A/N: As always, thank you to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter. I lied last time and said this chapter would be where all the action happened. That was the plan, but the set up to get all the characters where they needed to be for the action to happen ended up being really long in and of itself so the promised action will be next chapter instead. This one is mostly Emily and Hannah with a mixture of fluff and angst.

Chapter 31

Paranoid that one of the feds was following him, Jeremy drove around D.C. aimlessly for over an hour, frequently checking the rearview mirror of the car. It was dark outside when he finally decided he'd gotten away.

There had been at least four feds at the asshole fed's house when he left – Emily Prentiss, David Rossi, Spencer Reid, and, of course, Derek Morgan himself. Jeremy outsmarted all of them. They were the same feds who arrested him, but this time he got away.

He was feeling pretty smug about getting in and out of a fed's house without getting caught.

After he was out of the house, Jeremy stayed to watch, going unnoticed in the crowd of nosy neighbors who gathered on the street when they heard the shrill security alarm blaring and then the small explosion that came from inside of the Morgan house.

Jeremy knew the pipe bomb would piss Derek Morgan off. Jeremy built it just for him.

And the asshole fed's reaction wasn't disappointing at all.

Jeremy saw how pissed off the asshole fed looked when he first emerged from the house with a clenched jaw, his hands balled into fists at his sides. When he saw the hot fury in the asshole fed's eyes as his gaze swept over the crowd, looking for him, Jeremy shrunk back a little and made sure he was completely hidden by the tallest of the neighbors.

Jeremy took off as soon as the other feds showed up. He only stayed as long as he did because he wanted to see the asshole fed's reaction. The look on the asshole fed's face was totally worth it. Fear would have been better than anger, but anger was better than nothing.

Jeremy had succeeded in getting under the asshole fed's skin, and he hadn't really done anything yet.


Alex woke Hannah up earlier than she would have liked on Saturday morning. The dog was used to her getting up at a certain time to get ready for school and didn't understand the concept of sleeping in on the weekends.

The golden retriever slowly crept up from where he slept on the foot of Hannah's bed until his face was right next to hers on her pillow. He stared at her intently for several long seconds, and, when that didn't work, he licked her face. That always got her attention.

"Ugh," the tired teenager said when she opened her eyes rather grudgingly. She couldn't help but smile at the golden retriever that was cuddled up next to her though. "Hey, Alex. Let's go back to sleep," she suggested hopefully. She withdrew her arms from under the warmth of her quilt and wrapped them around the golden retriever in a loose hug.

The dog allowed the embrace for a moment before squirming free and nudging her insistently with his nose. It was time for breakfast, and he was starving.

"Okay, fine," Hannah gave in reluctantly, throwing her covers back and getting out of bed. She knew if she just fed him and took him outside, he would let her go back to sleep.

Shivering slightly when her bare feet hit the floor, Hannah put her slippers on and picked a hooded sweatshirt up from the floor to put on over the NYC t-shirt she slept in.

Alex waited anxiously as Hannah moved through her bedroom in slow motion. He led the way down the stairs and to the front door, looking back at her as if he was wondering what was taking her so long.

Hannah went to the front door on autopilot before remembering she was no longer allowed to take Alex out front by herself. It was a new rule that she either walked him with her dad or her birth mother or took him out in the backyard instead.

Speaking of her birth mother, the half-awake teenager thought she saw Emily's car parked across the street from her house. Hannah peered out the window, her eyes narrowing on the figure with long dark hair sitting in the driver's seat of the familiar grey sedan. Yep, it was Emily.

What was Emily doing there? It was way too early for brunch. Hell, it was too early for anything in Hannah's opinion.

Alex whined impatiently.

"Sorry, boy," Hannah apologized. She went to the back door, unlocked it, and let the dog out into the fenced yard.

Foregoing her plan to go right back to sleep, Hannah put a Pop Tart in the toaster and then scanned the contents of the cupboard. Seeing no tea or decaf coffee, she went with a packet of instant hot cocoa mix.

Roughly five minutes later, Alex was practically inhaling his breakfast while Hannah took a Pop Tart wrapped in a paper towel and a mug of cocoa out to Emily. The woman saw Hannah approaching and rolled down her window.

"What are you doing here?" Hannah asked as she offered the Pop Tart and mug to Emily.

"I could ask you the same thing. I could have sworn your dad and I both told you not to leave the house alone," Emily said a little bit pointedly, giving her kid an exasperated look. This was how well Hannah followed instructions. Instead of staying inside with the doors locked, here she was out in the middle of the street. It was actually very sweet of Hannah to bring breakfast out to her, but Emily would have preferred she stay inside the relative safety of the townhouse. Still, Hannah's intentions were good so Emily kept her tone more light and teasing than anything.

"Yeah, because some creepy stalker took my picture," Hannah responded in way that made it clear she thought everyone was completely overreacting.

