A/N: Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! This one is pretty much all Emily and Hannah. I'm trying really hard not to have chapters with just Emily and an OC, but this one was getting too long. The next chapter will be much more team focused and will have a decent amount of Reid.
Chapter 9
Emily unlocked the front door and held it open for her daughter. Hannah hung back awkwardly in the entryway, not sure what to do with herself as Emily entered the code to disable the alarm.
Hannah followed Emily as the woman ventured further into the condo. The teenager looked around curiously. Emily's condo was perfectly clean with none of the daily clutter that accumulated in the townhouse Hannah lived in with her dad. There were no shoes by the front door, no jackets thrown haphazardly over the back of the dark velvet sofa, and no notepad or stacks of paper littering the kitchen counter. The only thing that made the condo look lived in were the knickknacks – artwork hanging on the walls, Emily's collection of books filling the built-in bookshelf, a plant on the kitchen counter.
"Can I get you anything to drink?" Emily asked her daughter.
"Do you have Coke?" Hannah asked as she continued to trail after Emily.
Knowing she wouldn't have Coke, Emily noted the beverage choice for future reference as she opened the refrigerator to scan the contents. "Sorry, I only have water, milk or tea."
"Oh yeah, I forgot you gave up caffeine," Hannah said. "Water's…fine."
Emily heard the hesitation and slight catch in her daughter's voice and turned to her, following the girl's gaze to a drawing hanging on the open refrigerator door. Henry had given it to her when she moved back from London and had everyone over for a housewarming party. The crayon drawing was supposed to be of her, Henry and Michael. The boy always looked for the drawing when he was there so Emily had left it on the fridge even after all this time. "That's from my best friend's son," Emily explained. "Henry. He just turned ten."
"Oh," was all the girl said in response. Her eyes lingered on the second child – the baby - in the crayon drawing for a moment as she felt a sudden pang of jealousy. "Do you have kids?"
"Just you," Emily replied with an almost wistful expression.
The soft look of longing on her birth mother's face made Hannah uncomfortable. She wandered off into the living room, desperate to put some distance between herself and Emily.
When Emily joined Hannah in the living room, she found the girl sitting all the way over on one side of the couch with Sergio in her lap, purring as Hannah scratched his ears and murmured sweetly to him.
"I see you met Sergio," Emily observed with a smile as she joined her daughter on the couch, handing her a glass of ice water.
"Sergio?" Hannah said with a furrowed brow and a small frown. That was…different. She tried unsuccessfully to hide that she wasn't a fan of the name, but it was too late by the time she managed to school her features into a more neutral expression.
Emily wasn't offended. She knew Sergio wasn't a very common name in America, not for a cat or a person. What the American teenager didn't know was that it was a common name in Italy. "It's Italian," she offered in explanation, hiding a small smile.
"What would you have named me?" Hannah asked, wondering if Emily would have had some equally weird foreign name in mind for her.
"Elise," Emily told her with the same wistful expression from before. Since she hadn't decided what she was going to do until her phone call with Tsia toward the end of her pregnancy, she had chosen a name for her baby girl. "My mother's name is Elizabeth, and my grandmother's name was Evelyn. Our names…they all start with an E. I'm not very close with my mother, but I was close with my grandmother, and it started with her so I figured I'd keep that tradition alive."
It was silent as Emily let herself imagine for just a minute what her life would have been like if she kept her baby and raised her – if instead of barely knowing Hannah, Hannah was Elise Prentiss and Emily was the only mom she had ever known. Emily had never given into those thoughts before, knowing the what ifs and what could have been would drive her crazy. She knew the life she was imagining would have been shattered when Doyle escaped from prison. Instead of sitting next to her on the couch, her daughter could have been in an early grave right now.
"Elise. I like it," Hannah said with a pensive expression, pulling Emily out of her dark, depressing thoughts. "But if you ever have a son, maybe you should let your husband name him," the fourteen year old suggested seriously. She didn't think her birth mother should be allowed to name a boy if the woman thought Sergio was a good name. It might be Italian, but they weren't in Italy.
