Emily felt the sudden change in Penelope's demeanor as she felt her arms drop to her side.

"Garcie..." Emily pleaded in her ear not willing to let go of her friend,

"I am so sorry for putting you through all that. You have to believe me." Penelope's heart ached for her friend,

"I know you are Em. I'm really glad you're here, that you're alive. It's not every day that your worst moments get reversed, if that at all makes sense." Penelope said giving Emily a brief but meaningful squeeze before letting her go. It was not at all lost on Aaron, JJ and Emily that Penelope stepped back allowing physical distance between her and them.

"Thank you for driving all this way to tell me. I appreciate it." without another word to anyone she maneuvered between them to get to her front door and let herself in leaving Mac and Jo to deal with the three members of the BAU standing there in shock.

"Give her some time. She's had a really rough few months, and though she's getting there she's still licking her wounds. She loves you Emily and she's happy you're alive. She just needs to process." Mac began,

"We know this hasn't been a picnic for you either, any of you. But you have to remember something about Penelope, when she loves, she loves wholeheartedly and when she lost you Emily, as hard as that was she was determined to try and keep what was left together and when she couldn't, she fell apart. To her she didn't just lose Emily, she lost you all." Jo explained. Hotch and JJ hung their heads knowing what part they played in that. It would be easy to blame Derek, but they too abandoned her and there was no making up for that.

"I'm not quite sure where to go from here. She has every right to be angry." Hotch confessed to Mac feeling incredibly awful for What happened with Penelope.

"Give her time to work this out in her head. She'll come around. It's all on you guys. It's your turn to fight for her." Mac answered before giving them a farewell nod. Jo couldn't help but feel for Emily and JJ and gave their shoulders a sympathetic pat as she followed Mac to Penelope's apartment.

"Well that went well." JJ said with a sigh sitting back down on the porch steps.

"Can't say I blame her. While we're sitting here contemplating our next move, do you guys want to fill in the blanks?" Emily said looking from JJ and Hotch.

"After we lost you, I went back to my end of the law enforcement and the team tried their best to move forward with the loss of you. We all had our own way of coping. Every night for ten weeks Spence was crying in my lounge room. Rossi and Hotch banded together as always and we just assumed that Derek and Penelope would do as Derek and Penelope always did which was stick together. By the time we realized how bad it was between them, it was too late. She left without telling any of us. Her request for transfer effective immediately went straight to Strauss." Emily glanced at Hotch, who's gaze was focused on his hands. She placed a hand over his,

"This isn't on you alone Hotch, we're all in this. Though in theory what we did was necessary, and there was no other way around it, there are four people we isolated from that. We had our best friends, bury one of their own. Derek watched me supposedly die in his arms, and Penelope had to deal with the fallout of that, on all angles. She lost me, and seemingly the rest of you. They have every right to be angry, and honestly I don't know if this is something we can ever really recover from." JJ looked longingly up at Penelope's apartment, an ache in her heart told her just how much she missed her friend and how betrayed she much have felt knowing she played a part in deceiving them all. It was that guilt she felt that made her put some distance between them, which was something she was able to justify at the time, and now she struggled to justify it to herself, let along to her best friend.

Penelope looked out the window watching her friends sitting on the porch steps. She wished that she could give them the absolution they were looking for, but she just couldn't. So much had happened and so much was lost in only seven months. It started with a secret that led to inconceivable lies, and though in her heart she loved that Emily was back, her mind and parts of her heart couldn't reconcile the details surrounding it. Everything in her wanted to throw her arms around Emily and never let go and just be thankful for the chance to hug her again, but she just couldn't.

Derek knew that Emily, JJ and Hotch had taken a road trip to New York to tell her that Emily was indeed alive. There was a huge part of him that wanted to drive there just to make sure she was okay, knowing that she would struggle with it, but so much had changed between them. He hadn't heard from her since that night, and he had never tried to contact her. A part of him was relieved she had left, knowing that had she stayed, he would only have hurt her even more. At first he felt that he failed Emily, and failing her made him determined not to fail anyone else, especially Penelope who meant so much to him, but at the end, he failed her most of all.

"Mags," Jo said quietly coaxing Penelope out of her trance,

"Oh hey, sorry." She replied looking up at Jo and taking the tea she offered.

"You want to talk about it?"

"No, not really. Not yet. There's so many thoughts flying around in my head I don't know where to begin. I have all these unfiled emotions mixing with new ones. It's literally doing my head in."

"That's understandable." Mac assured her joining them on the bay window.

"I just wish it was as easy as she's alive and everything's alright, but it isn't and I don't know if it ever will be. With the exception of you two, there are only six other I trust so implicitly, three of them lied to me, and the rest of them just dropped out of my life. What does that say about what I thought we had?"

"You guys suffered an incredibly big loss and everyone handles grief differently, it was bound to challenge and test you."

"It turns out we were grieving for nothing. I guess what makes me that little bit more angry is that the loss was for nothing. She was alive all this time."