Chapter 2

An hour later a case came in and Hotch came to get her. He stayed in his office to make a call while Prentiss went to the conference room.

Everyone else had gathered and an expectant silence fell when she entered. She ignored it and took a seat, folding her hands neatly before her on the table. Across from her, Rossi lowered his eyelids in a slow, deliberate blink, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

Hotch walked in and the briefing began. The case was in Ohio. Prentiss paid attention even though she doubted she'd be able to go. She was resigned to accepting Scully's request. She was no fool. She knew what this request possibly portended for her future and so did Hotch. But after her seven months away from work they were both aware that the Bureau wouldn't look kindly on a refusal. And she was an FBI agent; it was her job to get bad people caught and Scully had a bad person to catch. People like Hotch and Prentiss who concentrated on substantive work rather than politics were essentially only reactive to political machinations affecting them; then they acted defensively, but they didn't do pre-emptive machinations themselves. So she would take the job and let the dice fall as they might. It was a small comfort that Scully didn't seem to be much of a politician either. She was being used, and probably well aware of it, to see how Prentiss performed outside the BAU now. However there was no help for it and things could be worse. Scully wasn't one to let the grass grow under her feet. She had come prepared this morning. She had been succinct and to the point, with not one word or one second wasted. Prentiss could work with someone like that.

Hotch ended the briefing, "We're waiting for the invitation to be extended by the local police. The higher ups are wrangling but I am told it is likely to come in about an hour or so. So wheels up in ninety minutes."

"Wait a minute," Morgan said. "What was that meeting this morning about?"

Hotch shot him a look. "Need-to-know only."

"What? Not another secret!" Morgan exclaimed, angry enough to forget discretion. He had put aside his upset that Prentiss had walked out on them all and then been alive while he had mourned her for the better part of a year because he was so glad that she was back with them, but the trouble with issues being left unresolved is that they tend to come alive at the most inconvenient times. "This is a team! How many more secrets are you and Prentiss gonna keep from us?"

In a voice like cut glass, JJ intervened before Hotch could reply, "Morgan, the world does not revolve around you and your desire to know things."

"Yeah, says the one who's so good at keeping secrets," Morgan retorted. "How about what we deserve, like team mates we can trust?"

JJ's hand slammed on the table. Everyone jumped.

"Do your mother and sisters deserve to feel betrayed because you keep your oath to keep our work confidential from them? All of us took that oath, Morgan. It covers different things for each of us. Are you gonna accuse me of betraying you because I don't tell you what I did at State? Who the hell are you to insist that any of us should break our oaths, and possibly endanger others, just to satisfy your curiosity? Why should we?Because Derek Morgan just has to be the hero who just has to be in the know and in on the takedown seeing as he's God's gift to the FBI?"

Everyone was too taken aback by the withering scorn emanating from the hitherto always mild-mannered JJ to react.

"When will you learn, Morgan," she went on, quietly livid now, "not to compromise team cohesion and morale by being sanctimonious about things outside your experience?"

Morgan opened his mouth but no words came out.

"When Emily went missing, you were the first one predisposed to see it as some sort of insult - that she thought you weren't good enough to protect her. Because of that one perceived slight to your ego, your loyalty just disappeared. Every time a question arose about Emily's motives, you took the worst interpretation and had to be talked out of it; no benefit of the doubt until you learned about Declan, as if he was the only thing that justified her actions. You don't know how many people she saved by completing that assignment!

You have no idea what it must have been like to be a lone woman without immediate backup, surrounded by a mob of vicious men, not knowing when the charade would end. You have no training or experience in undercover work. You don't know how many times this country has been saved by it. You don't know how many of its residents and citizens abroad have been saved by it. For all you know, your family's alive today only because Emily's assignment prevented guns from ending up in Chicago that might have used against them. Yet somehow you feel able to pass judgment on it, on all the patriots and heroes of this country who choose to pay the personal cost of doing it because ... what, because God appointed Derek fucking Morgan the arbiter of universal morals and undercover work doesn't meet your precious middle class sexual mores? "

Morgan was beginning to take on a hunted look. It wasn't helping him that Hotch was making no effort to stop or correct his newest profiler, making his opinion all too clear.

JJ went in for the kill. "And the next time you want to hold it against any of us for keeping secrets, remember Carl Buford." Morgan paled. JJ didn't relent. "When your freedom, your career and your reputation were at stake, you made a personal decision to make that case a whole lot harder for us to solve in order to preserve your own sanity, privacy and dignity. It was not out of professional obligation. We never held it against you. So can you say the words 'double-barrelled hypocrite'?