Emily couldn't help but grin at the serious expression on her daughter's face and the bluntness only a kid could get away with. The young teenager was just about at the age where she couldn't get away with it anymore, but Emily wasn't just anyone and wanted the girl to be able to be herself around her and say things she wouldn't say to a stranger, even if they didn't know each other that well yet.
Growing up in the world of politics where forced politeness between people who didn't even like each other was the norm, Emily was actually glad her kid didn't feel the need to be overly polite with her. She wanted to know what her daughter was really thinking, and not just about Sergio's name, but about everything.
"I should let my future husband name our nonexistent son?" Emily said in a slightly amused tone, knowing it was a moot point. There was no husband or son. There was only her daughter who wasn't subtle at all about her opinion of the name Sergio. "I'll keep that in mind for future reference."
Hannah blushed and offered her birth mother a sheepish smile as the woman's response made her realize how far-fetched that was.
The lighthearted exchange helped ease some of the tension that had been building back up between them from the moment brunch ended, but Emily knew the girl's questions wouldn't all be as easy as what she would have named her. Emily took a deep breath as she steeled herself for the reason they were there – the answers she'd promised to give her daughter. She knew what came next would define the nature of her relationship with her kid. She didn't want to push Hannah, but she knew she couldn't keep her there all afternoon or Steve would begin to think she'd kidnapped his daughter – brunch didn't take all day. If they were going to talk, they needed to do it before it got to be too late.
Emily turned so she was fully facing her daughter with her legs curled underneath her. "Did you just want to know if I would have named you something embarrassing like Hortense or Petronella?" She teased lightly as she started to slowly ease into the girl's real questions. They were the worst names Emily could come up with completely off the cuff, and she would be lying if she said she didn't enjoy the reaction she got out of her kid – a look that was truly priceless. Emily was only able to enjoy it for a second before getting serious and prompting gently, "Or do you have any other questions for me?"
The teenager visibly stiffened, her pale hand stilling on Sergio's head. For a second, Emily thought the girl wasn't going to say anything and then a single word came out of her mouth.
"Why?" Hannah asked. It was a general why that encompassed why Emily gave her up, why Emily didn't want her, why her birth mother wasn't her mom. She had a really great mom and wouldn't trade the time she had with her for anything, but it still hurt to think of her birth mother not wanting her.
Emily knew what Hannah was really asking. She could hear the uncertainty and brittle need in the girl's voice. If she was going to be a part of her kid's life now, Hannah needed to understand the past and why Emily hadn't been there from day one. There would be no steps forward in their tentative relationship until she made Hannah understand.
Emily started by telling the girl who she was really working for when she got pregnant and what the taskforce she was a part of did at a very high level.
"So you were like James Bond?" Hannah said, awed almost in spite of herself.
James Bond? Emily knew Henry saw the BAU profilers as heroes on par with Captain America. He had adorably dressed up like Reid for Halloween one year, he'd drawn various team members wearing superhero capes, and, out of both his parents, it was always JJ he wanted for Career Day at his elementary school. The difference was that Henry saw JJ as his mom first and a hero second.
Emily was hoping that eventually her daughter might come to see her as another mom – not a replacement for the mom who raised her, but as someone she could go to in the future when she needed a mom. As flattering as it was that her kid was comparing her with the most famous fictional secret agent out there, Emily didn't want to be Hannah's hero. She just wanted to be her mom. She didn't think the hero worship the girl seemed to be developing for her would help Hannah see her in the light Emily wanted to be seen in and wanted to squash it before it got out of control.
Emily tilted her head to the side slightly and stared at Hannah with a mock-offended look on her face. "Are you really comparing me with a British man?" She decided to give her kid a hard time about the comparison as a way to subtly discourage her from making it again, even in her own mind.
"A very badass British man," Hannah said helpfully.
Emily let out a little laugh. "Nice save, kid, but I'm no James Bond."
