Penelope

It's not me who can't keep a secret. It's the people I tell that can't - Abraham Lincoln

Penelope nibbled absently on the end of her pen. It was the purple one with a star on top, her favourite in times of deep thought because the shape meant she could worry the top edge with her teeth a little. Back and forth it went, as she turned over the facts as she knew them. Pip was lying to her. She was sure of it, but she didn't know what about. It was a mystery, and a fascinating one.

Pip had spent the weekend at a spa with some friends or so she said, after the team flew home from Chicago. Sunday night, she'd come over with a bottle and they'd spent the entire evening chatting and drinking wine; yet it felt like all the stories of her time outside the BAU were…a little off somehow. Like all the relevant details had been changed, sanitised almost, for her consumption. There was a big lie behind that misdirection, she was convinced of it, and it had started long before Pip's transfer to the Pentagon.

One perfectly manicured red nail tapped thoughtfully on the edge of her keyboard. She could find out. She could mine the information, slip with ease through any defences in her path to find what she wanted. She was a hacker, and a good one. It wouldn't be too hard. It might even be fun.

She'd barely reached forward to start typing before she hesitated and then leaned back in her chair once more. The star found its way back into that little groove just behind her front teeth. If she got caught looking where she thought she might have to look, there'd be big trouble. Looking for Pip in secret files could land her back in that cell, away from her amazing crime-fighting family. Doing things like that in the heat of the moment chasing an UnSub was one thing, but doing it cold-bloodedly to satisfy her own curiosity was quite another. She didn't do blackhat anymore, she used her superpowers for good, that was why she was in the BAU instead of jail. Although...she'd written a new program that would hide her tracks from all but the most determined…

Penelope flushed brilliantly even though she was all alone in her lair, as the frantically waving arms of her conscience finally caught her attention. Pip wouldn't want her looking. She knew that implicitly, and the fact that it had taken so long to recognise that felt incredibly shameful. Pip took her privacy incredibly seriously, something that was as intriguing as it was gratifying when she opened up and shared something personal.

Like Sunday night. Penelope fanned her heated face with a file grabbed at random from her desk as she cast her mind back. It was a little difficult, they'd had far more to drink than was really sensible when they both had to work the next day. Although it had to said, Pip could handle her alcohol far better than she could. Penelope only vaguely remembered being ushered to bed, but Pip had still been sensible enough before she left to set out the makings of some willow tea in anticipation of her hangover, and wash the dishes from their rather chaotic evening together.

She still didn't know who Pip's boyfriend was, but after Sunday night she knew for a fact that he existed. She'd had an inkling before, because somebody had obviously looked after Pip after Rossi got her shot in Alabama, and it hadn't been him or anyone in what Penelope had always called "the home team" - those members of the BAU who didn't travel with the profilers. Griffin had taken her home, but he hadn't stayed with her. She knew Pip had other friends both inside and outside the Bureau, including that unfortunately gay blonde who'd worked logistics desk for a while…

Her thoughts derailed for a moment…he really had been handsome, it was such a shame Mark was only interested in men, although his fiancé was also rather dishy. "Behave!" she muttered to herself. "You have a perfectly good boyfriend of your own."

She did. Kevin was lovely, but he wasn't... Penelope sighed. She was getting fed up of thinking about Kevin in that way: "lovely, but…". She'd explained it to Pip as the Penelope Garcia "Shoes" Theory of Men. In fact after a bottle of wine, she'd waxed lyrical on the subject, but Pip had been very patient with her. The way it went, was that every girl, whether they'd admit it or not, likes stilettos. They're sexy, they make you look fabulous and sometimes you just have to have them. Men like that were exciting. But that excitement could be dangerous and came with risks, because stilettos would always end up hurting you eventually.

And what did every girl do after a long day of tottering around in high heels? You kicked them off and comforted your poor feet with a pair of slippers, of course. Slippers that you loved, which were snuggly and dependable and wouldn't break your ankle if you miss-stepped a little. They were safe. But you couldn't keep them them on all the time, or potentially even leave the house wearing them.

The romantic ideal, obviously, was to find something in the middle. Something classy but comfortable that you wouldn't mind wearing all day, and multi-functional enough that they could be jazzed up with matching accessories for a big night out.

Kevin wasn't a pair of stilettos. Kevin wasn't even a vaguely interesting pair of boots. Kevin was the slippers, and they were boring and functional. Not a sequin in sight or even a pom-pom on the end to spice them up. They shared some interests, and the sex was usually worthwhile if a little vanilla for her taste, but nothing about their relationship was exciting. The initial burst of lust had faded and left her feeling wanting something more satisfying.

Pip had just absently told her to enjoy what she had, and moved Sergio off her lap so she could reach forward and open a second bottle of wine.