She wouldn't think that if she knew who her so-called 'creepy stalker' was or how many people he had killed, but all she really knew was what Emily had told her which was that Emily and some of the other agents on her team had received pictures of their loved ones in the mail. She thought the creepy stalker would have done something by now if he was going to do anything.

Emily could tell by Hannah's complete and total nonchalance that the young teenager still wasn't taking the threat to her safety as seriously as she should.

"He's not just a stalker," Emily tried to explain. She was trying to impress upon Hannah the need to exercise extreme caution until Jeremy Sayer was caught, but Hannah wasn't exactly the most cautious kid by nature. "He's extremely dangerous. If he was out here…"

"I wouldn't have brought him breakfast," was the teenager's quick retort despite not even knowing who the he in question was. She didn't need another lecture on stranger danger, not when it wasn't even eight in the morning. "I saw your car," Hannah told her birth mother to appease her. "Nothing was going to happen when you were right there." Her complete confidence in Emily's ability to protect her came through loud and clear in that statement, but Emily's presence and the early hour made her wonder. "Why? Did something happen? Is that why you're here so early?" She asked.

Emily studied her daughter as she decided how much to tell the fourteen year old without talking to Steve first. "No one was hurt," Emily started by calmly assuring her child of that. "But the person we've been looking for broke into someone's home yesterday."

"Yesterday?" Hannah said, frowning when she realized she didn't actually know how long Emily had been outside her house. She looked at the woman with wide eyes and gasped slightly. "Have you been out here all night? You could have slept on the couch. Or you could have slept in my bed and I would have slept on the couch."

Somehow Emily didn't think Steve would have been very welcoming if she just showed up on his doorstep with her go bag and told him she was moving in until Jeremy Sayer was caught.

She knew she was going to have to talk to the adoptive father eventually. She needed to update him on everything that had happened since they spoke last. The last time they spoke was the day Emily received the photograph of Hannah. That was on Wednesday – only three days ago and yet it felt like a lifetime ago. Steve didn't know about the voicemail she received the day before or that they had narrowed it down to one suspect. Emily would have updated any parent whose child was the target of an unsub, but Steve wasn't just any parent – he was her child's parent. That made it much more complicated.

By the time she left Derek's house the night before and parked directly across the street from Steve's townhouse where she would see if anyone approached the house, it was dinner time. The pizza guy arrived within minutes of her. She told herself she didn't want to interrupt their dinner, but maybe that was just an excuse to delay the inevitable.

Emily rationalized it to herself that Steve had made it pretty clear she was not welcome outside of scheduled visits. He would have made an exception in this case, but she ultimately decided to wait until Saturday when he was actually expecting her. They had planned for her to take Hannah to brunch. Although she no longer thought it was a good idea for her to take Hannah out anywhere, the FBI profiler could talk to Steve then instead of surprising him on Friday night when he was just sitting down to dinner with Hannah.

What she hadn't counted on was Hannah noticing her car this early in the morning. Steve hadn't seen her car when he answered the door to pay the pizza guy.

Hannah told Emily her dad wasn't awake yet, but shortly after the girl went back in the house after failing to convince Emily to come inside, Steve came out looking like he was on a mission and headed straight for Emily's car. With a weary sigh, Emily rolled down the window.

"Hannah said you were out here all night," Steve said, frowning at the idea of his child's birth mother sitting outside their house all night in a parked car. If she wasn't an FBI agent, it would have crossed the line into stalker behavior and would have been grounds for a restraining order. But Emily was an FBI agent, and the FBI wasn't really known for hiring stalkers. Steve knew Emily was worried about Hannah's safety because of the picture of Hannah that was sent to her at FBI headquarters. That may be why she was there. He had to assume there was some kind of rational explanation for Emily's presence. He wanted to know what it was before he decided whether to roll out the welcome mat.

Emily took the adoptive father through everything that had happened the day before, starting from the beginning. She didn't give him any more – or any less – information than she would have given any other parent whose child may be in danger. She was trying not to treat him any differently than she would anyone else in the same situation. If she wanted his cooperation, she needed him to see her as an agent there for his daughter's protection, not his child's interfering birth mother.

When she told him about the voicemail she received, he all but demanded to hear it. She advised against it, but he insisted. Even though the voicemail was left on her desk phone, Emily had a copy of the recorded voicemail on her iPhone and played it for him. There was no question it was about Hannah.

It made everything all the more real for the adoptive father. Before he heard the voicemail, it had all felt like a bad dream. Wasn't this every parent's worst nightmare?

He listened in a state of shock as Emily told him they had the person responsible for all this on video when he was leaving the house he broke into. They could confirm that it was someone her team had arrested in 2010 who was recently released from prison. "His name is Jeremy Sayer."

Emily went on to tell him that Jeremy Sayer had killed before and was known to go after families. She didn't tell him that they believed Hannah being relatively close in age to Caroline Sayer would make her more of a target for Jeremy, but what she did tell him was enough to make him fear for Hannah's safety like never before. Emily saw her own fear in Steve. The only difference was that her fear was hidden under a blank mask of professionalism, and his was written all over his face.