Emily went back to describing the taskforce and the work they did, telling the girl she'd been undercover for almost two years, but leaving out what the undercover assignment was for the time being.
"I was afraid you'd be in danger because of my job," Emily said. She watched as in a split second her kid went from looking at her with awe to looking at her with scorn.
"That's what you're going with? That I would have been in danger?" Hannah scoffed in disbelief, getting angry because it was easier to be angry than hurt. "You could save everyone else from some of the worst people in the world, but you couldn't keep me safe?"
Emily knew the missing piece of the puzzle – Ian Doyle – was necessary to give the girl a complete picture of the danger she would have been in. "I couldn't keep you safe because of who your father is. Earlier you said you wanted to know who he is. I can give you answers, and I will, but you're not going to like them," she warned her child. "Are you sure you're ready for that?"
Hannah gave her birth mother an annoyed look. It was the same look millions of teenagers gave their parents over little everyday things, including being treated like a child when they felt like they were already grown up. "Don't talk to me like I'm some little kid that needs to be protected. Just tell me."
"Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you," Emily said in a resigned tone. She was worried about what the truth would do to her daughter, but she knew she owed her nothing less than that. "Your father was an international arms dealer. The taskforce I was a part of helped with the case against him and his eventual arrest. He was our target when I was undercover."
Emily didn't see any reason to elaborate on that. Hannah didn't need to know how much death and destruction the attacks Doyle supplied the weapons for had caused or how many people Doyle had personally killed. And she definitely didn't need to know the things her father had done to her mother. Emily suppressed a shudder as memories of Doyle washed over her in a chilling wave.
Hannah stared at her birth mother with wide eyes, her mouth hanging open. "So he was…a criminal," she said with a frown. Her expression softened with a combination of understanding and sympathy, both of which were a little premature. "Did he…did he rape you?"
It would have been so easy for Emily to say yes and cling onto that understanding, but she wasn't going to lie now, even if the truth would transform the newfound understanding she saw in her daughter's eyes into inevitable judgment.
She'd thought about how to explain her complicated relationship with Ian Doyle to the impressionable young teenager, but she didn't think there was a good way to explain.
As one of few females in law enforcement, there were times when Emily Prentiss was expected to flirt with male suspects for information. Even Hotch, who was as by the book as they come, had expected it...no matter how it made her feel. It was a tactic – one of many at their disposal, and never her go-to strategy, but one that couldn't always be avoided. Emily hated doing it, but she was good at it.
It was different with Ian Doyle though. With him, it wasn't just harmless flirting at that bar where they met in Boston. It was so much more than that. It was a two-year relationship. Emily couldn't live with him for almost two years and not feel anything for him. What she felt wasn't love, but it wasn't only the disgust and contempt she should have felt for someone who had done all the things he did. Even though she was just doing her job, it definitely wasn't strictly professional.
Emily blew out her breath. "No, he didn't rape me. My job was to get close to him, and I…I did what I had to do," she said, struggling to explain it to a teenager. She was going to leave it at that if Hannah let her.
Getting the information they needed to arrest Doyle had stopped attacks and saved countless lives, but that didn't mean Emily felt good about what she had to do to earn his trust. Her teenage daughter didn't need to know all the intimate details of her relationship with Doyle. What kid wanted to think about how they were conceived anyway?
For her part, the fourteen year old was a little scandalized, but at the moment she was far more concerned with how contaminated her gene pool was from her father's genes than with what her birth mother did with the man. The blood running through her veins was poisoned with his blood. She shuddered at the thought. What if she was like him?
The profiler read the fear in the teenager's body language, misinterpreting it as fear of the danger Doyle's existence posed to her when really it was fear that she was like him because she had his genes. "He's dead, honey," Emily said as gently as possible. Hannah didn't know Doyle, but he was still her father. "Any danger you would have been in because of who he was died with him."
"Would he have hurt me?" Hannah asked in a small voice.
