A/N: Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed. This is a really long chapter. I incorporated one new character from the last few episodes of CM into this, but it does not play out the way it did in the show. I don't know if it would be considered spoiler-ish since I don't give away what actually happened, but this is a spoiler warning just in case. The part I'm referring to is at the very end during Emily's date with Andrew.
Chapter 23
"My dad wants to talk to you."
Emily took the phone from her daughter, not really knowing what to expect.
Steve was actually very pleasant. He already knew from his conversation with Hannah that she asked her birth mother for permission to go out, and Emily told her that she needed to ask him. By doing that Emily was showing him that she respected his role as Hannah's father – something he needed to know to feel comfortable with the woman's increasing presence in his daughter's life.
After a lot of begging and pleading from Hannah, who reminded him that she'd been sick almost all week and hadn't been able to do anything with her friends, the father was going to let his daughter go to the New Year's Eve party, but he needed to talk to Emily first and make sure she was okay with it. Hannah was staying with her, and he didn't know what other plans the woman might have. If Hannah went out, Steve wanted to make sure there was a responsible adult who could go get her from the party if she needed a ride.
When she thought she'd have Hannah home with her for the night, Emily was thinking about inviting Penelope and Tara – the single ladies of the BAU - over for a girl's night on New Year's Eve. It would have been something fun for the adults and the teenager. However, if Hannah was going out, Emily would probably end up going out with Andrew.
He'd asked, and she never really said no, but she hadn't exactly said yes either. Even before she agreed to take Hannah for the better part of a week, Emily was on the fence about spending New Year's Eve with the man she'd only seen a few times. A date on New Year's Eve seemed like a big deal to the woman who was a little bit of a commitment-phobe in relationships. It wasn't really commitment she was afraid of. It was opening herself to up to the possibility of heartache.
In response to the adoptive father's inquiry about whether she had other plans, Emily simply said she had dinner plans with a friend but assured him that Hannah could call her any time and she'd go get the girl.
Once she had permission to go out, Hannah immediately started trying to negotiate her 11:00 pm curfew with her dad. Emily listened as the young teenager argued that no one else had a curfew that early. According to Hannah, everyone would be out until midnight because it was New Year's Eve. Emily couldn't help but be mildly amused by the teenage girl's dramatics.
Hannah let out a long-suffering sigh at Steve's response, said goodbye, and handed the phone back to Emily in a defeated manner. "He wants to talk to you again."
It was so terrible to be a teenager with an attentive parent who wouldn't allow her to stay out all night and do whatever she wanted. Emily fought the urge to roll her eyes at her pouting fourteen year old and instead offered the girl a small smile as she took the phone to see what Steve had to say now.
Steve had compromised and extended Hannah's curfew to 11:30, but he did not want her out at midnight on New Year's Eve with all the drunk drivers out there. It wasn't just teenagers going home from high school parties that he was worried about, but college kids leaving the bars and twenty-somethings leaving clubs. He didn't ever think his young teenage daughter needed to be out that late, and he definitely didn't want her out that late on New Year's Eve. He just didn't think it was a good idea, and Emily privately agreed.
With both adults on the same page, Emily hung up with Steve and returned her daughter's phone. "Oh, stop pouting," Emily said, chuckling softly. "Your dad's not here to see it."
"I'm not pouting," Hannah protested with an indignant look at her birth mother. She wasn't pouting – she just thought it was unfair that she was the only one in her school who had an 11:00 pm curfew. Her dad had compromised but barely, and now, instead of sympathy or understanding, Emily was laughing at her.
In that moment, Emily could just picture her daughter as a little girl, but, instead of the bright smile Emily had seen in pictures, the version of her daughter that Emily conjured in her mind had the same dark, stormy eyes and the same pursed lips that Hannah had now. It would have been much more endearing on the four year old Emily was imagining than it was on the teenager sitting next to her on the couch, but four years old or fourteen years old, Hannah was her kid, and her adorable pout had the same effect on Emily. The mother stifled a smile. "Yes, you are. It's kind of cute."
