The Tenth Year

It is amazing. It really is, and she's not the type to wax poetic just for fun.

It's not that they don't have their fights, of course. Having Emily stateside means that she becomes a single parent when the BAU is on the road, and while Jack is genuinely a good kid he's also a teenager with issues. She tries, but it's hard. And that's on the side of her own work which really isn't all sunshine and roses and it's not like he doesn't have a temper either.

So maybe it isn't easy, but it most definitely is amazing.

Yet she can't help the strange feeling of emptiness sometimes. She hates herself when she does, because really, she has it really, really good, but sometimes, when she sees strollers in the park, when she has to dodge a kid in the hall, she feels it.

She's always wanted to be a mother.

She'd tossed the dream aside years ago though, when she'd joined the BAU and her life became her job. That had been her choice, and her option, and she doesn't really regret it, per se. But the job isn't there on bad days with a gap-toothed grin and childhood drama.

It's a perfect storm, the way it works out. It's Jack's turn to pick how they give back this year - a tradition they started long before she ended up in London, and one Hotch and Jack have carried on, even in the years the other members of the BAU haven't been able to join - and he has a friend whose family struggles to make it paycheque to paycheque.

So they end up running a Santa's toy drive at a local shelter.

That's where they meet Hannah.

She's three, brought into the shelter by one of the other homeless men who'd found her shivering behind a dumpster. Emily bonds with her immediately, violently, doesn't leave her side as they bundle her in blankets, find some chicken soup. And that's how she spends her evening.

It's painful to tear herself away from the little girl, both because of the bond they've formed and because this poor, abandoned girl deserves more than a shelter for Christmas. It's what takes her back there the next day, a soft, floppy doll wrapped up under her arm.

"She hasn't said a word since you left," the head of the shelter tells her when she'd arrive. "Totally silent. We can't find out if she has a family anywhere."

And Emily finds herself irrationally hoping she doesn't.

She spends the day with Hannah again, digging up books, playing hide and seek, trying to cajole her into making new friends. But Hannah won't let her go, throws a temper tantrum when Emily says she has to leave. It tears Emily apart.

"I don't know what to do," she confides in Hotch a few days later. She's still visiting Hannah, still pries the girl off of her when she leaves.

Hotch is silent for a moment, his hands rubbing up and down her back. "What about foster parents?"

"I don't want to just ship her off to some family, Hotch. We both know how that turns out and-"

"Us, Emily."

"Wh-What?"

"What if we became her foster parents?"

"The application would never go through. Our jobs are dangerous, unstable-"

"Were. You're rarely in the field now and, to be honest, I've been thinking of getting out."

She tilts her head up to look at him. "You love the BAU."

"I'm getting too old for the field," he says reluctantly. "The shooting last year and then blowing out my knee in the car accident six months ago… I'm still not totally healed." He shrugs. "I never see my son, I feel like I never see you…"

"We make it work," she argues. "Hotch, we make it work."

He kisses her then and she finds herself relaxing.

"You want this," he murmurs against her mouth. "You want Hannah."

Her shoulders sag. "I do."

"So let's make a couple of calls," he says. "Lets see what we can do."

Her breath comes out in a shaky exhale, hope rising in her despite herself. "Okay. Okay."

(It takes them a month, even with their connections and even Elizabeth pushing the application. But Emily picks Hannah up in early February and brings her home. She's skittish at first, of course, waiting for Emily to leave, but Emily doesn't care. She really, really doesn't care.

She has a daughter.

They have a daughter.

And there is nothing in the world like the first time Hannah calls her 'Mommy'.)

We're suspending our disbelief, right? Because it's a story and because now Em and Hotch have a Hannah? Awesome.