Penelope had immediately started to reel off a checklist of for and against: sex more or less when she wanted it, but it meant on her back with the lights off; he was good fun to go out with, if she get drag him away from his gaming; he understood her work and was good with code, but he didn't understand how tight-knit the BAU was; the fraternisation policies, although that was mostly an empty threat considering they didn't actually work together, for all that they were nominally in the same department…She'd barely started to warm to the subject before Pip started laughing.

It had taken a moment to pick up that her laughter was rueful, and directed internally. Like she'd had a similar kind of conversation with herself relatively recently about the merits or otherwise of a relationship. She had turned up to their evening looking a little ruffled and with a glow that could only be described as post-orgasmic, and the evidence finally added up. Garcia had barely been able to contain her squeal of excitement. Pip was dating! It was about time!

Penelope knew what had happened to her in Chicago, what she'd lost, years before the team had been called back there by that horrible little sneak, Cho. Not long after joining the BAU, Pip had started coming to her grief counselling group. At first, she hadn't been able to work out how Pip knew about it, until she saw Gideon pick her up afterwards one evening. She never mentioned what she knew about Pip's past unless it was in group, you had to respect the confidential boundary of that otherwise what was the point of doing it? It was the basis of trust between all the members that made it work.

Pip had stopped coming to group, but not because she had dealt with what happened in Chicago. The anniversary of Ian's death was still a day to batten down the hatches, even the profilers had known to tread carefully around her in early May; although equally obviously none of them except Rossi had previously known why. Her absence from the weekly meetings had coincided with the arrival of Damon McGill on the horizon, something Penelope still had occasional bad dreams about. Damon had scared her, in a way she couldn't fathom at the time. Their very first meeting, she had felt her pulse starting to race and her stomach twisting in apprehension before they'd even been introduced. He'd felt very threatening, even with a carefree smile on his face.

Damon had been a classic example of stilettos. He was handsome, he was spontaneous and he was extravagant. But he'd also been a vicious bully and Penelope had watched with horror as Pip put up with whatever Damon threw her way for nearly two years. What had started with pinches and slaps had graduated to fists very quickly and Pip had just let him do it.

She'd eventually got rid of Damon, but had seemed to just linger afterwards, marking time. Amber and Mark had tried to coax her out of her dating shell to no avail, although they clearly hadn't a clue as to what she looked for in a guy. The stories Pip had told her! The Russian who had groped her after walking home, the financier who had turned out to be married, and even a politician who only wanted a date with a woman to put the press off the scent of a story that he was gay. Apparently, he'd even offered Pip a threesome with his secret boyfriend in exchange for her silence when she objected to what he was proposing.

Penelope's brain wandered off unsupervised once more. What would that be like, she wondered. The possibilities were intriguing, especially if both guys were attentive and knew their way around. To be the filling in a stud sandwich…her sex gave a hearty throb of of interest and she resolutely turned her mind away. No point fantasising over something that would never happen. Kevin would have an aneurysm if she suggested doing it in the shower, let alone something so risqué as inviting another man into bed with them. Not to mention that for both men to be knowledgeable in the sack, neither of them would be Kevin in the first place.

Pip hadn't denied she was seeing someone, but had been quite clear that Penelope didn't know him and that his identity was something that would remain secret. Having only half the story was incredibly frustrating…she chomped down on the star hard enough to leave tooth marks, before smiling broadly. It didn't matter that Pip wouldn't tell her because Rossi would know.

That had been quite a surprise at first, because they didn't look like friends to the uninitiated observer. The opposite if anything, because Pip seemed to save up all her vitriol for Rossi's benefit. But they were quite similar once you got under the surface, and both seemed to profit from their friendship - smoothing some of the rough edges off each other. Pip had done it with Gideon too, to a degree.

With that in mind, Penny had yielded when Pip asked her a few years previously to disable the location tracking software she'd written to track everyone's cell phones. It had been for her own peace of mind, considering all the awful things that had happened to their family; there had been times she woken in the night terrified something had happened to her friends. Being able to check they were all safe was the only thing that allowed her to get back to sleep again. Pip's need for privacy overruled her objections, and that conversation had come with the revelation that she was good friends with Rossi, and didn't want it misunderstood that their movements outside work often involved each other.

Rossi was easy to broadside into admitting something, all she had to do was dress a little more flamboyantly than usual and the distraction that provided was usually enough to get him to talk. Super Agent Italian Stallion he might be, but beneath that he was just a guy, and few guys could lie to her impressive cleavage. He was no exception.

