December 20, 2013

The shelter the team meets at is bright and cheery, decorated for the season. Emily's glad for it, and for the loud hustle and bustle of the place. She'd woken off and wholly confused as to why. She hasn't been able to figure out the reason and it's got her pretty down.

The charity work is helping. It's Blake's thing, apparently, her choice of team building activity and Emily can definitely see the merits of it. There's something about giving back that certainly does wonders for each of them. Emily can see it, and it's beautiful. It's easy, she knows, to get caught up in the darkness they see and giving back is a way they can feel like they're making a difference.

It's settled her. So much so the words come out of her mouth before she even realizes it's coming.

"I think I want to come back."

Dave, the only team member around to hear her, doesn't even blink. In fact, he barely acknowledges that he's heard her, but Emily knows that's not the case. It's not Dave.

Eventually, he says, "To the BAU?"

She considers his question. The fact that she's pretty much just blurted the words means she hasn't thought this through, by any extent of the imagination. "No, not the BAU."

It's too much. She's left, died, come back to life, returned… It's a mess, and she refuses to add to that again. They're just finding a stride and a routine again, she can't ask them to shift what they've built for her again.

Dave doesn't seem surprised. She's getting the distinct impression that he's seen this coming. He's always been good at seeing her.

"Just… to the States," she goes on. "I'm sure I could find a job in the State Department."

"And be bored."

Yeah, she would be, and maybe that's part of what's keeping her in the UK to begin with. She runs a gateway office, for goodness sake, and well enough that Clyde has confessed she has coworkers that refer to her affectionately as Queen P. And she loves it, she genuinely does. Maybe it's why she couldn't return to the team. She's had a taste of this level of leadership and she's not sure she could come back from it.

"Why would you come back?"

This si why she talks to Dave, she knows. In her experience, he always knows the right questions to ask, or thing to say without making her feel small and stupid.

"Because you guys are here."

He nods once, she can see it out of the corner of her eye. "All of us?"

Emily rolls her eyes. It's not a subtle question, not that she thinks it's meant as one. "I wouldn't uproot my life for the third time in five years for a relationship."

Not even if it's a relationship she'd yearned for, for much of her tenure back in the US. She's too career-oriented for that, which sounds selfish and everything-

"But you'd do it for all fo us?"

She blows out a heavy breath. "It's-I love London, I do, but- It's not the same."

"Neither are you."

"No," she agrees. Doyle saw to that. "And maybe that's why it's time to come back."

To come home.

There's a sparkle of approval in Dave's eyes, like he's already figure out her head. She hates him. Because she has changed. They've all changed, and while she knew the anger and resentment that had followed her return had been fair because they'd all changed. Maybe they all expected things to just return to how they had been and when they hadn't, she'd started to itch beneath her skin.

But now, with distance and time, she can see how utterly damaging that mentality had been for all of them. She thinks maybe her acceptance of that, the knowledge that things will never be the same – for a number of reasons now – makes it easier to see what had been missing.

"What would you do?"

"DOD?" she replies. She hasn't thought about it. She hasn't done any research on it.

"Better than the State," he allows.

She huffs a laugh. "I don't know. I just thought about it."

They fall into an easy, natural silence for a few minutes, spooning bowls of soup and chatting quietly with the people in line.

"Are you going to tell him?" Dave inquires.

Emily shakes her head, her eyes seeking Hotch out without thinking. "I don't want to get his hopes up. I don't want to get anyone's hopes up."

Hotch looks up in that clichéd way, and makes his way towards her. There's worry in his eyes and she wonders if there'd been something in hers.

"Everything okay?" he asks, accepting the ladle Dave holds out.

She smiles and meets Dave's eyes just before he wanders off. The latter offers a nod. He'll keep her secret. He always does. So Emily leans over and presses a bit of a lingering kiss to Hotch's cheek. "Everything's great."

So this took a while. I know that. Real life and muse issues means that this was much slower. It happens. Of course it happens. It happened over the actual Christmas holidays. Most of you know how this works. I'm doing the best I can considering I set high standards for myself and my writing and I dislike posting chapters for the sake of posting. I post chapters because I feel like I can read them again later without wincing and wanting to take everything down.

Needless to say, patience is, as always, appreciated.