AN: Here is the next part. I hope you enjoy it.

To answer a question I received about Gideon. What happens with him will be mentioned in the 1st chapter or two after Highs and Lows is done. Like canon, he will have left. Unlike canon, I'm planning on him returning for a guest appearance later in the story though it isn't anytime soon.

For those of you reading Suspicions and Consequences of Cases past, I haven't forgotten the story. With it being alined with this part of the storyline, I've been writing both parts together. There will be four more chapters to that story, one of which will be the conversation Emily and Gideon had when he showed up at the BAU during Two Weeks. I hope to get them up soonish.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my imagination.

Reaching her office, Erin Strauss dropped her bags and plopped down in her desk chair. As she sat there, she attempted to process not just what had happened on this case but also what she thought was a foolproof plan to destroy Aaron Hotchner.

Less than three years earlier, she had been thrilled at her promotion to Section Chief however honeymoon stage for the position was very short. Just weeks after taking over the position, the explosion in Boston happened.

Happened on her watch.

Six agents killed while more were injured. Agent Gideon who had been negotiating with the bomber. While reports came out during the investigation that he had tried to get the agents out before the bomb went off, he had been partially unsuccessful.

As Section Chief, her role came under scrutiny as well as everyone else's. Just after the investigation concluded, Gideon had a public meltdown and was removed from field duties while being evaluated.

Strauss had wanted him removed completely from the FBI or at least demoted after the unfavorable publicity. However the brass insisted that Gideon needed to have the option of returning once cleared by psych citing his years of valuable experience for both cadets and agents.

As if that wasn't enough, she was informed by the Assistant Director that Aaron Hotchner would be assuming the position of Unit Chief instead of the loyalist Strauss had nominated for the position.

Aaron Hotchner.

There was nothing in his unblemished record that she could argue against his promotion. He had been an agent in the BAU for several years, was well respected in the unit as well as the FBI. It had been determined that in the aftermath of what happened in Boston that the BAU needed routine and stability.

In the following weeks, Strauss repeated heard Aaron Hotchner's name floated as a future Director on the FBI including by influential people on the Hill as well as the Director himself. The final straw had been when she overheard Hotchner's pregnant wife discussing the topic at an interagency social event.

After hearing those statements about a man who had only been in his position for a couple of months, Strauss knew she needed to come up with a plan to halt his accession within the ranks. Director of the FBI was her dream.

It wasn't the first time Strauss had felt the need to come up with a plan to damage someone's career. Someone who she had felt threatened by.

During the Amerithrax case, there was a screw up. At her suggestion, the rest of the team had focused on reducing the fall out while Strauss herself worked on reducing her personal liability. During the subsequent investigation, she had been covered from consequences while at the conclusion of the investigation the others on her team either quit, were terminated or demoted.

Then there was the agent who had compromising information found out about him after he had accidentally found out about her drinking and offered help.

With neither of those approaches right for handling Aaron Hotchner, Strauss had spent weeks trying to decide how to handle the agent that was continuing to get accolades in his work as Unit Chief. It was then in passing as she was looking over application for those interested in being on a list for possible BAU openings that an idea started to form.

While reviewing the files of those agents, one of the agents who was assisting her mentioned in passing that they had heard that Emily Prentiss had had a previous relationship with Aaron Hotchner that didn't end well. Hearing that Strauss had put the file aside until she could look at it privately.

And when she did, Strauss thought she had the perfect plan for ruining Hotchner's position in the BAU though not questioning certain holes in her record as she generally would.

Then she just needed to wait for an opening on the team as Gideon had transitioned well back onto the team and Greenaway recovered from her injuries sustained during the Fisher King case.

Strauss couldn't get the smile off her face when she received word on Greenaway's resignation. Not only were there questionable circumstances around it that she could investigate. But even more exciting for her it meant that there was an opening on the team. An opening she was going to jump on before Gideon or Hotchner hired someone without consulting her as they had with Greenaway a year earlier. It was time to put her plan into motion.

A brief phone interview with Emily Prentiss. With an offer made Strauss counted the days until Prentiss started. Her reaction to Hotchner's name the day they first met in her office reinforced the rumors Strauss had heard about them previous being involved.

After sending Prentiss over to the bullpen and her later insistence with Hotchner that Prentiss was staying, Strauss had sat back and waited for the fireworks to start. But surprisingly there were none.

As she would go through the bullpen, there was certainly tension at times though that was hardly unusual given the cases that team dealt with everyday. Neither Hotchner nor Prentiss came to her with any issues about working together. As she closely examined reports from their cases in the field, she noted that Prentiss had been appropriate assigned to tasks during cases as well as working with various members of the team.

And Hotchner got closer to the date that he was eligible for promotion, it became clear that was exactly what he was planning to do. Other departments were showing interest as well as the brass. Even Hotchner himself had given indications that he was going to seek a promotion.

