AN: Random inspiration that's probably been done before, but I couldn't resist. Takes place late season 4/early season 5.
Emily Prentiss walked into work that morning without the slightest inkling of what was about to occur. Had she known, she probably would've run screaming back to Interpol.
The bullpen seemed completely normal: the bustle of an everyday office combined with barely suppressed tension. Everyone was at their desks, with Garcia also present chatting with Spencer Reid. She barely registered the glances everyone took as she walked in.
"'Morning," she said as she plopped herself into her chair, coffee in hand. "Anything new on the Phoenix case?"
"Not yet," Derek Morgan said, rising to casually lean against the edge of her desk. "Heard you had a hot date last night."
Emily shrugged. "I don't know if I'd call it 'hot,' but it was... average."
"So no mangled shreds of self-worth spiraling gently into the abyss?"
She looked up at Morgan, eyebrow cocked. Now that was an odd turn of phrase. She only felt the barest tickle in the back of her mind as she replied, "Nnnnno. None of that."
JJ suddenly appeared out of nowhere, clutching a small pile of folders in her arms. "Did I hear something about the fingers of night caressing someone's blood-stained cheek?"
"No," Reid chimed in, "but there was some fascinating discussion about inner demons cackling with the rhythm of the damned."
Emily's confusion grew, even as that tickle in her mind grew into something more like insistent knocking. "Okay, what the hell is going on? You're all talking like you're—"
"The cries of stillborn dreams crushed under the heel of a world enshrouded in ennui?" Garcia offered.
"Personally, I liked 'the wishes of a hundred million screaming souls crying out for succor from a withered teat,'" David Rossi remarked as he approached the group.
Finally, the sense of familiarity drowned out her confusion: familiarity over both the words and the silly grins on the faces of her coworkers. She hadn't seen them smile at her like that since that time they found that old photo of her with the black lipstick and...
Oh God.
The poetry.
She had, of course, lied through her teeth about not remembering that part of her life. It was the quickest way she could think of to avoid the inevitable questions. Besides, it had truly been "just a phase" (something a lot rarer than most parents hoped), born of a desperate need to deal with a flaring conflict with her mother while she was at Garfield High. But she thought the poetry had been consigned to the dustbin of memory...
Emily looked up in horror; the grins on her colleagues' faces only grew wider.
"How?!"
Garcia smiled sweetly. "A very lovely former classmate of yours, Denise Tallman. She posted her old zines online in advance of your 20th high school reunion."
Emily remembered Denise Tallman (or Thalia, Lady of Winter, as she preferred to be called then). She always was a bitch, even before she got interested in Brad Jennings, Emily's boyfriend at the time. That was one of the major reasons she left behind that subculture: the realization that while humans separated themselves into groups that thought themselves unique, people were still kind of the same no matter how they categorized themselves. Hell, that was one reason she got interested in profiling in the first place: the tantalizing possibility of understanding others.
Not that that was of much help to her right now.
"And you found them." Of course she did. It felt pathetic, voicing something so obvious, but Emily's mind was whirling too much to do much else. Had she really been that... that cliche? But she was eighteen, for God's sake; surely everyone did stupid things at that age? She considered saying that aloud, but decided not to. It'd be completely useless, and would probably just increase the ribbing.
"You definitely had a... unique poetic voice," Reid said. "Reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges during his existential period."
Emily sighed wearily. "You're joking, right?"
"We're organizing a dramatic reading contest," Rossi chuckled. "Garcia is thinking of posting it to YouTube." Emily groaned, burying her face in her right hand.
"Oh, come on, Emily," JJ said with a cheerful, comforting pat on Prentiss's shoulder. "I'd be proud of lines like 'the organic multitudes squelch down, down, down, into the dripping sewers of oblivion.'"
Emily had just about figured out how to kill them all and make it look like a love pentagon gone horribly wrong when Hotch emerged from his office, approaching with a grim look on his face. "Phoenix PD's found another body," he announced. "Same signature wounds. They're calling us in; wheels up in thirty."
The group immediately scattered. Emily couldn't help but sigh with relief as she rose, picking up her overnight bag. Then she heard Hotch's deadpan voice in her ear, tinged with disbelief: "'Shrieking nightingale of despair'?"
Emily groaned again, hurrying out of the bullpen as fast as her legs could carry her, trying to ignore the chuckling behind her. It was going to be a long day. No, a long month.
If she was lucky.