Emily finished by telling the father that she was only there for Hannah's protection. He believed her.

"She shouldn't need protection. She's fourteen years old," Steve muttered bitterly. Hannah wouldn't even be on this crazy killer's radar if it wasn't for Emily.

"I know," Emily said quietly.

"How could you let this happen?" Steve demanded, not really expecting an answer. There was no answer she could give that would be good enough, and they both knew it.

Emily bowed her head slightly. "I know how hard this is, but please…let me do my job."

Steve supposed he could have requested another agent, but, despite her almost detached professionalism throughout their entire conversation, he knew Emily would go above and beyond to protect Hannah. He didn't know how he would feel about Emily spending time with Hannah when this was all over, but, for right now at least, there was no one else he would rather have protecting his little girl. Because Hannah wasn't just his only child – whether he liked it or not, she was also Emily's only child, and he knew they would both die for her if they had to. Steve didn't know just how true that was, but he would soon find out.

Logically Steve knew Emily could only stay in the car for so long. She would need to eat more than the Pop Tart his fourteen year old had brought out to the car. She would need to sleep, and he could tell she hadn't gotten much sleep, if any, the night before. He assumed another agent would take her place if – no, when – she left. If he really didn't want another agent who would see protecting his kid as just another job to take over for her, then he had no choice but to invite Emily in.

So much for his plan to establish boundaries with Hannah's birth mother. The best-laid-plans…

"Do you want to come in?" Steve asked resignedly.

"Do you want me to come in?" Emily questioned somewhat skeptically. It would be easier to protect Hannah from inside, but Emily didn't want to be somewhere where she wasn't wanted. She would just as soon stay in the car than go into the house if she was going to be persona-non-grata with Steve. She had more pride than that.

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't," Steve told her. "Come on, you can't stay out here all day and night."

And Hannah would never let him hear the end of it if he left Emily out there.


When Emily entered the townhouse behind Steve, her go bag in her hand, Hannah was on her way up the stairs.

"Where are you going?" Steve asked his daughter. He thought she'd be thrilled that he convinced Emily to come in. Instead, she was already disappearing.

"Back to bed," Hannah told him. "I only got up this early because of Alex."

Steve glanced at Emily. "You've got to be tired." He dragged a hand through his hair as he thought through the sleeping arrangements. They didn't have a guest room. His bedroom and Hannah's were upstairs. Downstairs was his office, the kitchen, and the living room. Should he offer Emily his bed? He was enough of a gentleman to know he probably should, but his back was already hurting just from thinking about spending a night on the couch. Honestly, everyone who would be sleeping in the townhouse was too tall to be comfortable sleeping on the couch. "You can-"

"She can sleep in my bed, and I'll sleep on the couch," Hannah was quick to offer before her father could even finish that sentence.

That wasn't happening. With both bedrooms upstairs, whoever slept on the couch in the living room would be the first one Jeremy saw if he broke in. "No," Emily said immediately. "I'll sleep on the couch."

They continued to argue back and forth about the sleeping arrangements, both mother and daughter adamantly refusing to sleep in Hannah's bed if it meant the other person was relegated to the couch. Steve watched the mini battle of wills with thinly veiled amusement. He knew just how stubborn his daughter could be, but Emily Prentiss might actually be more stubborn. In the end, it was a stalemate. The only compromise they were able to reach was for both of them to sleep in the girl's bed. Fortunately, Hannah outgrew her old twin bed when she had a growth spurt a couple of years ago, and the queen-sized bed she had now was plenty big enough for both of them. With that settled, they both went upstairs to take a nap.

Emily got changed into a long sleeve cotton shirt and flannel pajama pants that she had in her go bag, stashed her gun in the top drawer of Hannah's nightstand where it would be within reach if she needed it, and slipped into bed next to the teenager who had managed to fall back asleep in the five minutes Emily was in the bathroom. Emily had gotten absolutely no sleep the night before and fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. She was able rest easy, knowing her daughter was right there beside her.

When Hannah woke up again, it was almost noon. Emily was still asleep on the other side of the bed. Hannah tried to get up without waking the woman, but Emily's eyes were open before Hannah's feet ever touched the floor. Being a former spy made Emily Prentiss a very light sleeper.

"What are you doing?" Emily murmured sleepily.

Hannah gave Emily an apologetic look. "I'm sorry, I was trying not to wake you up."

"It's okay," Emily said, getting up herself. She took her gun out of Hannah's nightstand. She never knew when she might need it.

"You sleep with a gun?" Hannah questioned, watching Emily with wide eyes.

Unable to read the teenager's expression, Emily glanced at her questioningly. "Does that bother you?"

"No," Hannah said, more surprised than anything. The novelty of seeing Emily with a gun holstered on her hip had more or less worn off by now. The girl just hadn't expected Emily to whip a gun out in her bedroom. Recovering from the initial shock enough to joke around, Hannah looked at the woman with a mischievous glint in her eyes and the beginnings of a smirk playing across her lips. "If you were going to kill me, you would've done it on New Year's Eve."

