A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing. This is the rest of what I wanted to include in the last chapter, but had to re-write because I lost most of it. It's set during Season 14x10 Flesh and Blood and there are spoilers for that episode if you haven't seen it yet.

Chapter 13

After getting a call that cut the first date she'd had in months – and a date she'd already cancelled numerous times – short, Emily Prentiss was at Quantico late at night instead of in bed with a certain handsome and charming Special Agent-in-Charge of the FBI's Washington, D.C. field office.

Although it wasn't apparent at first, JJ eventually made the connection between their current case and a case from eleven years ago in Milwaukee – a case where Emily was instrumental in the arrest. The unsub was David Smith, the son of serial killer Joe Smith. Like his father, David was cutting the hearts out of the chests of his victims.

Joe Smith had conditioned his young son, David, to accept the revolving door of his female victims as maternal figures, even if it was only for forty-eight hours before Joe killed them. As a brunette female authority figure, Emily was Joe Smith's type. She volunteered to go to the door alone to see if she could get David to invite her in while Joe was preoccupied with his latest victim – one who should still be alive because it hadn't been forty-eight hours yet. The goal was to get in and save the woman he'd taken.

The second Emily set foot in that house in Milwaukee she became a maternal figure in David's mind. Emily didn't help matters by keeping in touch with the boy through phone calls – phone calls that stopped abruptly when Ian Doyle escaped from prison and her life as she knew it ended.

She'd only been on the team for just under a year at the time. In some ways her mindset was still that of the intelligence operative who infiltrated Ian Doyle's organization. Back then Emily didn't really see the difference between checking in on Declan Doyle, a boy she'd known for almost two years and one who she cared about, and checking in on David Smith, a boy she'd had very limited interaction with but felt for nonetheless. Honestly, David reminded her a little of Declan – they were both blonde, close in age, no mother in the picture and had fathers who were killers. That was part of the reason why Emily wanted to help David Smith – he reminded her of another little boy she cared a great deal about.

Under different circumstances, it could have been Declan following in his father's footsteps, but Emily got him out before Ian Doyle had done any damage that couldn't be undone. She couldn't help thinking that things might have been different for David if she had done more for him. Maybe he wouldn't be following in his father's footsteps now if she had.

She knew there were only two ways this would end for David. She didn't want it to end with his death, whether that was by his own hand or suicide by cop. She wanted him to let her help him, even if it would mean prison time. She wanted a chance to do for him now what she meant to do before.


For the second time in her life, David Smith had a gun pointed at her. The first time it was her own gun. He was just a child then. Now he was an adult and she knew he had killed before, but Emily still didn't think he would shoot her. His hand was shaking. He didn't have it in him to pull the trigger. He wasn't hard, he wasn't cold.

Emily holstered her weapon and held her hands out in a placating gesture as she slowly approached him. "If you don't want to take my help, then you're gonna have to shoot me."

"Please don't make me do this," David said with a desperate look on his face.

But no one was making him do anything, not this time. He didn't have his father or Dr. Rhodes whispering in his ear. What he did now would show who he really was.

Emily shook her head. "I'm not gonna make you do anything you don't want to do." She took another step toward him, continuing to close the distance between them.

"Emily, no," he said, his voice rising with panic. She was almost to him. He would either have to shoot her or let her get to him, and he knew it. She wasn't backing down.

"Go ahead. Do what you have to do. Shoot me," Emily said quietly, "if that's who you really are."

She knew what her words would do to him. He didn't want to be like his father. He even went to a therapist because he was afraid he shared the same violent urges as his father. That wasn't who he wanted to be.

He wanted help. He was practically crying out for it.

And then David Smith was literally crying as he surrendered to her.


"How'd you know he wouldn't shoot you?" Rossi asked in a deceptively calm tone.

David Rossi was anything but calm on the inside. Emily just walked right up to an armed unsub and practically dared him to shoot her. He thought her actions were reckless and stupid – and he knew she wasn't stupid, far from it. But there was no other word for what she did in there.

Even if Emily knew the unsub wouldn't shoot her (and she couldn't really know that), David Smith could have easily turned the gun on Dr. Rhodes. The mountain of paperwork and increased scrutiny on the BAU and its Unit Chief that would have resulted from a civilian's death wasn't what worried Rossi. It was the fact that Emily could have been killed that scared him, and that fear was quickly turning into a volatile combination of anger and frustration in the hot-tempered Italian.

With what they did, they always ran the risk of getting hurt or even killed on the job, but there was no reason to tempt fate the way Emily had. Rossi had half a mind to ask her what the hell she was thinking and really lay into her, but in the end, her instincts were right and no one got hurt so he held back and didn't say what he really wanted to say.

"His hand was shaking," Emily answered simply. David Smith was terrified of the gun in his hands and of what he could do with it. He looked more like a scared, traumatized kid than a ruthless killer. She'd known just from looking at him that he wasn't going to shoot her.

