Chapter 10

The West End Library at 23rd and L Streets NW had just opened a year ago and was one of the nicest libraries in D.C. It was also the only library that had a copy of a newer research journal featuring a study on Alzheimer's in schizophrenics. With a cup of coffee in his hand, Spencer Reid navigated up to the section where the publication would be.

Reid was a little surprised to see a young teenage girl perusing the otherwise deserted section, and not just any teenage girl but one who looked vaguely familiar. It took him a few seconds to place the girl as Emily's biological daughter – Hannah. At least that's who he thought it was. The girl was busy studying the titles on the bookshelf intently so he couldn't really see her face, just her side profile.

If it really was Hannah, the profiler didn't want to scare her by approaching her now. She wouldn't know who he was, and he knew an unknown male talking to a young teenage girl could be off-putting to say the least. Deciding to just get what he came for and leave without saying anything to her, he entered the row.

Sensing another presence, Hannah glanced up and offered Reid a polite but disinterested smile before turning back to the bookshelf. As soon as he saw her face, Reid knew it was Hannah. Her hair was lighter than Emily's and wavy instead of straight, but her facial features were similar enough to Emily's that there was no question they were related.

Reid and Hannah were only standing about two feet away from each other as they simultaneously scanned the titles on the shelf. When Hannah finally chose one, Reid tilted his head to the side so he could see the title from his angle. He recognized it as a psychological journal on genetics and specifically nature versus nurture. Ordinarily he would think it was an unusual choice for a high school student, but because Reid knew about the girl's recent reunion with Emily, her interest in the subject actually made sense. Her curiosity was only natural.

Reid understood the girl's desire to find answers to the fundamental questions of who she was and what made her…well, her in a scientific journal instead of from someone like Emily better than most, but he also knew she wouldn't find the answers she was looking for in that particular journal. Wanting to help, he changed his mind suddenly about not saying anything to her.

"You're Hannah, right?" Reid said, trying to strike up a conversation with Emily's daughter against his better judgment.

Hannah looked up from her reading with a wary expression. She had barely spared Reid a glance before and quickly sized him up now. He had a baby face and was wearing one of his signature sweater vests and mismatched socks. He looked harmless enough to her, but she didn't recognize him and didn't know how he knew who she was.

"Yeah," she said uneasily. "Who are you?"

"I'm Dr. Spencer Reid. I work with Emily," Reid introduced himself awkwardly.

"You work with Emily?" Hannah questioned skeptically. He didn't look like an FBI agent to her. And even if he was, that didn't explain how he knew who she was. She didn't think Emily had told anyone about her and didn't think the woman would decide to tell people now.

Reid nodded in confirmation. "At the BAU." He frowned slightly at the girl's confused expression, not realizing that Emily hadn't gone into detail about what she did at the FBI. "The Behavioral Analysis Unit at the FBI?" He prompted expectantly.

"Oh," Hannah said, accepting it as a true statement when she heard FBI. "Um…how do you know who I am?"

"From the night you ran away," Reid said honestly. "We helped Emily find you."

That was new information to the teenager and she blushed, feeling embarrassed that the people her birth mother worked with knew about that. "You did?"

"It's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's what we do," Reid told her in a matter of fact tone.

Hannah thought it was something to be embarrassed about. Did the whole FBI know she completely freaked out when she found out she was adopted?

There was a moment of awkward silence as the profiler waited for the teenager to say something. When she didn't, Reid glanced at the journal in her hand. "If you're trying to understand nature versus nurture as it relates to anyone who didn't grow up with their biological parents, that won't help you. It focuses more on mental illness."

"That's not what I'm doing," Hannah said a little too quickly. She looked at him nervously and invented, "It's for school. Biology."

Reid blinked at the obvious lie. She didn't get her skills – or lack thereof – in deception from Emily. "Okay, but if it is what you're doing, I'd recommend this one instead," he suggested helpfully, pulling a different publication down from the shelf and offering it to the flustered teenager.