"Ha ha," Emily replied in a deadpan manner. "The death penalty for missing curfew would be a bit excessive."

"And house arrest isn't?" Hannah said.

Emily wasn't sure if the girl was just referring to the grounding she was still serving or to Emily's insistence that she stay in the townhouse. Either way, Emily's answer was the same, an emphatic, "No."

"Are we still going to brunch?" Hannah wondered.

"Not today, honey," Emily answered regretfully. She didn't want to sacrifice any of her one-on-one time with her kid, but she would sacrifice it for Hannah's safety.

Hannah looked disappointed, but, to her credit, she didn't complain.

They took turns getting ready in the girl's bathroom, with Hannah getting dressed in comfortable workout clothes instead of 'real' clothes now that she knew they weren't going anywhere. When they finally made it downstairs, it was just about time for lunch.

"Good morning. Or should I say good afternoon?" Steve said wryly, smirking at his lazy teenager. "Are you guys hungry?" He didn't think Hannah had eaten anything before going back up to bed, and he figured Emily would probably be hungry, too, if all she had was a Pop Tart.

"Since we're not going to brunch, can we have chocolate chip pancakes instead?" Hannah asked, looking at her dad with pleading eyes.

"Do we even have chocolate chips?" Steve asked her.

Stifling a triumphant smile at the promising response, Hannah went to check the pantry. "We do," she called from the kitchen.

"Okay," Steve agreed.

Grinning widely, Hannah began taking the necessary ingredients out of the pantry for her dad.

"Can I help with anything?" Emily offered politely.

"No," Hannah said quickly. She thought she was doing them all a favor by keeping Emily out of the kitchen, but a warning look from her dad reminded the fourteen year old of her manners. "You're the guest," she added hastily.

Emily merely smiled and gave Hannah a look, knowing exactly why her daughter didn't want her in the kitchen. She had Dave to blame for that. He filled the girl's head with stories of her mishaps in the kitchen.

"Can Alex have a puppuccino?" Hannah asked her dad when she took a tub of Cool Whip out of the refrigerator and the idea popped into her head.

"A puppuccino?" Steve repeated with a somewhat incredulous look on his face. Who ever heard of such a thing?

Hannah nodded eagerly. "It's just whipped cream in a cup. They have it at Starbucks," she explained.

"They do not," Steve said with a disbelieving half-laugh.

"They do," Hannah insisted. "It's on the secret menu," she said knowledgeably. She picked her dad's iPhone up from the counter where it was plugged in and charging and entered the password, which was her birthday.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Steve asked. He didn't want her playing games on his phone. It was a constant battle to limit electronics when Hannah was grounded.

"I'm just showing you one thing," Hannah told him as she found a video of a husky eating a puppuccino on YouTube. "Look. See?"

After watching the YouTube video, Steve indulged his daughter's whim with a roll of his eyes and fondly exasperated chuckle. "Okay, he can have a puppuccino. But if it makes him sick, you're cleaning it up," he warned her seriously.

"I will," Hannah promised.

"A little cup, Hannah," Steve emphasized when the girl started rummaging around in the cabinet where they kept their glasses and cups. Whipped cream couldn't actually be good for Alex.

It was hard to say whether Hannah or Alex was more excited about the treat. Emily watched with a smile as the girl called the dog into the kitchen. He knew good things happened in there and came running as soon as he was called. Hannah kneeled down on the floor and held a small cup of whipped cream out to the dog, who dug in immediately. Once he had licked the cup clean, the golden retriever lifted his head, and they all saw that he had whipped cream on his nose. Hannah followed the dog around with a wet paper towel until he sat still long enough for her clean his nose off.

It was new and different for the biological mother, adoptive father, and the daughter they shared to sit down for a meal together, all three of them. Hannah liked having both her dad and her birth mother there and didn't seem to realize how strange it was for the two adults when their dynamic was not exactly that of one big happy family. Somehow, the young teenager remained oblivious to her dad's uneasiness and Emily's discomfort. Steve would always be grateful to Emily for choosing him and Sarah to adopt her baby and, in doing that, finally making them parents. Likewise, Emily would always be grateful to Steve for raising her daughter as his own. But they were every bit as wary of each other as they were grateful to each other, and that wariness was at an all-time high now. The meal would have been filled with uncomfortable silence if it wasn't for Hannah. While they ate, she talked about her classes so far and complained about how much homework she already had.

Having Emily in his home for a prolonged period of time was an eye-opening experience for Steve. He had seen little glimpses of how good Emily was with his daughter before, but this was different from watching Emily and Hannah exchange Christmas gifts or being in the other room while Emily helped Hannah with her French paper. This wasn't a fleeting moment. This was a whole entire weekend.