"His hand was shaking?" Rossi repeated incredulously, his voice slightly higher than normal. "His hand was shaking?!" That wasn't a reason to walk up to someone who had a gun! If anything, it was all the more reason to proceed with caution. It was a great big neon sign that the unsub was losing control.

"He's not a killer," Emily said, her eyes sad as she thought of the boy she felt like she'd failed. If she'd done more for him, things could have been different. Their four victims might still be alive, and David might not be looking at life in prison.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I must have him confused with someone else," Rossi said sarcastically with an edge to his voice. "Because the David Smith I'm thinking of killed four people, and that was just this week."

The snark was nothing new for Rossi, but the sharp, cutting edge in his voice wasn't something Emily had heard from him before, at least not directed at her. She looked at him with a startled expression. "You heard Dr. Rhodes in there. She was pulling the strings."

"Maybe she manipulated him, but he's a human being, not a puppet. He's capable of thinking for himself," Rossi told her.

"The things he's done…they weren't his idea," Emily said, shaking her head. "When he was a child, he had to take part in his father's ruse to lure women in or his father would turn his rage on him."

"He's not a child anymore," Rossi said pointedly. It wasn't that he had no sympathy for David Smith because he did, but David wasn't the child Emily remembered - he was a grown man Emily was still treating with kid-gloves. She obviously felt guilty that she couldn't save him from himself and that guilt was impairing her judgment now in Rossi's not-so-humble opinion.

"No. He's an adult who went to a therapist for help, but instead of helping him, she manipulated him into doing her bidding," Emily said. "But even after he killed those men, he didn't develop a taste for it. He doesn't enjoy killing. That doesn't absolve him of guilt - I'm not saying it does. All I'm saying is he didn't actually want to hurt anyone. He was only doing what she told him to. He wasn't going to shoot me because no one was telling him to shoot me."

"You did!" Rossi yelled in frustration, finally losing control of his temper. "My God, Emily. You practically dared him to shoot you. And I'd just like to point out that no one held a gun to his head and made him kidnap Dr. Rhodes. He was the one with a gun to her head. Pinocchio did that all on his own because he felt betrayed by her, not because anyone told him to."

It wasn't like David Rossi to be critical of her – quite the opposite, in fact. He was usually one of her biggest supporters. That was probably why Emily just stood there in stunned silence while he yelled at her.

"His rage wasn't directed toward me," Emily said quietly.

"He could have turned his rage on you. You're another maternal figure he feels betrayed by." Rossi took a deep breath as he tried to rein in his temper. He didn't mean to lose it in the first place. "Now I know your instincts were right in this case. They usually are," he acknowledged with a rueful smile that didn't last very long before he went back to being dead serious. "But I don't care what your instincts are telling you. You never dare an unsub who is armed and dangerous to shoot you," he chided Emily, not caring that she was his boss just then. She was still the younger agent he'd been somewhat of a mentor to and someone he cared about. "The next one might just take you up on it. We already buried you once. Don't make us do it again."

"Hey," Emily said, reaching out to squeeze Rossi's shoulder reassuringly as the real reason for his anger became clear to her. It wasn't that he was questioning her judgment on the case. He was doing that and she didn't like it, but it was more that he was afraid David Smith would shoot her. "I'm okay. I knew what I was doing."

"What was that exactly? Trying to give me a heart attack?" Rossi asked her mock-sternly, his expression softening.

He sounded more paternal than professional, and it filled Emily with an unexpected warmth. She felt…loved. She knew he loved her – he didn't need to yell at her for doing something dangerous for her to know that, but she really felt it in that moment.

"Just trying to give you more grey hair," Emily teased with a smirk, trying to slip back into their normal dynamic with that response. She didn't want him to be mad at her and was glad he seemed to be done yelling, even if he was only yelling because he cared.

"I don't think I have any hair left that's not grey, working with you as long as I have," Rossi retorted with a good-natured smile.

Rossi thought about all the times Emily Prentiss probably had contributed to his full head of grey hair…there was the time they could hear Benjamin Cyrus beating the crap out of her, the time she went after Ian Doyle alone, the time she risked her life to defuse the bomb strapped to Will's chest, and the time Mr. Scratch had her. She'd always had a tendency to be reckless, and she almost always demonstrated it by risking her life to save someone else's, but this time it was a completely unnecessary risk. This time she wasn't saving Reid or the team or Will. She was still being brave and noble, but she was doing it for no reason – at least not one that was good enough, not by a long shot. The only person who'd been in any real danger when they arrived on the scene was Dr. Rhodes, and there was a chance they could have still saved her life if Emily had followed protocol instead of going off-book on this one. That was what had been different and why he was so frustrated with her this time around.

David Rossi wasn't going to bury Emily again, not if he could help it.

A/N: Thanks again for reading! The date I referred to at the very beginning was, of course, with Mendoza. While I thought Emily's date with Mendoza and really all of their interactions in Season 14 were cute, the end game relationship in this will still be Prentiss / Hotch, but it will be a very slow build and romantic relationships aren't the focus of this story. Mendoza will make a few more appearances though. Next chapter will be mostly Emily and Hannah.