Your reviews are so incredibly nice, I really don't deserve so many kind words from so many wonderful people. I appreciate it so so so much and I think I say this with each update, but I truly mean it! Thank you all so much :)

Two days later, Emily's routine was much as it had been before the stroke, except that not Emily visited her mother in the hospital instead of the nursing home. Elizabeth had been doing well enough to be moved from the ICU, but she was still in the hospital. So, Emily spent her mornings with her mother, and left the afternoons for Elizabeth and George to spend together. Emily and the older man weren't allowed to spend nights with Elizabeth at the hospital any more, but they knew that meant Elizabeth was healing well.

Just as Emily walked outside, her phone began to ring. She smiled when she saw the name flashing across the screen.

"Hi, Pen." Emily greeted warmly.

"Dear, sweet Emily please tell me you don't have anything planned this afternoon!" Garcia chattered happily.

"I don't, actually." Emily replied with a chuckle.

"Oh good! JJ, Alex and I are treating you to lunch! And I don't want to hear a word of protest from you, missy."

Emily bit back a laugh at Garcia's fierceness. "How'd you get away from that strict boss of yours?"

"Oh, you know. It was a challenge. Remind me to let him out of his restraints in three hours." Garcia joked.

"Should I meet you guys somewhere?" Emily asked as she began walking to where she parked her car.

"Meet us at our usual place in…an hour?"

"Okay, I'll be there." Emily promised as the call ended. She, Garcia, and JJ used to always take their lunch breaks together at least once a week, meeting at a cute little diner a few miles away from Quantico. They hadn't been there in so long, she couldn't even remember the last time just the three of them had spent time together. Emily was glad Alex was coming too, because she hadn't really gotten to know her very well.

An hour later, Emily walked into the diner and immediately found her friends. They waved her over and practically attacked her with hugs once Emily got closer.

"You guys literally saw me like, less than a week ago." Emily joked as she hugged them all back.

"If it was up to Garcia, we would've all moved in with you already." JJ smiled as they all sat down at the table. Emily and Alex sat next to each other on one side, while JJ and Garcia sat across from them.

"It was hard enough to get her to wait this long to ask you to lunch." Alex added.

"Well, I'm glad you did." Emily said honestly. "I've missed this."

The four friends talked almost constantly for almost two hours. Emily heard all the latest gossip going around in Quantico, surprised to see that not much had changed since she left. Garcia was already planning their next get together even though this one hadn't ended yet. Alex and Emily were getting along perfectly; they seemed to have the same sense of humor. JJ told them all stories about Henry, a favorite topic among the girls. He was always doing and saying the cutest things.

"I can't believe he's five already." Emily commented. "Weren't you in labor at the BAU like a week ago?"

"You went into labor at the BAU?" Alex asked in shock.

"How have you guys not told her that story?" Emily asked in disbelief, immediately offering up all the details to her newfound friend.

"I can't believe Garcia and I never mentioned that!" JJ said, laughing after Emily had told the story of how JJ had been in labor for hours before anyone noticed, and how they'd had to rush to the hospital in the middle of a case.

They talked for a bit more, before JJ glanced at her watch.

"Hotch is expecting us back soon." She said reluctantly.

"He'll understand, we're with Emily. Emily is much more important than paperwork!" Garcia protested.

"Slow day at the office?" Emily asked with a smile.

"Oh my God, Emily. This is the longest we've gone without a case in like, forever, probably. Now, I'm not saying I want some crazy person to start axing people, but if I have to sit at my desk and catch up on official documents for much longer, I will probably start axing people." JJ said dramatically, causing everyone to laugh.

"Well if you do start offing people, let us know so we can make sure you have an alibi. Henry probably wouldn't like visiting you in prison." Alex laughed.

"You guys are terrible!" Garcia exclaimed.

"You're laughing too, Pen." Emily pointed out.

Though none of them wanted to see their good time end, they all said their goodbyes anyway. By the time they'd all gotten back to the parking lot, Garcia had already planned days that all four of them would work on getting the rest of Emily's things from London and helping to unpack them all. She had also planned a girl's night out the next Saturday that the team was in town and no one had anything else planned. None of them minded, of course. A night out seemed like something they all needed.

Emily left the diner feeling happier than she'd felt in a very long time. It was hard for her to believe that a little more than a month ago, she didn't even want anyone to know she was back in DC. It didn't seem to matter how much time passed, she and the team always seemed to get along great. Even after she returned from Paris, once the feelings were discussed and everyone had talked, things went back to normal between the team for the most part. A small part of Emily did still blame herself for what happened with Doyle. She was sure that part of her was always going to be there, and because of that she had an even harder time trusting people and letting them into her life. She hoped, however, that being back with her friends would help that. Maybe she could have a relatively normal life again.