Hannah sat on the couch with her arms crossed in front of her, the very picture of a sullen teenager, and turned her head to glare at her birth mother in an affronted manner. She was fourteen. She wasn't pouting, and she wasn't cute.
With Hannah's arms crossed in front of her chest like that, her side was unprotected. Emily took the opportunity to poke her daughter's side in a playful manner, her index finger getting the girl right between her ribs in a spot that was especially ticklish.
Hannah shrieked in surprise. Try as she might to maintain her glare, she couldn't help laughing - a natural response to the sensation, however short-lived, of being tickled. "Don't," Hannah whined as she squirmed away.
Although her laughter was dying down quickly, it made it hard for Emily to take the girl's complaint seriously. Emily merely grinned widely when her kid dropped the angry glare despite her best efforts to keep up the moody teenager act.
Hannah tried to move on with as much dignity as a teenager could possibly have after that exchange. "I need to go back to my house to get something to wear to the party. I don't have anything here."
"Or we could go shopping," Emily suggested. She needed something to wear if she was going to go out with Andrew on New Year's Eve.
Hannah brightened almost immediately at the prospect of shopping with Emily, her displeasure with her curfew temporarily forgotten. As they planned their shopping trip, mother and daughter debated the merits of the different malls before agreeing on Tyson's Corner.
Even though they were going shopping and she no longer needed clothes, Hannah still wanted to stop by her house to get the gift cards she received for Christmas. Emily waited in the entryway while the girl ran upstairs to grab her gift cards and anything else she needed.
While she was waiting, her phone started ringing. Emily glanced at the screen of her iPhone and saw that it was Deputy Director of the FBI James Barbour. He wouldn't be calling unless he had a reason to, and, whatever the reason, somehow she didn't think it would be good.
"Prentiss," Emily answered her phone in a crisp, professional tone.
"Agent Prentiss," he said. "This is Deputy Director Barbour."
"Sir," Emily acknowledged respectfully as she racked her brain for what he could be calling about.
"I know the BAU is currently out of rotation. That's not why I'm calling," he started. "The fact of the matter is that the BAU isn't the only unit we have with more people taking time off this time of year than who are actually working. Every female agent in Counterterrorism who's fluent in Arabic is out right now. I'll cut right to the chase. You're fluent in Arabic."
Shit. Emily could already tell this was going to cut into her plans with Hannah, but she couldn't exactly say no. It was the Deputy Director. "Yes, sir," Emily confirmed with a defeated sigh.
"Counterterrorism has taken a husband and wife with known ties to an organization on every watchlist out there into custody. We could use your help in the wife's interrogation, Agent Prentiss. She only speaks Arabic, and we think she may respond better to a female agent. You're the only female agent who is fluent Arabic and stayed in the D.C. area for the holidays. Based on the chatter we've picked up, time is of the essence here."
"Sir, I have my daughter with me," Emily said, giving the girl in question an apologetic look as she came down the stairs.
Hannah looked at Emily quizzically but didn't say anything since she could see that the woman was on the phone.
"Another agent can sit with your daughter," Barbour offered, not unkindly. He didn't know how old Emily's daughter was. He wouldn't normally volunteer an FBI agent for babysitting duty, but he really needed Emily's particular skillset. Her language skills, previous experience with an anti-terrorism taskforce, and background in profiling made her the perfect man – or rather woman – for the job. He needed her to come in.
"That won't be necessary," Emily said hastily, knowing her teenager would have an absolute fit if she thought someone was babysitting her. "She'll be okay in my office."
After she disconnected, Emily reluctantly met Hannah's gaze. "I'm so sorry," Emily said sincerely, "but I have to go into work. You can come with me, and we can still go to the mall after," Emily promised.
Instead of the disappointment Emily expected, Hannah looked overly excited about the prospect. "I can come?" Hannah asked with wide eyes.
