A/N: For the Writers of the Silver Screen challenge on CCOAC. My chosen character was Prentiss, the movie was The Untouchables, and my assigned character was Strauss.
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A few weeks before graduation, Emily was called into a meeting with the Director of International Affairs. Your instructors have praised your work quite highly, he told her. There's an opening in the Legat office in Baghdad. She was being offered a post as a legal attaché in Iraq. She had so desperately wanted to leave her childhood behind, and yet that was exactly what brought her to this point. As a child she had longed to return to a home that didn't exist and as an adult Emily continued to search for a home that she hadn't found. Emily agreed almost instantly. The opportunity was an escape and a homecoming in one.
It didn't take long for Erin to discover that the politics and bureaucracy at the FBI don't hold a candle to those of the Wellington Academy PTA. There were hierarchies for everything from the phone tree to bake sales. It certainly didn't help matters that the first time they met, the PTA President referred to her as Mrs. Legette. Section Chief Erin Strauss had never called herself Mrs. Legette. Mrs. Legette was her mother-in-law, who was judgmental and never liked the woman that her son had married. Erin's unpopularity in the PTA only supported Mrs. Legette's warnings that Erin's relationship with the FBI would leave James home playing Mr. Mom. Erin and James thought their division of labor in the household was ideal; the only problem was having to defend it to everyone else.
She fit a type. That's what SSA Prentiss was told when the Interpol-FBI-MI5 joint task force recruited her to the Valhalla Project. She was told it would be a six-month assignment, maybe nine months, tops. That was before they realized how much they had underestimated the size and scope of Ian Doyle's reach. Every day for almost three years, Emily woke up and slipped on another layer to her Gore-tex shield. At first it was to protect herself. As more time passed, however, those extra layers began to replace the pieces of herself that she lost every time she felt Doyle's body pressed up against hers.
Section Chief Strauss was horrified to find the list of potential Section Chief candidates. She had not been notified that she was up for a promotion. Which meant she was being replaced, not succeeded. Agent Hotchner's name was at the top of the list. Her own subordinate. A field agent who had no business being an administrator. Strauss thought about the BAU and immediately she recalled a number of transgressions. Technical Analyst Garcia had compromised the security of the entire network at Quantico and Agent Hotchner had given her a pass. Nobody actually believed that Agent Greenaway's shooting in Ohio was on the up-and-up and yet she was cleared to return to work. Not to mention that the team's work was suffering; they hadn't solved the case in time to save that high school girl in Pennsylvania. These missteps could not and should not be overlooked. But it would be suspicious in timing if suddenly months old issues surfaced. She needed someone else to help bring Agent Hotchner's failed leadership to light. As she reviewed the candidates applying for the opening, one name caught her eye. Emily Prentiss.
Emily had been given three months of paid leave following the successful conclusion of the Valhalla case. She had three months to undo three years. Three months to get back the pieces of herself that Doyle had taken. Lauren Reynolds is dead. If Lauren Reynolds were dead then Emily wouldn't find herself shopping for white pants. She wouldn't go to the children's section of the bookstore. If Lauren Reynolds were dead, Emily wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night, still feeling Doyle's lips on hers. Three months was hardly enough time to fully extricate herself from Lauren Reynolds. So it wasn't surprising that when she arrived in St. Louis, she quickly acquired the reputation of being impulsive and reckless in the field.
It wasn't the first time Chief Strauss had seen Agent Prentiss's name on the list when there was an opening in the BAU. There was always something amiss about her file: she was a certified profiler with the appropriate qualifications, but there was no evidence in her file that she'd actually taken the courses and logged the field time. Chief Strauss, like many of the others involved in the hiring process presumed that the Ambassador had pulled the right strings to get her on the list, but not enough strings to be able to falsify course records. Strauss sat back in her chair and smiled. If Agent Prentiss were willing to have Mommy Prentiss work the system to her advantage, surely she would have no issue becoming Strauss's pawn. Her Agent Prentiss Puppet would be well-poised to help in the takedown of Aaron Hotchner.
