This is the product of my mind's wandering into wondering what might push Emily away from law enforcement altogether. It wound down the path of Emily's exit, and then began gnawing at Garcia, Rossi, JJ, and Reid.
Enjoy.
"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him, like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again."
-Azir Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran
Penelope
"What are you not saying?" Garcia said, her voice beginning to rise in pitch as the dread and panic began to set in.
The split-second hesitation before Morgan began to answer was all it took. Her thoughts immediately began to spiral downward as her mind worked out what it was they weren't telling her. The gentle frown of confusion on her face gave way to a distressed expression as she pieced together what had happened.
"Did I...?" she whispered, praying that the conclusion she'd reached was not true. "Is this…?"
"No, Baby Girl," Morgan was quick to assure this time, "it's not your fault."
"But he… Oh god," she said in realization. "I led him straight to them. I led him straight to those sweet and-"
"Garcia," JJ said with a shake of her head, as she reached a hand out to try and calm her down.
"Oh god," Garcia murmured as she realized what they hadn't been willing to say. He'd gotten the information from her. She'd given it so willingly, assuming that the information was going to the good guys. But he'd taken it and used it for evil. Used it to find the kids that had managed to escape the hell he'd put them through years ago. Used it to find his former victims and silence them once and for all.
Hotch watched as her face contorted with pain, disgust, and guilt all rolled into one. He watched as she ran from the room in a panic, Morgan hot on her heels. Hotch's gaze stayed fixed on the still swinging door where they'd left the room as he wondered if this was the thing that would finally push Penelope Garcia over the edge.
"Penelope, come on. Open the door," JJ said sadly. "Please?" she added when she got no response.
JJ let out a soft sigh. It didn't seem so long ago that she couldn't go 10 minutes without a notification of some kind from Garcia. Now it had been days and weeks since she'd last let someone into the apartment. Days and weeks since she'd walked into the BAU and resigned.
"I'm worried about you, Penelope. Please, let me know you're at least alive. Give me something here," she said, worry creeping into her tone.
A moment passed and then JJ heard her phone chime. She glanced down and saw a text from Penelope..
I'm alive.
JJ let out another sigh. She was still alive – that was…something.
Morgan found her in the bathroom, bent over the toilet and emptying her stomach's contents.
"Penelope," he said softly as he came up behind her and held her hair back.
She shook her head slowly as her body continued heaving despite a now empty stomach. "I killed them," she whispered after a moment.
"No, you absolutely did not," Morgan said firmly, turning her around so she was facing him. "He was an expert at blending in. We all thought he was on our side."
"But I gave him the information. I told him where they were."
"To save them."
"But that's not what happened," she pointed out. "They're dead, and it's on me, Derek. I may not have held the knife, but I killed them," she said as she stood up and pushed past him.
Derek frowned as he watched the blonde make a hasty exit. The thought crossed his mind that maybe this was too much for Garcia to handle. Maybe this was too heavy a burden of guilt for her to bear without breaking.
"Garcia?" Reid called out tentatively, staring at the closed door. There was no answer, and really Reid wasn't surprised.
"I just wanted to check on you, and make sure you're okay, because JJ says you haven't been answering your phone or your texts, and Kevin says you haven't logged into any of your social media accounts."
He waited a moment to allow the usually bubbly blonde to respond, but was met with only silence.
"I've been reading about guilt," he began, unsure of what else to say. He'd never been very good at connecting with people, particularly when they were hurting. "Specifically about the Dobby Effect, so named after the house-elf character from Harry Potter who compulsively punishes himself to absolve his guilt."
Reid fell silent again, trying to figure out a way to reach his friend. She'd always been there for him, even when he'd pushed everyone away so fervently. She deserved more than half-hearted attempts to get her to talk. She deserved dogged determination.
"They say in an average week a person spends approximately 5 hours feeling guilty," he continued, idly wondering if Garcia had any hours in her days now that weren't filled with feeling guilty.
"I know it's hard to get past things like this, but eventually you do, and it stops hurting so much," he said softly, remembering the guilt that had consumed him after he'd committed his mother, and after Maeve, and after everything with Hankel…
"We miss you," he said quietly. He paused again. "I brought you some mixed nuts. I'll just leave them outside your door," he said, putting down the small package on the mat in front of her door. He left them because she'd once done the same for him. He left them because like her back then, he just wasn't quite sure what to do.
