"Hi Penelope, how are you doing today?" Her bubbly therapist asked.
"I'm ok." She replied as she sat down across from the woman named Kate.
"Has your sleeping improved any from the last time we spoke?"
"Not really." She admitted. "I don't like sleeping because I don't like what I see when I close my eyes."
"Ok." Kate said as she wrote something down on her notepad.
"I was hoping that today we could dig a little bit deeper so that we can try to better understand why it is that you decided to do drugs."
"But I already know why, I started using because I was upset about my friends death." Penelope told her.
"Well you see, addictions can be quite complicated and there is almost never just one cause but multiple different things that build up over time. Emily's death is definitely a reason but there are probably other things going on here that you probably never even realized." Kate explained.
"Ok." Penelope agreed.
"You always refer to your team as your family but what about any blood relatives?" She asked.
"My parents died in a car crash when I was eighteen, my brothers hate me because they blame me for their deaths so I don't really have any blood related family." Penelope explained.
"Why do your brothers blame you?" Kate asked.
"Because my parents were out looking for me the night if the crash."
"Do you blame yourself?"
"Of course I do." Penelope replied.
"Ok, so what happened after your parents died?" Kate asked.
"I ran. I dropped out of school and went off the grid, I started dating this guy and I became a hacker, that's how I was recruited for the FBI, I was on a blacklist for the most dangerous hackers in the world. Eventually they caught me and they gave me a job instead of sending me to prison."
"Why did you run?" Kate asked.
"Because I couldn't deal with the grief of losing my parents or the guilt of the fact that it My my fault. I couldn't handle being myself, it was too painful so I became someone else, I was known as the black queen and I built up a whole new identity for myself so I would have to deal with the pain." Penelope said. She hadn't expected to say any of that it just kinda came out. She never really talked about this stuff before so now that she finally is it's all coming out.
"How has your life been like after joining the team? It must not be easy to be surrounded with so much bad things all day." Kate said.
"It's not that bad, I'm not the one who puts her life in danger every day like everyone else, I'm almost never in the field." Penelope said
"You might not be in the field all the time but you still see horrible things every day and you are in danger, just because your not carrying a gun with you and storming into buildings doesn't mean that you're in any less danger. I heard that you were shot before."
"Yes but what does that have to do with anything?" Penelope asked confused as to why she was bringing this up.
"It's a trauma that you've experienced." Kate stated.
"It was two years ago, I'm over it it's not a big deal."
"Penelope a man asked you out on a date, charmed you and made you trust him so much so that you let him drive you home, then he shot you and you almost died during surgery. A couple of days later he breaks into your apartment building and try's to kill you again. That sounds like a pretty big deal to me." Kate said.
"Can we just talk about something else?" Penelope asked suddenly getting annoyed.
"Can we talk about what happened in Alaska?" Kate asked.
"How do know about Alaska? Have you been reading my files?" Penelope asked feeling extremely exposed at the moment.
"Yes I did look at your files and I spoke with agent Hotchner." Kate said calmly.
"Ok well if you read my files then you would know that when I was in Alaska I watched a man get stabbed and so I ran towards him to help him and he died in my arms and I watched the life leave his body. Is that what you wanted to know?" Penelope snapped.
"What about the part where you ran after the killer?" Kate asked.
"Yeah so I ran towards the killer, a man was dying what was I supposed to do? I couldn't just let him die!"
"You put yourself in danger it might have been to save someone's life but it was still reckless especially when you easily could have gotten someone on you team to help you. You could have been in shock from watching that happen but Why would you even go outside by yourself in the middle of the night unarmed when you knew that there was a serial killer running around. And what about with Jason Battle? You knowingly got into his car even though he was a total stranger, you work for the fbi surly you know how dangerous that is." Kate said.
"What are you getting at Kate?" Penelope asked.
"I think that you subconsciously put yourself into dangerous situations."
"That's ridiculous! Why would I do that?" Penelope snapped.
"I don't know, you tell me." Kate said.
"This is insane. I'm going home." Penelope said as she stood up.
"Ok, I get it we have done a lot today so just think about it, ok?" Kate said.
Penelope didn't answer her as she quickly walked out of the office.