Penelope glanced down. No cleavage today, at least not on display. She hadn't slept well, and had been in too much of a rush after sleeping through her alarm to do more than throw on a favourite dress and pin her hair up instead of washing it. Tomorrow, she decided. She'd interrogate Rossi tomorrow. He would know who Pip's mystery man was, there was no way he wouldn't, they spent so much time together…

She sat bolt upright as a possibility she hadn't seriously considered before suddenly presented itself. Could he be…? She shook her head. No. She would have noticed if they were more than friends, and she liked to think Pip would have told her if Rossi was the secret identity she didn't want made public. It would only be an extension of the clandestine friendship she knew about already, so where would be the harm in that?

She settled into her seat, leaning back a bit to gnaw properly on her pen. Rossi had been devastated by Emily's death, if he had been violating the fraternisation policies with anyone, it was more likely to have been her. He'd been inconsolable when she died and had turned moody and uncooperative with everyone. He'd worked instead of dealing his grief, much as her darling Derek had done, but Rossi had spiralled rather than finding a new state of balance. He had pulled long hours, longer even than Hotch, coming in at weekends and during the holidays too. He'd been a complete mess until Pip had reappeared, fresh from her time in the bowels of the Pentagon to help him through his grief. Whatever it was he'd needed, she had obviously managed it because he was more or less back to his usual self; if not a little chirpier than before.

Would interrogating Rossi count as a violation of Pip's privacy? Probably. She sighed. There was no "probably" about it she realised, resigned to abandoning the idea. As soon as Rossi worked out that he'd been duped by the effect of her breasts, he'd confess to Pip what he'd let slip. The two of them were close enough that he'd probably survive the thermonuclear detonation that would result, and then Pip would come storming into her lair armed with a disappointed expression that was far more upsetting than when she shouted.

The thing was, Penelope decided as she twirled the pen between her lips like a lollipop, was that the unknown boyfriend wasn't a lie as such, just an omission. The real lie was bigger, and the reason she couldn't see it for what it was, was because it covered so many things. It was like Pip had a whole other life she didn't know about, and as someone who had made a slightly criminal career out of doing the same, albeit briefly and in cyberspace, Penelope knew she ought to have been quicker to see it. She could sympathise with the need to keep the past shrouded.

Shane Wyeth had been stilettos too and although he'd never hurt her physically, the scars were still there. Digging up that part of her life wouldn't be pleasant for anyone, and she had to wonder if Pip's paranoid fixation with secrecy stemmed from something similar.

Pip had spent years in foster care after losing both her parents young, same as she had. Foster homes often had little to no privacy and if you were unlucky, other kids that stole your stuff too. Pip had gone from there to the Marines, and she had to suppose there was probably even less privacy in that sort of environment. It wouldn't take much, like a bad breakup, to turn that into an overwhelming urge to keep that part of yourself hidden, unknown by others. Logical, if a little sad.

At least, it would be if the secret boyfriend was the only thing. But it wasn't. That wasn't the headline in caps lock on the front page, it wasn't even the smaller one underneath. It was buried somewhere near the back, next to an ad for washing powder and a feel-good article about a stray cat. As fascinating as she found it, Penelope knew that wasn't the main event.

She sat forward and pulled her keyboard nearer. She was good at lists, cross-checking lists against other lists was what got the UnSubs caught, once the profilers told her what they were looking for. The world was at her fingertips and she turned it into one big pivot table to give them their answers. Maybe doing the same with the current mystery would help.

She sighed and pushed her keyboard aside again. If she used her babies, she'd end up getting carried away, the temptation would be too great. She'd end up actually testing her suppositions and get lost in the rabbit hole. She'd dig, and she'd feel sorry about it afterwards, but it wouldn't stop her. She was a hacker, and a hacker's gotta hack. Everyone had their addictions. It was better to use paper for this particular exercise.

What were the main questions, apart from the name of Pip's new man? The star on the end of her pen bobbed and weaved as she wrote.

When did it all start?

What changed recently to make it more obvious?

Penelope pondered the two things she'd written. She needed to be careful, writing things down was a good way for Pip to catch her in the act of ferreting out information she'd been told wasn't her business. She'd shred it once she was done, but that didn't stop her doodling in the corner. Like the pen-chewing, it helped her to think.

How would she find out when it all started, without knowing what she was looking for?

The mirror-reflection of an abstract 3D shape she'd drawn gave her the answer. She needed to look at it the other way around. Finding the what would give her the when.

What had thrown Pip's tales into sharp relief? Her absence from the BAU. Perhaps there was something about her job in the Pentagon? National security? Something she couldn't talk about? Pip's work in the Pentagon might have been highly classified, but it seemed unlikely. According to her transfer orders, she was supposed to have been JJ's admin support. It was conceivable that had been a mis-direct, a handy way to explain it given that JJ's transfer had already been assured by then, but it seemed a bit over-the-top.