And Strauss had thought all hope for derailing him was lost until the angry phone call from Flagstaff. As she listened to their side of the what had happened during the case, it was clearly a case of them trying to cover their own asses.

When all was said and done she refused to allow them to push the blame onto the FBI. But she hadn't done it to protect Hotchner and Gideon or even the rest of the BAU. She had done it to protect the FBI.

And even with the charges being questionable, this was her chance to compromise Aaron Hotchner. So after meeting with him, he suspended him for two week thus eliminating his chance for promotion for at least the next year.

When she had tried to pull Prentiss on board weeks earlier, she had been surprised by her reluctance to provide damaging information on Hotchner. Given her upbringing and personal ambitions as well as a complicated history with Hotchner, Strauss had expected to have several pieces of information before Prentiss walked out of her office that day.

Not one to be easily pushed off, Strauss had started to check in several times with Prentiss about any information she wanted to share as well as updates on current cases. Maybe a big red flag that Prentiss wasn't going to help her should have been when Prentiss reported nothing from Flagstaff to prepare her for that phone call.

But instead Strauss had pushed further. She made Prentiss acting Unit Chief while Hotchner was suspended. Had even inferred about making it permanent for the right information. Though that wasn't going to happen. Strauss already knew who she was going to put in the Unit Chief position.

However that had also proven unfruitful. Prentiss had kept her head down, focusing on her team and the work of the BAU.

Her last attempt to gather information was the promise to transfer Prentiss away from the BAU unless Strauss got what she wanted. Prentiss had made it clear from the beginning that she wanted to work in the BAU.

Though from Hotchner's assessment had been Prentiss didn't feel as if she was part of the team, she closely protected the BAU as a whole as well as the team members. Strauss had anticipated the threat to remove her from the team would be the needed incentive to gain the information she needed. Though at that point, Strauss had already determined that Prentiss was being transferred off the team regardless.

But again, Prentiss did not come through with information. No, just as Strauss had finally made progress with Hotchner to transfer off the team, Prentiss had interrupted their meeting and resigned. To Hotchner. Not surprisingly, the energy in the room changed after that interaction.

Though Prentiss hadn't come out and said something, Hotchner knew something was up. Strauss was then left having to accompany the team on a case.

A case she had been planning to send Prentiss to lead before transferring her. Strauss hated being in the field. She much preferred the comforts of her office and the predictability of her meeting schedule.

The issues on the case had started as early as the jet. Distrust from the team. Thinly veiled hostility from Morgan. JJ questioning her in public. Inappropriate phone comments from Garcia. Reid quietly working on the case.

And the case wasn't as clear cut as Strauss had hoped. She had wanted a quick resolution so they could head back to Quantico. Her plans were then to avoid field cases until she had her new members of the team in place so she wouldn't need to travel with them again. If she had known Prentiss was going to resign she would have thought twice about accepting this one in the first place.

As time went on with the team making little progress to finding the UNSUB, Strauss knew she need to reduce her personal exposure. After finding an empty room, she called her assistant and instructed her to pull Prentiss' resignation and Hotchner's transfer request from the system.

If the BAU team couldn't solve this case, she would refuse to go down with them. Without their paperwork in the system, both Prentiss and Hotchner would be viewed as having been derelict in their duty to their team.

For Prentiss there is only so much that the Bureau could really do directly since she had resigned. However the accusation of dereliction of duty could affect her future in the State Department and compromise her ability to gain a needed security clearance.

However with Hotchner, he was planning to transfer. However with his request out of the system he was still assigned to the BAU. Being a no-show on a case resulted in additional civilian deaths would be investigated.

If she claimed no noticed and there was no paper trail as he told her in person, she could have him take the fall for the dysfunction and slow investigative work on this case. The most likely outcome would be the destruction of his FBI career that she sought. He would be lucky to even get a spot on that White Collar taskforce that he had looked down on when she mentioned it though any hope he had of leading it would be lost.

As time passed, there was increasing anxiety and frustration on the team as the clock ran down for the woman the UNSUB was currently holding with no big breaks to point them to his identity.

Then Strauss walked back into the room only to find Hotchner and Prentiss there with the team. Suddenly there was renewed energy within the group. Morale which had started to sink immediately rose. And Strauss watched as the team caught the two of them up on the case and then how they processed all of the information together with Hotchner leading the group.

They all had worked through the night but shortly after dawn, there was the call that they had all been dreading. The body of the missing woman was found. As the team surveyed the scene and pointed out the changes in MO, Strauss slipped and was rattled as she unintentionally touched the victim.

Given all the negative feelings she had caused for them, she was surprised as they gave her a safe place to pull herself together from the curious crowd of civilians. The person who calmly walked her through it was the person she had been trying to destroy for all these months, Aaron Hotchner.

