So, was it really as horrible as you thought it would be?" Michael asked a moment later.

I had to seriously think about it. "It was…nice," I finally concluded. "And I think that's the scary part."

"Nice is now scary? I didn't know you were updating Webster's."

I pushed against Michael's shoulder in protest and smirked. "I wasn't expecting nice and I don't really know how I feel about nice any more. That's why it scares me."

"You mean, you felt like it shouldn't be nice because of everything else that's happened last year."

"Yeah."

"And maybe you think you don't get to deserve nice anymore."

I looked up sharply. It was bad enough living with profilers who could pull my thoughts out of thin air and verbalize them, but my best friend was an expert at reading me at the same time.

"It's not that I think I don't deserve it," I tried to explain. "I just keep waiting for it to blow up in my face."

"The way I see it, you've got two options," Michael told me. "One: if it goes to crap, you appreciated the good stuff while you could. And two: it doesn't go to crap and you don't spoil what you've got with unnecessary drama."

He was right, I knew. And it was the same thing that I kept trying to tell myself when my subconscious went all emo on me.

I didn't answer him right away. I looked up and saw that we had a minute to go before passing period began.

"So basically, you're telling me 'laissez le bon temps roulez?'" I asked.

Michael noticed the time as well and stood up, offering me his hand to help me to my feet which I took.

"If that was French for 'get over it' then yes."

I shrugged. The sentiment was close enough.

We said good bye and parted ways. We wouldn't see each other for the rest of the day since band and orchestra had both been in the morning and we each had work after school. I got through French, intro to law for my business credit, and English and also managed to get most of my homework done during my study hall.

I wasn't surprised to see a wrapped package in the front seat of my car when I got to my parking spot once school had let out. Michael didn't have a key to my car, but I wasn't naïve enough to think that he hadn't learned how to jimmy a car door open in his line of work.

I smiled to open up a CD of Avenue Q, put it into my CD player immediately and cued up "It Sucks to Be Me."

My job at Monarch Books had a lot of perks besides a paycheck. It would have been nice enough just being next to a café, but on top of that, the café was owned by my boss' mother. Colin and Matilda Morris offered joint membership cards between the store and the café for their frequent customers.

Before starting my shift at the book store, I stopped by the café first to pick up the usual afternoon snack order.

"Rachel! Happy birthday!"

I smiled at what was probably one of the best things to happen because of my job. Or rather, who was the best thing, Natasha Morris, Colin's daughter and probably my closet friend after Michael.

"Got something special for you today," Natasha promised with a wink. "One amaretto cherry brownie, made specially by yours truly."

Natasha was twenty two and studying culinary arts at the local college; her grandmother was already leaving much of the management of the Crown Café to her and would most likely sign everything over in a couple of years.

"Thank you," I told Natasha. She knew brownies were my favorite and always included one in the standard afternoon order for the bookstore she prepared for us.

"Any plans for the next weekend?" Natasha asked me. "There's a club I like that lets you in at eighteen. They just stamp your hand so the bartenders know not to give you anything stronger than Red Bull."

"Maybe another time," I answered. "But how about some clothes shopping instead?"

Natasha dramatically slapped a hand over her chest. "Be still my heart, are you actually proposing we do something girly?"

I had been thinking about it all day. "I got some clothes for my birthday that are…nice, but just not me anymore. I was thinking about trading them in at the store."

Garcia would understand, I was fairly certain. I wasn't quite to the point of wearing all black, but the bright colors and bold patterns were just too much for me.

Natasha was almost as bad a profiler sometimes. She met my eyes and seemed to know what I meant.

"All right, leave it to me, we'll find you clothes that are smoking hot, cute, chic, whatever without going overboard, I promise."

I smiled. Natasha knew something of what I had gone through because of her own mother's death years ago.

"See you then."

"And you eat every speck of that brownie, understand? No sharing no matter how much my dad pouts!"

I walked out of the café and down to the next door for the bookstore with a smile still lingering on my face. It was certainly not how I had envisioned my life turning out, but despite my bleak imagining around this point last year, I had managed to reform my life into something good again.

I wasn't certain what I would do if it all came apart again.

Notes:

That's right, folks, I have done it again! Two years ago, when I first thought up the idea of Rachel's character and set out to write her into the series by following the episodes, I might have planned out how to incorporate her into the series through season seven, but I never imagined that I would actually make it as far as I have. I thought, well, it's a good idea and I'll try it and see what people think, but it might not go anywhere. And then, when the first movement was out and got such overwhelming responses, I still thought, I wonder if I can actually keep this going. And here we are, in the fourth movement and I am still working faithfully to write Rachel's story and flesh it out from the outline that I first created all that time ago.

The only explanation that I can come up with for this astounding event is two-fold: (1) the show is just that good that it keeps me spinning and thinking all the time as to how Rachel would respond and affect canon events and (2) you, my loyal readers, are just that inspiring with your support, your comments, and your enthusiasm that always serves to spur me on. For that, I cannot ever thank you all enough. This endeavor has now permeated my life so much that this past semester when I was forced to take a Wednesday night class, I despaired for missing the new episodes of Criminal Minds, but I also despaired for how that would impede my writing. Luckily, I believe I have plenty of time to catch up on those episodes before I catch up with writing for season eight, so don't worry.

Now, the broad strokes for this movement. I have five chapters ready to go as of right now and I promise I am working on the others. So, as has become my custom, you will receive five chapters updated weekly, followed by a hopefully short break before another set of chapters is ready. I don't anticipate that this movement will be much longer than previous ones, so I'm estimating it at about a dozen chapters in total. Now, we all know what's at the end of this year, and before any of you can ask (demand, beg, plead, moan) about Foyet, I'll say this much from the start: I'm. Not. Telling. You shall have to wait and see as always and I hope that I can meet or surpass everyone's expectations as I believe I did with Frank.

Your musical education for the week concerning the chapter title. I cannot convey how difficult it's becoming to keep to my theme, but that's what I set out to do and I what I aim to keep doing. Chamber music came to me for this chapter for the fact that I wanted to make sure that I gave attention to all of my relevant characters, both canon and original, in the same manner that in chamber music, no one line is more important than the others and it's only when played all together that it sounds right.

That's all for now, but I look forward to reading your responses. Second chapter will be posted one week from today, Saturday.

Yours,

Cantoris