"Yes," Emily said. "Just to my office though," she tried to warn the girl who seemed more excited than the situation really warranted. "You might want to bring a book or something."
"Because the FBI is so boring?" Hannah said lightly, amusement in her eyes. How did her birth mother not know how cool her job was?
The Unit Chief of the BAU did a quick sweep of her office to make sure there were no case files or reports sitting out. She didn't want Hannah to think that she didn't trust her, but there were things in her office that no fourteen year old needed to see. Her daughter's obvious interest in her job was bothering her a little.
"Emily Prentiss! What are you doing here?"
Emily recognized Penelope's voice and looked up from her desk in surprise. She didn't think anyone from her team would be there. She took in the other woman's hot pink workout top and multicolored hot pink, bright purple, electric blue, and neon yellow tights and then noticed Tara, who was also wearing workout clothes and was leaning casually against the doorframe. They must have come in to use the gym. Emily knew Tara was a regular at the gym. Penelope wasn't, but there was a newer agent on another team who looked a lot like a younger Derek Morgan, and Penelope had taken to watching him lift weights in the gym whenever she could.
"You should be at home, bonding with-" Penelope's rant was cut off abruptly when she spotted Hannah. "Hannah!"
"Hi," Hannah said dryly.
"Do we have a case?" Tara asked.
"No, we don't," Emily assured them. "I was called in to help Counterterrorism."
"What? But why?" Penelope said with a worried expression. She didn't want Emily mixed up with another Ian Doyle type, even if the man was partially responsible for the creation of her new favorite teenager.
"Because they need someone who speaks Arabic," Emily explained.
"And Emily's like Google Translate. Only more accurate," Hannah quipped.
Tara knew Emily didn't want to be at work, not when she had Hannah. "It's Counterterrorism," she said with an exasperated expression. "Don't they have anyone else who speaks Arabic?"
"Not a female. At least not one who's in town right now," Emily told the other woman.
"Lucky you," Tara said sarcastically, looking at Emily with a sympathetic expression. "We were going down to the gym when we saw the light on in your office." Tara turned to Hannah. "You can come with us. We'll give you the nickel tour."
Emily shot Tara a grateful look. "Go with them," Emily urged her daughter. She put a hand on the girl's shoulder and gave her a gentle push toward Penelope and Tara. "I'll come find you guys when I'm done."
Almost two hours later Emily found her friends and her daughter in the gym. Penelope was lying spread-eagle on the training mat on the floor and acknowledged Emily with a groan. Tara had Hannah standing in front of a punching bag and was showing the girl the correct way to make a fist. Emily watched her daughter give the punching bag an experimental punch before announcing her presence. "I'd hold off on joining a fight club."
"She's a lover, not a fighter," Penelope spoke up without ever moving from the floor.
Emily made a face at that. She didn't know that she wanted her fourteen year old daughter to be a lover or a fighter.
Hannah turned to Emily with a good-natured, if somewhat sheepish, smile. "I guess I don't have your right hook."
"Are you planning on punching anyone?" Emily asked her child in a slightly amused tone.
"Not anymore. I'll just kick anyone who messes with me in the balls," Hannah told the woman mock seriously.
Emily looked at Hannah with thinly veiled amusement. "How about you tell me if someone messes with you and I'll take care of it?"
"Sure, I'll just ask the rapist or mugger to wait a minute so I can call my mother, the FBI agent," Hannah said sarcastically.
"Where are you going that you think you're going to be fighting off rapists and muggers?" Emily asked her daughter with raised eyebrows. She would be appalled if she didn't know better, but she knew the teenager's normal routine, and it consisted of school, volleyball and home – no place Hannah was likely to be mugged.
"Nowhere," Hannah said, giggling a little at the absurdity of it.
"Uh-huh," Emily murmured, fighting a smile. "Since we know you don't have a knockout punch, does anyone want to tell me what happened to Penelope?"
"Oh." Hannah glanced at Penelope. "Tara broke her."
