Those Shoes

by the Eagles (youtube... watch?v=_ywfnnCBERY)

"Upon this a question arises: whether it better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with." - Niccolo Machiavelli

"I knew you were watching me."

"What's the expression?" He removed his hand from between her shoulder blades. "Keep your friends close, your enemies on surveillance?"

"I've been here for two hours. You should know better than to keep a lady waiting."

"Seems hypocritical. Seeing as I had to wait seven years."

"Hello, Ian."

Doyle set himself down on he seat across from Emily; "Hello, Lauren. Oh wait. Lauren Reynolds died in a car accident, didn't she?"

"What do you want?"

Emily slowed her words, pronouncing each syllable with sharp flicks of her tongue. She tasted every part of each and every word. She wasn't going to make a mistake. She wasn't going to slip.

"You." Doyle smirked at Emily's expression. "Oh, not today. Don't worry about that. But soon."

"I've got a glock leveled at your crotch. What's to stop me from taking you and the little ones out right now?"

"You'd never make it back to your car, and you know it," he said, and he exuded an air of arrogance that Emily could almost see, an arrogance that made her gut turn and squeeze. "Tell me. Does the lovely Penelope know the truth about you? Or is she too busy watching movies with Derek to care? Here you are, all alone, while Aaron sits at home with his son. And why didn't they actually invite you to their game night? Maybe they'd thought you were on the Metro with Dr. Reid. Well that one does have some quirks."

"Come near my team, and I will end you."

A part of her was tempted to shoot him there, right and then, taking out the head of snake. It would come with a price, of course, a hail of bullets in her direction. A part of her didn't care, though. She imagined what it would be like to press down on the trigger. But a snake can grow a second head. This had to be done right. Just in case.

There was another part of her, buried deep in her head, that she would never admit to. It was the part of her that was glad and Doyle's words. Glad because this, once and for all, confirmed that Emily had indeed made the best decision she could have.

Doyle didn't mention JJ. The name Jennifer Jareau never even touched his lips.

"I don't have a qualm with them. How long that remains the case depends entirely on you. They're innocent. You are not."

"I was doing my job."

"I think you did a little more than that. You took the only thing that mattered to me. So I'm going to take the only thing that matters from you." Doyle smirked again, and Emily felt a drop of sweat roll down her back. The fear was back. The fear that maybe she had been wrong, that the lengths she had taken had not been enough. "Your life."

Emily closed her eyes, as a small breath of air, unnoticed by Doyle, left her lips. She blinked, drinking in the relief that suddenly engulfed her.

"Your life."

She replied the words in her head to ensure that she had heard right, that she hadn't been fooling herself. Because this, this she could easily take. This was easy to deal with. This she could handle losing. She suppressed a smile.

"Honore de Balzac once said, 'Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most of thought believe in providence." Doyle stood as Emily kept her face still, her skin like stone. "Tell me, Emily Prentiss. Which do you think you're going to be?"

The truth was, she already knew.

Five days before she left

After years of working undercover, Emily had learned to trust her gut. She had learned to plan to every contingency, to be absolutely thorough in every part of an operation, but most of all, she had learned to trust her gut. Some might call it superstition. Or extreme paranoia from her days working intel. But her gut very rarely let her down, and her gut never lied.

She knew that there were elements that she could easily miss, elements that her brain cataloged nonetheless. Maybe a face. A voice. A trinket left behind.

It was safer to assume that everything was intentional, that anything could go wrong.

Especially when the back of her neck tingled, causing little hairs all across her body to stand rigid in anticipation.

She didn't want to think about it, but she knew, deep down inside, that he was back. That somehow he had escaped. She had known this could happen, that this was a contingency. Ian Doyle had been locked up before. Of course, he had been locked up in minor, amateurish institutions, but the man was dangerous, and he had his methods.

You didn't get to be Valhalla for nothing.

Commando training. Former prisoner of war. Weapons expert.

Ian Doyle had his faults, but he was most certainly a skilled man. They knew his behavior. They knew only a fraction of his skill set.