Emily frowned as she considered her answer, her heart constricting at how young, vulnerable, and hurt her child sounded in that moment. "If he'd known about you, he would have loved you," she said, not wanting Hannah to ever question that. "But-"
"He didn't know about me?" Hannah interrupted.
Emily shook her head. "No. The key to ensuring your safety was making sure no one knew about you."
"Your family doesn't know about me?" Hannah questioned, frowning slightly.
"No one knew," Emily told her. "When you were born, your father was being interrogated in a North Korean prison." She swallowed as she thought about what she had to say to make sure her daughter understood that the danger she would have been in was very real. Emily didn't want to scare the girl or put thoughts of torture in her head, but it was too important that Hannah understand. "Torture wasn't working. If the North Koreans found out about you, they would have used you to get him to talk, and I wasn't about to let that happen."
Later, once she had time to really think about it, Hannah would question if Emily not telling anyone about her was really to keep her safe or if a part of the spy-turned-FBI agent was ashamed of her because of who her father was. And then she would begin to wonder if her adoptive parents would have wanted her if the identity of her criminal father had been in the fine print of the adoption. But in that moment, the teenager was too preoccupied with finding out her father was a criminal so she just took Emily at her word.
When the woman warned her she wouldn't like the answers, Hannah just thought her father hadn't wanted her – something she'd been trying to prepare herself to hear since she the night she found out she was adopted and that Emily was her birth mother. To Hannah, it seemed obvious her birth parents hadn't wanted her. If they had, why would they have given her up? Hannah hadn't had enough time to dream up the perfect father and create a fantasy in her head the way so many children who were adopted did, but she had thought for a minute there that maybe he worked with Emily and had an equally cool job. She would never in a million years have imagined her father as a hardened criminal rotting away in prison. The crushing reality of a father who was arrested by an antiterrorism taskforce and then tortured for information was not something Hannah ever could have prepared for.
"I was a baby," Hannah said forlornly. The protected only child couldn't believe anyone would use a baby, no matter what crimes the baby's father had committed.
"That wouldn't have mattered to them," Emily told her. "So I did what I had to do to give you a life where no one would ever be able to make the connection between you and your father. And in doing that, I missed out on the opportunity to be part of your life."
Emily was trying to wrap up the story there. She thought there was a difference between lying and holding back on the girl. There were some things a child didn't need to know about their parents. Emily subconsciously placed her hand over the exact spot where Doyle had branded her, dropping her hand as soon as she realized what she was doing. Her scars, emotional and physical, were not something she would ever want her child to see.
Emily had also avoided mentioning Declan for multiple reasons, but the biggest was that knowing about her half-brother wouldn't just affect Hannah. It would affect Declan, too – assuming Hannah would want to meet him. Emily had already turned one child's life upside down that week and was still trying to pick up the pieces from that. She didn't know if she wanted to turn another child's life upside down. She rationalized her decision, telling herself Hannah needed time to adjust before they added any other new family members in. A new mother figure was enough for now.
"Until now," Hannah said, referring to Emily's presence in her life.
"Until now," Emily agreed with a tentative smile. "I told you before I'd like to be a part of your life if you'll let me. What do you want, Hannah?"
"I…" Hannah trailed off, realizing she didn't know what she wanted from Emily. She was having a hard time reconciling the cool older woman who had a kick ass job with the birth mother who couldn't keep her safe. After spending time with Emily, Hannah's feelings toward the woman were more conflicted than ever. "I still want to get to know you," she said uneasily, "but I need to go now."
Emily's heart sank as she looked at her daughter helplessly. The girl looked pale and lost and not at all certain about what she wanted. Emily wasn't surprised by it, but it wasn't the reaction she wanted or the answer she was looking for. She knew it could have been worse – instead of the lukewarm response, her kid could have pushed her away completely. She forced a tight smile and nodded, not sure what else she could do.
Hannah got up from the couch so abruptly it woke Sergio, who had moved from her lap to the space in between Emily and Hannah earlier. The girl was halfway to the front door before Emily realized she was just going to leave.
