Sorry all! I realized I uploaded the wrong draft! Here is the real thing! I hope you enjoy!

"Lightman, you are telling me that this piece of crap, isn't the one behind the kidnapping?" Reynolds asked in exasperation, motioning angrily to the man sitting quietly in the cube, quickly losing the little patience he had left after this whirlwind of a case. "He has three priors for solicitation of minors!"

"Oh yeah," Lightman said, pausing as he shoved his hands in his pockets, nonchalantly, "This guy is into kids, but he's not your guy."

"We caught him at the scene of the crime!" Reynolds said in exasperation.

"Yes, but there was no indicative increase in heart rate, body temperature…" Loker began listing off from his point at the observation station.

"English!" Reynolds yelled, putting his hands on his hips.

"Meaning," Torres jumped in, folding her arms in front of her chest, "He showed no signs of arousal or stress when he was shown pictures of Lauren."

"So?" Reynolds asked.

"So, did you ever stop to think that he may not be lying about where he was?" Torres countered.

"You guys are usually the ones who tell me that," Reynolds said angrily.

Torres scoffed and rolled her eyes.

"This guy has priors and no alibi," Reynolds said pointedly, "Lauren described her abductor as a white male, mid-forties, brown hair…"

"Oh yeah," Lightman said casually, "Because you found the one person in the world who fits that description."

It was Reynolds turn to scoff.

"The guy fits the profile!"

"So, you are a profiler now, eh?" Lightman asked, sending the last of Reynold's patience out the window.

Reynolds scoffed again, looking at the ceiling as he put his hands on his hips, trying his best not to punch the scientist in front of him.

"Look," Lightman said, sensing the obvious agitation from the agent, "This man's priors," he said as he pointed a hand at the man in the cube, "Did you ever look at what type of kids he went after?"

"The guy is a registered sex offender!" Reynolds argued.

"Lauren isn't this guy's type," Loker said as he leaned back in the chair, toying with the pen in his hand.

"Not his type?" Reynolds asked looking at him in disgust.

"Mr. Cranston here," Lightman said as he bent down to the computer, pressing some buttons. The video of the man that had been recorded in the interview moments earlier appeared on the screen, "only signs of arousal showed up on his face when I was speaking about boys."

Reynolds clenched his jaw in anger, knowing he was backed into a corner, but still unwilling to admit he was wrong.

"I'd bet," Lightman said, turning to look at him, "That if you look up his victims, you'll find that they are all adolescent boys… ages, 14-16. Not really the type to switch suddenly to 10-year-old girls, is it?"

Reynolds ran his tongue over his teeth angrily, causing Lightman to smile at him.

"Let him loose," Lightman said as he began walking out of the lab, "or charge him with something that will keep him off the street."

Loker gave Torres a look before shrugging and turning back to the computer screen, saving the interview into the system's server.

Reynolds huffed in anger and followed Lightman out of the lab, Torres quickly on his heels.

She followed Reynolds and Lightman out of the lab, hearing the unfamiliar sound of a bassline thumping throughout the hallways of the Lightman group.

"Lightman!" Reynolds called.

Lightman did not respond. Instead, Torres watched his body language. His head tilted slightly to the side with curiosity. He had noticed it as well.

The music grew clearer and louder as they approached Lightman's office.

A nineties rap song? Is that what it was?

Torres felt her own head tilt to the side with curiosity as she followed both Reynolds and Lightman.

Was the music coming from Lightman's office?

"Lightman! Hey!" Reynolds said as he followed him around the corner to his office, the music blaring now, "I'm talking to you!"

Torres glanced to her right, looking for Heidi for answers.

She felt herself frown as she saw Heidi was nowhere to be found.

She must be at lunch…

Torres turned the corner into Lightman's office, nearly running a slightly stunned Reynolds, staring at Lightman's form. Lightman looked slightly dumbfounded, staring at the stranger in his office.

A woman in her mid-thirties sat at Lightman's desk. Dressed casually in an oversized denim shirt and camisole. Her long legs were stretched out on the corner of Lightman's desk as she bobbed her booted heel to the music.

Her light blue eyes were focused on Lightman's computer screen behind oversize but stylish lenses, the keyboard in her lap as she typed something on the screen.

Torres glanced towards Lightman, seeing bewilderment and the slightest of smirks beginning to cover his face.

He knew her.

The woman must have felt eyes on her as she looked up. The corner of her mouth pulled up in a self-satisfied grin. Without looking or moving her feet off the desk, she hit a few buttons on the keyboard, stopping the music and bathing the room in silence.

"About time. I thought I was going to have to turn on that screamo-metal crap to get you to come in here," the woman said.