"I didn't break her," Tara said defensively. "She wanted to work out with me."
"Only because I thought this whole gym thing would be less horrible if I had a workout buddy!" Penelope said earnestly. "But it wasn't. After this experience, I can only conclude that whoever came up with the concept of a gym was a total sadist, and all the exercise machines are torture devices for all the masochists out there."
"Hey, you said you wanted to do whatever I would normally do," Tara reminded her. She had asked the tech analyst what she wanted to do and that was the answer.
Emily bit her bottom lip as she hid a small smile. "Maybe you should try something low intensity like yoga or Pilates. There's a Pilates class at this place by me on Saturday mornings. We could go," Emily suggested tentatively.
"But that's when we hang out," Hannah said a little forlornly.
"Not at 8:00 am we don't. You're asleep when I go to Pilates," Emily assured her kid.
With what looked like enormous effort, Penelope sat up and stared at Emily in disbelief. "A workout class at 8:00 am on a Saturday? No, thank you."
Emily just laughed and helped pull Penelope to her feet.
"Okay, ow," Penelope complained loudly, wincing as she stood stiffly.
"You gonna be okay?" Emily asked.
"I'm okay. I just feel like a pinata after a whole party full of six year old boys gets through with it," Penelope replied.
"You broke her," Hannah told Tara.
It was just over a half hour drive from Quantico to Tyson's Corner Center, and it took Emily another ten minutes of circling to find a parking spot outside the three-story Nordstrom. After a late lunch in Nordstrom café, they wandered through the mall aimlessly.
The mall was still crowded, but it was a lot less crowded than it had been just a week before when everyone was doing last minute Christmas shopping. Now people were there returning gifts they didn't like or that just didn't fit and using gift cards at the after Christmas sales. There were groups of giggling young teenage girls about Hannah's age, hassled looking mothers with younger children who did not want to be in a mall unless they were in a candy store or a toy store, and mothers with their pre-teen or teenage daughters who thought the mall was their oyster.
Shopping had been a go-to activity for Hannah and her adoptive mom, and she missed having a mother to shop with. She always jumped at the chance to go shopping with her aunt and cousins, but her aunt's focus was always on her own kids, Hannah's cousins. It was nice to have Emily's sole focus be on her. They went into any store Hannah showed any interest in, Emily picked out some things for Hannah to try on, Emily waited in the dressing room for Hannah to model everything she took back to the dressing room. If she noticed Hannah looking at anything longingly, Emily grabbed it. It was different from shopping with her aunt and cousins or her friends. It was all about Hannah, and she was relishing it.
Emily lost count of the number of stores they'd been in, but they had bags from Madewell, Altar'd State, and H&M by the time they were done shopping for Hannah. It was fun for the mother to shop for her daughter. It helped that the tall, slender teenager looked good in just about anything. Hannah wanted to know what Emily thought about everything she tried on and was extremely grateful for everything Emily got her. Hannah thanked her profusely, but really Emily was glad to be able to take her daughter shopping.
When there were no other stores Hannah wanted to go in, they detoured to the second floor of Nordstrom where Emily browsed the racks of more formal dresses.
After Emily told the saleswoman who took a dress back to the dressing room for her while she continued looking that she was shopping for New Year's Eve, Hannah looked at her curiously. "What are you doing for New Year's Eve?" It had never even occurred to the teenager that her birth mother might have plans. Her dad never went out.
"I'm going out to dinner," Emily replied casually as she looked for her size in a dress she wanted to try on.
Hannah gave Emily a speculative look. "Like on a date?" She asked, her eyes shining with excitement. For a teenage girl, guys were always a hot topic.
Emily didn't like discussing her love life with anyone, but Hannah wasn't just anyone. If she wanted her daughter to be comfortable talking to her about dating, Emily knew she couldn't act like her own date was something to hide. "Yes, on a date," Emily answered.
