A/N: Very few people write about Alex (two of the best stories are in Spanish, ha!), so I thought I would try. My first CM fic. I own nothing. Please review!
Reid did not miss that "deer in the headlights" look on Alex's face when Brooke clung to her for comfort. He understood. He didn't do well with the victims either. At least, not the live ones. He had made the assumption, erroneous apparently, that as a woman Alex would do better with the emotional side of the job. Instead, she looked terrified of the young woman sobbing in her arms. He wondered at that…but said nothing.
Had he spoken to Alex, he would have found her in agreement. When Brooke latched onto her, she froze. She floundered for the right thing to say. She, who could analyze and dissect the most obscure of sentences, could not find two words of comfort to put together for this girl who just watched her friend get gunned down before her eyes. What kind of cop did that make her? What kind of person did that make her? Those questions haunted her throughout the case, but she suffered in silence. Despite being on the team for some time, she still felt like an outsider. Part of it was her own doing, she knew, again part of that emotional disconnect. And even though she and Erin had eventually made peace, she was still reeling from the betrayal of trust. She wasn't bitter per se, but all these years of scraping back up the FBI ladder had certainly made her guard her heart.
Having taken the spot of Emily Prentiss didn't help any either. She was obviously cherished by her teammates and though the beloved agent had left of her own accord, Alex often wondered if they saw her as just a replacement. And she knew she could never measure up to the picture the team painted of Prentiss. Latent insecurities bubbled to the surface. Fears of rejection and of not measuring up wrenched out of her less-than-spectacular childhood and reared their ugly heads in her mind and her heart. It was totally irrational. She was a grown woman for heaven's sake! She had achieved great academic success, was married to a brilliant man, was on one of the most elite teams in the FBI, and grew amazing roses in her backyard that even won a prize in a magazine. She knew she had a lot to be proud of. It just didn't always feel that way. And what the hell was she supposed to do about that?
She had debated even talking to James about the whole mess. He had certainly seen her broken and hurting in the days and weeks (and months) after the fallout from the anthrax case. But her confidence had gradually rebuilt her into the self-assured woman he married. She hesitated in bringing up that hurt to him again. She knew he wouldn't outright reject her, but would he think less of her for letting her confused emotions get the best of her oh-so-logical mind? She sat on it for a while before deciding she needed to come clean.
"You're a wonderful agent and a wonderful person Alex", he'd said when she asked him her two plaguing questions. "You're just not overly emotional, and that's ok. Not everyone is meant to connect on that level. But if you really want to work on this, don't shy away at the next opportunity." She promised herself she wouldn't. And the opportunity came sooner than she thought.