Steve watched the ease with which Hannah interacted with Emily. He remembered the night Emily told Hannah who she really was like it was yesterday. His daughter's burgeoning curiosity about the woman who gave birth to her had been evident then, but there had also been fear there. Initially Hannah was afraid to get close to Emily. There was no fear now. Hannah was no longer afraid of what her adoptive mom would say about Emily. She was no longer afraid of rejection from the woman who gave her up when she was born. She let her guard down as she became more comfortable with Emily and more confident in Emily's love and affection for her. She relaxed instantly into every little motherly touch from the woman, whether that be an arm casually thrown around her shoulders, a loving pat on her leg or knee, or a decidedly parental kiss on the top of her head.

When they all played board games together on Saturday night to entertain the grounded teenager who was absolutely bored out of her mind, Emily and Hannah bantered back and forth effortlessly. Emily never missed a beat when responding to the girl's snarky comments with playful teasing. It was easy for Steve to see exactly where – or rather who - Hannah got her quick wit and wicked sense of humor from.

Hannah was enough like Emily that it was impossible for the adoptive father not to like the woman the more he got to know her. If he loved Hannah, how could he not like Emily? They were two peas in a pod.

Emily was filling a big, gaping hole in his daughter's life that he couldn't fill, that even his sister couldn't fill. Wasn't that what Steve wanted when he decided to let his daughter's biological mother have a relationship with her? He wanted Emily to be a positive female influence his young teenage daughter could go to for 'girl stuff.' He wanted Hannah to have another person in her life who cared about her. It should have made him happy to see that Emily had become like a second mom to Hannah, but jealousy had to rear its ugly head.

It wasn't that he didn't like Emily. He liked Emily just fine, but that didn't mean he wanted his daughter to like – or love – Emily more than him. Right or wrong, Steve felt like he was in the middle of a long-running competition with Emily for his daughter's affections. It shouldn't have been much of a competition – he was the one who'd been there for everything, but Emily was still new and exciting. Hannah chose to sit on the floor by Emily instead of next to him on the couch when they set up the Monopoly board on the coffee table. Hannah asked Emily to check her homework on Sunday when she could have asked him. He realized after the fact that it was French homework and he wouldn't have been able to help anyway, but his feelings were already hurt and his ego already bruised. Every slight, real or imagined, made the adoptive father feel like he was losing the childish competition in which Emily was an unwitting competitor. He felt like the kid he had done absolutely everything for loved her birth mother more than him. Needless to say, it was not a good feeling.

It didn't help that Emily didn't even seem to be trying, and yet she was still the apparent favorite. Emily probably spent more time using Steve's office for work than she spent hanging out with Hannah that weekend.

Immediately after the break-in at the Morgan residence Penelope had checked footage from the security cameras at the closest Metro station to Derek's house and the traffic light cameras at the intersections of the major streets near his subdivision for the timeframe before and after Derek's house was broken into; but, however he was getting around, Jeremy managed to avoid cameras.

Reid and Simmons spent Saturday showing a picture of Jeremy at local homeless shelters and motels in the area. Jeremy had been in D.C. for at least two weeks, maybe longer. He had to be staying somewhere.

Emily had Penelope running the license plates on any cars parked on the street in front of the townhouse that Steve didn't recognize as belonging to one of his neighbors.

Emily got regular check-ins from Tara and Luke, who were still in the Midwest conducting interviews in the prison where Jeremy Sayer was incarcerated.

The BAU team didn't get that weekend off, and Emily was doing double duty as Unit Chief and mother. She was trying to strike the right balance between being Hannah's mother and only being in the townhouse for the sole purpose of protecting her. It was a delicate balance.

Every single time she took Alex out Hannah had an armed guard in the form of her birth mother, but the rest of the time Emily was trying to give Steve and Hannah time alone. Emily tried to stay out of the adoptive father's way as much as possible, but Hannah apparently had other ideas. Whenever Emily disappeared into Steve's office, Hannah always wanted to know what she was doing and was clearly waiting for her to be finished working so they could do things together.

Old insecurities and hurt feelings were already brewing in the adoptive father when Hannah unknowingly stirred the pot on Sunday afternoon.

Steve's sister, Jill, was doing him a huge favor by dropping groceries off for them on Sunday afternoon. He hadn't had a chance to go to the store since he got back from Vermont, and, with everything going on, he didn't want to leave Hannah to run errands now. "Do you need anything?" He asked his daughter when he was on the phone with Jill.

Hannah started to say no before thinking of something. "Wait, actually, can I talk to her?"

The young teenager took his phone into the other room, where neither he nor Emily could hear her conversation with his sister. Whatever she wanted was apparently top secret. The secrecy bothered Steve more than it normally would. Emily was just as clueless as Steve was, but she shrugged it off unconcernedly and went back to the book she was reading. Hannah reappeared within seconds and wordlessly returned Steve's phone.

