Anna walked slowly into the conference room. Emily had sunk down into one of the plush chairs and was facing away from the door. Everything about her posture screamed 'defeated' and Anna had never known Emily to act this way. She shut the door behind her and walked to stand behind Emily. Shrugging out of her sling - that thing truly annoyed her - she set it on the table and ran her fingers through Emily's hair, expertly beginning to work it into a French braid.

"Necesitamos hablar. Me parece imposible que ellos no sepan nada."

"What did she just say?" Morgan asked, frustrated. His Spanish consisted of "Back off, I'm a cop," and "Where's the bathroom?"

"She said that they need to talk and that she can't believe we don't know anything." Reid translated.

"Shhh." Garcia hushed sharply. On the screen, a ghost of a smile passed over Emily's face. She and Anna had done this as kids when they didn't want other people to know what they were talking about. She answered in Arabic.

"I can't tell them."

Reid named the language and translated so quickly that no one had a chance to ask what she'd said.

"Emily, you need to tell them. They have a right to know what's going on, and they can help."

"Is that Russian?" JJ asked.

Reid nodded. "Anna wants Emily to tell us everything."

Emily sighed and answered back in a language that was unfamiliar to all of them.

"Let me guess…gibberish?" Morgan asked, annoyed.

Anna faltered on the screen and eventually broke into a regretful smile. "That's not fair!" she tugged Emily's hair gently. "You know my Swahili sucks."

"I've gotten a little rusty," Emily admitted.

"How's your Gaelic?" Anna asked quietly.

Emily's face darkened and she stood angrily, turning sharply to face her sister, her hair falling out of its braid and back onto her shoulders. "I can't believe you just asked me that!" she hissed.

Anna rolled her eyes. "Emily, come on. You and I both know who brought me here. He admitted to being behind the fire."

"You talked to him?"

"It's kind of a long drive, Em," Anna said, sitting in one of the plush chairs that surrounded the table.

"What else did he say?"

"That he's going to kill me. And you," she added as an afterthought.

Emily sat back down, knee to knee with Anna. "I'm sorry I brought you into this."

"You didn't. He did," Anna said firmly, leaning forward. "Emily, he's doing this to get to you."

"I know," Emily sighed resignedly.

"Why haven't you told them?" Anna asked softly. "The team. They could help you."

Emily shook her head slowly. "I can't tell them."

"Why? What's stopping you?" Comprehension dawned. "He threatened them, didn't he?" When Emily nodded she continued. "Then you have to tell them. They deserve to know."

"If I tell them, they'll go after him," Emily said in a low voice. "Then how can I protect them?"

"Emily, who's protecting you?"

"I don't need protection."

"Bull," Anna leaned back in her chair. "You're not telling me everything. I get that you want to protect them and that's admirable. But there's more to it."

"No, there's not," Emily glared.

"You know, you've never been good at lying to me. Why do you insist on trying to get away with it?" she softened her tone. "Why haven't you told them?"

Emily fought to keep her voice from shaking. "Anna, the things I did...with him, to him...to Declan," her voice wavered. "How do I explain that? They're going to hate me. Hotch-"

"Hotch will understand. Emily, you were doing your job."

"Yeah but Anna, they're not going to see it that way."

"You won't know until you put it out there. Emily, you have to trust that they care about you enough to stand by you."

"I do trust them. But this..."

"Do you? Do you really trust them?" Anna asked. "Because if you really truly trusted them, if you had faith in the strength of your relationships, you wouldn't think twice about telling them this. Emily you can say this is about protection all you want but that's only part of it. The real question is, do you trust your team?"

"Yes," Emily answered definitively.

"Yes what?"

"Yes, I trust my team."

"Why?"

Emily did a double take. "What?"

"Why do you trust them?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"Emily, it's one thing to say what the other person wants to hear and it's something entirely different to mean it. Why do you trust your team? Individually, each person. What makes you trust them?"

Emily stared at her. "I'm waiting," Anna said impatiently.

Emily sighed. "I trust Garcia because she's one of my best friends and she's never judged me for any decision I made. I trust JJ for the same reason, and because she's a mom, she might have a shot at understanding why I did what I did." Emily took a breath. "Rossi was the first person I told about Rome and he was so accepting...and Morgan has my back no matter what. He's never let me down, even when he thinks he has. And Reid...Reid knows what it's like to deal with demons. Mainly I trust him because he trusts me, or at least he seems to."