"Hey, Garcia," Rossi said with a smile as he spied her making her way through the bullpen. "Good to see you back. The office could use a little of your…well, you." It was true – the office had seemed a bit drearier without her the last week.
She offered a small smile. "Thanks, Rossi. I'm actually just here to see Hotch…do you know if he's around?"
"He's just finishing up a meeting with Cruz. Shouldn't be much longer. You want to wait with me in my office?"
She blinked a few times as she considered his offer. "Sure," she said finally.
Rossi scrutinized her carefully, noting the distinct lack of flair and pizazz in her fashion choices. He knew that she'd taken the fallout of the case hard, but he hadn't quite been able to put a finger on just how badly she'd been affected. Her posture, her clothes, the tendency to avoid eye contact, waiting to meet with Hotch… It didn't take a profiler to know that Penelope Garcia was probably resigning.
He held in a sigh as he realized the job had taken another one. He'd watched colleague after colleague burn out and become shells of who they'd once been. He never thought he'd see the day where the intense brightness that was Penelope Garcia would go out though.
And yet that day had apparently come.
"Penelope?"
Alex doubted that she'd have any luck after JJ, Spencer, and Morgan had both failed to get anywhere, but she'd still felt compelled to come and at least try.
"I know you probably don't want to talk, and I totally get that," she started, leaning her back against the wall beside Garcia's door. "But I want you to know, just in case you didn't get the message from Spencer, JJ, and Morgan, that we're all here for you. If you need anything at all, just let us know."
She contemplated saying more, but if she hadn't responded to the others, then there wasn't anything else Alex could say to comfort her. They knew her better, and she trusted them more.
"Take the time you need, but remember that we're worried about you, and that we care about you. Take care, Penelope."
"Garcia, it's good to see you," Hotch said, motioning for her to sit before taking a seat behind his desk.
"Thank you, sir," Garcia said with a nod.
"What can I do for you?" Hotch asked, though he had a pretty good idea what she needed, and what was on that piece of paper she was clutching so fiercely.
"I…" she began, but quickly felt her words lump together in her throat. "I'm sorry, but I don't think I can do this anymore."
Hotch's gaze stayed on her slouched posture, finding that she looked decidedly overwhelmed. "Maybe you need to take some time off."
"It's been 3 weeks, Hotch," she replied quickly.
"Yes, but you spent that time consumed by your guilt and holed up in your apartment. Time off means more than just staying away from the office."
"I don't think time off is going to fix this," she said, tremors of emotion clear in her voice.
"Try it," Hotch pressed gently. It was no secret that while tougher than most gave her credit for, Penelope Garcia was a gentle soul. A part of him had always known that she was the one he'd needed to really worry about. They all did.
She shook her head and pushed the paper she'd been clutching so tightly forward on the desk. "I'm sorry, Hotch. I really am. I love you guys…I know you all know that, but I can't do this anymore. This…this darkness is just too much now."
Hotch's lips pressed together in a tight line as he considered her words. "Okay," he said softly, accepting the letter of resignation that she'd offered. The stark white of the paper stood in contrast to the dark wood of his desk, and he found his mind wandering to the pink resume she'd once handed him.
Garcia's eyes lifted and they locked gazes. Hotch wasn't surprised to see the emotion swimming in her eyes, but it still dealt a heavy blow to his heart. Penelope was at the centre of this family, and he feared that without her things would begin to crumble. And that wasn't even taking into consideration how the effectiveness of the team would certainly be compromised by her absence.
He briefly considered pressing the issue more or trying to guilt her into staying, but dismissed both quickly. That would do more harm than good. And at the root of everything, this was about Penelope Garcia, not the technical analyst of the BAU.
He reached into his desk drawer and pulled the card of his old therapist out. He pushed it toward her. "After Foyet, I was mandated to attend therapy. I was against the very idea of it from the start, but it helped. It really did. Think about it," he suggested.
She nodded and took the card, tucking it into her purse. She stood up and locked eyes with Hotch once more. "Thank you, Hotch," she said softly. "For everything," she added after a beat.
He stood and stepped out from behind his desk, holding his hand out. Her hand shook his weakly for just a moment before she let go and instead wrapped her arms around Hotch tightly. He was surprised by her action – hugging was not something he did with the members of his team – but wrapped his arms around her and held her for a moment.
They broke apart and she looked away sheepishly for a moment, as though she'd realized it was something they didn't normally do. "If you change your mind…" he began.
"I know where to find you," she finished for him.