When the doorbell rang an hour later, Hannah jumped up to go greet her aunt and help with the groceries, but Emily stopped her. It took Steve a few seconds to catch on to what Emily was trying to do, which was keep the girl inside where she was safe, but he did eventually catch on. When he did, he suggested that he bring the groceries in and Hannah put them away.

The reason for all the secrecy became clear to Emily when Steve's sister discreetly handed one of the grocery bags to Hannah, who blushed, murmured a quiet thank you, and took the bag upstairs quickly before her father saw it. When Emily glanced at her daughter's retreating back curiously, she could just make out the Tampax box in the translucent plastic grocery bag.

Emily could understand why a fourteen year old girl wouldn't want to broadcast that particular need to her dad and felt a pang of sympathy for the girl who lost her adoptive mom before she reached the age of twelve. There were more than two years where Hannah was completely motherless before Emily reentered her life, and those two years were not known for being particularly kind to girls. Thirteen was probably one of the worst ages for girls. Emily was glad to see Hannah had someone she was comfortable going to for girl stuff, even if she wished she could have been the one Hannah had gone to.

With Hannah upstairs and Steve outside getting a load of groceries from the back of Jill's SUV, it left Emily alone with Steve's sister, who she had yet to be formally introduced to. Hannah probably would have remembered to introduce the two of them if she hadn't been in such a hurry to put the Tampax box away. "You must be Jill. I'm Emily," Emily said a little nervously. She had a feeling the other woman would have heard all about her, and not all of it good.

"I know. I heard," Jill said, not bothering with niceties. She just couldn't bring herself to be nice to the woman whose job was the reason Hannah was in danger. She eyed Hannah's biological mother warily. "She looks like you," she observed in a surprised tone. "Especially the eyes."

"She does," Emily agreed cautiously.

Emily could have hugged Hannah when she came back downstairs to save her from the painfully awkward conversation. Not realizing Emily had already introduced herself, the young teenager belatedly remembered her manners and introduced the two older women. "Oh, Aunt Jill, this is Emily…my mom." It was the first time Hannah had introduced Emily to anyone, and there was less hesitation and uncertainty in how to introduce her than the profiler would have expected.

Of course, Steve chose that exact moment to walk in, arms laden down with grocery bags, just in time to hear how Hannah introduced Emily. There was no preamble or qualification, the word 'birth' or 'biological' glaringly absent. Hannah didn't even use the more formal variation - 'mother.' Sarah was Hannah's mom, but there Hannah was introducing Emily as her mom. It was like a gut punch that hit the adoptive father with a sudden painful ferocity.

Emily wasn't the one who rocked Hannah to sleep, read Hannah bedtime stories, and cleaned up and bandaged Hannah's scraped knees. Steve and Sarah were the ones who did all of that. They were Hannah's parents. Sarah was Hannah's mom. Sarah would always be Hannah's mom.

Hurt and even angered by his daughter's words, the adoptive father's mood declined steadily after that. Steve was normally a patient man, but his patience with his teenager was in exceedingly short supply for the rest of the day, and infinitely bored, grounded teenagers had a way of trying their parents' patience even at the best of times. Steve was quick to snap at Hannah for every little thing.

Knowing unsolicited parenting advice from her wouldn't go over very well, Emily had to bite her tongue each and every time the adoptive father completely overreacted. She thought she had a pretty good idea why Steve was acting like this, but she could tell her poor kid had no idea why he was getting so mad at her.

Father and daughter both finally lost it that night after dinner when Steve walked by the kitchen table where Hannah was supposed to be doing homework and saw that she had a messaging app up on her laptop. He immediately thought the worst. Why wouldn't he? It wouldn't be the first time the teenager had bent the rules when grounded.

Grounded or not, he didn't like Hannah to leave the house without her cell phone; but, whenever she was grounded, he took her phone away in the evenings and on weekends. He couldn't take her computer away because she needed it for school, but she knew full well that she wasn't supposed to be using it to message her friends when she was grounded. Normally he would have just asked Hannah what she was doing and reminded her of the rules of her grounding. Hannah would have gone back to her homework and that would have been the end of it. But that wasn't what happened this time. His patience had finally run out.

"Are you supposed to be doing homework or texting your friends?" Steve demanded angrily.

"I'm not," Hannah protested her innocence. Was her dad actually mad at her when she was just doing her homework? The messaging app in question opened automatically and was just up in the background. If Steve had really looked, he would have seen that Hannah hadn't actually responded to any of the text messages. She had a browser open and was doing research on the first debate topic for her debate class – gun control.

Steve looked at his daughter in complete disbelief. Now she was lying to his face? "Don't lie to me, Hannah."

"I'm not lying!" Hannah cried defensively, a hysterical note to her voice.

"Yes, you are. I can see the text messages right there," Steve told her, gesturing toward the open messaging app. That was all the evidence he thought he needed to believe he caught her red-handed.

