Howdy, friends. Many thanks for the comments on my holiday-themed conversations. I'm glad you enjoyed them.

I started writing fanfiction this year, and through it I've learned a ton, met a lot of really talented people, and gotten a chance to flex my writing muscles a bit. I started off my fanfiction journey with JJ and Emily, and it seems only fitting that I'd cap off the year with them as well. It's tagged to the season 3 episode "Doubt" - and kudos go to Shadpup for the suggestion all those weeks ago.

A very Happy New Year to you all - you've all been the best readers a writer could ask for this year.

Happy reading =)

"Conversation is the slowest form of human connection." – Author Unknown

I watch with slight amusement as Spencer sets up the chess board and waits for Gideon to join him, as is customary for them on the flight home from a case. I can almost see the smoke pouring out of his ears as his mind calculates potential moves, and possible strategies to employ. He is so intently focused he doesn't realize when Gideon begins speaking to him.

"Not today, Spencer."

"What?" he says distractedly, his mind clearly still focused on strategizing.

"I said, not today," the older profiler repeats, continuing down the aisle and sliding into the seat at the back away from everyone.

"Oh," he says, his face falling. His eyes jump up and meet Morgan's gaze. "Hey, Morgan. You wanna play?"

"Hell no, kid. Don't feel like gettin' my ass handed to me by a youngin."

"Aw, c'mon. I'll put a 5 second time limit on myself to make a move."

"No thanks, pretty boy," Morgan says with a laugh. "Playing chess with a genius is not a fair fight," he says pointedly before putting on his headphones and shifting his gaze to the small window beside him.

Spencer's eyes jump up to me this time and I'm distinctly aware of my expression doing its best portrayal of a deer in headlights. I know what's about to happen.

"JJ?" he asks hopefully.

"Um..." I frantically try and figure out a way of letting him down easy, a task made all the more difficult by the almost childlike quality of his eyes. A flat-out "no" would break his heart, but I have absolutely no desire to, as Morgan put it, get my ass handed to me. My mouth opens and closes a few times, my brain clearly unsuccessful in trying to string together a coherent response.

"Sorry, Reid," Emily says as she appears next to me and offers me a bottle of water. "Time for some girl talk. Right, JJ?"

"Girl talk. Right," I say, catching her meaningful look. "Sorry Spence. Rain check?"

"Sure," he says reluctantly. "You know, you're the only one I haven't played yet," he says, fixing Emily with an expression probably meant to convey a challenge. But it only makes her laugh.

"You mean I'm the only one you haven't had the chance to beat yet," she corrects.

"Actually, he's never beaten Gideon," I supply. Spence shoots me a look in response, and I shrug my shoulders. "What? It's true."

"Actually, not it's not. I beat him once on the way home from-"

"Okay, so out of the hundreds of times you've played him, you've only won once?"

"He's a far more experienced ch-"

"And you're a genius," Emily interrupts. "That's a fair fight if you ask me."

He mutters something about "not fair if I always lose" under his breath as his eyes drop to the already set up board.

"What was that, Reid?" Emily asks, plastering an innocent look on her face.

"I said you're just afraid you'll lose," he says boldly.

I hold in a chuckle. It's not often we get to see the competitive and playful, yet slightly snarky side of him.

"What makes you so sure you'll beat me?" she asks, crossing her arms and arching an eyebrow.

"Oh, he'll beat you, Prentiss" Morgan says, partially pulling his headphones off his ears.

"Yeah?"

"Definitely. Pretty boy doesn't take any prisoners when it comes to chess."

She shoots him an unimpressed look. "I'm so glad to have your support, Morgan. Really, it means a lot. Good to know my partner has such faith in me. It's very reassuring."

"Just tellin' it like it is, princess," he says with a smile and a wink before replacing his headphones over his ears.

"Okay, Dr. Reid. You've got yourself a match. Next flight home from a case, we'll play," she says, turning her attention back to the young genius.

"Excellent!" he says excitedly. But almost immediately his expression turns to disappointment as he realizes he has no one to play currently. "But who am I supposed to play now?" he whines.

"Yourself?" Emily suggests with a shrug. "Maybe that'll be a fair fight."

He grumbles incoherently, but begins a fairly fast-paced game, spinning the board around every turn. His lips continue moving as he mutters strategies and moves to himself. I just shake my head – even after all the years I've known him, I'm still not quite used to him being quite so...whatever he is. Emily offers a quiet chuckle and settles into her seat across the aisle from Spencer while I slide into the one across from her.

"Thank you," I say gratefully. "I don't quite know how to say no to him."

She chuckles. "Then for your sake I hope you don't have kids."

I frown pointedly.