Knowing he didn't believe her, Hannah took the proffered journal hesitantly. She figured it couldn't hurt to give it a look. She'd been there for half an hour already and hadn't found anything like what she was looking for.

Like any teenager, Hannah started her search on the Internet, but everything she found had either been a very basic description of what nature versus nurture was or short excerpts from scholarly journals that looked promising but were cut off before she got much out of them. It was actually the scholarly articles that gave her the idea to try the library.

Hannah flipped the publication Reid pulled for her open and skimmed through the table of contents. To her surprise, it was exactly what she was looking for – the results of a study on adoption and the conclusions drawn from it on whether genetics or environment was more important in determining a person's behavior and personality.

"Are you sure you're an FBI agent and not a librarian?" Hannah said wryly. She was kidding, but now that she thought about it, he actually kind of looked like a librarian.

"I'm not a librarian, but I have read every psychological science journal ever written," Reid told her earnestly.

"You've read every psychological science journal ever written?" Hannah repeated incredulously. She'd only skimmed through a few, and they weren't exactly light reading.

Reid nodded as if that were perfectly normal. "I read a lot."

"So what side are you on in the great nature versus nurture debate then?" Hannah asked curiously, trying her best to sound casual. Asking would be a lot easier than finding the answer herself.

"They both play a role," Reid said. "The real question is how much of a role."

"That's not helpful," Hannah told him ruefully.

"It's true though," Reid told her. "Most experts agree on that, even if they don't agree on which factor is more important. Behavioral scientists generally put more emphasis on the importance of environment and life experiences, more commonly referred to as nurture."

"Does that mean nurture is more important when it comes to behavior?" Hannah asked hopefully. The teenager was hearing what she wanted to hear, and what she really wanted to hear was that she might look like her birth parents, but she didn't act like them – or at least not the one who was a criminal. She hadn't gone in with any unrealistic expectations of her biological father. She didn't expect him to be a famous actor or anything like that. She just expected him to be a halfway decent person, and she was hugely disappointed to find out he was anything but.

Reid frowned slightly. "It's not that simple." The profiler watched the girl's face fall dramatically, the hopeful look on her face turning into a look of profound disappointment. He looked at her quizzically, his brow furrowed and eyes narrowed slightly. "Would it be so bad if you were like Emily?" He was defensive of Emily, and couldn't help the defensive note in his voice now.

Hannah opened her mouth to respond and then closed it abruptly as she realized he might not know who her father was - and Emily might not want everyone she worked with knowing. She shifted uncomfortably as she tried to figure out how to respond. "Emily's…not actually the biological parent I'm worried about," Hannah said vaguely, not going into detail.

It only dawned on him then that this wasn't about Emily at all – it was about Ian Doyle. Reid didn't know why he didn't think of that before. He probably should have, but when it came to Doyle, Emily had a history of trying to protect everyone by keeping her history with him secret. As protective as Emily was, Reid would have thought she'd keep the truth about who her father was from her daughter. Apparently not.

"Have you talked to Emily about this?" Reid asked hesitantly. He didn't know how much Hannah knew and wasn't going to risk letting something slip that Emily didn't want her to know.

Hannah scoffed slightly. "No."

"Why not?" Reid questioned. He was completely baffled by her response. Why wouldn't Hannah talk to the only person who knew both her and Ian Doyle on a personal level? He frowned at the teenager's clear disdain for the idea of talking to Emily. "Are you mad at her?"

"I'm not mad at her. I'm just – I don't know." The teenager let out a frustrated sigh. She didn't know what she was feeling or how to explain her emotional turmoil. Her disappointment in who her father was and her fear that she could be like him were too all-consuming for her to spend any time working through her jumbled thoughts and feelings about Emily.

"A lot of adoptees have feelings of abandonment," Reid suggested tentatively as he wondered if maybe that was the feeling Hannah didn't know how to describe. It would be a foreign feeling for someone who grew up as the only child of two adoptive parents who had desperately wanted a kid. There was probably never a day where she felt unloved or unwanted until the revelation that she was adopted.