Hannah was telling the truth, and her dad wouldn't believe her. The fact filled her with a sense of righteous indignation. Instead of trying to explain when she didn't feel like her dad was listening to her anyway, she responded with blatant disrespect. "Then you need to get your eyes checked," she sassed, "because-"

"That's it!" Steve snapped, cutting his daughter off. She couldn't talk to him like that. She knew better than to talk to any adult like that. She was way out of line. "Go to your room," he ordered sternly.

It had been at least a year since Hannah had been sent to her room as a punishment, maybe even longer. She looked at her dad with a shocked expression. "Dad-"

"Don't argue with me," Steve cut her off again, his voice dangerously low and filled with frustration.

The young teenager's face was red from both anger and embarrassment over the childish punishment she hadn't done anything to deserve. Her dad was being so unfair. She couldn't believe he was sending her to her room like some naughty little kid when Emily was there. She would have resented it even if Emily wasn't there, but Emily being there made it ten times worse. Hannah walked to the staircase silently, not meeting either of her parents' eyes as she made the trek up to her bedroom.

Both parents waited for the anticipated slam of her bedroom door, but it never came. However angry and upset she was, Hannah knew she did not want her dad to come up there when he was acting like this so she closed the door carefully behind her.

As she sat on her bed thinking about how unfair her life was, Hannah was dreading the moment when Emily came in to go to bed. She didn't want to have to see or talk to either of her parents – her dad because she was mad at him, and Emily because she was completely and totally embarrassed. What would Emily think of her now?

Not knowing how long she would be left alone, Hannah looked over at the window. She should leave while she had the chance. She shouldn't even be confined to her room in the first place. She wanted to be anywhere but there.

From where Emily was sitting in the armchair in the living room with a book, she saw and heard everything that happened between Steve and Hannah. "Well, that escalated quickly," Emily muttered once Hannah was out of earshot. She had no way of knowing that Hannah wasn't really taking advantage of her computer privileges to talk to her friends, but even if she had been, Emily knew Steve didn't usually react like that. He was normally a lot more patient and tolerant. He would probably feel bad about being so hard on Hannah later. "But she's not the one you're really mad at. Is she?" Emily pressed on, knowing he was mad at her, not her daughter. He was just taking it out on Hannah, and that wasn't fair. She was giving him the perfect opportunity to unleash his pent-up anger and frustration on her. She could take it. Hannah shouldn't have to.

"Yes, she is," Steve insisted. "She's grounded," he emphasized. "She knows she's not supposed to be texting her friends when she's grounded, and she definitely knows she can't talk to me like that," he continued to defend his actions even though he shouldn't have to defend himself to her. No parent really appreciated being told how to raise their kid, and he really didn't appreciate it when it was coming from Emily. "Don't tell me how to deal with my daughter," the adoptive father finished coldly.

That wasn't what Emily was trying to do. She was just trying to get him to see that his anger was misplaced. She had specifically avoided saying anything about how hard he was being on the young girl. She stared at him, exhaling sharply as she took in his determined gaze and the stubborn set of his jaw. He wasn't going to listen to reason. "Right," she said softly. "I'm sorry."

With that very halfhearted apology, Emily got up from the chair to go upstairs.

"Don't go up there," Steve said, stopping Emily before she could take one step. He didn't want Emily to run up there after Hannah, making her the savior and him the bad guy. Hannah would be fine in her room.

It was a punishment the girl was well-acquainted with. When she was too old for a time-out but too young to have the kind of social life that made grounding an effective punishment, sending her to her room had been the default punishment. It gave her – and, sometimes just as importantly, her adoptive parents - time to calm down when the young girl had ignored their every warning until they finally decided they'd had it with her. As a pre-teen, she was sent to her room for attitude or for being a smart aleck too many times to count. While she definitely still had a smart mouth, by now Hannah had figured out where the line was and managed to skillfully toe the line about ninety-nine percent of the time. By the time she started high school, Steve almost exclusively relied on grounding the young teenager and only for bigger things, but he had fallen back on the old punishment because of how disrespectful she was being. He was sure Hannah was up in her room pouting and feeling sorry for herself, but she would get over it, and she would think twice before talking to him like that again.

A look of utter defiance that Steve had seen many times before on his daughter's face briefly flashed across Emily's face. She bristled at Steve's tone. She wasn't fourteen, and he had no real authority over her. Did he really think he could stop her from going upstairs if she wanted to? It was his house, and legally Hannah was his daughter, but Emily Prentiss was not the type to sit back when she felt like she was in the right, especially not when someone she cared about was being wronged.

"She's fine," Steve told Emily, feeling like he was at his wit's end.

It was only because Emily knew Hannah was okay up there that she reluctantly dropped it and sat back down, realizing no good could come from fighting the adoptive father on this. She went back to her book and pointedly ignored Steve for the rest of the night.

When they both retired for the night about an hour later, Emily couldn't get away from Steve fast enough. Once upstairs, Emily knocked lightly on Hannah's closed bedroom door and waited for permission to go in.

From inside her room where she hadn't moved from her bed the entire time she'd been up there, Hannah glanced at the door warily and sighed. "Come in," she called out grudgingly.