It was weird for the girl to think of one of her parents dating, but it would have been even weirder if it were her dad – the parent she actually grew up with and had only ever seen with her adoptive mom. Hannah couldn't imagine her dad with anyone but her mom. She didn't think she would like anyone her dad dated for no other reason than because that woman wouldn't be her mom.
"With who? Do you have a boyfriend?" Hannah asked with an eager expression, wanting to know everything about her birth mother's date.
That was a good question. Emily had only been out with Andrew Mendoza a few times because of cases and work travel. When she was going to see him, Emily always felt the kind of giddy nervous excitement that she only felt when she really liked someone. They'd had sex – not that she was going to tell her young teenage daughter that – and there was chemistry there. She hesitated, her uncertainty about how to answer playing across her face. "I…don't know that I'd call him that. I've only gone out with him a few times," Emily responded, trying to downplay it. She wasn't entirely comfortable having this conversation, but she was trying to give enough information to keep the lines of communication about dating and guys open without giving any more information than she had to.
"Would you tell me if you had a boyfriend?" Hannah questioned uncertainly. Emily was her mother, and it felt like something she should know, but she didn't know if Emily would think it was any of her business. Unlike her dad whose life seemed to the teenager to revolve around her, Emily had a whole life outside of her.
Emily chuckled softly. "Yes. On one condition…you tell me when you have a boyfriend."
The fourteen year old blushed and looked down, avoiding the older woman's eyes. "I will," she murmured her quiet agreement. "But that's not going to happen any time soon."
Emily wanted that to be true, but she knew better. "It may happen sooner than you think," was all she said in response. Whenever it happened, Emily wouldn't be ready for it. She didn't even want to think about her daughter doing with boys what Emily herself was doing with boys at fifteen, but Hannah was almost that age.
"Have you ever seen 10 Things I Hate About You?" Hannah asked seemingly randomly.
"Yes," Emily replied. "The nineties teen movie version of Shakespeare's The Taming of The Shrew. Good movie."
"You know the dad in it? And how he was all 'no dating until you graduate?'" Hannah said, getting to her point. "That's totally my dad."
Emily smirked as her teenager compared the overprotective single father from the movie with her own dad. In the movie and in real life, a hard-and-fast rule like that only made kids resort to sneaking around. Emily would much rather know who her kid was with and what she was doing than have Hannah lying and sneaking around. "But Bianca did date before she graduated," Emily reminded Hannah. "And you will, too. And when you do-"
"I'll tell you," Hannah promised her birth mother dutifully.
Emily decided to leave it at that for now, trusting that Hannah would tell her before her first date, and they could talk more then. While they were talking, Emily found her size in the dress she was looking at. She headed back to the dressing rooms with her daughter following behind her.
Hannah sat down in a chair in the dressing room and waited for Emily to try on the two dresses she found. The first was a three-quarter sleeve black lace cocktail dress. It was very classic and timeless. The second was midnight blue satin slip dress that was extremely flattering on Emily.
"I like that one," Hannah said enthusiastically when Emily stepped out of the dressing room wearing the second dress. "You look really pretty."
Emily's heart melted at the sweet sincerity in her daughter's voice. Hannah could be really sweet when she wanted to be.
On New Year's Eve Emily and Hannah were both in Emily's bathroom getting ready to go out. After showering in the guest bathroom, Hannah went into Emily's bathroom to ask if she could use her blow dryer. When Emily said she could get ready in there if she wanted to, Hannah brought her flat iron and makeup bag in and took up residence in front of the second sink. They talked as they got ready, with Emily indulging the girl's questions about how she met Andrew, what he looked like, and where they were going to dinner.
Hannah was almost done straightening her hair. It was a cumbersome task that felt like it could take forever with her long, thick hair. "I wish I had your hair," Hannah said as she set the flat iron down on the counter. She was only thinking about how much easier – and faster – it would be to style her hair if it was straight. But as soon as she said it, she got to thinking about who she got her wavy hair from.
"You do. Mine's not that much darker," Emily told her.