"Hannah, wait," Emily called after the girl's retreating back, getting up to follow her.
The girl pretended not to hear her and actually sped up.
Emily stared in disbelief. Did her fourteen year old really think she could run from her? She was an FBI agent! She caught up to the teenager in seconds and gently grabbed her arm. "Hey, stop."
Hannah knew Emily was behind her before she felt the woman's hand on her arm, physically stopping her and turning her around. Her birth mother's grip was gentle but firm, and she didn't even try to pull away because she knew she wouldn't be able to. Instead, she just stood there stiffly, refusing to meet her birth mother's gaze.
"My dad said if I wanted to leave, I could," Hannah mumbled obstinately. She really wanted to get out of there before Emily asked her anything else she wasn't ready to answer. She didn't know what she wanted. She didn't even know how to feel about all this. She thought she would be leaving with answers, and instead she was just leaving with more questions. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts because they were all over the place at the moment.
Emily stared at her kid, waiting for her to meet her eyes, but she never did. "You can," Emily agreed reluctantly, trying to hide her disappointment in how the day was ending. "I'll drive you or you can call your dad to pick you up, but you can't just leave."
"I'm fourteen, not four. I can walk or take the Metro," Hannah told her.
"You can, but you're not going to - not on my watch," Emily replied. "I don't think I need to remind you that the last time you just left, you were missing for hours. Come on, I'll take you home."
After a short standoff in Emily's entryway, Emily had her sullen fourteen year old in her car. The drive to the townhouse Steve and Hannah lived in was uncomfortably silent.
As Emily went over all her interactions with Hannah in her head, analyzing them for clues as to how to fix things with the girl, she remembered something. In a last-ditch attempt to not leave things like this with her daughter, she asked if Hannah still needed help with her French paper. Emily could tell Hannah really wanted to say no, but she seemed to realize she did need help. She suppressed a triumphant smirk as her kid reluctantly asked her to come in and look at the paper.
Steve was watching college football in the living room when they walked in. "Hey, sweetheart, how was brunch?" He said without looking, his eyes glued to the television screen. When he finally turned around, he looked surprised to see Emily. "Oh - hi, Emily," he added in a neutral tone with a questioning glance at his daughter.
"Hey, Dad," Hannah said, shifting uncomfortably. "Um, Emily was just going to look at my French paper for me. You know, the one that's due next week?"
Steve shifted his inquisitive gaze to Emily. "You know French?"
"Yes," Emily answered warily as she wondered if she should have asked permission before offering to help the girl with her homework.
Steve offered her a small smile. "That'll come in handy. Her teacher's really tough. It's a bunch of kids in all honors classes, and none of them are doing well. I don't know a word of French so I'm no help."
"You wouldn't have been able to help with Spanish either," Hannah pointed out wryly.
Steve chuckled good-naturedly. "I took four years of Spanish in high school. I just don't remember any of it," he admitted for Emily's benefit. He raised his eyebrows at his daughter and teased lightly, "Let's see how much French you remember when you're my age."
It was still awkward between Steve and Emily, but they were both trying to get along for Hannah's sake. Steve was being cautious and trying to take things slow and see how Hannah did with everything, but he'd decided he wasn't going to deny his teenage daughter a positive female influence - someone she could go to for 'girl stuff' she wouldn't come to him about. Hannah had already gone to her aunt, his older sister, instead of him a few times, but each time the girl had been embarrassed and seemed awkward and uncomfortable.
With his blessing, Hannah led Emily up to her bedroom. The profiler couldn't help looking around the teenage girl's room to try to figure out who she was, what she liked, what her hobbies were. Sometime between the days when she begged her dad for a pink treehouse and now, Hannah's favorite color had changed. That was reflected in the Bohemian-looking purple, blue, and teal quilt covering her bed and the dark purple rug thrown over the white carpet – though Emily could barely see the rug because of all the clothes that hadn't made it to the hamper and instead were strewn over the floor. A black backpack was also discarded haphazardly on the floor, textbooks and binders spilling out of it. Apparently tidiness was not genetic.