So, when she had seen the vase at the concierge desk of her apartment filled with those all too familiar flowers, Emily's brain went into overload. Hyperspeed. And she followed her first instinct. Her first instinct to ensure the safety of everyone she knew.

As she jumped into her car, she arranged for an encrypted message to be sent to Tom, and immediately she headed south towards Quantico. Towards JJ.

If there was one thing about driving in DC that she could appreciate, it was the ease at which she could lose a trail. The traffic lights flashed green, yellow, and red at seemingly nonsensical intervals, and there was never a moment when vehicles could simply drive uninterrupted for any significant length of time. Normally, it would have annoyed her to all hell. But, today, as she twisted and turned through the DC streets before finally leaving the city, she was thankful for it.

She wondered, for a moment, if the design had been entirely intentional.

Emily caught sight of the blond leaving the supermarket, and she felt the anxiety leave her, her muscles relaxing into the fabric of her car seat. JJ piled the bags of groceries into the back of her minivan, and Emily took the time to examine their surroundings, examining each and every car in the lot, scanning for any object even remotely out of place, and reading the micro-expressions twitching across each and every passerby's face, no matter how far away or seemingly insignificant.

Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

She had learned that as a Marine. As a moto statement designed to get the blood flowing.

It wasn't she started working undercover at Interpol that she truly understood its importance.

Especially for moments like these.

Secure in JJ's current safety, Emily took the last remaining moments to read JJ. To double check. To go over her once more in the best way she knew how.

In that moment, she wouldn't have it. She wouldn't let it happen, and her eyes locked in determination as it dawned on her just what she needed to do. As JJ drove away, Emily continued to tail her for the rest of the afternoon, continuing with her routine of eliminating any potential threats lingering around.

When she left, finally, to check on the other members of her team, the locked expression never left her face.

Her course of action was clear. She had to take it. She could not falter.

Unlike the Metro cars in New York, the Metro cars in DC didn't have seats pressed up against the walls. Instead, they emulated the older trains, lined with little rows of two, leaving one's back exposed to either one entrance or the other. Tactically inept. Terrible design. But then again, Metro cars weren't designed for tactical situations. Emily sat down on the disabled seat, the only position allowing her full view of the entire car and each and every door.

Clyde sat down in the seat beside her. She jumped at the movement.

"Luckily for you, I'm not working for Doyle," he said, the words spilling out of his mouth in French. "We got on three stops ago."

"We?"

Tsia made her way down the empty car; "You okay?"

"Ian Doyle is here." She wasn't going to stop for pleasantries. "In DC."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I sat next to him last night."

"What?"

"He said if I warned my team or told anyone he would kill them."

"Why didn't he kill you?"

Clyde continued the line of questioning; "And more to the point, why didn't you kill him?"

"He isn't working alone. He's meticulous. He plans everything to the last detail."

"Yeah. That last detail being you."

Emily looked away at Clyde's words. She hadn't forgotten that her former colleague could profile as well. After all, he had been the one to teach her most of her trade. She didn't want him to see her face, that at this point, this was precisely what she wanted, what she had been counting on and planning for. She didn't want him to know that she didn't care in the slightest. She moved the little muscles in her face to relay otherwise.

"Maybe you should tell your team."

"No. No way. This isn't their fight. And I won't take that risk."

"Wait, wait." Clyde tried to stop the flow of the conversation. "When you went undercover, I promised you I wouldn't let anything happen to you."

"I'm not undercover anymore." Her next words were forceful. "DC isn't his comfort zone - it's mine. This ends here."

With that, Emily left the empty subway car, leaving behind her two former colleagues. She had gotten a call. A new case. She couldn't let on what was going on, not to her team. Not to anyone. Not fully. She memorized all the little micro-expressions she would have to show in order to make everything appear as she needed it to be. She would not - she could not - let her team profile her.

She hadn't expected Garcia to be the first one to ask.

"What's his name?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Oh. Answering a question with a question. That's interesting."

"Stop it," she said, the fear beginning to start in her gut.

"Stop what? Probing?"

"Seriously..."

