A/N: Thanks for reading and for anyone who reviewed the first chapter! This is set during Season 14x08 Ashley and there are spoilers for the case.
Chapter 1
November 2018
Emily watched with wide eyes as Becky Hughes looked at the image of the happy, smiling little girl on the TV screen and promptly broke down crying.
Becky was visibly shaken and tearful when her ex-boyfriend and former-fiance, Jordan Halloran, was holding her at gunpoint, but she held it together remarkably well until the pictures and video clips of the daughter she'd given up for adoption started playing on TV. That was when her tears really intensified.
She hadn't really been able to focus on the TV with everything else going on in her living room, but once the eight year old girl Jordan had kidnapped as a substitute for Ashley was out of the house and Simmons had led Jordan out of the house in handcuffs, Becky really looked at the TV for the first time.
Emily followed the younger woman's shocked gaze to the TV screen where Ashley was playing with a hula hoop in her backyard. The little girl let the hula hoop fall to the ground and smiled big for the camera, waving at whoever was taking the home video.
Ashley's biological mother gasped and doubled over, crying like her heart was breaking for the daughter she had never really known and would only ever know from these pictures and video clips. Emily's heart went out to the other woman.
It wasn't the first case the BAU had where adoption had been one of the stressors, not by a long shot, but Emily felt she could relate more to Becky Hughes than she had to any of the others over the years.
Emily was drawing uncomfortable parallels to her past. Ian Doyle made Jordan Halloran look like a kitten, but both she and Becky gave their baby girls up for adoption to protect them because of who the fathers were. The realization that, at least in Ashley's case, it hadn't been enough to save the girl made Emily wonder if her own daughter was okay.
The BAU hadn't profiled Becky Hughes, but from her behavior so far, Emily thought the other woman might have locked the emotional turmoil of giving her daughter up in a box in the back of her mind much like Emily had. That box was wide open now, and all the emotions Becky had never allowed herself to feel were spilling over the surface as she broke down completely.
"Becky?" Emily questioned, trying to get the younger woman's attention off the TV since seeing the little girl seemed like it was too much for her.
Becky turned away from the TV when she heard her name and realized the Plymouth P.D. officer was waiting to escort her out of the house that was now a crime scene. She let the officer guide her out.
Emily started for the door, too, but Rossi's voice stopped her.
"Hey, Emily, you okay?"
"I'm fine," Emily said automatically.
Rossi scoffed slightly. "You and I both know you don't know the meaning of the word."
"I'm fine," Emily snapped. She was barely in control of her emotions and didn't trust herself to talk without having her own breakdown on the same scale as what they'd just witnessed from Becky Hughes. She needed time to force fourteen years' worth of repressed feelings back into the box they'd been safely locked away in for her daughter's whole life. There was a newfound worry added to the mixture of pain and regret thanks to this case and what had happened to Ashley. The box couldn't quite contain her overwhelming worry.
The warning tone her voice had taken would have been enough for anyone else on the team to leave it – and her - alone, but not David Rossi. "You know, if you don't want to tell me what's bothering you, that's fine, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't bite my head off," he said mildly.
Emily glanced at him, her eyes filling with regret when she met his concerned gaze. "I'm sorry, Dave."
"Apology accepted. Completely unnecessary though," he told her warmly. He was never angry or even annoyed with her. He was just hurt that her walls were up and keeping him out when all he wanted was to be there for her, whatever she was going through. "You, uh, sure there's nothing you want to talk about?"
"This case…it hit close to home," Emily said with a faraway look on her face, knowing she had to give him something.
Rossi raised his eyebrows in disbelief. Was that really all she was going to give him? "Thank you, Captain Obvious," he said, ignoring the baleful glare he received from Emily. "Come on, you're really not going to tell me why? I'm all in here."
Emily hesitated, trying to figure out where to start and how much to divulge. She had never told anyone about this chapter of her past, and the words to explain weren't coming to her easily. But if she were going to tell anyone her best-kept secret, it would be David Rossi. She knew from past experience that he would listen without judgment or recrimination. She didn't think there was anything she could say that would change his opinion of her. He'd been unwavering in his loyalty to her and always seemed to be in her corner.
"There was another undercover agent assigned to infiltrate Ian Doyle's organization before me," Emily began in a resigned tone. "A man. Doyle made him before he got anything."
"Doyle killed him?" Rossi questioned.
"Not personally," Emily answered. "But yeah. That's when they sent me in."