"It's kind of messy," Hannah acknowledged apologetically with a half-hearted shrug. She hadn't been expecting to have anyone in her room, and there was nothing she could do about it now.
While the teenager dug her French binder out of her backpack and searched for the paper, Emily continued looking around. Her eyes roamed over the titles of the books on Hannah's bookshelf. She moved over to the bulletin board hanging over Hannah's desk and took in the calendar with all the girl's volleyball games, a ticket stub from Hamilton, and an invitation to an upcoming birthday party. There was a single strip of three pictures that looked like it had come from a photo booth. In each of the three pictures, Hannah was with another girl her age and they were both wearing nice dresses. They were smiling in two of the three pictures and making funny faces in the last one.
Hannah brought the first draft of her paper over to her desk and stood there awkwardly. "You can sit if you want," the teenager offered with a glance at the desk chair.
Emily sat down at Hannah's desk to read the paper.
"Pay special attention to the grammar," Hannah told her. Cognizant that Emily wasn't one of the parents she'd grown up with and she couldn't just expect her help like she would if it were her dad helping her with algebra, the girl quickly added a soft, "Please."
Hannah's paper wasn't bad, especially for a fourteen year old in freshman French class. Emily only found two small grammar errors, which she pointed out to her daughter.
Hannah groaned. "I would have gotten a C," she said with a dramatic sigh as she proceeded to fix the mistakes with Emily's help.
The teenager warmed back up to Emily a little bit as they worked. She was really grateful for the woman's help, and knew she couldn't continue giving the woman the cold shoulder when Emily was helping her.
"Thank you so much," Hannah said appreciatively, feeling a little embarrassed about how she treated Emily earlier.
"I told you it's no problem," Emily reminded her with a smile. "Where's your phone? I'll give you my number so you can call me if you need help with your homework. Or anything else." She held her daughter's gaze, wanting her to know she meant the 'or anything else.'
Hannah pulled her iPhone out of her back pocket and entered Emily's number, texting the woman so she would have her number, too.
Emily didn't want to leave without knowing she would see her daughter again soon. Knowing she couldn't push too hard or Hannah would start to shut down on her again, she asked if the girl wanted to go to brunch again next weekend.
"I have to ask my dad," Hannah told her birth mother in a neutral tone. It was true, but she was also using it as an excuse because she didn't want to commit to anything yet. She wanted to think about it and figure out how she felt and what she wanted before agreeing to see Emily again so soon.
"Oh. Okay," Emily said, her heart sinking at the deflection. "Just let me know."
"I will," Hannah promised.
The girl walked her birth mother out, thanking her again for her help.
Their goodbye in the entryway of the townhouse felt a little like the end of an awkward first date – clearly not in the romantic sense, but in the sense that it was a brand new relationship and Emily felt just as awkward and tentative and unsure. She desperately wanted to hug her kid and started to reach out for the girl, but quickly retracted her hand and stopped herself. Sticking with the first date analogy, her daughter hadn't even agreed to a second date so Emily was going to wait on showing any physical affection that might be unwanted or unwelcome. She didn't want to come on too strong in this newfound relationship. At the end of the day, Emily was trying to build a mother-daughter relationship from scratch with a kid she barely knew, and it would take time for things between them to start to feel more natural.
She just hoped her daughter would call.
A/N: Thanks again for reading. I'd love to hear what you think and if there's anything you want to see or any characters you want to see more of.
I hope the name discussion between Emily and Hannah didn't offend anyone. Sergio isn't a very common name in the US. I like it, but I thought it might be something an American teenager would think was different. Hortense and Petronella both came up in a Google search on names so I blame the Internet for those.
I don't believe we ever learned Emily's grandmother's name so Evelyn is made up. I originally considered having Emily choose a name for the adoptive parents to use and it occurred to me then that both Emily and Elizabeth Prentiss had 'E' names so I was going to follow that in this story as well.
