Author's Note: Here is my tribute to CBS writing AJ Cook off the show. I know, lots of people have done this already, but I don't really care. This will be a collection of unrelated one-shots of JJ leaving the BAU.

Wasted

I don't want to spend my life jaded, waiting

to wake up one morning and find

that I let all these years go by wasted.

-Carrie Underwood

He was vaguely aware that JJ sat down across from him. Tearing himself away from the paperwork in front of him, Hotch looked up and smiled at the blonde agent misinterpreting her unease as regret for not finishing her own paperwork, "You know as well as I do that you spend more time doing paperwork than anyone else." He attempted to console her.

She smiled, her eyes filled with something that Hotch could only identify as slight regret with quiet determination. "JJ?" He asked again.

Wordlessly, she handed over a piece of paper. His eyebrows shot up in surprise as he glanced at the paper, the words resignation and effective immediately reverberating in his mind. "What is this?"

"When Spicer's daughter was taken—do you know what I felt?" She asked after a moment, deciding to forego any attempts at dodging the issue. Truthfully, she had been thinking about this for a while, but the last case was the icing on the cake. She just couldn't do it anymore.

Hotch's questioning look told her that he was waiting for her to continue.

"I didn't feel anything. I thought of the next press releases, the interviews, and everything else I had to do." She explained, feeling all the more sure of her decision.

"I don't understand." He admitted, clenching his jaw in frustration. The BAU had become his family, the people that knew him better than anyone else in the world. And now, an integral part of that family was just giving up.

"Do you remember what you told me once? I said if I stopped caring I was jaded, if I cared too much it could ruin me." She asked, hoping that he could push aside his feelings of betrayal and understand. This job—it had become a part of her. And now she wasn't sure she liked the person she saw in the mirror.

"I said that it was still better to care." The flash of memory struck him like a ton of bricks.

"I don't want to live my life jaded. It's not fair to Henry. It's not fair to me." She explained sadly. "I want you to know, this is one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make."

"We will miss you." Hotch pushed down the thought that yet again, another person in his life was leaving. But looking at the younger woman, he realized that she had the strength to do something he had never been able to do. She had the strength to walk away.

"What will you do?" He asked, accepting the paper and folding it neatly in his pocket.

She laughed lightly and ran her fingers through her hair. "I think Will is going to faint with joy. We might move, or I might get a job with a PR firm. Either way, it's time for me to do what's best for my family."

Thinking back, Hotch couldn't point to one moment where he knew that the job was eating away at his soul. He thought back to all that the job had cost him—his happy family life, the moments with his son that he could never get back, his wife—and he couldn't fault JJ for having the strength to walk away.

Maybe if he had the same strength, his son would still have a mother. But that was a thought for another day. Now, he could easily recognize the anticipation in the woman in front of him, hoping for approval.

Smiling softly, he nodded to show he understood. "If you ever need anything, let me know."

JJ's broad grin was nearly infectious. "Thanks."