There was an easy way to check, of course. She cast a distrustful look at her monitor before surrendering to the inevitable and grabbing the keyboard. She'd pull Pip's job history, and that was it. Just to give herself a timeline to work with.

It wasn't quite what she'd expected.

Pip's current status was no surprise: BAU AST Lead, reporting to Rossi in Hotch's absence, but her pay bracket meant she was still technically an active field agent. That was interesting, but not entirely unexpected given the requirements of her post. Her recent time in the Pentagon was no surprise either, Administration Officer to the Defence Department Media Liaison, which had been JJ's title. She'd known that already. Her employer was noted down as being the State Department, but apparently, that was just the way the Pentagon liked to do things - it took all of three seconds to confirm that discrepancy was in JJ's record too. Penelope rolled her eyes. Bureaucracy at its finest.

Pip's time as part of the FBI before she joined the BAU was known to her as well, although she hadn't been aware Pip had extensive eskrima skills in addition to her proficiency with guns. She'd even won awards. Why would she keep that quiet? Penelope stalled for a moment, pondering that. If it had been her, she'd have them mounted on the wall in her lair for everyone to see. Pip hadn't told anyone.

She kept reading. It was the entry before Pip joined the Bureau that really caught her attention, because the dates didn't tally with her knowledge. She'd been under the impression that Pip had joined the Bureau straight from a long service in the Marines. She hadn't. She'd worked for the State Department before, as a Language Analyst. She had only served a five year hitch in the military as a sharpshooter before putting down her weapon and using her language skills instead. What had made Pip pick up the gun again and join the Bureau, she wondered.

Penelope leaned back in her chair. Pip had worked at the Pentagon before, perhaps translating intelligence briefings or wire-tap recordings. Potentially highly-classified information. That would account for all the name and place changes she suspected in the anecdotes Pip shared. It was almost disappointing how easily explained it all was.

But…knowing Pip as she did, Penelope would put good money on the secret identity of the boyfriend being related in some way. Pip always hid secrets within secrets. You were supposed to stop smugly after you found the first one, leaving the rest safe. Pip held the only key to a single undeniable form of control: the power to allow others to know her. Or not.

For someone who wore her soul through her wardrobe for the world to see, Penelope found the whole concept exhausting. How would you keep track of it all? If you told one person something and not someone else, how did you juggle it when they met? How could you possibly decide on that sort of scale what to tell and what to withhold, with each and every single person, and not trip up? It was giving her a headache just thinking about it.

Back to the boyfriend. Perhaps he'd been a coworker? Some intelligence asset, maybe? Someone she shouldn't have been seeing, necessitating secrecy. Long hours pouring over a recording together in a sound-proofed room, all alone…

She squeezed her legs together to ease the ache between her thighs. Yes, quite. Damn her overactive imagination.

Further thought was interrupted by a case, although from the quick email Pip had sent her, it was one Rossi had picked up himself. Penelope grabbed her tablet. If it wasn't one of the recent requests she'd passed on, she'd need to take notes.

She tottered back to her lair, mind whirling. The pictures had been icky, but then they always were. Some super-duper analyst type in the Pentagon had been tortured for information and then shot in the head. Lots and lots of blood all over everything, followed by brains on the wall. Nasty. However, not only did she have permission to look at his computers, she was allowed to widen her search if necessary. Who knows what she might…happen to run across?

But despite the enormity of the opportunity that had presented itself, the chaos in her thoughts wasn't anything to do with the case, oh no. It was the General that had asked for their help. Julio Perez.

Tall, imposing, and rather good-looking, for an older guy. He obviously worked in a highly classified department because she'd got nowhere with a basic inquiry into him on her tablet as she stood in the conference room, watching as the profilers got more and more frustrated with him. He cut Rossi off several times, denied them access to certain information, then all but gave her permission to hack the Department of Defence. Just who was he, to be able to do that?

Vintage stilettos, no less.

She'd escorted him to the elevator as he left and they'd run into Pip on their way. She hadn't missed the adoring looks the General had cast in Pip's direction, and it had been clear that Pip was only pretending that they'd never met. She'd been fidgety, fiddling with something on a chain around her neck.

What was it Derek had told her about body language and subconscious gestures? She was willing to bet the apple pendant Pip had unintentionally drawn attention to had been from her lover. Unconsciously, she'd reached for the pendant when she saw Perez. The General was clearly besotted. Which meant…

He was Pip's secret, it was him that required the privacy, not Pip. Somehow that was even more worrying, if she was right about the kind of man he was. If they'd met while she was at the State Department, where did that leave Ian? Perhaps it was more of an on-off thing. Although from the look on Perez's face, it was definitely "on" as far as he was concerned.

Penelope's nails clattered cheerfully over her keyboard as she trawled through records looking for what her profilers had asked for. Her mind however, was focussed elsewhere.