[This is a one-shot for now, hope you guys like it!
Keep in mind that this is set about 10/12 years in the future. Enjoy!]
"Sometimes good things fall apart so that better things can fall together" -Marilyn Monroe
"Connor, hold still", Emily muttered, trying to contain the squirming, laughing toddler long enough to get his shirt on.
The little boy just giggled in response.
"Mommy!", came a shout from the kitchen.
Emily exhaled before picking up her son (shirt still only half on) and venturing out of her room towards her daughter.
"Yes honey?"
"When are we going to Auntie Pe'lope's?", the 6-year old said hopefully, looking up at Emily with shining brown eyes that so much resembled her own.
"When Daddy gets home, okay?", she said, finally getting the shirt onto Connor's squirming body.
As if on cue, Clooney started to bark, signaling her husband's return.
In minutes, the door opened.
"Daddy!", Aimee shouted before flinging herself into her father's arms.
"Hey sweetie!", he said, accepting the hug with a content look on his face.
Getting up, he walked over to his wife who was holding Connor on the kitchen counter.
Kissing the little boy on the forehead, he then leaned over to Emily.
"How was your day Princess?", he said, giving her a small kiss.
"Good. But now you've gotta help me get the kids ready. We have Garcia's at six remember?", Emily responded, handing the toddler off to Derek in a hurry.
She wasn't even dressed yet, and it was nearly 5:30.
As she walked into the bathroom, she heard Aimee's small voice.
"Daddy, why do you call mommy Princess?"
Emily could almost imagine Derek's smile at that.
She heard him give a low chuckle.
"I think that's a story for another time Ame. Now, can you go find Connor's bottle for me?"
Emily just smiled, closing the bathroom door behind her.
Yes, it was a story for another time, she thought, as memories of their days of the BAU filled her head.
The team had been good – great even. They had a 94% case closing rate, they were the A-team. But most of all, they had become a family.
But all good things must come to an end. And theirs had, eight years ago.
Surprisingly, Garcia was the first to go. It was sudden, unexpected. Even a group of profilers couldn't have predicted her departure.
One day, she was happy and bubbly and flirty like she always had been, smiling at them as they left for another case. The next, Derek had found her, sobbing on the floor of her office, saying that she couldn't do it anymore. The bodies, the victims, the nightmares, they'd all become too much, so she left.
But of course, she'd stayed in contact. Emily remembered her wedding to Kevin. Penelope looked glowing and beautiful as she walked down the isle accompanied by Derek and slipped a ring on Kevin's finger, Emily and JJ standing, in matching (hideous) dresses, beside her.
She remembered, only a couple years later, as the birth announcement came.
Two beautiful little girls.
Joy and Anabel were perfect; happy and talkative, just like their mother.
They were eight now, she thought. Where had the time gone?
Penelope, every year, organized a reunion for the old BAU team. This year was no different, except for the fact that Garcia was hugely pregnant, and hormonal, so this get-together will probably be even more extravagant than usual, Emily thought, smiling to herself.
Rossi was the next to leave the BAU.
Maybe it was because he'd seen too much, lived through too many horrors, and agreed to leave, maybe it was because Strauss basically forced him into retirement, none of them knew.
He'd gone on a trip around the world after his departure – to re-invent himself, he had said. Also, it's given him the inspiration for a new book.
But before long, he'd drifted back to Virginia, back to the FBI.
Now, he was a consultant for the new BAU team. When they got a tough case, they would come to him, seeking advice and guidance, and he would help.
He had book tours too, his books now more popular than ever.
But at the end of the day, he would come home from a book signing or something other, in his fancy spots car that he didn't even like. He would unlock the door to his mansion, empty as ever, and go to bed, alone.
And he would wonder if it was worth it.
Because at the end of the day, all he had was his job, 3 ex-wives, too many regrets and no one to come home to.
Next had been JJ.
The realization came that she couldn't be a mother and a profiler at the same time.
She found herself missing Henry's soccer games, his school plays, and she couldn't take it.
So she handed in her letter of resignation, stating that being a mother was her top priority and transferred back to the Pentagon, where she had set hours and weekends off to spend with her son and Will.
A year later, a birth announcement came. Another little boy. Aiden Jason.
