Note- This is a pinch hit for Chit Chat on Author's Corner's March Madness Challenge. My couple was Reid/Prentiss and the prompt was Land of the Lost.

Make sure you stop by Chit Chat on Author's Corner in the upcoming weeks because they are getting started with their nominations for fan fic awards. They need everyone to pitch in and nominate so that the most deserving stories get recognized. If you don't know where to find Chit Chat on Author's Corner then PM me.

Now You See Me

Reid and Prentiss

July 2011

She made him feel like he could do anything. Like he was normal. As bad as it sounds, before he met her Reid had never felt like that.

Though Emily Prentiss probably didn't know the effect she had on Dr. Spencer Reid, it was true that she had made him a better man. Just because when she looked at him she saw a man- not the little boy with a genius brain that a lot of other people saw.

For three months and twenty seven days he had believed her dead. The only way he knew to honor her memory had been not to lose himself in grief but to live an even bolder, better, happier life. To joke and laugh more. To love deeper. To appreciate his friends and family and every second he had with them.

Every second they were safe and alive while Reid thought Emily was gone from this world. Lost from this life. That her hopes and dreams were dead. That their chances had all withered up.

Now, as he sits on the jet with his other team members as they head to Europe to bring her home, Reid can't help but remember the first time Emily made him feel like an average guy.

"So," she asked, dragging out the word, as she sat across from him in the break room during the first week she was working at the BAU "are you seeing anyone?"

He choked on his coffee. Quickly wiping at his mouth with a napkin, he asked, his voice squeaking some, "Me? Am I seeing someone? How do you mean?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm prying. Its just I noticed her flirting with you."

He looked all around. "Who?"

"Come on, Reid, you don't need to play it off for me. I'm sure you noticed Agent Greene hitting on you when she was getting her coffee."

"She was?"

"She was giving you signals left and right. If you're single and interested you should ask her to dinner because I guarantee she'd jump all over the chance."

"She would? What makes you say that?"

"You didn't notice her giving you eyes? Touching your arm? Laughing a little too loud at your jokes? Titling her head to the side to listen intently to every word you said? Tossing her hair over her shoulder?"

He blinked a few times. "No."

She chuckled. "God, you men drive me crazy. I would think a trained profiler would catch a signal when its being broadcast with neon lights but I guess profilers are just men underneath it all." She shrugged. "So are you going to ask her out?"

"No, I don't think so. I'm not so great at dating."

"Join the club. Who is?" And then she gave him a sweet smile, grabbed her coffee cup and walked off.

He had sat there not thinking at all about Agent Miranda Greene but instead about how Prentiss didn't see him as some geek who couldn't get a date or some kid that no grown woman would waste her time on. It was a small thing but it mattered to Reid. And in the years to come he would learn that Emily, even when she was trying to protect him, saw him as her equal and not the baby of the BAU.

For that, he loved her, even before he fell in love with her. Just as he had been starting to realize his deeper feelings for her she got wrapped up in the Ian Doyle case that eventually took her from them all. Reid had thought she was gone from this world and all he could do was honor her memory by living his life to the fullest.

But he had been wrong...he had been lied to. Emily wasn't gone. And now he was going to Europe to bring her home.

Maybe she would never return his feelings of adoration, aching want and desperate need but he knew she would be the friend he had always relied on. And that would be enough for him.

Just to see her again and see that she was all right. Just to know the one person who saw him as the man he wanted to be was still here on earth, that would satisfy him. He smiled as he stared out the window of the jet, looking at the colors of the sky as the sunset upon their descent into Paris.

The jet was filled with a quiet tension that, at any moment, felt like it could explode. Anger, hurt, shock and pain filled the members of the team who had been kept in the dark about Emily still being alive.

At first Reid had felt all that too but as every second passed he was filled more and more with the feeling of gratitude that he hadn't lost his last chance to ever see her, hold her, talk to her, look into her lovely eyes, laugh with Emily.

When, hours later, he finally saw her face-to-face again there were no words he could find to say that would explain how much she meant to him so he settled for choking out "I missed you," in a tone that probably did sound like a little boy.

But he knew that Emily knew he was all man now. And what she thought was what counted most to him.

They fell into each other's arms, hugging tightly, the same way she had hugged Garcia, like they never wanted to let go. She had come back to them. She wasn't lost for this lifetime.

Spencer Reid wasn't sure he believed in miracles but holding her on that warm summer day sure felt like one.

THE END