Chapter Six

Emily still hadn't found her place in the team. They were all welcoming, friendly. She enjoyed each of their company, both individually and as a group (with perhaps the glaring exceptions of Gideon, and she didn't much like being around Hotch for, well, obvious reasons). Even though she was friendly with them all, and happy to share in their company, she still hesitated each time she climbed onto the jet, unsure of which seat to take and of who to sit beside. If she was up for chatting, usually she chose Morgan. If she wasn't, Reid was a safe bet. He would let her sit in the quiet, not ask any questions, and not make it awkward at all. With JJ, she could do either.

Today, as she climbed onto the jet, she avoided both Gideon and Hotch; the former because she didn't want to discuss the details of the case and have to explain to him why his language was both outdated and offensive, and the latter because she'd been rather impressed by his handling of Gideon, and she didn't want to have to discuss that with him, either.

So far, she had developed the best relationship with JJ. They were fast becoming friends; Emily enjoyed her company the most, and she felt they'd shared a bonding moment at the round table, both rolling their eyes behind Gideon's back. This was why she looked for the blonde as she stepped onto the jet. She quickly found blue eyes, and felt perhaps JJ had been looking for her, too, because the blonde smiled invitingly and gestured her over, to the seat beside her. Emily gratefully took the seat. Morgan had already dropped into the seat beside Reid, Hotch and Gideon had taken seats separate both from each other and the rest of the group, and were each pouring over their case files. Emily returned JJ's smile as she took the seat beside her. The flight would be much more bearable for them both, this way.

"Let them keep their boys club," JJ quietly quipped, handing Emily her manila file, and the brunette chuckled in response. Emily habitually opened the file, though she'd already familiarised herself with the case at her desk. She scanned through the gruesome images without so much as flinching, and absently wondered how many scenes of a similar nature she had seen at this point. It had to be hundreds. She couldn't remember the last time a crime scene made her flinch, at least on the outside. On the outside, she could remain unbothered. On the inside, she cringed, squirmed, wanted desperately to get away from it. So she shut up those feelings into a tiny little drawer, and made herself look longer at the photographs she loathed. How many did it take to become desensitised? She looked at Gideon, pouring over the same photographs that she was, then at Hotch, doing the same. Were they, too, squirming on the inside? Or were their poker faces actually genuine?

"So," JJ's voice drew her out of her thoughts as the blonde dragged out the syllable, guiltily. Emily sighed as she closed the file on her lap, intuition telling her exactly what was coming next. "Are you really not going to come to this party? Your mother's party?"

Emily groaned and leaned her weight on her palms, making to leave her seat and find somewhere else to sit, but JJ grabbed for her arm. "Oh, come on," Emily turned on her, eyebrows raised. JJ rolled her eyes, but raised her hands in surrender. "Alright, fine. I promise to drop it."

The older agent was thoroughly unconvinced, but she sank back into her seat with a sigh, leaning her head back against the headrest. She hadn't even seen Elizabeth yet, and she was already giving her a headache. Beside her, JJ was quiet. Now it was her turn to flip thorough her case file, but Emily could tell she wasn't really paying attention to the words in front of her, that she was biting her lip with the effort it took her not to speak, and that she was sneaking the occasional glance across at Emily, glances that were both guilty and curious at the same time. It was with an irritated sigh that Emily took pity on the blonde.

"JJ, what you fail to understand is that my mother is the reason I'm not going to this party. That, and it's not just a party." She pointed out, "It's a chance for my mother to spy on he, to elbow her way into my life. To meddle, the way she always has done." She shook her head, emphatically, "You don't know what she's like. She hasn't invited you all to be nice, trust me. She's invited you to dig up some dirt on me, to try and prove some ambiguous point she's been trying to prove since I was a teenager. I'm still not sure what it is, but I know it's nothing good, believe me. You have no idea how difficult being her daughter is; she's the whole reason I never wanted to end up back in Virginia in the first place. I literally moved across the country to get away from that woman."

"I get it, my mom is no picnic either," JJ piped up, as though this information was helpful. Emily shook her head, opening her mouth to continue her assault on her mother's character, but JJ cut across her. "What? You think you have the monopoly on difficult parents? I also moved halfway across the country to get away from my eagle eyed mother. She has an opinion on everything I do, especially this job."