Hannah glanced at him in surprise. The word abandonment wasn't right. Maybe she felt a little unwanted, but not abandoned. "It's kind of hard to feel abandoned by someone when you don't even know they exist," she said. "And I didn't know Emily existed until now."

Reid studied the teenager with a furrowed brow. "If you really have no negative feelings toward Emily, then why don't you want to talk to her?"

"I just don't, okay?" Hannah snapped in a frustrated tone. She knew anything she said now could – and probably would - be repeated to her birth mother. She wasn't going to tell someone who worked with Emily why she didn't want to talk to the woman, not about this.

"You have to," Reid said softly. This was Emily's daughter – that made her family. She was practically his niece. He looked down as he tried to figure out how to get through to her. "I love my mom," he started, "but she has schizophrenia, and until I was past the age where it would have manifested, I was afraid I could have it, too. That's why I read every psychological science journal ever written. My interest in genetics was personal." Reid looked back up and met Hannah's gaze, looking into eyes that were nearly identical to Emily's. "You know, nothing I read took away the fear that I could have schizophrenia. All the statistics really told me was that there was a chance I could have it. Take it from someone who knows, you're not going to find what you're looking for in a library. The only one who can tell you definitively if you're anything like your father is Emily."

"How can she do that when she doesn't really know me?" Hannah questioned skeptically.

"Maybe she doesn't really know you. Not yet anyway," Reid acknowledged, knowing the teenager had a point. Emily had only known Hannah for weeks at that point. "But Emily is the only person who really knew your father," he told the girl. "If you want to know which personality traits, if any, you got from him, you need to talk to her."

Hannah looked at him resignedly. "There's no way you're not going to tell her about this, is there?"

"I have to," Reid told her with an apologetic note in his voice. He knew from his own experience that understanding the statistical probability that he was genetically predisposed to schizophrenia had done nothing to ease his fears. While the teenager would be able to find the scientific answer to her question in the journal he pulled for her, it wouldn't make her feel better, but talking to Emily might. Hannah needed to talk to Emily, whether she wanted to or not.

"I'm not going to have a choice then," Hannah muttered, stifling a groan. Emily hadn't exactly shied away from hard topics the last time they talked so the woman would probably say something about this the next time Hannah saw her. Trying to resign herself to that, the young teenager looked at Reid a little begrudgingly but with genuine curiosity in her eyes. "Did talking to your dad help when you were worried you could be sick like your mom?"

"I didn't talk to my dad about it," Reid admitted reluctantly. He hadn't planned on telling the girl about his estranged father. He only told Hannah about his mom because he was trying to relate to her and thought he could relate to her based on their mutual fear of becoming a parent they were terrified they could be like. It had worked, too. The girl was opening up to him.

"Then how can you stand there and tell me to talk to Emily?" Hannah demanded, raising her eyebrows at how hypocritical that was.

"I didn't talk to my dad about it because he left my mom and me when I was young," Reid explained with a frown. He swallowed as he felt the familiar mixture of hurt and anger that always accompanied any thoughts of his dad.

"I'm sorry," Hannah said quietly with unmistakable sincerity in her voice. "That really sucks." Feeling like he had to understand not wanting to talk to an absentee parent, the teenager tried again to convince him not to tell Emily what she was doing in the library. "But if you think about it, technically Emily left me when I was born. I don't want to talk to her about it any more than you wanted to talk to your dad."

"It's not the same," Reid said fiercely, not liking the way the teenager was comparing the dad he resented with someone he had the utmost respect for. "My dad knew my mom needed help, and he still left me with her. He wasn't thinking about me when he left. He wasn't thinking about anyone but himself."

"And Emily was thinking about me," Hannah said in a dull tone, knowing that was the point he was trying to make even if she wasn't sure she believed it.

"She was," Reid insisted. "Did she tell you why she gave you up for adoption?"