"Bloody fucking hell," Lightman muttered, smiling fully at the woman in the chair. The woman smiled back as Lightman strode over to her, knocking her feet off of the desk, causing the woman to laugh before he pulled her up and into his arms. The woman hugged him back tightly, true joy spread over to her face.

Lightman pulled back, kissing the woman's cheek.

"What are you doing here, love?" Lightman asked her in a strangely paternal tone he usually reserved for Emily, "I thought you were in…"

"Ireland?" the woman supplied for him as she sat back down in his desk chair, "I was. Then I was in London. Now I'm here. I just took a job in DC."

Lightman frowned at her, seemingly forgetting that there were others in the room.

"You moved back to DC?"

The woman smiled at him, a flicker of fear and sadness passed quickly over her face as she put her feet back on the desk, forcing her body language to show otherwise.

"I'm out," she told him, "Officially."

"Lightman," Reynolds interrupted, "This reunion or whatever is touching, but we have a case."

The woman looked over at him, raising her eyebrows at him quizzically before looking back at Lightman.

"Is he always this hospitable?" she asked him, glancing back at Reynolds, taking him in, "Your FBI muscle?"

Reynolds looked at the woman, taken completely aback.

The woman looked at him with slight interest before looking back at Lightman, "Also, since when do you require FBI muscle in your office?"

"Since I have my old students break into my office and hijack my research on my private server," Lightman said as he turned the screen of his computer towards him, snatching back the mouse and keyboard from the woman.

The woman's smirk grew as she watched him take in the screen.

"Please," she said, "You know I would never steal your research. I will, however, be the person to tell you that this 'blinking experiment' I found on your server, is completely flawed."

Lightman straightened, making her smile even more.

"I mean, whoever ran your analysis is obviously trying to prove themselves or are desperately trying to compensate for something. This analysis is far too novel and so overly complex that it takes away from the data. It will make it an uphill struggle to get this study published as your data is no longer meaningful."

Lightman turned to look at her, putting his hands in his pockets.

"That server is encrypted, and password protected. Just like my computer is."

The woman smiled again, turning in the chair slightly as she looked at Lightman.

"So, you are a hacker now, too?" he asked her.

"I didn't need to hack it."

"You guessed?"

"Please," the woman scoffed, "I don't guess. You've used the same set of passwords for the last decade. I'm amazed they actually gave you security clearance."

Lightman shifted his stance, looking at her, obviously taken aback.

"I don't."

"Well," the woman said, her bluff obviously being called out, "Okay you don't, but you are far more predictable than you think you are."

Lightman let out of huff of laughter, obviously intrigued.

"Oh, and," the woman said as she let her feet thud to the floor, reaching forward and pulling the mouse towards her and clicking a few things and motioning the screen, "I took the liberty of giving you my feedback and edits on this latest manuscript you had in your recents folder."

Lightman stared at her as the woman smiled up at him.

He took a small step back, looking at her with slight amusement.

"When did you get so cheeky?"

The woman smiled, clicking a few more times for leaning back in the chair once more.

"I learned from the best."

Lightman paused for a moment before laughing, looking back at the woman.

"Drink?"

"Of course," the woman said as she reached down and grabbed her bag, standing up again.

"In case you've forgotten," Reynolds said, trying to bring Lightman back to the situation at hand, "we have a case."

"Loker and Torres can handle it," Lightman said dismissively as he put on his coat.

Torres raised an eyebrow at him.

"You are really leaving right now?"

"Yeah," Lightman shrugged as he straightened his coat.

"What's the case?" the woman asked.

"Kidnapping of a 10-year-old girl," Lightman said as he turned back to her, "We got the girl back, but her kidnapper is still at large."

"Sounds up my alley if you need help," the woman offered.

Lightman stared at her.

"If you wanted a job, darling, all you had to do was ask."

The woman laughed, "No, I worked for you long enough. Plus, if I wanted to get into this cushy corporate lifestyle…" she said as she walked out of the office, turning to face him as she did, "I would have gone to the Raider firm."

Lightman stared after her for a moment.

"Liar!"

*&$(*#$() *#) (

Torres walked back into the lab, quickly getting out of the way of a seething Reynolds as he stormed towards the cube to release their latest suspect.

She saw Loker sitting at his desk, watching Reynolds with slight apprehension before he met Torres's gaze.

"Let me guess," Loker said jokingly, "Lightman insulted him?... Again."

Torres let out a breath as she leaned up against Loker's workstation, "Lightman left."

Loker looked at her in surprise.

"Left? In the middle of a case?"

"Yeah," Torres shrugged, "Apparently, he thinks it's done. Said that we could wrap it up with Reynolds. Drinks with one of his former students was more important."

Loker looked up at her in confusion and suprise.

"He's getting drinks with Raider?"

"No," Torres said shaking her head, "It was a woman."

"A woman?" Loker asked, even more perplexed.