What is it about wanting to keep your mother and your sisters alive that so needs your holy forgiveness? When your friend walked in alive instead of dead, why couldn't you just be happy? Because your pride was bruised? You weren't good enough to be let in on the secret? Well if you pride means more to you than your friends then by all means sit in your room and think what kind of a man that makes you. We are the ones who combat injustice; we don't propagate it and we definitely don't do it within the team. So get your ego out of your ass, Morgan, or I'll really cut you down to size and I can promise you, you won't like the results."

Morgan already didn't like the result of incurring JJ's uncommon ire. He had wilted so completely that Prentiss could almost sense his testicles retracting. Even Garcia, usually his staunchest supporter, was keeping quiet and still.

Clearly JJ's time at State had taken her well out from under Morgan's wing and she wasn't planning on going back.

Across the table, Rossi stood up and gathered his things. "You know," he said quietly, "a whole generation of soldiers left this country for Vietnam believing that they were doing so to protect their country, their friends and their family. Half that generation came back to this country having lost their friends, their health, their limbs and half their sanity, to find their girlfriends had moved on, to find no work, no gratitude, no love. To see that kind of social injustice repeated on a private scale in my lifetime is more than I can stand." He nodded at Prentiss and JJ and left.

"Wheels up now in 75 minutes," was all Hotch had to say as he left the room with a jerk of his head at Prentiss.

…

Chapter 3

In his office, Hotch said briskly, "It's not four o'clock but I suppose we have to do this now since the team has to leave. Have you decided?"

"I'll do it," Prentiss said, now thinking it just as well to stay out from under Morgan's feet for a little while. "But that means I can't get on the jet. Scully will want me to be read in and meet her team ASAP. I'll stay in touch with the case through Garcia and help as much I can over the phone. Once I get an idea of what my schedule with Scully's lot will be like, I'll let you know. But I suspect that as I'm the only profiler on her team, she'll need me to prioritize her project over our normal caseload." Scully was also senior to Hotch. She hadn't pulled rank but she could have. Still it would have been churlish to say so out loud to a man who was just as aware of it as she was; a man who, on Prentiss's behalf, had for months put himself out and risked his relationship with team members he had worked with far longer than he had worked with her.

Hotch nodded. "Do that then. Pass off your consults to the others when you must." He paused and gave her a look. "I know you won't tell me to make sure things between JJ and Morgan get dealt with, even though you won't be there to patch up my leadership failings behind the scenes."

Prentiss flushed scarlet.

"I can learn, too," he pointed out with a flash of sardonic humour. "Have a word with JJ before sending her in here, please. Then you can go see Scully. And Prentiss, don't let Scully push you around. She's consulting you, remember."

...

Morgan was in his room, the one that had been JJ's, looking so hangdog through the blinds that Prentiss didn't see how it could be productive to start a conversation now. She rapped gently on the window and waved solemnly in passing to let him know she was still talking to him, but didn't wait around to force him to muster up a reaction.

JJ wasn't in the bullpen but her go-bag was on her desk. Reid said, "She's cooling off in the conference room."

Prentiss turned to head there but Reid stopped her with big pleading eyes. "Emily," he began, "I know I've been an ass but you have to know how glad I am that you're here and not dead. I mean, you do know that, right?"

"Yeah," Prentiss said affectionately. "If I didn't, I'm certainly convinced now."

"So ..." he went on nervously, "... the main trouble I'm having now is with JJ lying to my face for months, because I know I shouldn't be angry about it and yet I still am. I don't want to be any more of an ass but she and I have been such good friends for so long and I trusted her so much."

Prentiss thought about that. "Well, try this hypothetical. A big guy in a black balaclava rushes up to you with a bloody cleaver. You're unarmed and babysitting Jack. The big guy asks you, 'Is that that bastard Hotchner's son?' Is it immoral to lie now? Would you lose sleep at night if you told him no?"

Reid was quiet for a few long moments. Then his face cleared. "I see ... Morals, situational they are." He blinked at her hopefully.

Prentiss laughed in incredulous delight. "Oh well done, Reid!"

He smiled back a bit proudly. There was hope that he wouldn't be eternally inept socially, among nerds at least.

Prentiss leaned against the nearest desk and went on kindly, "Spencer, while Doyle was alive the FBI didn't have infinite resources to mount indefinite guard over Morgan's mother and sisters in Chicago who go to different places throughout the day, and over your mother in Vegas and over Jack and Jessica and Beth. Remember Doyle was a family annihilator. He had snipers. He wouldn't even have needed particularly good ones to get at any of you or your families. All of you had your hands full with case work and your minds and eyes couldn't be preoccupied sweeping rooftops and windows and passers-by wherever you went all the time. This could have gone on indefinitely. JJ and Hotch trust you implicitly. They just didn't want you to have to live a life of deception. Even if you can flawlessly put on an act for the time required to talk a perp down, they didn't want you to have to live against your nature 24 hours a day for goodness knows how long. It went against JJ's nature too, you know, to have had to do that to you."