"I'm going to make it my life's work to find out who this boy is so you might as well..."

That was all she needed for the fear to start to a boil; "Stop! Just stop. We have enough to worry about already, don't we?"

As Emily walked away with the rest of the team, she couldn't help but feel the guilt at feeling some measure of relief at her ability to push Garcia away. Anything to keep JJ and the team safe. Anything. And words were quite the weapon. That she knew better than anyone else.

Reid came after Rossi. But to his credit, he hadn't started it.

"Are you okay?"

She wondered if Doyle had already broken his promise and had gone after the young man.

"Yeah," he answered. His face was glued to his desk. "I'm sure these victims overlapped, and Garcia pulled their phone numbers, but so far I can't find anything."

Emily ignored the deflection; "You just jumped."

"I'm having these really intense headaches lately."

"Have you seen a doctor?"

Doyle, it could be Doyle. What did he use? Poison?

"Yeah, a few, but none of them have been able to figure it out."

"Oh. I'm sorry." She couldn't help but once again feel a measure of relief. "Does anyone know?"

"You." Reid looked back and forth between his desk and the woman. "What about you?"

"I'm good."

"You've been, uh, picking your fingernails again. You only do that when you're stressed."

"It's just a bad habit," she explained, sheepishly.

She hadn't expected Reid to have been the one on the team to almost break her, to almost break her resolve and the plan. She had never had a younger brother, but she supposed Reid was just that. A little brother. She wished almost that she could set a better example, that she could be better to him, to all of them.

She knew that Morgan would start, sooner or later. He always did. He watched as she, for the fifteenth time that drive, look out the window behind them.

"What, are we being followed, 007?"

"No." She flinched at the nickname. Only JJ could call her that. No one else. Only JJ. She snapped at the thought. "You should go through the city. 66th is going to be miserable right now."

"We'll get there when we get there."

"Oh, before Doyle takes somebody else out? He's shooting up federal agents. What's he going to do next?"

"Yeah? So what would you like me to do?"

"Get creative with your driving."

"I'm working on it!" He took a deep breath. "You know, Emily, you really need to trust people."

"I trust people," she said, laughing inwardly to herself.

Laughing because Derek knew everything and nothing at once. Laughing because was right. She didn't trust anyone. Laughing because he was wrong. She didn't need to. She needed not to. Trust was a funny thing.

"No, you don't." He kept his eyes trained on the road. "Garcia told me what happened earlier, in the bathroom."

"What?"

"She said you told her that she always made you smile, and that you never got the chance to tell her that."

"So?"

"So, that sounds like a goodbye to me. What's going on, Emily?"

"Nothing. Nothing's going on."

"I get it. Every time you try to trust someone or count on someone, they let you down, so you go it alone. You'll never admit that because you're just too damn stubborn. It's alright. It doesn't really matter. But I'll tell you what does matter. That you can trust me, Emily. With anything. I'm serious. I promise you, no matter how horrible you think it is, I promise you, you are not alone. I just wish you'd believe that."

"I do." She tried to search for the words. "You profile me again, you'll wish you hadn't."

After a silence, the two agents began to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Of the case. Of every case. Of themselves.

In her mind, Emily spread the cement over her plan, satisfied with yet another cryptic goodbye to the team. At least she had said something. At least she put it out there, in her own way.

Nine years before she left

She had to come up with name. Normally she didn't like patterns. Patterns were too easy for the enemy to predict. But in this case, patterns were the key. Patterns made it easier to remember the nuances. The details. Of course, the pattern couldn't be too obvious, not to the target. It only needed to obvious to herself and herself alone.

Her last identity had been Ellen Paladino. A second generation Italian-American who had decided to return to Italy to explore her heritage. And her connections to low-level Sicilian mobsters. Ellen Paladino liked baseball, and she only ate her mother's gnocchi and no one else's.

Before that, she had taken on the persona of Leila Rahal. Part Egyptian, Leila Rahal left Britain, disillusioned with Western ways. She made her way to Pakistan where she infiltrated small terrorist camps with the promise of blackmarket, high-end medical supplies.