"She said she did it to keep me safe." Hannah looked down and shook her head. "I just - I don't believe she couldn't have kept me safe. I mean, she has a gun."

"Actually, she has at least two guns," Reid corrected, referring to Emily's service weapons. "But the people she was trying to protect you from had guns, too. What matters is that she believes leaving you with your adoptive parents was the only way to guarantee your safety. Whether you believe it or not, she really believes she was protecting you."

"Now I feel like a jerk," Hannah said.

"I don't think you're a jerk," Reid said honestly. "And neither does Emily."

"I'll talk to her," Hannah promised, specifically not saying what she was going to talk to Emily about. Maybe he wouldn't tell Emily if he thought she was going to tell her herself. She wasn't actually going to ask her birth mother if she was like her father, but she was going to see if the woman still wanted to do something with her that weekend.

What if she was like her father? Would her birth mother still want anything to do with her if Hannah reminded Emily of the man she had helped put behind bars?


After Hannah begged off brunch with a lame excuse that her profiler mother didn't believe for a second, JJ insisted that the women of the BAU go to brunch on Saturday to cheer Emily up. Instead of having brunch with her daughter, Emily met JJ, Penelope, and Tara for brunch at their go-to brunch spot. They were seated and Emily had taken her first sip of a much-needed mimosa when Penelope looked at her nervously.

"Not that I'm not glad we're doing this because I am – I really am," Penelope started, "but I still don't understand why you can't just make Hannah to go to brunch with you."

"Uh, because that would be kidnapping," Emily replied dryly.

"She's your kid," Penelope countered.

Emily sighed wearily. "Not legally. Look, I'm not going to drag her to brunch kicking and screaming." She shrugged helplessly. "She didn't want to go."

"I think you missed the kicking and screaming stage, Em," JJ told her with a small smirk. "I wish Michael were past it. He had a total meltdown in the grocery store this morning because I wouldn't buy him a candy bar. You should have seen the way everyone was looking at me. Like I'm a terrible person because I'm not feeding my toddler candy for breakfast." JJ rolled her eyes and shook her head.

"Is that why you're depriving us of his cuteness now?" Penelope demanded indignantly.

"No," JJ answered with a laugh. "Will's taking the boys to lunch and a movie so I can do some Christmas shopping."

Penelope gasped, mock scandalized. "You're going shopping and you weren't going to invite us?"

"I try to avoid the mall this time of year," Tara said, raising her eyebrows at the tech analyst as she wondered how the other woman could actually want to go to the mall in December.

"I'm with you," Emily told Tara.

"I'm not looking forward to it," JJ said honestly with a wary expression.

"Aw, do you need a little liquid courage before you brave the crowds?" Emily asked as she picked up the pitcher of mimosa and topped off JJ's glass.

"Like we need an excuse for mimosas," Penelope scoffed as she took a drink from her own glass.

"Laugh now, but just wait until moms fighting over the last Fingerling in the store make the evening news," JJ said wryly, referring to one of the 'it' toys of the year that was in low supply and high demand.

"What the hell is a Fingerling?" Emily asked with a confused expression.

"And more importantly, does Henry want one? Do you need his fairy godmother to find it for him?" Penelope offered magnanimously.

"Thankfully Fingerlings aren't on either of the boys' Christmas lists," JJ said. She shifted her gaze to Emily. "And you don't want to know. Just think the Tickle Me Elmo of 2018."

"I remember people fighting over those Tickle Me Elmo dolls!" Emily told her.

"Moms can be ruthless when it comes to getting their kids what they want for Christmas," Tara mused. She tilted her head to the side slightly, looking at JJ curiously. "What does Henry want? I still need to get him something."

As JJ went through her oldest son's extensive Christmas list, rolling her eyes at some of the outlandish things he was asking for, Emily's phone started ringing. The chatter stopped abruptly and all four women froze, knowing they might be getting called in on their day off.

"If we're getting called in, I'm finishing my mimosa first," Penelope warned them.