Reid looked his hands. "I suppose ..."

Prentiss regarded him worriedly. "So do you think you'll be OK with her now? Do you see that there's nothing for her to apologize for? Life just happens and sometimes it makes us do what we need to do whether we like it or not and then other people also have to pay the piper when they don't deserve to. I'm sorry that Hotch and JJ protecting me led to you having difficulties, enough to drive you to the brink. You definitely didn't deserve that. But even less would you have deserved any guilt if you had been let in on it and that put your mother in danger. Doyle was a driven psychopath with no compunction about causing suffering and death. What if he had taken your mother, tortured her, to put pressure on you to tell him where I was? What would it have done for your sobriety then?"

He nodded and his eyes went slightly unfocused, the way people look when they are adjusting internally to their new reality. Prentiss quietly left him to it.

...

JJ let Prentiss into the conference room. She was still a light pink and breathing perceptibly, indicating that her temper was still up.

"I wanted to thank you for stepping in there," Prentiss began delicately. "That was an impressive argument you constructed."

JJ pinked up more. "Because it was all true. It's all right that you feel regret because they suffered so much sorrow when they thought you had died, but you shouldn't feel remorse because you did nothing wrong and it's just been getting on my nerves that they're indirectly encouraging you to think you should."

"JJ, you are a woman in a million." The distinction was so obvious now that JJ had made it; Prentiss hadn't seen it before and she realized now the absolute justice of it. She didn't know what she had done to deserve a friend like this but she was so very glad that whatever it was, she had done it. In her relief at realizing why she'd felt apologetic without really having done anything wrong, she grinned unreservedly. "Though why do I get the feeling you've been saving all that up for a nice long rant?"

JJ threw up her hands. "Because I have and I didn't realize it until then? I love Morgan but sometimes ... sometimes his male ego really makes my tits ache!"

"Oh, whoa, hey, hey! You were defending me. I'm the last person to whom you need to justify yourself." Prentiss had to laugh. "You can air your grievances privately to me anytime."

She tried not to over-emphasize 'privately' because she was grateful to JJ and because few people respond well to a lecture, but it was actually her main goal in this conversation. Hotch hadn't stopped JJ and that had implied to everyone that he agreed with her: Prentiss could only think it was because he had suffered the same sense of recrimination from Morgan and Reid. But if JJ developed a tendency to whale on team members when others were present, it would be as destructive to team dynamics as she had pointed out Morgan could be; then Hotch would have to pull her up and Prentiss didn't want that for her. She was trying to help JJ get back on balance.

"Anyway, I just wanted to check in before you all go flying off into the sunset."

"You're not coming?" JJ's disappointment was palpable.

"If I can I will, but it's unlikely. I'm so sorry. I'll miss being out there. I've lost so much time with all of you already. I just ... have a very bad guy to stop."

Into JJ's eyes there crept a horrified, haunted look Prentiss didn't like to see at all. "You're leaving again?" Her voice was suddenly thin and high.

"No! Not at all! This is a consult, not a secondment or transfer," Prentiss clarified hastily and pulled JJ into a brief sideways hug. She was glad to see that look had disappeared when she let go, but JJ still clung to her shirt momentarily so she went on, "Ops guidance only. I'll still be with this team, just not physically all of the time. In fact, given that they'll need me to be available for them, you guys will be in more day to day danger than I because you'll be in the field while I'll probably just be moving up and downstairs between them and here. I'm staying on top of every case this team gets so far as I can so you can talk to me, OK? About anything, as always. I am absolutely not leaving, JJ."

JJ nodded, reassured.

"By the way, is there some reason you don't like Scully?" Prentiss asked, veering off into lightness as she remembered JJ's pissed-off look that morning.

"Oh, is that her name? No, why? I don't even know who she is."

Both Morgan and JJ's SOP would have been to consult with Garcia and pull up background on the stranger. Prentiss wondered why they hadn't but she wasn't about to poke the bear. "No reason. I just thought you looked ticked off with her, but I was preoccupied wondering why she was here so I must have made a mistake about that. Listen, I have to go see her and you have to go see Hotch; he wants you for something. Stay safe, you hear?"

"I have every intention of that," JJ replied. "I happen to have a lot to live for."