A/N: Hi guys! I haven't published any Criminal Minds fic in a while, but I saw a post on tumblr today that inspired me to write this bad boy. Let me know what you think, and have a good one!
"Hey, Garcia, what's up?" Emily asked, hoping the analyst had made more headway into the investigation. She'd called her a while ago with a set of parameters with which to search, and the investigation on the ground here in Louisiana had made little progress since.
"Is Reid there? He's not answering his phone. Can I talk to Spencer?" Penelope stammered. She squeezed her black cat squishy rhythmically and stared daggers into the screen in front of her as if willing the information at hand to be different could make it so.
"Um, Reid's not here right now. Penelope, is everything okay?" Emily asked, stepping away from the group and narrowing her eyes as she tried to make her voice as even as possible. Everything was, of course, most clearly not okay, but she was internally struggling with how to diffuse the unfolding situation.
"What about JJ? Is she around?" Penelope unconsciously squished her cat even faster, and the eyes behind her two-tone pink and red frames squeezed shut from a combination of denial and anxiety.
Emily looked over her shoulder, made eye contact with the agent in question, and beckoned her over with a nod of her head, glad to have identified a concrete step she could take. "Okay, Garcia, JJ's coming. Is everything okay?"
"No. Yes. I don't know. I just - " Garcia took a deep breath and ran the cat through her fingers - "I need to talk to JJ. Please."
"Okay, Penelope, here you go," Emily raised her eyebrows as she handed the phone over, as if to say, I've got no idea.
"Penelope?" JJ asked softly, turning her back to the rest of the team in an attempt to gain some semblance of privacy for a conversation whose nature she had no way of anticipating. "What's going on?"
"I found the UNSUB," Garcia explained, her voice shaking and her kitty squeaking softly as her hands trembled.
"Okay," JJ said slowly, prodding gently for more information and giving Emily a look that said, I don't know either!
Penelope swallowed and clenched the toy in her fist. "It's Elle."
JJ's mouth dropped open slightly, and she blinked several times. She turned to Emily for a moment, then looked away again before finally repeating, "Elle?"
"Yeah," Garcia whispered. She set the cat on her desk, closed her eyes, and leaned back slightly in her chair. "Elle Greenaway. It's her. She's doing this."
"Are - are you sure?" JJ stammered breathily, her mind reeling.
"It isn't often that I wish I was worse at my job, but this is one of those times. I wish I wasn't, but I'm sure." At the sound of a the door creaking open behind her, Garcia looked over her shoulder and said, "I gotta go. I'm forwarding you her info now."
The line clicked dead, and JJ found herself staring blankly at Emily's phone, trying to make sense of what she'd just learned. As the screen pinged to life with the receipt of the promised information, JJ passed the cell back to Prentiss and reached for her own from her back pocket.
"What's going on?" Prentiss asked. She pocketed the phone - she could check out the Garcia's update in a minute - and stepped closer to JJ, placing a hand on her shoulder.
"Uh, Garcia found our UNSUB." JJ's eyes were fixed on the floor as she tried to process the new information.
"Okay. So what's wrong?" Emily was feeling very confused. Finding an UNSUB shouldn't have had Garcia so upset, and it certainly shouldn't have had JJ so frazzled.
"It's, uh, it's Elle Greenaway." JJ shook her head and looked up at Emily, realizing that she would have no way of knowing who Elle was. "She was in the BAU before you got here."
"Wait, she was an agent?" Emily's eyes widened and the shift from comforter and friend to investigator and boss was almost palpable. She reached for her phone again and started scrolling through the details Garcia had sent, completely oblivious to the tall shadow lingering in the doorway.
"What's Elle?" Spencer asked, toying with the hem of his jacket as he approached the pair. JJ met his gaze, and his eyes darkened in realization. "Elle?" he nearly gasped, hands flying to his hair and head tilting back slightly in shock.
"Former law enforcement fits the profile," Emily ventured after a moment's silence, then looked over as Rossi, Simmons, and Lewis approached.
"You guys see the info Garcia sent over?" Tara asked, raising her phone slightly and glancing from agent to agent.
"Yeah," JJ snapped, blonde hair flying as she turned quickly to face her teammate, "We saw it."
At the look of surprise on Dr. Lewis's face, she sighed and blinked slowly. "I'm sorry," JJ offered. "This UNSUB - she left the BAU twelve years ago."
"The BAU?" Rossi interjected. "You know her?" His mind was racing at the notion of an agent from the BAU - his BAU - the team he had created and for which he had worked so hard for long ending up on the wrong side of the law.
"We worked with her," JJ responded. "Me, Garcia, Spence. I mean, the way she left was rough, but I never though - " her voice trailed off and she shook her head, eyes cast towards the floor.
"She was my friend," Reid choked out. "God, Jason's dead, Hotch is gone, and now this?" He swallowed hard, his face reddening. "I'm sorry," he said quickly, turning on his heel. "I just need a minute."
"Okay," Matt finally spoke as Reid's form retreated down the hallway. "So what do we do now?"
Back in Quantico, Alvez shut the door quietly behind him as he stepped into Garcia's office. Her eyes met his, and she quickly ended her conversation. Luke hoped she hadn't cut it too short on his behalf.
"What's, uh, what's up?" Penelope asked shakily. She spun in her chair to face Luke, looking up at him expectantly, hands fidgeting in her lap. She spun a ring with her thumb and chewed lightly on her lower lip as Alvez paused in front of her, continuing to make eye contact for what she felt to be an unreasonably long stretch of time.
"Something wrong, Garcia?" He finally asked. He knelt down in front of her chair and placed a hand on her knee, looking up at her and trying to figure out how he could comfort her without being invasive or making her mad.
A tear slipped onto her face before she could stop it, and Penelope quickly found herself being brought to her feet and pulled into the strong embrace of one Luke Alvez, who had thrown caution to the wind and decided to do anything he could think of to make her feel better the moment he saw her start to cry.
"Hey, it's gonna be okay," He whispered, stroking her back gently with one hand and just hoping he was right, hoping that everything would, in fact, be okay.
Penelope's shoulders shook even harder and, against her own better judgement, she buried her face in Luke's chest. None of this was okay.
I'm not sure if this should be a one-shot or a longer story. What do y'all think?