Emily didn't think there was an agent whose parents didn't have an opinion on their job. Profiling is not a skill one can pick up and put down when convenient and, as a result, Emily had been pretty much silently profiling the team ever since she'd met them, and she was certain they had been doing the same to her. It was part of the reason she liked JJ's company; the blonde was the only one who didn't make her feel like she was being analysed, made to fit into tiny little boxes. Penelope also lacked this skill, thankfully. On the outisde, JJ had her shit together. Morgan bore signs of having to be the man of the house from an early age. Spencer was...well, Spencer. He, too, had been forced to grow up much too quickly, though in a very different way to Derek. The world was not build for people like Dr Spencer Reid, though he managed to navigate it spectacularly. He was socially stunted to an extent, probably as a result of always being so far ahead of his peers. Penelope surrounded herself with beautiful things to shut out the world, and what their job involved, to protect herself from their everyday horrors, the same ones Emily could look at without blinking. JJ, it appeared anyway, was much better at keeping herself hidden than the rest of them. Emily's dark eyes drifted to Aaron's mop of dark hair, traced their way down his frowning face, but she tore her eyes away, lest JJ notice. He, too, put up his walls. She'd had a glimpse behind them, that first night they'd shared together, but ever since he'd found out who she was, he had shut her out, just like the rest of them. Perhaps even more so, as compensation for all that he had already given up to her.

"Alright, alright," She conceded, "So I'm not the only one with a difficult mother, fine. But I stand by what I said; mine is awful, and I'm more than reluctant to give her what she wants, which is to either isolate me in a public situation where I have to talk to her, or to grill you all about my personal life."

"You can show me just how awful she is at the party," JJ said, returning to the file on her lap. She didn't even look at Emily, who sensed she was losing a battle of wills. "We can get drunk and laugh about all of the awful things our mother's have done over the years."

With a final, stubborn sign, Emily opened her own file. After a moment of silence, she muttered, "Fine."

"So, you're saying you'll come?" JJ grabbed her arm, excitedly, her cool demeanour entirely abandoned. Emily rolled her eyes back, but mostly just for the dramatics. At least getting drunk for free was better than spending her own money to do it.

"Fine, but only for the good booze and the even better company."

"No promises there," JJ lowered her voice to a whisper, "Gideon'll be there."

And they giggled like schoolgirls.

The case didn't take very long. Once they found his latest victim, and the traces of cocaine he left on her body, everything moved along smoothly. Around her, Emily felt as though everyone was going through the motions. She sat at the conference table, everyone around her moving in fast-forward.

When they gave the profile, everything felt scripted. White, male, young. Likely using the women he killed as a surrogate for someone he had lost, most likely his mother. She would have been a sex worker, too, the profile said.

When they found him, he was crying. Curled in on himself, weeping, sober. Emily, like the rest of them, held her gun ahead of her while Aaron approached him to cuff him. She tried to see a killer, tried to imagine how those women he had killed felt in their last moments. All she saw was a weeping boy. Nineteen years old. A child.

A killer, yes. But a child.

She put her gun down first. She was the first to turn away from the scene, unable to listen to the weeping any longer, from either of them.

Their profile was right. His mother had been a sex worker, in and out of the emergency room; bruises, beatings, broken bones. And he had seen all of it. He'd seen the substance abuse, the physical abuse from clients. Later when they interviewed him, they found out he, too, had been a victim of abuse from her clients; both physical and sexual. None of it was an excuse for the things he had done, the pain and fear he had inflicted on his victims. Nevertheless, when Emily looked at his picture later in the precinct, all she could see was the little boy went through all of that and then lost his mother.

Hotch saw her walk away. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her lower her gun. The scent of her perfume and swish of her ponytail, as she turned her back on the scene, caught his attention. He cursed himself for it, and he tried to deny it, but since she started on the team, he had been hyper aware of her. Perhaps it was some remnant of embarrassment he felt after their night together, or perhaps it was something else entirely. Either way, he saw her in his peripheral vision, turn and walk away. She was waiting by the cars when they brought the unsub in, climbed into an SUV beside Morgan and drove away.

Later, at the precinct, he found her in their designated room, taking down their evidence. She had paused, her brow furrowed like she was thinking very hard about something, her lips pursed. There was a photograph in her hand, their unsub. She was staring down at it, deep in thought. Her lashes cast long shadows down her pale face, as she lowered her eyes to look at the photograph. Hotch wondered what exactly she was thinking, frowning at her through the glass. He watched her heave a sigh as she slid the photograph into one of the folders.