Then, a wedding. Her and Will had finally tied the knot, in a small ceremony on the beach, Henry, cute as ever, being ring bearer.
A couple months later, another baby. A boy again. Lucas. Emily had joked that she was going to have to keep Aimee far away from those boys.
Now, JJ worked a 9-5 job at the Pentagon, and coached soccer for the team that Henry was on. Every day, she hurried home to her four boys excitedly waiting for her to come home.
Her life, many would say, was the definition of perfect.
Hotch resigned next. Maybe it was JJ's leaving that made him realize that he wasn't doing enough for Jack.
So he started as an ADA again, taking only one case every couple weeks, working mostly from home. Those were the conditions he'd set when they offered him a position.
Aaron had come to every one of Jack's sports games, band concerts and plays. He had raised a straight-A student, who was proud as ever of his father.
They went, every Sunday morning, and put fresh flowers on Haley's grave, then went out to breakfast and talked about anything and everything, mostly Haley, who Jack didn't remember much of.
Now, Jack was in his senior year of high school.
He was going to college next year. Wanted to be a doctor, for which Hotch was happy.
Yes, he had loved his job at the BAU, he loved helping people.
But at the end of the day, the job had gotten him a divorce from the only woman he ever loved, losing her and almost losing his son, and countless sleepless nights.
He loved his job, but he didn't wish it on anyone else, especially his son.
After Hotch quit, the team wasn't the same anymore.
All of them knew it.
So when Morgan got offered a position at the DC field office, he had accepted.
Somewhere along the way, while everyone was leaving, while their family was falling apart, Derek and Emily had fallen together – they had fallen in love.
So they left, moving into one of Derek's properties in DC, renovating it until they finally made it their own.
A year later came a night of surprises for both of them. He had taken her to her favorite restaurant, saying he had something important to tell her. She told him she did too.
So as he got down on one knee and asked her to marry him, she told him she was pregnant.
Four months later, Emily was walking down the aisle, very pregnant, to a beaming Derek.
Another couple months later, they were sitting side by side in the hospital, holding hands and looking at the beautiful little girl they had created.
When Aimee was four, they found out Emily was pregnant again. Derek couldn't be happier as he watched his son be born.
Sometime after JJ's youngest son had been born, the family had bought a house next door to the one Derek and Emily had made their home 5 years before.
Now, Emily stayed home, looking after her two amazing kids, going on walks with her best friend and her three boys. Aiden and Aimee had become fast friends, and were already having their wedding planned by an overexcited Penelope.
In the end, Derek and Emily had both not expected their life to turn out like this, suburbs, picket fence and all, but they couldn't be happier.
Reid watched as everyone left. As his team fell apart, until, soon enough, he was the only one left.
But Reid stayed.
The truth was, he didn't know anything else. Right after college, he'd gone into the FBI and started as a profiler. He loved it. And he was damn good at it, too.
So he stayed, quickly becoming a part of the new team. They, however, never replaced the original team in his mind.
Once a year, he would to neurological scans to make sure schizophrenia hadn't started. And it never did.
Every year, he would go to Garcia's reunions. He would be a frequent guest at all the kid's birthday parties. Sometimes, he would even be called upon to babysit.
And he realized he was content.
Even though he had never gotten married, or had kids of his own, his life had been worth something.
He had helped dozens of people, caught hundreds of monsters, made the world a safer place.
He was Uncle Spencer to eight (soon to be nine) beautiful kids.
He had a girlfriend of four years, who he was completely in love with.
Spencer Reid was happy, and that was all that mattered.
"Ready to go Em?", Derek said, bouncing the toddler on his knee.
"You know how Garcia usually is, but now, she's pregnant and hormonal, so she'll be super pissed if we're late.", he added with a smile.
"Yep.", she responded, taking Connor from him as he put his arm around her and Aimee ran up to join them. And she realized that she'd had good times with the BAU, but retiring had been the best decision she ever made.
When the BAU ended, something better had begun for her. She had a family now, something that she wouldn't give up for the world.
Sometimes, she concluded, things had to fall apart, so that better things could fall together.
[This was kind of hard for me because I usually add details to my writing, but having to speed through a decade of people's lives in a paragraph was really tough. Took all my self-control not to go off on a long backstory about everything, haha :)
Review and tell me how I did? Please?]