XxxX

A week went by, and Emily didn't get to see much of the team, because apparently JJ had jinxed their rare time off hunting creepy killers. Emily of course didn't mind, she knew that was the job, but she did miss her friends more now that she had finally let them back into her life.

Emily had officially been back in DC for two months. Sometimes to her it felt like two years, and others it felt like merely two days.

The brunette was prepared to wake up this morning and starting her day just as she did every morning, by getting ready and visiting her mother.

Except this morning, her immune system seemed to have a different plan. Apparently sometime in the last few days, she had been around someone with a terrible head cold. She'd barely lifted her head off the pillow, and she could already tell she had a pounding headache. Her throat felt like it was on fire, and she was pretty sure she had a fever.

Normally, a simple head cold wouldn't disrupt Emily Prentiss' life. Except that now, she couldn't go visit her mother. Her immune system was still weak from the surgery, and the doctors had told both Emily and George that if they were even the slightest bit under the weather, that they should stay home.

So now, Emily had absolutely no idea what she was going to do with her day. For so many years, her life had revolved around a spontaneous schedule, never really knowing if she would get to go home at night or jet across the country to find a serial killer. Even after she left the BAU and started working at Interpol, her days were rarely the same from one to the next. That was how Emily liked it. But now, her days were almost identical to the ones before. She knew exactly what she would be doing from the time she woke up until she went to bed that night.

It had been difficult at first, but Emily had a system that she had finally gotten used to.

But she wouldn't be doing that today. She sighed, forcing herself out of bed and slipping on a sweatshirt. Maybe if she made some tea and took some medicine, she would be fine later and could go see her mother, she decided.

When she got to the kitchen, she greeted George. He was normally always awake before her, but Emily had woken up even earlier than normal today.

"You're up early," Emily said, her voice raspy and thick. Maybe the cold was a little worse than she thought.

"You're sick too?" He asked. Apparently, they'd both caught the same thing. Now neither one of them could visit Elizabeth today.

"I guess so," Emily frowned. "I feel bad, this will be the first day Mom hasn't had any visitors."

"We can call her. I know that's not the same, but I would hate for her to get sick because of us." George replied.

"I know, I know. I just don't like thinking about her sitting there all by herself." Emily said as she started making a pot of tea.

"She might welcome the day to herself." George smiled.

As expected, Elizabeth didn't seem upset that they couldn't come see her that day. "It's not like I'm going anywhere, you can try again tomorrow." She had said with a laugh.

Emily was happy that her mom seemed to be doing so well despite everything she had gone through the past few weeks. Barring any complications, Elizabeth would be able to leave the hospital in three more days. That was progress, Emily knew.

"Well," Emily said after she and George had spoken to Elizabeth. "What should we do with our day?"

"There's a bunch of movies recorded on the DVR that I haven't had time to watch, we could watch one if you'd like." George offered.

Emily agreed, and the two of them spent their morning watching terrible horror movies that were much more comedic than scary.

XxxxX

Aaron Hotchner glanced at the clock on his desk, noting that it was well after 2 in the afternoon and he hadn't stopped looking at case files for hours. He ran a hand over his face, blinking several times to adjust his vision.

He dug his phone out of his desk drawer and called Emily. He actually hadn't talked to her in a few days, which was strange for them. Lately they talked every day.

"Hello?" She answered. She sounded terrible.

"Are you alright?" He asked instinctively.

He heard her chuckle on the other end of the line, sending her into a coughing fit. "I'm okay as long as you don't make me laugh." She replied after a moment. He could almost hear the smirk on her face.

"How long have you been sick?" He asked, hoping that she hadn't been miserable for days without him knowing.

"Just today, George and I must've caught it at the hospital or something because we both were sick when we woke up." She explained.

"Do you guys need anything?" He asked.

"No, we're all nicely drugged up and watching awful movies in between sleeping." Emily said. "But thank you, that's really sweet."

"Well, I hope you feel better soon. You sound awful." He said jokingly.

"Aaaand there it is, that charm I keep telling you about." She joked back. "Tell me you've got a really good case to tell me about or something, I've seen so many terrible horror movies it's almost embarrassing. Does no one understand that you should never follow the noise in your basement? And is anyone going to tell those poor teenagers that the strange banging noises in the kitchen are 99 percent of the time not their mothers?" She rambled. Hotch smiled. She tended to do that the few times in his life he'd ever seen her take cold medicine. She might as well have been drunk.

"No, actually. I don't. Our last case was really basic. Just your angry unsub, taking his anger for his girlfriend out on women that looked like her. We saved his last victim because he gave himself away pretty early on, and we were home three days after we left. But if anything interesting pops up, I'll let you know." Hotch replied. "You know, I never pegged you for a horror movie fan."