"Are you alright?" She started at his voice, not expecting him, sure she was alone. Brown eyes found his, and he saw her try to shield whatever she was feeling. She shrugged, eyebrows raising in an attempt at a nonchalant expression, but not before he saw her try to cover it up.

"Of course." She shrugged, with a smile. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"I saw you walk away at the arrest." She waited for an admonishment, but none came. Glancing up at him, she found him looking at her with curious eyes. Those eyes. She cursed those eyes. It was as though he could see right through her, while his own eyes gave her absolutely nothing back, she couldn't read him. She could read everybody. Not him; he was doing his upmost to keep her shut out, and that meant he didn't even give her an inch.

"Yes,"She agreed, trying to give him as little as he gave her, but something about the way he looked at her made her mouth keep moving, though she didn't recall deciding to speak. "I felt like my job was done." She told him, "There were more police there than needed to be, he was coming quietly. I didn't see the need to hang around." There was more, they both knew there was more. Perhaps, if she were someone else, he would have pushed further, he might have asked more questions. But he didn't. And yet, she found herself once more opening her mouth to speak, as though she owed him more of an explanation than she had given.

"He just...I know he's a killer, I know what he did to those women. But I just saw the sad little boy he used to be. He's ill, Hotch. Not just sadistic or psychotic. He's ill-"

"And he's going to get help, Emily." Hotch assured her. "Justice and help."

She nodded, and, for a long moment, he just looked at her. Under the intensity of his gaze, Emily turned away. She felt he was seeing right through her once again.

"This is the job, Emily-"

"And I can do it." She rounded back on him, at once. His surprise was obvious in his expression as his eyebrows shot up. This was something Emily had heard before, something her superiors often said to her. She was sick of hearing it, sick of the implication that somehow, feeling something meant she couldn't do her job properly. "It doesn't make me a soft touch, Hotch."

"I never meant to suggest-"

"Yes, well, please don't." She cut him off, insubordinately, dropping a pile of papers into the box she was packing in front of her. Hotch bristled, frowning and obviously uncomfortable. Emily knew she deserved a telling off from her boss for speaking to him that way, but it didn't come. Eventually, she raised her eyes to look at him. He was staring at her, levelly, and after a deep breath, Emily shook her head and backed down.

"I apologise, sir," She said, although Hotch could tell it was through figuratively gritted teeth. "I just...don't think that it makes me weak to have a feeling every now and then. I think it makes me human. And I won't turn my back on that. I won't. It makes me better at what I do, I truly believe that. That boy...he has demons in his past. I just, I hate when someone becomes the sum of those demons." She shook her head, looking away from him. "It's nothing short of tragic."

"It is," He agreed, and he left it there. There really wasn't much else to be said. He stood there awkwardly for a moment, and she waited for him to say something, but he didn't. In his head, he was marvelling at her, the way he marvelled at his whole team. He had seen people in their line of work who had completely shut themselves off. Emily, though, was a mystery to him; it appeared she had the best of both worlds. She could compartmentalise when the situation called for it, but when she felt something, she felt it deeply. He turned to leave and Emily relaxed, relieved.

"Oh," He stopped on his way out, hand on the door frame. "Your mother, she uh," He paused, awkwardly, "I worked briefly for her, she's invited me to this party." He saw her expression, his own turning apologetic, "I don't have to go, I don't want to go if it's going to be awkward at all for you."

Emily wasn't quite sure if he meant awkward around her mother, or awkward around the team, but either way she shook her head, not because she didn't think it would be awkward, but because she knew it was the right thing to do. Not only would Elizabeth be suspicious and judgemental if her boss, Elizabeth's former employee no less, turned down the invitation. She had no doubt it would be awkward, but Emily could deal with awkward. "No, you should go. Gideon is going, right? I'm sure he'll have a better time if you're there, too."

"Yes." He nodded, and Emily thought perhaps he had wanted a different response. "Gideon. Right. I'll see you there then?"

"You'll, uh, see me on the flight home " She corrected, with a slightly amused smile.

"Right, of course" He muttered, awkwardly. Emily smiled, a small smile, and returned back to the board, very aware of his eyes on her back, but giving him a moment to leave, quietly, as she felt the weight of what had passed between them press down on them both.

"We've all have demons in our past, Emily." He said, softly. By the time she looked up, he was already walking away, but she felt that he had revealed more to her in that sentence than ever before. Finally, she was seeing the man behind the job again.