"And Hotch?" Anna prompted.

"Hotch...I trust Hotch because he takes all the parts of me, good and bad, in stride. He's a little bit of everyone else all wrapped into one. And he more than anyone else is going to understand this because he's gone to the extreme to save people he loves," Emily concluded. Anna leaned back in her chair with a satisfied look on her face. "There you go then."

Emily sighed. "Are you going to let up on this?"

"Nope," Anna grinned at first, but sobered at the look on Emily's face. "Listen Em, I'm not going to tell them. I'm not going to make you tell them. I'm going to heavily suggest that you tell your team what is going on." She leaned forward again and grabbed Emily's hand. "Feathers, if they love you as much as you love them they're not going to turn their backs on you," Anna said softly.

Emily took a deep breath and nodded. "Okay." Before she could stop herself, she pressed a button on the console on the conference table. Garcia jumped when the phone in her office buzzed.

"Garcia, can you get everyone into the conference room?"

"Uh, yeah," she responded guiltily. "Guys, go to the conference room," she whispered.

"You too, PG," Emily added.

Garcia squeaked her assent and tottered out of her office after everyone else.

"Want me to go?" Anna asked quietly as everyone entered the room. She was standing beside Emily, near the television set that was mounted to the wall. Emily shook her head and squeezed Anna's arm.

"I need you here for this," she admitted.

"You know, I don't think I have the appropriate security clearance," Anna cracked softly.

Emily snorted. "Neither does anyone else here. Except JJ."

"That could be your way out," Anna pointed out.

Emily shook her head. "No, I'm doing this." She surveyed her audience after everyone was seated. Rossi and JJ looked expectant, Garcia and Reid slightly confused, and Morgan looked pissed. And Hotch...she couldn't read, which was nothing new, but she still wished she had some inkling as to what he was thinking. She took a breath and felt Anna squeeze her hand.

"I-don't know where to start," she faltered.

"I lied to you this morning," Anna spoke up. "Which you all already know. I know who brought me here, and I know who destroyed my building."

"Who?" Morgan asked sharply.

Emily took over. "His name is Ian Doyle. He's an ex-IRA arms dealer."

"What does an international arms dealer want with you?" Reid asked Anna.

"Not her. Me," Emily said. Her eyes were drawn to JJ, who looked utterly unsurprised by this revelation and Emily realized with a jolt that during her time with the State Department, she would have had access to Doyle's file. JJ gave her a small smile that prompted Emily to continue.

"Before I joined the BAU, I was part of a CIA task force. Our job was to infiltrate Doyle's network and bring it down from the inside. It took months, but we did it. Doyle was taken into custody and shipped to a prison in North Korea."

"And now he's out," Rossi surmised.

"I don't know how. But he is," Emily confirmed. "The murders that have happened over the past few weeks, including Tsia's from this morning, are all Doyle's work. Sean, Jeremy, Tsia, and I made up the task force. Our handler was a man named Clyde Easter. I don't know where he is."

"So Doyle has been systematically taking out your ex-team members and you don't even tell us?" Reid asked angrily.

"Doyle is killing them and everyone they're close to. I didn't want to put you at risk," Emily explained, a pleading tone coloring her voice.

"That's why he's going after Anna," Rossi verified. "It was a message for you."

Emily nodded.

"Has he made contact with you?" JJ asked. Emily nodded again. "When?"

"I saw him about a week ago. The night of the fire."

"Why didn't he take you out then?" Morgan asked harshly. Not that he wanted Emily dead, but right now he was so mad he could barely see straight.

"Because Ian likes to cause people pain. By leaving me alive, he leaves the threat of him getting to someone I care about hanging over my head. And then he got to Anna. Twice. He's telling me that I can try whatever I want but that I'm not going to win. That's why I didn't tell you. He's not your typical Unsub, you can't get into his head."

"But you did," Hotch finally said, surveying her closely. "You called him Ian. How close were you?"

"I was put on the task force not just because I was a capable agent. I was Ian's type. Romantically," she finally admitted.

"How long were you on this assignment?" Hotch asked.

"Eight months. Long enough for him to trust me, to let me in and give me enough to put him away."

"Long enough for you to sleep with him?" Morgan threw out.

"Derek," Anna said sharply.

"What, you don't have a problem with this?" He turned to Hotch. "Do you?"

