(A/N: Thanks for the reviews, please keep them coming. This is going to be a fill-in chapter, explaining how Emily got to this point.)

Prentiss sighed and slumped over her books on the couch in the student union. No matter how much you study, you're going to fail. Worthless. Failure. Stupid, she thought. She couldn't even focus today; she was barely able to stay awake after her late night with JJ, nor could she keep out her memories, the bad feelings.

Flash. Little seven-year-old Emily stood nervously in front of her mother, holding her quarterly school progress report. She may have only been in second grade, but she knew what was expected. Straight A's. The perfect child. And she hadn't made it this time.

"Well, let's see," her mother said coldly and evenly, snatching the paper from her daughter's hand. She nodded as she saw the neat row of A's across the top, then scowled, her whole face changing, as she saw the one mistake. It was math, Emily's worst subject. No matter how hard she tried, she could never get an A there. She would find herself writing numbers down wrong from the chalkboard, flipping digits around, and taking much longer than the other children to do problems. Every day in that classroom, she'd silently scream at the numbers Stay still! But they never would. To even get that B had taken a stupendous amount of effort, staying after school every day for weeks and studying for hours until she had a severe headache.

"A B!" her mother yelled. "How could you do that to me? It's just like an F! I need you to be excellent, this is unacceptable!"

"I'm sorry, Mom!" she protested. "I did my best! You know I was staying after school to get help with my math every day." Her head started to pound again, and tears built up behind her eyes.

"I gave you excellence, I'm a great parent, and all I ask is that you get good grades," Emily's mother said, like she was talking to a three-year-old. "So what's this?"

"Mom, I?..." Emily started to cry and sniffle.

"Stop crying!" her mother shouted. "You're such a baby! How will you get ahead in life if you're just crying all the time? I didn't raise you to be stupid, you're garbage, and you disgrace me!"

Emily ran to her room and gently closed the door. If she slammed it, she would be in even more trouble. She lay down on her bed, crying and trying not to cry at the same time. Why did her mother treat her like this? She'd been told she was garbage so many times that she was beginning to believe it. Thoughts spun wildly around in her head, and she couldn't stop or slow them. You're so stupid, a failure. A bad person. You deserve to be punished for your stupid mistakes. And you yelled at your mom, too! You're terrible. You're nothing. You're always going to failfailfail. You'll never be good enough. Ever! Stop crying, be strong.

She didn't know what to do with the pain, the feelings. There was too much pain for her to even cry, and anyway, she wasn't supposed to. Without any conscious thought as to what she was doing, she held her hands out and smashed her wrists against the headboard of her bed. A jolt of pain shot up both arms, and she gritted her teeth to keep from crying out.

Emily stopped, took a deep breath. For some reason, she now felt immediately calmer, better somehow, at least a bit. This scared her even then- why did this happen? But the guilt, the feeling that she was somehow bad, persisted. She hit her wrists again, and again, until the feelings stopped, then lay on her bed in a tired, blank daze.

"Dinner, Emily." Her mother's voice floated up the stairs to her room. Emily got up, carefully pulling the sleeves of her shirt down over the bruises starting to form.

Flash. Twelve-year-old Emily sitting alone in the school cafeteria. She kicked her feet against the bench of her table, trying to eat her sandwich and failing. She felt like her throat was choking up with loneliness, and she could barely swallow. She hadn't been paying attention, and someone, one of her many bullies, came up behind her, shoving her off the bench and onto the hard floor. "Nerd. Dyke," the boy sneered, kicking her as she struggled to get up. "With short hair like that, you've got to be a lesbian."

I'm not! Emily screamed inside. But she couldn't deny the feelings she sometimes had when she saw a beautiful girl. She got back up and looked around the cafeteria. Everyone else was sitting in large, laughing groups, and she sat alone, like a rock in a stream, the pain inside her growing every day. She never cried any more. Not since she was about eight. There was no way for her to express whatever was in her.

She bent down to tie her shoe and tugged the leg of her pants down, checking to make sure that the cuts and scars, now on her ankles and partially covered by her socks, wouldn't show.

Flash. Emily was fifteen now. Sophomore year. She sat quietly, got A's, but she never talked in school any more, she hadn't since she started high school, except to answer a teacher's direct question if it was required for her grade. She rapidly took notes, ignoring the paper balls that the boy behind her was flicking at her head, the girls whispering about her. At home now, she didn't talk either, unless asked a question or ask for something she really needed, like food or school clothes. This had been happening since she was about ten. Sometimes a week or more went by without her saying a word. People had been frustrated with her not talking, but eventually, they gave up. They always did. No one even talked to her any more, except for the bullies' teasing and whispers. She seemed fine with it, but was actually so lonely.

Flash. Emily smiled a little as she looked around her dorm room on freshman move-in day. She could make a new start here, and she resolved to start talking from here on out. And things did improve, a little. It was so difficult for her to speak after such a long silence, but she eventually started again, first smiling, then saying "hi," then forcing out a sentence or two. She was mostly left alone here, but by the end of her first year, she had made a loose group of friends; herself, JJ, Reid the child prodigy, Morgan, Hotchner, and Garcia. Left alone, that is, until she put up that Facebook post on National Coming Out Day in October of her junior year. Her friends had, of course, supported her and "liked" it, but once her roommate found out and told everyone, she faced harassment every day, and none of them knew how bad it really was. That's part of the reason her self-harm, which had been much less frequent from the time she started college until then (she'd even been able to go months without it, she had felt so proud of herself,) had started again with a vengeance. It was almost every day by the time JJ found her out.

After finally being able to get some studying done, Prentiss returned to her room very late, again. 12:43 a.m. She opened her desk to look for a highlighter to put in her bag for the next day, and found a thin manila envelope in the drawer that she hadn't put there. After determining that it contained only paper and not something else, like shaving cream or manure or something someone would send her as a cruel prank, she opened it. Two sheets, one with Reid's chicken scratch handwriting, the other with JJ's neat, loopy, if somewhat crooked cursive. Reid's sheet held a long list of things, she couldn't figure out what they meant at first, then thought about what was scrawled across the top of the page. "Alternatives." JJ, you're dead. You weren't supposed to tell. But I guess you only told the child genius, it could have been worse. The other page held a list of hotlines, emergency numbers, and people and organizations Prentiss could call for help. Right. Like I'll talk to some stranger. But she was touched by her friends' concern. And even though she still cut that night before going to sleep, because she hadn't so far that day and needed, needed to, she at least stopped and thought first, and didn't go as far as she originally wanted to. At 1:30 that night, she finally fell into an uneasy sleep, still feeling unsatisfied.

(A/N: Sorry for the ending here; trying to keep it real. Things do improve and get less depressing, it'll just take a few chapters. Also, here's some foreshadowing :) "Hey, don't do that, baby girl, what's wrong?" Morgan asked clumsily. "This is a party, you don't need to be sad." Prentiss was crying so hard she could barely breathe. "She's had a lot to drink," JJ said worriedly. "I don't…I can't even begin to explain this…Nothing, everything's wrong," Prentiss choked. "Try," Garcia said softly. "We're all here anyway, so we'll listen to you.")