"But your hair's straight. Mine's wavy." Hannah glanced at her birth mother a little warily. "Did my father have wavy hair?"
Emily froze for a split second, the hand that was holding the mascara wand pausing in mid-air. Hannah hadn't said one word about Ian Doyle in weeks. Ever since Emily convinced her that personality-wise she was nothing like Doyle, Hannah never brought him up again. Why was Hannah asking this now? Why now when everything was good…when they were good? Hannah wasn't going to like the answer. Emily knew how much her kid hated the idea that she was anything like her father, but that was one physical characteristic the girl definitely couldn't have gotten from her.
As a little boy, Declan had an adorable mop of blonde curls. In the most recent picture Emily had seen of him, his hair wasn't as curly as it used to be, but it wasn't straight either. He was wearing it in a shaggy style that fell about an inch past his chin in blonde waves. Although Ian Doyle had a militaristic buzzcut when Emily knew him, he had said more than once that his young son looked just like him. That was who Hannah got her wavy hair from.
"He had a buzzcut when I knew him," Emily deflected. Every word was true, but she was choosing her words very carefully. She was raised by a career politician. She knew how to bend the truth and twist it to her advantage. She learned from the best. But her skill at deception didn't do anything to alleviate the guilt she felt. This was the closest she had come to lying to her daughter – something she swore she would never do. She didn't want to lie to Hannah, but she also didn't want the girl to have a meltdown over her wavy hair.
"Does your mom or anyone on your side of the family have wavy hair?" Hannah asked with a glimmer of hope in her dark eyes.
"My mother's hair is straight, but she always curls her hair," Emily told the girl as she swiped the mascara wand over her lashes.
"Really? Do you have any pictures of her?" Hannah asked.
Emily didn't have any pictures of her parents on display in her condo. She shook her head. "I'm not very close with my parents," she offered simply by way of explanation.
Hannah stared at Emily in complete disbelief. "You have to have a picture of her somewhere. She's your mom," Hannah said earnestly.
Emily opened her mouth to respond and hesitated slightly. "My mother was always working," Emily started to explain.
"My dad's always working," Hannah said, exaggerating a little.
"Not like my mother he's not," Emily told the girl as she uncapped her lipstick. "Let me put it this way - in a month, you and I have spent more time together than my mother ever spent with me when I was your age. I wasn't the easiest kid. I did things to rebel. It was my way of trying to get her attention, but what it really did was make it so that every time she actually paid attention to me, we were fighting."
"I'm sorry," Hannah said with a sympathetic expression.
Emily offered her daughter a small smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Me, too."
"You're not like her," Hannah said, feeling a sudden rush of gratitude that neither of the mothers she'd known had ever acted anything like Emily's mother.
"That's because I use my mother as an example of what not to do," Emily tried to joke.
"So you really don't have any pictures of her?" Hannah asked, still finding that hard to believe.
"Google her," Emily told her daughter. "There has to be a picture of her attending a political summit or fundraiser online."
Hannah grabbed her iPhone from the bathroom counter to do what her birth mother suggested. With the web browser app open, she shot her mother a questioning look. "Ambassador Prentiss?"
"Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss," Emily supplied.
Just as Emily predicted, the search results returned several pictures of the Ambassador. There was one picture of Elizabeth Prentiss and a man. Wondering if the man was Emily's father, Hannah clicked on it and saw that it wasn't actually Emily's father. "Is that – is she with Reagan?" Hannah looked at Emily with astonishment.
Emily glanced at the image on her daughter's phone, unsurprised to see her mother with a former president of the United States. "Yes."
"She doesn't look like a cold-hearted bitch," Hannah observed in a detached manner.
"Hannah!" Emily cried in a tone that was half-disapproving and half-amused as she shot her teenager a look.
"I'm sorry, but it's true," Hannah said unapologetically. "You're the one who told me how awful she was to you."