"Must've been scary," Rossi offered, knowing it would have been tough for Emily – for any agent really - to go under on the heels of another agent's cover being blown. She would have been in her mid-twenties, presumably one of the younger agents on the team, and desperate to prove herself as worthy that early in her career. He knew she wouldn't have said no to the assignment even if she wanted to.
"I was chosen for a reason. I was Doyle's type. It was another way in – the only other way in," Emily explained.
Rossi already knew the nature of Emily's relationship with Doyle, and unlike a few of the other members of the BAU team, had never once judged her for it. He'd even defended her when Derek Morgan had been a little too quick to rush to judgment. He nodded in understanding. "Doyle would have been suspicious of any new business contacts."
"My cover was an arms dealer, but I never asked him about his business," Emily said, shaking her head. "I kept things personal to avoid suspicion."
"Whatever you did, it worked," Rossi acknowledged in an impressed tone.
"I was able to earn his trust, but it took me almost two years to get everything we needed. For most of that time, I was living with him in his house." Emily lowered her gaze to the floor and continued hesitantly. "I was, uh, on the pill. I'd been on the pill since I was fifteen." She laughed humorlessly and shook her head, mentally cursing her luck. She'd had two unplanned pregnancies in the space of twelve years. That must be some kind of a record – and not the kind she wanted to set. She wasn't exactly proud. She needed him to know she hadn't been stupid and careless.
"You got pregnant anyway. Doyle was the father?" Rossi prompted gently, seeing where this was going. It would have been a terrible position for an undercover agent to be in.
"He didn't know. I…never told him."
"Unless…" Rossi's eyes narrowed in suspicion as details of Ian Doyle's profile came back to him and something niggled in the back of his mind. "Have you ever considered the possibility that you getting pregnant was no accident?"
Emily stared at him with an incredulous expression. She was on the pill. Of course it was an accident.
Rossi held his hands out in front of him to stave off her protests. "Hear me out here. We know Doyle was highly controlling. He gave you an engagement ring. He wanted you to raise his son."
"Yeah, and I said no," Emily told him.
"That's just it though. A man like Doyle…he wouldn't take no for an answer. If you said no…well, some women get pregnant to trap unsuspecting men into marriage. What if with Doyle it was the other way around? Maybe he thought you'd marry him and be Declan's new mother if he got you pregnant," Rossi mused. "It could have been his way of trying to control you, or at least the situation."
Emily sucked in her breath. Doyle gave her his ring even though she told him she wasn't the marrying type and brought up having kids with her repeatedly. She knew he loved her when she was Lauren, but that didn't mean he wouldn't have done something underhanded to get what he wanted from her. It fit the profile.
"But I was on the pill."
Short of substituting her pills for placebos without her knowing, what could Doyle really have done to sabotage her birth control? Emily had always just assumed she missed a pill.
"What, and he couldn't have tampered with them somehow?" Rossi questioned, remembering the victims of Doyle's that had died from what appeared to be natural causes when there was nothing natural about it. He didn't think it was such a stretch for the guy to slip Emily something that would render her birth control pills completely ineffective.
"I suppose it's possible," Emily said doubtfully. "But it's more likely I missed a pill."
Rossi could tell she was beating herself up and tried to gloss over it. "However it happened, the fact remains that you were pregnant with Doyle's kid. I'm guessing you gave the kid up for adoption?"
Emily trusted David Rossi with her life and her daughter's life, but she still didn't trust herself to talk about the baby girl she gave up for adoption. Her emotions were too raw. This was the most painful part of her past. She swallowed a lump in the back of her throat, hoping she would make it through the rest of the story without crying.
"I wouldn't let my daughter be a pawn. When she was born, they were still interrogating Doyle. They used the pictures of Declan, and I was afraid – I was afraid they'd use her, too," Emily said, her voice cracking with emotion.
Rossi sighed as he thought about how much grief this one undercover assignment had caused Emily Prentiss. The ghosts from her past continued to haunt her. He put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze.
Emily took a shuddered breath, trying to regain her composure. "Giving her up probably saved her life. If she were with me, Doyle would have gone after her when he escaped from prison seven years ago. If he even suspected she were his, he would have taken her from me. If not, he would have put a bullet through her head as revenge for what he thought I did to Declan."