"Yeah," Torres responded, "mentioned she was an old student. Used to work for him."

Loker looked at her, completely bewildered.

"You know who she is?" Torres asked.

"No," Loker said, turning in his chair thoughtfully, "Must have been before the Lightman group came to be. The only student I know of is Raider."

Torres straightened, an idea coming over her.

"If she was a student of his, she must have published something with him," she said, pushing Loker's chair to the side, typing on his computer.

"You're wasting your time," Loker told her, "Lightman didn't publish much after his postdoc up until he started the Lightman group."

Torres stood up, sighing in defeat.

"Maybe she was a natural he took on," Loker supplied, "Like you."

"No," Torres said, shaking her head again as she leaned up against his desk once more, "She was critiquing some blinking experiment Lightman ran. She definitely comes from the academic world."

When Loker didn't answer, Torres looked down at him.

"Did she say what she thought was wrong with the blinking experiment?," Loker attempted to say nonchalantly.

Torres began to smile.

"She said the analysis was wrong," Torres told him, enjoying the look coming over Loker's face as she said it, "She said that whomever ran the analysis is trying too hard to compensate for something."

Loker scoffed, fully offended.

"You are the one who ran that analysis, aren't you?" Torres said, a full smile now on her face.

Loker leaned forward onto his desk, looking up at Torres pointedly.

"There is nothing wrong with that analysis. She obviously doesn't know what she is talking about."

Torres laughed as she stood up, walking towards the cube.

"Oh, she definitely knows what she is talking about."

Loker stared after her in offense.

"... because you are definitely compensating," Torres said as she walked out of the lab.

Loker scoffed.

"I'm not!" he called after her just as the door was swinging closed.

"I'm not," he said firmly to himself as he turned back to the computer.

#^* &#)*& (* )(#

Lightman leaned on the bar, staring at his former pupil from around his beer.

"The Bureau?" he asked, still frowning in disbelief.

The woman shook her long brown hair out of her face smiling as she sipped her beer.

"Really?" Lightman asked again.

"Yes, really," the woman said, setting her drink down and looking at him.

"So what?" Lightman said as he sat up, "Hendrickson saw the error of his ways?"

The woman scoffed, laughing bitterly.

"No. He's definitely still the misogynistic ass-wipe he's always been."

"So, you are going to go work for a man who thinks that women don't belong in the Bureau or in the field? Because you are way above that, love."

The woman looked at him, smiling slightly.

Lightman straightened, smiling at her as he read her face.

"No," he said as he watched her, "You aren't going to work for Hendrickson and his goons, are you?"

The woman wouldn't answer.

"So, not the BAU," Lightman said.

"The BAU isn't the only place for profilers," the woman countered.

"No, it isn't," Lightman told her, "But, it's the only place for the best ones… and you are the best."

The woman shook her head and shrugged slightly.

"You need to start believing that, love. Otherwise you'll always be working middle-range jobs that are way below your potential."

"Oh yeah?" the woman asked, "then what is my potential? Because they sure as hell haven't asked me to run the BAU."

"Why come back then?" Lightman asked her, "You told me you would never come back to DC."

The woman stared at him for a moment, before she sighed breaking eye-contact and leaning back in the chair.

"The FBI offered me a position, picking and running my own profiling team," the woman told him, "Based out of Quantico."

Lightman leaned back and laughed, looking at her.

"So a teaching job, then?"

The woman stared at him in surprise.

"No," she said adamantly, "I get to hand-pick my team and consult on specific cases. Yes, there is a teaching component in that they asked me to take a course load at Quantico, but I'm happy with the offer."

"No you aren't!"

"I am," she told him firmly.

"You aren't," he said, partially grinning at her, "You know all you are going to get is the dregs that Hendrickson and the BAU don't want or think that is below them."

The woman sighed, looking at her beer, picking at the label on the bottle.

"Does Hendrickson teach? Anyone on his team teach?" Lightman asked her.

The woman's mouth twitched, giving Lightman his answer.

"So, you are going to be a glorified professor stuck at a desk while the BAU get to run around and play FBI superhero. That's a step up from MI5, is it?"

The woman rolled her eyes and picked up her beer, taking a sip.

"Some people find joy in teaching," the woman told him.

"But not you," Lightman said smiling as he picked up his beer, "Hundred bucks says you'll want to scratch your eyes out after a week."

The woman looked at him in exasperation.

"I enjoy mentoring!"

"Yeah, but mentoring and teaching are two different things."

The woman looked at him with slight surprise.

"You see, teaching," Lightman said as he shifted his weight forward in the chair, "is what you do when you are talking in front of a room full of hungover FBI wanna-be's. None of whom have enough sense or ability to use more than 30% of what you can teach them. Mentoring, is when you take someone under your wing and show them all that you know and how to apply it. In the field, in the lab, in life in general. Mentoring is much more than teaching and that… THAT is what you enjoy."