"She was just…focused on her career," Emily said quietly as she inspected her own reflection in the mirror with a critical eye. When she was happy with her makeup, she turned to Hannah. "Andrew will be here soon. Your friend is picking you up?"
"Yeah," Hannah replied.
"How do you have friends that drive?" Emily wondered. "You're fourteen."
"Everyone on my volleyball team is older," Hannah answered.
"Varsity?" Emily guessed.
Hannah nodded. "I'm the only freshman." The girl didn't say this with pride but rather in more of a woe-is-me way.
Although she didn't elaborate, many of the older girls on the team called Hannah 'the freshman' or worse – 'baby freshman.' Try outs were the summer before ninth grade started, and the girl had inadvertently taken the last spot on the Varsity team away from a sophomore whose sister was one of the more popular juniors on the team.
After a sleepover to 'celebrate' the new members of the team that was really a night of hazing, it had been obvious to everyone there that it was the first time Hannah drank alcohol. In one night, the girl who had just barely turned fourteen at the time earned a reputation as a baby that she'd been trying to live down ever since. Once they realized Hannah wasn't going to tell on them for the hazing or anything else, most of the girls on the team got over their initial resentment of having a freshman on the team. A few of them thought of her as an unofficial little sister. They still called her 'baby freshman,' but it was no longer to be mean or snide. However, the popular junior whose sister was relegated to the JV team still treated Hannah with cold resentment that bordered on cruelty sometime.
"You're just that good," Emily said teasingly, a proud grin on her face. "I'd like to go to one of your games and see you in action."
When she first met Emily, Hannah couldn't picture the woman at a high school volleyball game, but now she could actually see it. It was nice that her birth mother wanted to be there for her, but the season was over. "The season just ended," Hannah told Emily. "And I don't know if I'm going to play next year."
"Why not?" Emily questioned, frowning slightly.
Hannah just shrugged, not wanting to tell the older woman how miserable one girl had made the season for her. "I might do cross country instead," she offered in an attempt to distract her birth mother from the subject of volleyball.
Emily accepted the explanation without questioning it. "I would come watch you run cross-country, but I'm not sure if there's anything to watch. Just your back as you run away." With that, Emily went back to the logistics of the evening. "I need regular check ins from you tonight."
Once her dad gave permission, he trusted that Hannah was doing what she said she was going to do and didn't feel the need to check in on her unless she missed her curfew. The teenager looked at her birth mother in surprise, a protest forming instantly. "What? Why?"
"I need you to let me know when you get there and if your plans change at all," Emily explained calmly. She could see that her daughter was about to argue and spoke quickly to try to stop the argument before it started. "Give me a break here, okay, kid? Having a teenager going to a high school party is new to me. It's not going to ruin your night to send me a couple of text messages, but it will ruin mine if I'm worried because I don't know if you've made it to the party in one piece."
"Fine," Hannah muttered grudgingly, unable to argue with that logic.
Emily offered the teenager a small half-smile as thank you for the tiny concession. "I need you back here at 11:30. Call me if you need a ride."
"I have a ride," Hannah told her.
"Well, if your ride decides to drink anything at all, or the cops break up the party and you need a getaway driver-"
"You are like a cop," Hannah interrupted Emily to point out. She knew the woman wasn't actually a cop, but she was an FBI agent, and that seemed like basically the same thing to the young teenager, only more important.
"An FBI agent," Emily corrected her. "And I'm not an FBI agent to you. I'm your mother."
"So you wouldn't arrest me?" Hannah asked lightly. She knew Emily wouldn't arrest her, but she didn't know what Emily would do if she called the woman to pick her up from the party.
She thought she knew exactly how her dad would react and didn't think she would ever call him for a ride even though he always told her she could. She knew her dad wasn't stupid – he knew teenagers drank, but he had no idea that she drank, and Hannah wanted to keep it that way. She didn't think he would understand the peer pressure she faced. How could he? It was different for girls. There wasn't a movie called 'Mean Boys.'