He offered a small smile and then watched as she left his office. The darkness had somehow consumed the seemingly never-ending light of Penelope Garcia. He worried that if it could consume her, what chance did the rest of them – dull by comparison – stand?
"Garcia! Open the door!" Emily said, dropping her bag and banging loudly on the door. JJ had told her about the unsuccessful gentle attempts by the team to coax the blonde out of the apartment. Emily had decided on the flight over that it was time for some more significant efforts. "I flew all the way from London and haven't slept in over 24 hours, so you better open this damn door!"
The door swung open suddenly and Emily stepped backwards in surprise. Truthfully she hadn't actually expected Garcia to open the door. She'd expected to be met with the silence that JJ and Reid had described. But she recovered quickly and offered a half-hearted sarcastic "thank you" as she grabbed her bag and pushed past the blonde into the apartment.
"What are you doing here, Emily?"
Emily arched an eyebrow. "What am I doing here? Garcia, you quit the BAU and haven't said a word to anyone in weeks. Me being here is so not the weird thing going on."
Garcia opened her mouth to respond but instead turned around to close the door.
Emily put down her bag and dropped onto the couch. "So, are you gonna spill and tell me what the hell happened? Or am I going to have to profile you?"
Garcia let out a sigh and then sat down next to her old friend on the couch. "I assume you heard from JJ what went down?"
Emily shrugged. "I'm asking you what happened."
"Unsub was going after kids, and we found out that it had been going on for awhile. The team established a pattern and we managed to find a long string of kills over the years. What was weird about this one though, was that there was an unusually high number of victims who survived."
"And you guys figured they could give some insight on the unsub's behaviour," Emily guessed.
Garcia nodded. "I compiled a list, and then made the discovery that one of them had been killed recently. And then another, and another."
"He was trying to cover his tracks," Emily interjected, her eyes scrutinizing her friend's expressions and not liking what she was seeing.
"Yeah. So we figured we had to protect the ones that were still out there, and I passed along a list of their current addresses while JJ was holding a press conference to hopefully mislead the unsub."
"And…" Emily gently prompted.
"And it turns out the unsub was a cop in that very unit, who managed to get his hands on that list before the team did."
Emily's eyes closed as she realized where the story was headed. She'd heard the brief overview from JJ, yes, but not the details.
"They didn't stand a chance. It was like I handed him a frickin' map to each and every one of them," she said bitterly, tears building in her eyes
Emily blew out a heavy breath. "And it pushed you over the edge," she guessed.
Garcia nodded. "I just…I can't fight for so many years against the evil and awful people of the world and yet somehow make so little of a dent in that giant pile of crap. I can't spend basically every waking moment hunting these creeps down and still have another hundred open cases that we can't get to."
Emily looked at her friend sadly. She knew exactly what she was talking about.
"How do you still do it, Em?" she asked, wiping at her eyes to prevent the tears from falling. "With the CIA, and then the FBI, and now Interpol. How do you deal with seeing all the awful stuff in the world every single day?"
Emily paused for a moment before answering. She needed to be careful how she approached this, lest she accidentally do more harm than good. "They are few and far between," she began, "but you get those cases where there's a happy ending. Where you get to put the bad guy behind bars, return the kid to their parents, or stop the fear and terror in a community. They make the grind of the rest of the days worth it."
Garcia stayed quiet, letting Emily's words sink in. They made sense, and Garcia knew what she was talking about…but it wasn't enough.
"Why didn't you just take some time off?" Emily asked gently.
"I did," Garcia sniffed.
"I mean more than a couple weeks. Take a leave of absence and get away from everything. Travel the world, go shopping, spend some quality time with your godson…"
"I just…I couldn't be there anymore, I couldn't look at the awful, awful stuff all day long," she explained in a rush, her tears winning the battle and trickling down her face. "It was too much."
"I know," Emily soothed, wrapping an arm around her. "I know."
"I didn't wanna leave, but I can't do it anymore."
"I know, Garcia," Emily said quietly. "I know."
"I love them, but it's too much darkness."
"They know."
"I can't anymore, Em. I just can't. Just thinking about going back…" she trailed off, her voice shuddering with emotion.
"You don't have to," Emily replied gently. She knew all too well how important walking away could be, and understood the feeling of being overwhelmed by it all that her friend was describing. Things with Garcia could often be fleeting – fashion trends, moods, anger and grudges, to name a few – but somehow Emily knew that this was one thing in Penelope's life that wasn't going to fade as quickly as it had come. Somehow, she knew that Garcia had worked her last day in the BAU.