"Oh please!" Emily said. "Most of them are just hilarious. I mean I could probably come up with a better movie just based off the stuff we've seen with our work. Hey, we should do that. You can quit the FBI, I've already quit Interpol. We can better the world by making movies that actually scare people. It'll be great."

"Emily, I think you should take a nap." Hotch bit back a laugh, he wished he could see her in person right now.

"I will later. I think I'm going to call my mom again first. We couldn't go see her today because we had fevers. I feel bad that she's all alone." She admitted.

"Well, I could go check on her." Hotch offered. If she wouldn't let him come see her, he could at least do this.

"No, that's okay. You don't have to do that. I'm sure you're busy." Emily replied, somehow her voice sounded even more tired than it had a few moments ago.

"Just go to sleep, Prentiss." Hotch joked.

"You're not my boss anymore, Hotchner. And even if you were you couldn't tell me when to sleep. I'm not even tired."

"Mmhmm," Hotch hummed. "Okay, you keep telling yourself that. Call your mom, go to sleep, write a movie script, whatever you want."

"I will, don't you worry." Emily said as they bid each other goodbye and the call ended.

Hotch looked at the clock again, he figured he could leave for an hour or so to check in on Elizabeth without too much trouble. Though Emily had told him not to, he really wanted to do this. He knew how much Emily worried about Elizabeth, and if she hadn't been so doped up on cold medicine, she probably would have seemed a lot more worried.

So, he took an hour for lunch and headed to the hospital.

XxxX

Hotch entered Elizabeth's room quietly, in case she was sleeping. She was awake though, and she greeted him with a smile.

"Hello, Aaron." She said.

"Hi, Elizabeth. How are you today?" He asked as he walked farther into the room, taking a chair and pulling it up next to Elizabeth's bed. He'd never visited her without Emily, and even then it had only been once or twice.

"I'm alright. It's so peaceful without Emily and George around." She said, a smile stretching across her face. "It's a shame they're sick, though."

"I spoke to Emily not long ago, she seems to be…" He searched for the right word.

"Drunk?" Elizabeth supplied.

Hotch laughed. "Well, you said it, not me."

"Cold medicine has always done that to her. No matter how many different dosages or brands I tried. She's quite funny. When she was a sophomore in high school, she got a really awful cold during her finals week. I told her I was sure I could call the school and have them reschedule them for her, but she was insistent. So she took some medicine and went to school anyway. The school called not an hour after she got there. She'd fallen asleep at her desk before the test even started. But before she fell asleep, she of course had to inform her teacher that she didn't need a final exam and that she could have probably taught tenth grade English to a herd of cattle better than she could teach it to the class." Elizabeth smiled.

"Needless to say, I had to pull a lot of strings to make sure Emily didn't fail that class just because she wasn't thinking clearly."

Hotch couldn't even pretend to bite back his laughter. That definitely sounded like something Emily would do.

Elizabeth laughed at the memory, before she spoke again. "She just called me a few minutes ago and told me that you were going to quit the FBU so the two of you could write 'a believable, truly terrifying horror movie.'"

Hotch chuckled. "Yeah, we'll see how she feels about that tomorrow."

They were quiet for a moment before Elizabeth spoke again.

"She really enjoys spending time with you, you know." She said softly. "She always tells me about how much fun she has with you and your son."

"Jack adores her, he's always asking me when he'll get to see Emily again." Hotch replied.

"I know none of this is any of my business, so I'm not going to ask any questions. But you make her happy, I can see that. She hates it when I talk about this, but it's no secret that I'm not going to get any better. And it's not fair for me to make you promise me anything, so I won't ask you to do anything after I'm gone except to make sure that she stays happy. Whether you're the one making her happy or not, I need someone to make sure that she's not going to shut everyone out of her life. I don't want her to be my age and realize everything she's missed out on." Elizabeth said, meeting his eyes. Hotch could see the seriousness behind them; the same seriousness that he'd seen in Emily's eyes many times before.

"I'll make sure she's alright. That much I can promise you." He told her honestly. Emily had become his best friend, and he trusted her more than he could remember trusting anyone since Haley. Though they'd never said it, he knew that she trusted him that much too.

He also knew that even though she hadn't talked about it very much, she was scared about what would happen after her mother died. Naturally, she was going to put up her emotional walls. And when she did, he was going to be right there to help her take them back down again.

"Thank you, Aaron." Elizabeth said as she took his hand in hers. "You're a very good man, and Emily is very lucky to have you."

He just nodded, knowing that he was even luckier to have her in his life.