When I mention Ros I get respectful silence. I understand that—especially from the team. We know better than to step into each others lives uninvited and we are wary of overstepping bounds. But it was different when Emily arrived. Our histories were new to her: tomes on dusty tomes, which we revealed only into riddles, casual remarks, and coffee conversations. I thought that, by staring while the others looked away, Emily only meant to catch up—to read as far into me as she could while I was open in front of her, before the window of opportunity was closed again. I don't talk about my sister's suicide a lot.

Almost a month passed from that day before I first saw the scratches on her wrist. A new watch was making her skin itch—oh, she knew it was bad to scratch, but her favourite timepiece had stopped unexpectedly and she'd picked up another of the cheap drugstore variety. It must be made of nickel. I didn't think her watch had changed, but then, who knew? I'd noticed her wearing one, but I couldn't say for certain it wasn't a different one. To be honest, I found her attractive—if I got a chance, there were other parts of her I studied first.

God, it's hard to think that now. Because you know in retrospect, don't you? You know it's been goddamn obvious all along and there's no excuse for missing it. I missed it twice. First with Ros, then with Emily. If I'd ever torn my stupid lovestruck eyes from her lips, her neck, or wherever else, and just taken one good look at her wrist I would have realised that it was more than a few scratches. But of course, I wanted to believe her—just like I'd wanted to believe every lie Ros ever told me about her own scars. The sleeve that had slipped upwards was rolled back down, and my chance was gone.

Once, a few months before Rosaline died, I caught her with some friends under the bleachers. She and her friends would meet there sometimes, as all teenagers did, to talk about boys and make-up and other scandalous things, and I—Ros's baby sister—was most certainly not welcome. Sometimes there were boys with them, but that day it was just Ros and a few girlfriends. She was messing with her sleeve the same way Emily did, and I heard her whine, "It's the stupid cat, guys! It hates me!" Her friends all laughed. Apparently she was notorious with animals, to her friends at least. She hadn't counted on me coming up behind her.

"What cat?" I asked dumbly.

"Our cat, you doofus!"

I couldn't comprehend the anger in Ros's tone as she hissed at me to go home and leave her alone. She had roughly escorted me out of sight before I had a chance to reveal to her friends that we'd never owned a cat.

For God's sake, if only I could've made Ros's friends a little more suspicious about the marks on her arms. For years I lay awake at night thinking how I'd failed her; imagining her lying awake too, after that day, crying and wishing for someone to realise what it all meant, thinking about how close I'd come. But how could I have guessed when she always seemed so perfect? When I admired her so much? And when it was Emily, well what then? She wasn't a teenager, and she was one of the most well put together people I knew. I guess I'm just good at comparmentalising, she'd said. Jesus, Em. Yeah. I wish you weren't.

So I honestly can't say what stroke of idiocy made me ask, weeks later, when I glimpsed for a moment the scratches multiplying on Emily's wrist, "Do you have a cat or something?"

Maybe I was desperate for the lie to be true this time, but Emily seized upon the way out I had offered her, and her quickness was telling enough.

"It's my neighbours," she apologized, rapidly tugging down the sleeve that had been nudged upward as she worked.

I baulked as silence fell between us. What next? I fought the urge to walk up behind her, grab her arm, and roll up her sleeve against her will without ever having to see her face or explain why. Instead I found myself hedging, "The same thing… always seemed to happen to my sister."

I was keen to the way Emily froze at the mention of Ros—I knew she remembered. She froze, and then glanced slowly, incrementally, to each side, barely moving her head at all. I knew she was checking that she and I were alone in the evidence room—which we were. The local PD staff had cleared off to give us space to work and the rest of the team were out in the field.

"Jennifer…"

I didn't have to be a profiler to know that her use of my full name meant I was getting in close to her, and that this was serious. I couldn't let her slide away with stock excuses the way Ros had. And we couldn't do this from opposite ends of the table either, with evidence stacked up between us. Biting my lip, I stood, hoping not to startle her back into herself. I lifted, not dragged, my chair beside hers and lowered it as quietly as I could. The air in the room, which had been stifling before, seemed to stagnate further. Emily barely breathed, stiff with the exertion of portraying so little emotion. Her face was a blank to me.