Emily glanced at the screen of her iPhone, planning to send whoever was calling to voicemail unless they were actually getting called in. "You can relax. It's just Spencer," the BAU Unit Chief told her companions before answering it. "Hey, Spence."

"Tell him to come join us!" Penelope exclaimed excitedly.

"He should come," Tara agreed. "We haven't even ordered yet."

"Emily, hi," Reid said a little impatiently. "Listen, I'm leaving the West End Library right now."

"Oh, yeah? I'm with JJ, Tara, and Penelope. Do you want to meet us for brunch?" Emily asked him.

Reid frowned slightly as he tried to hear Emily over the background noise of the restaurant she was in. And was that Penelope demanding that Emily give her the phone? "Actually, I'm calling because I saw Hannah at the library."

"You did?" Emily said in a surprised tone. Maybe Hannah hadn't been lying and she was actually doing homework on a Saturday. That might be a first for a teenager.

"She was looking at psychological journals containing research on genetics, and specifically nature versus nurture," Reid told her. "She's worried she could be like Ian Doyle."

"How do you know that's what she's worried about?" Emily asked warily. She closed her eyes for a second and let out a small, frustrated sigh. "Please tell me you didn't say anything to her." If Hannah hadn't come to her with her worries and fears, somehow Emily didn't think the teenager would appreciate one of her colleagues prying into something so personal.

"Who are we talking about here?" JJ inquired curiously, leaning forward in her chair.

"Yeah, what's wrong?" Tara asked with a concerned expression.

Emily held up her hand, silently signaling for both of them to hang on.

"I can't because I did," Reid admitted. "I wasn't going to say anything at first, but when I saw what she was reading, I couldn't help it. I actually think it might have helped her to talk to me about how she was feeling."

Emily raised her eyebrows in surprise. Hannah talked to Reid about her feelings? The mother was glad her daughter was talking to someone, but wished the girl felt like she could talk to her. "How is she feeling?"

"That's just it. I don't think she really knows. She doesn't really seem angry with you though," Reid mused.

"No, she just doesn't want to talk to me," Emily said wryly. She thought she'd take her kid angry over shutting her out if she had a choice.

"She said she would talk to you," Reid reported back. "But she doesn't really want to. She wouldn't tell me why though. She did say she doesn't believe that you couldn't have kept her safe even if you didn't give her up for adoption. I think maybe she's hurt that you didn't find another way to protect her."

"There was no other way," Emily said resolutely.

"I know you believe that," Reid said quietly.

"You don't?" Emily questioned a little defensively.

"There's always another way. One that doesn't involve leaving your family," Reid said pointedly. He wasn't just talking about Emily's daughter anymore. He was talking about Emily leaving them.

Emily left them to go after Ian Doyle alone. When they found her in that warehouse in Boston and saved her from Doyle, she let Reid believe she was dead because she didn't think Doyle would stop coming after the team – or her – as long as she was alive. And it wasn't just whenever Doyle was involved.

Emily almost left again last year. She was going to take the fall for what happened in Roswell so Linda Barnes would leave the team alone. The only reason she didn't was because Reid found her packing and convinced her to stay.

"Is this still about Hannah?" Emily asked. She had a feeling it wasn't.

"No, it's about you," Reid told her bluntly. "Your answer is always to leave.

"Always? That's a bit of an exaggeration," Emily said lightly.

"Maybe not always, but enough that it's a pattern of behavior," Reid said, daring to profile her. "And I know it's always to protect the people you care about," he acknowledged, "but we care about you, too. I just worry that you'll leave us again if you think you're protecting us," he continued solemnly. Her protective nature was the reason they were even having this conversation so he decided to appeal to her protective instincts with a hypothetical scenario. "How would you feel if the situations were reversed? What if I was in trouble and I just left to deal with it on my own?"

Emily's first thought was that if he ever did that, she would find him and kick his ass. But it would never come to that. If Reid was in trouble, she would know. She had always been able to tell when something was going on with him, even when she was new to the team. When he was using Dilaudid, Emily was the first one to call him on all the changes in his behavior even though she'd only known him for months at the time. She thought she had a pretty good track record of knowing when something was up with him - and, now that she knew him better, of getting him to talk to her about it.

