Hey everyone, I hope you enjoy this chapter. Let me know what you think. This chapter is shorter than I wanted and I do apologise. This heat where I am is seriously frying my brain.

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All mistakes are my own

Reid and Emmy sat together in the park, each of them enjoying the meal that were eating. It had been two days since her attack in her room. Her face was still bruised but the swelling had gone down. Her attacker was awaiting trial and had been charged with attempted murder after Emmy's statement. Garcia and Daniel had invited them both out for a picnic and they had both accepted. Reid just felt relieved to have Emmy still with him and the team. He didn't know what it was but he felt fiercely protective of her. His feelings were in no way romantic, they were different. He felt the need to guide, support and look after her the way Gideon had looked after him. He heard Emmy let out a small giggle.

"Why are you giggling?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, I'm eating one of Penelope's cupcakes. They are just amazing. They remind me of-" she began to say before she stopped.

"Your mother made cupcakes, didn't she?" Reid said sadly.

"I used to wake up to the smell of them sometimes. She used to have the night shift and I didn't always see her as much as I wanted. Every time she came home from her night shift, she would bake a batch of cupcakes for me. It didn't matter that she was tired, she would bake them, ice them and decorate them. I would wake up and see a pink cupcake waiting for me. I always hugged her in the morning. I told her that I was happy none of the bad guys had hurt her. We baked cupcakes the night she died. We made them, had two and then decided we would keep the rest for the next day because she had a day off and we were going to watch movies and cartoons. I woke up and walked into her room," Emmy said, her voice wobbling. "Her bed had nothing but red blood over it and she wasn't breathing. I screamed and tried to wake her up. She never woke up."

Reid heard her let out a small sob. He shuffled closer to her using her cries to find her and carefully put his arms around her. He held her gently as she cried. She gripped his shirt tight.

"I'm sorry, this isn't very brave," she said as she tried to calm herself down.

"It's okay to cry," he told her. "Penelope told me that. Crying because you hurt inside isn't weak, it is healthy. I know from personal experience that keeping pain and anger inside can destroy you."

Emmy came away from the hug and wiped her eyes. "Penelope reminds me of my mother. She used to always have this amazing belief and hope for the world. She would always make sure the other cops down at her precinct got looked after. She said that being happy helped the world. I struggled for a long time with my anger. Even though I was a child when it happened, I felt that I could have done something to prevent it. I came to realise that there was no way of knowing what was going to happen. I'm still angry but I've learned to turn my anger into something useful. Something that doesn't hurt other people. What did you mean when you said you knew that keeping pain and anger inside could hurt you?"

Reid took a deep breath. "A few months back, a man broke into Morgan's house, I was living with him while I was learning to live without my sight. He knocked out Morgan with a drug and came into my room. H-He r-raped me during the night. I struggled with it for a long time and I didn't feel human after what he did to me."

Emmy sat on the picnic blanket staring at her mentor and the man she had come to see as a father. He seemed so full of life and she couldn't believe that something so horrific and painful had happened to him.

"What he did to you doesn't make you less of anything?" she said gently. "I'm so sorry that happened to you."

"Justice got served in a sense," Reid said. "My attacker died in a house fire."

Reid knew the truth but as much as he trusted Emmy and loved her like a daughter, he would never put such a dark secret on her shoulders. She had been through so much and he just wanted to help her as much as he could.

"Emmy, you are a wonderful young woman and I know you are going to help so many people when you graduate. Your mother would be proud that her daughter has grown up into a strong woman who wants to help the world. "

"I'm still not used to having a family around me. I said to Morgan that I hadn't had a family since my mother had died. He told me that I had one now no matter what. I wasn't expecting all this when I came to Quantico to join the academy. I love having all the support and help in my life. I just never expected all this..." she said before she got stuck on finding the right word.

"Love," Reid suggested with a smile.

"Yeah," she giggled gently.

"You are part of this family now and you will always be part of this family."

Buzz came running up to the picnic blanket with a ball in his mouth and looked at Emmy with his tail waggling quickly. He dropped the ball in her lap. She picked it up and threw the ball out into the park. He raced after it to fetch it.

"He's such a cute dog," Emmy said.

"He keeps me sane," Reid smiled. "He just needs to work on not running into furniture."

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