The woman just stared at him once more.

"What's your point, Cal?"

"My point, is that you didn't come back to DC. A town… I know you hate just to do something under your potential."

The woman looked down, toying with her beer.

"Why did you come back, Ell?"

"My research," she told him, "Taking this position does put me in the classroom, but I do get to develop my own team, and… I get full access to case files and my research subjects."

"Nah," Lightman said, "You left MI5. Why?"

The woman smiled, sadness with traces of fear covering her face.

"I wanted out," she told him, "I was sick of the lies. Sick of the pain. Sick of the pressure. You remember what it was like."

"Yeah," Lightman said as he watched her carefully, "I do. That's why I tried to pull you out, love."

"I know," she smiled, "That's also why I came back. I missed the only people I consider family."

"Reconnected with your father, have you?" Lightman asked, cheekily.

The woman rolled her eyes and picked up her beer again.

"You know what I meant," she told him pointedly, "You, Zoe, Em… you three are the only family I have left in this world."

Lightman stared at her.

"Come work for the Lightman group," he told her, "Tell the Bureau to sod it. They don't know how valuable you are."

The woman laughed at him, looking at him in shock.

"Oh, and you do?"

"You were the only postdoc I ever took on. I never had any intention of ever taking one… not until you stopped me at that conference," he told her, "You have a gift. For reading people, for science, for profiling."

"You were never good at brown-nosing, you know that, right?"

"You could come in very handy…"

"No! Cal! This is absurd."

"Why?!"

"I am not coming to work for the Lightman group for several reasons… just to start with."

"Oh yeah? What are these reasons then?" Lightman challenged.

"A) I don't need you to find me a job."

"I'm…."

"B) You were my mentor. And who I consider family. I'm not going to continue to live on your coattails. I need to establish myself as an individual researcher."

"You don't want to be a tenured professor, so that's a load of rubbish."

"C) I'm a forensic psychologist and a criminal profiler who does research on cults and microexpressions in serial killers and criminals. How in the hell do you think I'll fit in to a corporate gig? Have Manson on speed dial?"

"Are you calling me a corporate sellout? You are, aren't you?"

"D) My research. Last I checked, the Lightman group does not allow me access to the most dangerous criminals I need for my research. The FBI is the only state-side bureaucracy that does. And they happen to be based in DC, and this is all they offered me. It's a starting point until I prove myself."

"We work with the FBI now," Lightman said, "I can get you your subjects."

The woman scoffed.

"You can't."

"I can," Lightman said, stubbornly.

"What was all that crap then about 'realizing my potential' and not working some 'mid-level job' then, eh?" the woman asked him, "And now you are telling me to come work a mid-level job… but for you?"

"No," Lightman said smiling, "I'd make you partner."

The woman stared at him in disbelief.

"What?"

"Full equity partner," Lightman told her.

The woman ran a hand through her hair, leaning back in disbelief, "No… No! You are not tempting me with full partner. Didn't you just listen to all the reasons why I can't come work for you?"

"With me," Lightman corrected.

The woman stared at him in disbelief.

"No," she told him firmly, "Plus, what would Gillian have to say about that? Hm? Last time I spoke to her, she decided to rummage through my file and my childhood before she labeled me coo coo for cocoa puffs. I'd doubt she'd want me around the firm."

"She labeled me the same. Now look at us!" Lightman said with a cheeky grin.

The woman rolled her eyes, causing Lightman's smile to fade slightly.

"She's a shrink," Lightman said, "she has a tendency to dive into people's childhoods."

"She didn't need to go waist deep into it," the woman muttered bitterly as she took a sip of her beer.

Lightman stared at her for a moment before he leaned on the bar again.

"Who do you report to now?" he asked, "At the FBI."

The woman turned to look at him pointedly, "No, Cal."

"Why? Why do you not want me to know?" he asked.

"Don't meddle," she told him pointedly.

"I'm not going to," he said defensively, "I just want to know."

"You do realize that I can read you, right?" the woman said as Lightman stood up and pulled a few bills out, tossing them on the bar counter, "Do not meddle in this. I am begging you."

Lightman looked at her, defensively, "I won't alright!"

The woman stared at him, narrowing her eyes.

"I don't believe you."

"Well, you should love," he said as he kissed her cheek, grabbing his coat as he did, looking at her in the eye, "I would never do anything to hurt you or compromise your happiness."

The woman continued staring.

"Right, well. I have a child abductor to find," he told her as he began walking away, leaving her at the bar, "We'll get dinner soon!"

The woman turned back and stared at her beer, realizing how royally fucked she was.

Thoughts? Feelings?

Review?