As she now sat at her desk, she noticed the blood stain on her sweater that was the blood from that woman who they had been unable to save. And as she stared at the stain, she could stop thinking about if she could have done anything else to prevent the death.

Should she have called Hotchner herself earlier when she noticed that JJ, Morgan and Reid were struggling?

She wasn't a field agent or a profiler. She had been so out of her element on this case. It was much harder to be in the field and being in the case as the story was still being written instead of behind the desk and knowing how it ends and evaluating the process.

Had the potential cause for investigating Hotchner been worth it? Worth the loss to that family — to her husband, to her daughter and to her parents?

The break that ultimately lead to the UNSUB didn't end coming from Hotchner or Prentiss. It came from Dr Reid as he pointed out perhaps they were approaching the characteristics of the son the wrong way. It seemed that he was just more comfortable talking out the case with them there.

The scene at the house had been stressful, at least for her as the team debated the best approach to get into the house now that they had another missing woman.

She had stated they should waited however the team had pointed out that the UNSUB had broken pattern. While she wouldn't admit it to them, she understood the significance when that was mentioned as she had read enough cae reports since becoming Section Chief to know from a behavioral standpoint that was a dire sign.

Strauss had been against her going into the house. She couldn't support a move that risky. While she had objected to the approach, she didn't see another option either. As the decision maker all consequences for it would go down on Hotchner.

But it had been the right move for the woman who came out alive and was now home with her family. Those were the types of calls that Aaron Hotchner needed to make every day.

Unfortunately for Strauss, the takedown had mostly gone as expected though even Prentiss' injury turned out to be minor.

But now Strauss found herself back at square one or actually worse that square one. Hotchner and Prentiss were both back on the team. While Hotchner still couldn't be promoted, she couldn't keep him from resuming his position as Unit Chief given she had no evidence of wrongdoing on his part.

But that wasn't Strauss most significant problem now. No she now had a larger complication and this was one of her own making. As much as she had been trying over the last few hours to come up with a solution she had determined at this point, there wasn't one.

And her biggest issue now was Emily Prentiss.

Strauss had hoped that with Prentiss' resignation, all of her attempts to procure information about Aaron Hotcher and well as the reasons why would disappear with her.

However, her arrival with Hotchner had put any hope out that outcome to rest. He knew. He now knew what Prentiss knew.

Now Strauss didn't have an element of surprise. Now he knew pages from her playbook. Now he would know how far she was willing to go.

Then at Prentiss' request to rejoin the team, Strauss knew she had no cause to deny the request. And she didn't even attempt to find cause as Prentiss had plenty of cause to use against her at this point if she chose to push the issue. Cause that could easily call Strauss' way of operating as Section Chief into question.

Due to Strauss' own actions, the resignation wasn't even in the system so all Hotchner really needed to do was get her gun and credentials back to her.

So now instead of only having Hotchner to worry about, Strauss now had arguably a larger dilemma. She had created an enemy. An enemy who was powerful in her own right.

After Prentiss resigned, Strauss had checked with contacts in the State Department only to find out that Prentiss' name was being floated for a position there. And it was reported that several people including the Secretary were pleased with the potential addition.

Her mother and stepfather both had long and respected careers within the Department and thus additional contacts over what Prentiss had mentioned just a couple days earlier about her own connections.

With a stint in the State Department along with her experience in the FBI, in a couple of years she could easily challenge even Strauss for advancement. And she could do it on merit and not because she destroyed someone else's career.

For Prentiss to go to the State Department could be a disaster for Strauss. She was intelligent, ambitious, multilingual and had multiple advanced degrees. And as Strauss discovered when Prentiss was applying to the BAU, she was willing to work hard for what she wanted. Basically Emily Prentiss had check marks in most of the boxes that the brass looked for when evaluating for promotions.

And by pushing Prentiss the way she did to betray Aaron Hotchner, Erin Strauss had lost any chance of bonding with what could have been a powerful ally. But at least now that she was back on the BAU team as the adage goes 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer.'

Prentiss had shined a light into the dark corners Strauss was working from by the action of unexpectedly quitting. That move had raised questions from Hotchner as well as the rest of the BAU team. Questions that now had answers that made them all aware now of the power play that Strauss had attempted and subsequently lost.

If the last few days were a chess game, one could say that Emily Prentiss had been five moves ahead the whole time and completely outmaneuvered Strauss. And Strauss knew she had no one to blame for this change in events but herself.

For now, Strauss knew she needed to take a low profile with the team and let the dust settle. Prentiss was back on the team and if Hotchner's statement's in Milwaukee were any indication, he was back too. They had won this battle. But she wasn't through with them. And she would win the war.

AN: I'm still working on the next and last part of Highs and Lows. It is about Hotch and Haley though there isn't interaction between the two. It will be primarily Hotch. I hope to have it posted by mid next week.