Emily wanted to roll her eyes at the inquiry, even if her daughter wasn't seriously asking her that. "No," she told the girl in a half-exasperated, half-amused tone. "I'm serious. Call me if you need a ride, okay?" The mother looked at her daughter expectantly, eyebrows raised as she waited for explicit agreement.
"Okay," Hannah agreed with no intention of calling Emily. She didn't know how Emily would react if she did, but she was pretty sure the woman would tell her dad about it. While Emily didn't seem to have any illusions about just what kind of party Hannah was going to, the teenager liked to think that her dad was clueless about how hard the kids at her private high school partied. Whether that was true or not, Hannah truly believed it. Her dad was the Captain of the debate team in high school, and the young teenager thought that probably made him a huge nerd. Emily was a lot cooler than her dorky dad and had even said she did things to rebel not even ten minutes ago. Hannah wondered idly if the older woman drank when she was in high school.
"Okay, I'm going to wait for Andrew in the lobby so he doesn't have to try find somewhere to park," Emily said, knowing parking anywhere in Dupont Circle would be difficult that night. She also didn't really want to explain the presence of the teenage daughter Andrew knew nothing about. She knew she would have to tell him about Hannah or he would never understand why she needed to call it an early night on New Year's Eve – a night when couples would normally ring in the New Year together. Instead of kissing him at midnight, she would be at home to make sure her kid made it home safely. She dropped a soft kiss on the top of the girl's head, careful not to smudge her lipstick or mess Hannah's hair up. "I love you. Have fun, but not too much fun."
Emily didn't know how to tell Andrew about her teenage daughter. Most single parents of teenage children had a lot of practice telling anyone they were seeing romantically about their child, but it was the first time Emily had to tell anyone she was seeing about Hannah. A child seemed like the kind of thing to disclose early on in any relationship in case the other person involved wasn't okay with it. She wondered if Andrew would be upset that she hadn't said anything sooner. Because she was worried about how he would react, Emily delayed telling him until he noticed she was checking her phone non-stop and took the direct approach of asking her about it.
"You've been checking your phone every five minutes. I'm beginning to think you want to get called in on a case. And if you'd rather be chasing a serial killer than having dinner with me, I'm doing something really wrong here," Andrew said, chuckling nervously.
"It's not that," Emily assured him. She took a deep breath and continued nervously. "I have a fourteen year old daughter. She went to a party tonight, and I told her I need regular check ins from her. That's why I'm checking my phone so much."
"Say no more," Andrew said with an understanding smile. He proceeded to show her a picture of a young teenage girl who looked to be about the same age as Hannah on his phone. "This is my daughter, Keely. She's living with her mom in Denver, but if she were here, I'd be doing the same thing."
"Denver? That has to be hard," Emily said sympathetically.
Andrew nodded. "It is. It's new for me…her being there, me being here. My ex-wife just moved out there for a new job."
"What are you going to do?" Emily asked him. She thought she already knew what he was going to do. He wasn't the type of man to shirk his parental duties.
"The only thing I can do is request a transfer to the Denver field office," Andrew said. "But it could be a while before a Unit Chief position opens up."
Emily sat back a little in her chair and stared at him as the realization sank in that there was a clock ticking on their time together. "What are we doing?" Emily questioned.
"I don't know about you, but I'm getting to know a beautiful, intelligent woman and loving every minute of it," Andrew replied easily, charming as ever.
Emily was flattered, but she didn't want to get more invested than she already was. "You're going to move to Denver when your transfer goes through. That's where your daughter is. My job and my daughter are here," Emily laid out the facts. "I like you. I really do. But this is never going to work."
Andrew wished he could say he was surprised, but he wasn't. The entire time he'd known her it felt like Emily Prentiss had one foot out the door, ready to run.
A/N: I know, I know…I lied about Hotch again. He will be in the beginning of the next chapter. This one was just getting too long. I didn't have the part with Penelope and Tara planned, but it just sort of happened. Thanks again for reading. Please let me know what you think.