Emily thought of the families Doyle had annihilated in revenge and of the Cosenza boy in particular. Samuel Cosenza was shot execution-style with a single bullet through his head, which was exactly how Doyle believed Declan died. She understood the message the moment she laid eyes on the fatal gunshot wound in the middle of the boy's forehead – a message meant for her. She felt almost as guilty for her role in the innocent child's death as she would have if she'd been the one to pull the trigger. She could live with that guilt, but she would never have been able to live with it if it had been her daughter lying dead on the ground, killed in cold-blood by her own father. That would have destroyed Emily.
"But he didn't. And he'll never be able to hurt you again. Your daughter's safe, Emily. And so is Declan. Because of you," Rossi told her, looking straight into her eyes so she would see he really meant it. Emily had made some tough calls for those kids – calls that just might have saved their lives, but that also had some far-reaching consequences. He knew she was feeling the full weight of those consequences now and wanted nothing more than to take some of the load off.
In his not-so-humble opinion, Emily was the only reason Declan was still alive and kicking. She saved him from the unwanted - and potentially deadly - attention of the North Koreans, and then she saved him from his own mother who'd teamed up with one of his father's rivals. That kid may have lost the parent lottery, but Declan was one lucky kid to have Emily Prentiss looking out for him.
They didn't know that Emily wouldn't have been able to protect her daughter, but Rossi understood she wasn't willing to take any chances. If there were even the slightest chance the kid would be in danger, Emily wouldn't have been able to justify keeping her.
"Safe, yes. But what about healthy?" Emily asked anxiously as she thought about Ashley. Becky Hughes' daughter had been safe, but that didn't mean she was healthy.
Rossi's expression softened. "That's what's really bothering you, isn't it? Do you know her name? Where she lives? Anything Penelope could use to put your mind at ease?"
"Her parents' – her, uh, adoptive parents' - names," Emily said, realizing how awkward it felt to refer to anyone else as her daughter's parents.
"Friends of yours?" Rossi inquired.
Emily shook her head. "There was no one I could trust with her. I picked her parents from the files the adoption agency gave me. I only met them once."
She spent hours poring over the files the adoption agency gave her on prospective parents. She debated with herself over whether she should meet them in person, not wanting to leave a trail that would lead straight to her child if anyone were ever looking for the kid Emily Prentiss gave up. In the end, she felt like she had to meet them. She met them under an assumed name, but it had still been a calculated risk to let them see her face. If anyone were to ask questions about her daughter's biological mother, they would be able to describe her. But she thought she'd covered her tracks well enough that no one would ever get close to the truth of her child's parentage.
Emily took an instant liking to Sarah and Steve Johnson. It helped that they were the complete and total opposite of Emily's parents. They had good jobs, but didn't put their careers first the way Emily's mother always had. Family came first for them, and they'd been trying to start a family of their own for years, but the prospective mother had been unable to get pregnant. They answered all her questions about their backgrounds and how they would raise her daughter honestly. They were warm and open with affection, holding hands as they sat across the table from her in the conference room at the adoption agency and even hugging Emily goodbye.
"Did you profile them?" Rossi teased with a small grin, trying to lighten the mood a little.
The hint of a smile played on Emily's lips – the first he'd seen since they started talking.
"That's a yes," Rossi murmured knowingly.
"I wasn't going to give my baby to just anyone," Emily told him.
"She's, what, fourteen or fifteen now?" Rossi asked.
"Fourteen."
Rossi smiled fondly as a mental image of a teenage version of Emily popped into his head. "I bet the boys are lining up around the block. I almost feel sorry for her old man."
"Hey, I thought you were trying to help here!" Emily shot him a mock-glare, not wanting to imagine the girl she still thought of as a baby with teenage boys.
Rossi chuckled softly. "Sorry. You know, I have to admit, as much as I wish I'd known about Joy sooner, it's probably a good thing I missed her teenage years. If it were up to me, I wouldn't have let her date until she was thirty."
Emily glanced at him sideways. "Knowing Joy, I'm not sure she would have asked for permission."
"Probably not," Rossi admitted good-naturedly. "But she would have had a hell of a time sneaking around on my watch."
Emily laughed a little at the idea of a teenage Joy trying to lie to one of the original founders of the BAU about where she was going and what she was doing. "How's everything going with her anyway?"
"Good," Rossi answered. "If you're asking if you can have a good relationship with your kid this late in the game, the answer is yes. That is what you're really asking, isn't it?"
Emily smiled sheepishly in response. She didn't realize she was being that transparent.
"I'm not saying it will be easy or instantaneous. But it will be worth it. At least it has been for me. Talk to Penelope," Rossi said in an encouraging tone.