"Oh, c'mon JJ. If you can't say no to Reid, how are you gonna say no to an adorable little boy or girl with big blue eyes asking you for just one more piece of candy?"

"I can be firm," I say in my own defence, but it's far from convincing.

"With the press, sure. But with a 5 year old looking up at you with those wide eyes? Not so much."

"Maybe. Maybe not. I guess time will tell," I say with a small shrug.

"You think you'll have kids?" she asks casually.

"Maybe one day. I honestly haven't really given it a lot of thought," I say, pausing to take a sip of water. "What about you?"

I admit I'm rather curious to hear her answer. While we're all pretty private people, preferring to keep our personal lives separate from our work, when you spend this much time around people, you tend to learn a thing or two. But Emily has remained an enigma. She's been with the team for months now, and yet we know practically nothing about her. Even her personnel file didn't reveal a whole lot. Hell, Garcia's sleuthing didn't reveal a ton either. Either she's incredibly normal and boring, or she covers her tracks very well.

"He's quite the character," she says, her eyes taking in Spence's chess match with himself. "How old is he again?"

"Uh, 26 I think?" I reply, blinking quickly to recover from her abrupt change in subject. I'm not sure if she got distracted or was pointedly trying to avoid the question.

"Is that all? He's practically a baby!"

"Yeah, sometimes it's hard to remember that a person who knows so much is so young."

"Makes me feel old," she moans.

"Oh, don't even. You're not old. He's just really young," I say with a grin.

"I like the way you think, JJ," she says with a quiet chuckle before turning her attention back to Reid. "He has himself in 3," she says.

"What?" I say in confusion. It's confusing not only because my skill at playing chess doesn't stretch far beyond knowing the names and movement patterns of the pieces, but also because he's playing himself.

"Look," she says as she gestures toward him, "White is in zugzwang."

"Zugzwang? You lost me."

"It's a German word, loosely meaning a compulsion to move. It essentially means he'd prefer to pass because all his options lead to negative consequences."

"So, basically he's screwed?" I ask in confirmation.

She chuckles. "Well, the half of him playing with the white pieces is, yeah."

We both watch as Reid realizes the truth Emily had pointed out. He slumps in his seat and lets out what can only be described as a simultaneous huff of frustration and sigh of relief.

"Can I ask you something?" I say, turning my attention to the brunette sitting across from me.

"Sure," she says as her own gaze shifts to meet mine.

"You moved around a lot when you were a kid, right?"

"Yeah," she says slowly. Her tone implies she's not entirely comfortable with the direction in which this conversation is going. Which isn't that terribly surprising considering how little she's divulged about herself since we'd met her. "My mother's postings changed pretty frequently so we jumped from country to country until I was 17."

"What was that like?" I ask, my mind flashing back to our earlier conversation.

"Everyone is so much younger than I remember being," I say, feeling decidedly old.

"Yeah," she says with a laugh. "It's a weird age. You want to be treated like an adult, but you're still used to someone else solving your problems for you."

"All I remember is trying to figure out who I was."

"You move around enough you get used to being whoever people want you to be," she replies.

It was such a small moment, but in that moment she'd revealed something about herself. And given how close to her chest she'd been playing her cards, it came as a bit of a surprise. She'd said it so plainly, as if it were just a matter of fact, and her expression was hard, but not emotional. She didn't sound bitter or angry as the words or their assumed meaning might suggest, but merely as though she was only stating a universal truth. It had piqued my curiosity and her comment had stuck with me the rest of the case.

She shrugs. "It had its ups and downs," she says vaguely.

"And..." I prompt, hoping I can get a little more out of her.

"And...I guess it was difficult to adjust, what with having to uproot your life every few months from the age of 4."

"Fitting in must have been hard. It's hard enough to do normally, but in a foreign country? I can't even begin to imagine..." I say, hoping to lead the discussion naturally to the actual question I want to ask.

"I guess," she says with a shrug. "You get used to it after a bit."

"Get used to what?"

"Being the one to up and leave, and not ever putting down roots."

"And being whoever people want you to be?" I say, echoing her statement from earlier, my tone trying to subtly prompt her for further explanation.

"Yeah," she admits, but turns her attention briefly down to her hands, where she's idly picking at her fingernails.

I let an awkward silence hang in the air for a moment, perhaps in the hopes that she'll expand on her comment. But no answer comes, so I press on. "If you moved around so much, where do you call home?"

She looks thoughtful for a moment. "D.C., I guess. We bounced around in Europe, but always ended up coming back to D.C. in between her assignments when we weren't visited my grandfather in France, and now I guess I've come back again."

"It must be nice for you to spend more time there then."