"You wouldn't do that," Emily said simply. She didn't tell him that she would never let him do that, but she was thinking it.

"No, I wouldn't. But if I did, how would you feel?" Reid asked her, not backing down. He wanted her to think about it. Mainly he just didn't want Emily to leave again.

Reid loved JJ and Penelope, but they were relatively close in age. The three of them had always been the youngest on the highly experienced BAU team. They were friends. They were family, too – the whole team was family. But it was different with Emily. She was almost exactly eleven years older than he was. She literally had a decade more experience than he did. He looked up to Emily Prentiss. She was a sort of pseudo big sister to him. Now that she was officially his boss, Emily was the only consistent female authority figure he'd ever had. But even before she was Unit Chief of the BAU, Emily was a trusted older female who had been a (mostly) stable presence in his life, her absences when she was legally dead and again when she was working for Interpol in London notwithstanding. Growing up with an unstable mother, Spencer Reid had never really had an older female looking out for him until Emily. Reid felt like he was slowly losing his mom as her Alzheimer's progressed. He didn't think he could stand to lose Emily again, too.

"Okay, you've made your point," Emily told Reid gently, not wanting to argue. They would never agree on this. It would be different if he were in trouble just because of who he was. He was the youngest member of the team. Even if she weren't his boss - which she was - Emily saw Spencer Reid as the kid brother she never had. It was her job to protect him, both as his boss and as a self-appointed older sister.

"Have I?" Reid questioned doubtfully.

"Yes. Come on, Reid, it's me," Emily said in a pleading tone, not wanting him to worry about this. "I'm not going anywhere, but even if I did – even if I were back in London – you know I'd still be there for you, anything you need. You do know that, right?"

"I know," Reid conceded. "For what it's worth, I think I convinced Hannah that you were trying to do the right thing for her."

"Oh, yeah?" Emily said cautiously.

Emily listened as he recounted the rest of his conversation with Hannah, the mother's concern growing as Reid dutifully repeated everything her daughter said to him about her and Ian Doyle. She chewed her bottom lip as Reid told her that for the longest time he was terrified he could have schizophrenia like his mom and that he saw that same fear in Hannah now.

A teenage girl should be worrying about her grades and whether or not her high school crush liked her, not whether she had inherited criminal tendencies from her father.

Maybe it was a mistake to tell Hannah the truth about who her father was. Emily didn't want to lie to her daughter, but was fourteen too young for the uncensored truth? Should she have waited until the girl was older?

Emily didn't know if she should have told Hannah as much as she did, but it was too late now. The only thing she could do now was take away her child's fears – or try to anyway.

"Is she still at the library?" Emily asked urgently.

"She was when I left," Reid told her. "And I just left. If you hurry, you can probably catch her."

"Thank you," Emily said before hanging up. She took enough money to cover the mimosa she'd nearly finished and a tip out of her wallet and set it on the table. "Sorry, but I have to go. Spencer saw Hannah, and, well, I really have to go, but I'll explain later."


Ten minutes later Emily slid out of the back of her Uber driver's car and walked into the library. She followed the librarian's instructions to a fairly deserted part of the library where she found Hannah sitting alone at a table with her earbuds in and a research journal open in front of her on the table.

Emily sat down in the chair directly across from Hannah, prompting the teenager to look up with a small sigh. The girl took her earbuds out and looked at Emily expectantly. She didn't exactly seem happy to see her, but she also didn't seem angry or even annoyed. If anything, the girl just seemed resigned.

"Well, that was fast," Hannah observed.

A/N: Thanks for reading and to everyone who reviewed! In answer to a question, I have plans to include Declan eventually, but not any time soon. I want Emily and Hannah to have a solid relationship before introducing Declan. The way I plan to introduce him will be a source of major drama later on.