And then there had been Elizabeth Perot in Prague. And Lisa Royce. Erica Petrakov. Lara Radcliff. Edith Packard.

Leigh Reilly. Eleanor Preston. Lucy Robinson.

She knew then.

She had made her choice and instantly felt the rush of excitement shoot through her veins. This was her favorite part.

Lauren Reynolds.

An arms dealer with rather admirable connections and an additional interest of expanding those connections with the IRA. Hailing from Boston, Lauren Reynolds grew up the daughter of a widowed longshoreman on turf protected by an Irish mob family. Lauren Reynolds remembered this. Even after she received a scholarship to attend school in Paris, where she became fluent in a number of European languages.

Spontaneous. An adrenaline junkie. Loves nothing more than watching things just go... boom.

But with morals, of course. A modified black and white view of the world she had inherited from her blue-collar father. After all, she couldn't make it too easy for Ian Doyle. She had to give him a hook. This was that.

These were among of Lauren Reynolds' traits.

She scribbled them down as she committed them to memory. As she became Lauren Reynolds.

Others on her team would figure out the technicalities, drawing up birth certificates and passports and papers proving that she had indeed completed her collegiate schooling in France. She would ensure that everything else would go smoothly. She knew Clyde was worried, but she was far from that.

She had it all burned in her head. All the things she needed to say. All the things she needed to do.

She built Lauren Reynolds. Made her more than an alias. She made her a person.

Favorite food? Fresh bread and cheese from a small boulengerie in Paris.

Drink? Some days she would say wine. On others, she might say whiskey.

She would follow the Bruins to the death. On her fifteenth birthday, she got to go to a game. Canucks. The Bruins won 3-4 in overtime.

Favorite weapon? 50 cal. machine gun.

You can't miss.

Morgan stood over the body on Ninth Street examining the wounds inflicted. It didn't go unnoticed that Emily had stopped just short of the door and was staring, motionless, at the female victim. He took a deep breath and walked towards his partner; "This took two to the chest. He went quickly." He stepped beside Emily. "And one to the head. The holes were made by a .45. So she comes through the door and then shoots her. She didn't stand a chance. This has to be the work of our guy. She might be on our list, we should run her prints."

Emily felt her gut to a back flip. And then three front flips to boot.

She had told Tsia to come here. To get away from Clyde.

Which meant that, ultimately, she was responsible. For this. She looked over at Morgan. She couldn't keep members of her former team safe. What did that say about her? What did that say about her ability to ensure the safety of her current one? She took a deep breath before turning away.

"I need to get some air."

She knew Morgan would follow up on her. Check up on her suspicious behavior. She used her tongue to press on her gag reflex, and she quickly held back her hair.

"What'd you do? Pull a whiskey pete?"

Exactly according to Plan.

"Uh, I don't know what that means. But if it involves getting vomit on your boots then yeah, I'm guilty."

"You need a soda? What can I do?"

She cleared her throat, interrupting him; "I live ten minutes from here. Think we can swing by? I think I got some on my pants, too."

"Hotch wants us to get back."

"I know. I'll be really quick. I promise."

She wiped her mouth as they made their way towards Emily's apartment, satisfied at the step-by-step completion of her plan. Morgan waited in the car as she slipped out, and she half-jogged into the building.

Quickly she changed, as she said she would. But not before flushing the necklace Doyle had given her - or rather, Lauren Reynolds - down the toilet. She left the safe open, the files in plain view. She knew, after this, that they would come looking. That they would find out. Now she knew there was no way she could stop it from unfolding. Not after this case.

So, she left them what she could. Tidbits of information she had kept safe all these years.

Later, she watched Hotch give a profile to a room filled with people she wished would just go away. She found everyone with her eyes, scanning across the room. Everyone except for JJ. She had done everything she could have done from this side. Now, it was time. Time to take the step she had been hoping, for seven years, to avoid.

She knew where Ian Doyle was.

She had already said her goodbyes.

"I think it better to do right, even if we suffer in so doing than to incur the reproach of our consciousness and posterity." - Robert E. Lee