Emily waited anxiously for Hotch's answer. "No," he said finally. "Sometimes you have to do whatever you have to, consequences be damned." He met Emily's eyes and she knew he was talking about Foyet. "What happened after Doyle went to North Korea?"

"I thought that was the end of it. We all did. But when I heard that Jeremy had been killed, I looked into things and found out that he'd escaped. He made his way here and I'm the only one left on his list."

"What did he say to you when you saw him?" Reid asked.

"That he was going to kill me and anyone else that came after him. That's why I didn't want to tell you."

"So it had nothing to do with you being ashamed of the fact that you slept with an arms dealer? Or that you've lied to us ever since you got here? Damn it Emily, you're my partner and you didn't feel the need to tell me any of this?" Morgan shouted.

"How did he find you?" JJ asked, trying to ease the tension. "Your cover was airtight."

"Lauren Reynolds," Reid whispered, recalling what he'd overheard earlier. "That was your cover, right?"

"Can't get anything past you, Dr. Reid," Emily joked weakly. "Lauren Reynolds was an arms dealer that started off brokering deals with Doyle. They grew close and the relationship turned from professional to personal. Lauren Reynolds was killed in a car crash; that was how I got out. Up until a few weeks ago, I thought Doyle thought that she-I-was dead."

Morgan glared at her incredulously. "Emily you're talking like Lauren Reynolds was an entirely separate person," he said slowly.

"Morgan, I had to make myself think that. It's the only way I made it through those eight months. I had to be Lauren Reynolds and when it was over, I had to put her away."

Her statement was met with an uneasy silence. Emily tried to meet Hotch's eye but he was having a silent conversation with Rossi. She felt the need to say something further to help explain her actions.

"This wasn't about you, it was about bringing Doyle down and about keeping Declan safe," Emily told him.

"Who the hell is Declan?" Morgan asked, confused.

Emily clamped her mouth shut and Anna knew she hadn't meant to bring Declan into this at all.

"Declan was Doyle's son," she told the team. "He had Emily wrapped around his finger," she paused.

"Doyle asked me to marry him," Emily reported. "He said that Declan needed a mother."

"Your answer?" Hotch asked quietly.

"I told him that I wasn't the marrying type," Emily said with a grim smile. "And that I couldn't raise Declan to live his father's life."

"Where is Declan now?" Hotch asked.

Emily looked to JJ for guidance and found none. Yes, she'd definitely read the file. "The last part of my assignment was to get leverage to use against Doyle during his interrogation in North Korea. Declan was the only thing the CIA could come up with and I was ordered to turn him over," Emily said hesitantly.

"So, what? You just gave him to the North Koreans?" Morgan asked.

"No! The things they would have done to him to get Doyle to talk..." her voice trailed off.

"What, the CIA then?" Reid guessed.

Emily hesitated and that was when Hotch knew.

"You killed him," he accused quietly, pain evident in his eyes.

"It was the only way," Emily explained helplessly, knowing that Hotch wouldn't understand, not after everything Jack had been through. "I couldn't turn him over to the North Korean officials and I couldn't turn him over to the CIA because they would have done the same thing. I took photos and sent those in to be used against Ian." Tears sprang to her eyes at the memory of pressing the gun to Declan's forehead and she blinked them back. "I didn't have a choice," she repeated.

"Come on, Prentiss, I know you're more creative than that," Morgan spat. "The only thing you could think of was to kill a kid?"

"I didn't know what to do," Emily whispered. "So I followed orders."

Morgan shook his head. "I can't do this," he stormed past Emily. "You disgust me."

Garcia followed him out, having been suspiciously quiet during the entire conversation. As she brushed past Emily she saw that her face was streaked with tears and she tossed a hurt glance in Emily's direction as she left the room.

Rossi stood, presumably to find Morgan and calm him down. He didn't smile but he did give her arm a small squeeze as he passed, as did JJ, who Emily knew couldn't fathom doing the things she'd done but who was willing to stand by her anyway. Reid got up next; looking lost more than anything else. "I don't even know who you are," he said softly.

"Hotch..." Emily said softly once everyone but Anna had left. "I need you to understand,"

"I don't," Hotch said simply. "But now is not the time for this. The team will help bring Doyle in. You're not to leave the building until we have him in custody. We'll figure everything else out after that." And without another word, he strode purposefully past the sisters, who were left standing huddled together.

"You did good, Em," Anna said softly.

"No." Emily shook her head. "I fucked up. And now I have to fix it."