She laughs lightly. "Hardly. I should probably call the BAU home with the amount of time we spend there."

"I suppose I can't really argue with that," I concede.

"What about you? Where's home?" she asks, clearly relieved to have the spotlight shifted from her.

"Small town in Pennsylvania that I couldn't wait to get out of when I was a kid. All I wanted was to get out of that bubble and travel the world. After I got my scholarship, I never looked back."

Her expression shifts slightly to one of wistfulness and longing, but it lingers only for a moment before it slips away. "Athletic scholarship, right?"

"Yeah, soccer," I say. "I transferred to Georgetown after my sophomore year though."

She seems to perk up slightly at my mention of Georgetown. It isn't until after she asks, "Why Georgetown?" that I remember reading in her personnel file that she'd studied there after completing her undergrad at Yale.

"They had a stronger women's soccer program..." I reply quickly.

Emily smiles knowingly. "That's the reason you tell people...but what's the real reason?"

"Ugh. God, I hate profilers sometimes," I say with a chuckle.

"C'mon," she prompts. "Was it to escape the family that was still too close for comfort, or to follow the guy who later broke your heart?"

My jaw drops and my eyes widen as she hits the nail on the head. Directly on the head.

"So which is it?" she asks with a spreading grin, clearly pleased with her correct deduction.

"Both," I reply grudgingly.

"Oh! Really?"

I nod and bury my face in my hands. "I promised myself I wouldn't be one of those girls, and yet as soon as the chance materialized I had already packed my bags."

"You could've done a lot worse than Georgetown," she points out.

"I know," I admit. "But I still hate that I gave up everything I had just because of what I thought was love."

"The illusion of love can make you think and do things you wouldn't usually even consider doing," she says comfortingly.

"Maybe so, but I'm not proud of being that girl."

"It's not so bad," she muses. "Following your heart, I mean. Better than not feeling anything." At her words a quick flash of a memory from the aftermath of my brush with vicious dogs and Reid's abduction appears in my mind.

"I guess maybe I...compartmentalize better than most people."

Was she speaking from experience? Or just making an observation?

"Besides, if people were honest we'd see that we've all done things we're not proud of," she finishes with a shrug.

"And what has Emily Prentiss done that she's not proud of?" I ask, my curiosity piquing again.

"Many, many things, unfortunately," she answers sadly.

I frown gently, conveying my mixture of surprise and compassion.

"Last year," she begins slowly, and I feel myself drawn into her words. Whatever she's going to admit, it's big. "Oh god, it was so horrible. I can't believe I did it..." she says, a touch of despondence in her tone.

"What did you do?" I ask softly, glancing around the jet to make sure no one was listening in.

She begins her sentence several times, but fails to make it past the first syllable. "I... I..." she trails off, closing her eyes, bringing a hand to cover her mouth, and shaking her head lightly.

"You what, Emily?" I say gently, leaning forward and reaching a hand out tentatively, which she grabs tightly as though seeking support.

She pauses and swallows before meeting my gaze. "I wore white after labour day," she chokes out finally, straight-faced.

"Argh!" I exclaim, letting go of her hand hastily and landing a soft punch to her shoulder. "You're ridiculous."

She fails in all her efforts to hold in her laughter, and it soon proves too infectious for me to ignore. Within seconds our loud guffaws fill the cabin of the plane, drawing the attention of the rest of the team. They each turn and shoot confused looks toward us before returning to their previous actions when we don't offer any explanation.

"I'm sorry," she says as her laughter slows. "I couldn't help myself."

"You've been hanging out with Morgan too much."

She grins and leans back in her seat, crossing her arms and turning her gaze out the window. It seems our conversation had reached its natural end, but I suppose I could count it a success since I'd learned a few valuable things about her. Except...the more I think about it, the more I realize that Emily Prentiss has an uncanny ability, when she wants to, to talk without saying anything. We'd chatted about her childhood, and yet hadn't learned anything that I didn't already know. We'd talked about school, and yet she revealed nothing about herself. She'd asked whether I envisioned myself having kids, and yet deftly redirected the conversation when it came time to give her own answer.

The way I see it, there's two distinct possibilities to explain her reluctance to reveal anything about herself deeper than mere surface topics. One, she's an intensely private person and prefers to keep her work life separate from her personal life. Or two, she's got something significant in her past that she doesn't want or can't let out. At this point, both seem equally likely, but I'm inclined to go with the first option. We've all got our secrets, after all. Some of us are just more scared that they'll get out.

Reviews make my day...and I would so appreciate you taking the time to leave a few words. I love to hear how I'm doing and if you're enjoying these conversations!

And you'll be pleased to hear there's more conversations in the works. :)