"Emily," I tried to keep my voice as low and soothing as possible—this was supposed to be what I was good at, wasn't it? But I wasn't, not with her. "I'm really sorry to do this, but I'm going to roll up your sleeve, okay?"

Emily's eyes stared straight ahead and her lips formed a perfect line, but her cheeks had begun to quiver. You can't control everything. Gently I lifted my hand to turn her face toward mine. I'd pulled myself close before—our knees touched as she turned. My hand cupped her soft white cheek and I tried to make that small gesture say everything I wanted it to. What I really wanted was to throw my arms around her and hold her tight, to wipe away all the tears she wouldn't let fall, but I knew that that would be too much, too fast. Still, Emily yielded. Her eyes, which had been so determinedly averted, now met mine straight on, and I was both relieved and distraught to find defeat written in them. It wasn't what I wanted at all.

I didn't dare ask again if it was all right, and I didn't want to give anyone a chance to walk in either. So, giving Emily's dry cheek a last delicate stroke with my thumb, I dropped that hand to hold hers, while my other slid back the long sleeve of her blouse. I tried not to register her flinch.

The scratches on Emily's wrist were superficial, as they had been with my sister—the sort you can blame on a cheap watch or a disgruntled cat. Further up her arm, what I hadn't seen, were long gashes at various stages of healing, disappearing into a thin gauze bandage that presumably covered the newest additions.

Still Emily neither spoke nor cried. I expected she didn't think she could do one without inviting the other, and wanted to avoid tears at all costs. Repeatedly her eyes moved to the door—ajar. I rolled her sleeve back down and placed my hand over it.

"You're taking care of them. That's good," I told her, hardly trusting my own voice. "Em, you know I have to ask if you're hurting yourself with a mind to—you know. To kill yourself."

Emily briefly resembled herself at that comment. A look of what might have been construed as annoyance, but what was more probably bravado, crossed her face. "I have a gun, JJ. If I wanted to kill myself—" That bravado faltered here, along with her voice. "Anyway," she said. "I'm not trying to…" The words right now were unspoken but permeated the air between us.

I tried to push on regardless of what I felt. "I'm not going to ask you to talk about it today—we've got work to do, and I'll try to leave you alone for a while. But after this case—"

"I know."

Her tone was dismissive.

"Do you, though, Em? Do you understand?" My hand on her wrist dipped to her hand and clung tighter than I intended. "This isn't okay-" Goddammit. My voice had broken. Tears accumulated, ready to fall at any second. "I… I know what this does to people. I…"

"I know."

"I should— I'm supposed to tell Hotch— Fuck, Emily, you carry a weapon. You can't be out in the field and have the team not know if you're—"

Finally emotion began to rise in Emily's voice and her other hand came to sandwich mine, clutching as tightly as mine was. "Jayj, I've worked hard for this!"

"I know. Just—"

"I know. Your sister—"

"No." I shook my head, begging her to see. "Not Ros, Em. You." Although I'd meant to move away, I found myself folding her into my arms, and she didn't resist. "Emily, my sister's been dead for a long time. It's you I'm afraid to lose. Jesus… I've been afraid of that for a while now, but—"

"I don't… make it easy for people to worry about me, Jen."

I had no more words, but Emily's arms lifting to return my embrace were enough. I didn't hear or see her cry, but I began to feel wetness pressing into my shoulder where her cheek rested, and that prompted my own tears to fall—hard. Only when both of our tears had been exhausted did I pull back enough to look into her clear eyes. They were wet but more open now, accessible. Emily looked at me straight on, her hands loosely grasping my biceps. And her eyes—those gorgeous eyes, which threatened, promised, to remove all my fears and all my restraint at once… Her eyes seemed to drop to my lips. I saw my name move on her own lips before I realised that my own eyes had done the same. Twice, softly, she said my name. I watched through my eyelashes, leaned in unconsciously, and felt her chest lightly brush mine. I yearned to close the gap between us and kiss her, make sure she was really, truly here, alive and all right.

Yet I knew I was the only one aware of Emily's position. And although I also knew I needed to tell someone, I already feared that I wouldn't, which meant that we would have to be on the best possible terms. She couldn't have another reason to avoid me - had to trust me. So instead I leaned my forehead against hers, took a deep breath in, and withdrew.

"Let's get back to work."