If it was her dad, Hannah knew he would come in whether she wanted him to or not. And Emily's bag was in Hannah's room so Hannah couldn't exactly keep her out. Why hadn't she left when she had the chance? Oh, right…because she thought Emily might actually kill her if she did. After all of the warnings not to leave the house alone, Hannah didn't know what her birth mother would do if she left the house as she'd been so tempted to do, but she didn't think she really wanted to find out. She knew from New Year's Eve that Emily could be kind of scary when she was mad.

Emily went into Hannah's room and shut the door behind her. The lights were off, but Hannah was sitting up on her bed with her arms crossed in front of her in the perfect sullen teenager pose. As soon as she saw which of her parents it was, Hannah immediately looked away, but not before Emily saw the pain in her eyes. Hannah was angry, but she was also hurting.

"You had a bad day," Emily began sympathetically. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Hannah was torn between just wanting to be left alone and wanting at least one of her parents to hear her side and believe her when she said she wasn't doing anything wrong. Would Emily even believe her if Hannah tried to tell her what really happened? Her dad didn't believe her.

Without waiting for an answer, Emily quickly stashed her gun in the nightstand and sat down next to Hannah. She put her arm around her daughter's shoulders and ran her hand soothingly up and down the girl's arm. Hannah tried to maintain her stiff, angry posture, but her body instinctively relaxed under the calming touch.

"I wasn't doing anything wrong," Hannah told Emily forlornly, glancing at the woman. When Emily didn't immediately accuse her of lying, Hannah took heart from it and continued telling her side of the story. "I was researching gun control for debate."

"Why did your dad think you were sending messages to your friends?" Emily asked in a neutral tone. As angry as he was, Emily didn't think the adoptive father would have just gotten mad like that for no reason. She never thought Hannah was completely innocent or blameless. She thought Hannah was just being a teenager who didn't like being grounded. In stereotypical teenage fashion, Hannah had been pushing her limits all weekend. But it was how Steve responded that was so out of character and concerning. He had gone from being the kind of dad who made Hannah's favorite pancakes and gave in to her outlandish request to give the dog whipped cream to being the tough dad who gave her no leeway whatsoever.

"The Messages app was up, but it's always up," Hannah explained. "I had new text messages, but I wasn't texting, I swear."

Emily didn't get the sense that Hannah was lying. If anything, the girl's hurt feelings and her vehemence now made her story believable to the seasoned profiler. Taken aback a little, Emily pulled back just enough to turn and look Hannah in the eyes. "Why didn't you tell your dad that?"

"Because he wouldn't listen!" Hannah told her birth mother, railing against the unfairness of it all to the only person who would listen.

Knowing it would do more harm than good if she were to agree with Hannah because doing that would be officially going on record as disagreeing with the adoptive father, Emily made a noncommittal sound and resumed the calming motion of running her hand up and down Hannah's arm. She hoped the physical comfort would make up for the fact that there was nothing she could really say to make things right between Hannah and her dad. Anything Emily said to Steve would only make things worse.

"I didn't even do anything wrong, and he sent me to my room like a little kid," Hannah complained. She was just venting now.

Emily smiled a little, the right corner of her mouth curving upward. "You are a kid."

"I'm fourteen," Hannah said indignantly. She had been soaking up all of the comfort Emily had to offer, but she disentangled herself from the woman's arms suddenly. She didn't want Emily to think she was a baby.

"You know, you're right. You're getting old," Emily said facetiously. She reached over to tuck a stray strand of hair behind Hannah's ear and pretended to inspect it closely, gasping in an exaggerated manner. "Is that a grey hair?"

Hannah was worried for a split second before realizing Emily was just messing with her. She gave the woman a distinctly unamused look. "No."

Emily laughed and threw her arm around Hannah's shoulders again, pulling the girl back to her side. "You still have a few years until you're an adult. And even when you're eighteen and you can vote and get a tattoo, you'll still be your dad's little girl." As she spoke, Emily tickled the girl's ribcage, her fingers dancing lightly across the area where she got her first tattoo when she turned eighteen. The little black swallow tattooed on Emily's ribcage was less a form of artistic expression and more a surefire way to piss off her mother.

"Stop," Hannah said breathlessly as she jerked back and twisted in Emily's arms, red-faced and laughing.

When Emily stopped tickling her, Hannah settled back into the woman's side. She knew without Emily saying it that she would always be a little girl in her birth mother's eyes, too, and in that moment, that didn't seem so terrible. Even though she was still mad at her dad, Hannah felt better now. Emily had listened to her and believed her when her dad didn't. Feeling a sudden rush of gratitude for her birth mother, Hannah rested her head on Emily's shoulder and snuggled a little closer.

A/N: Thank you for reading! I hope I didn't make everyone hate Hannah's dad.

I really, really promise the action will be in the next chapter. I probably have about half of it written and will do my best to finish it in the next week or two. It will include the entire BAU team again.