Hey all. This is my first story in a long time. I used to write about Prentiss (far and away my favorite) quite frequently then went on hiatus for awhile. Happy to be back. The last few stories I wrote were sort of sequels to Prentiss's time on the show (at least through Season 7). I thought it might be fun to do a prequel exploring just how Emily came to be involved in the CIA and, ultimately, the Ian Doyle investigation before joining the BAU.
I'm posting the first three chapters at one time because they originally started as one chapter that was just too unwieldy, so I cut it in thirds. After this I'll try to update on a weekly basis. Your feedback and critique is welcomed and appreciated. (Especially since I will probably be rusty!) Hope you enjoy!
…
Georgetown University 1995
After a moment of fumbling with a crumpled packet and cheap Bic lighter, she took a drag of her cigarette and immediately fell into a coughing fit. She wasn't sure if it was intake of the unseasonably sweltering April air, the staleness of the cigarette, or the fact that she hadn't smoked in three weeks, but the smoke hadn't provided the fleeting moment of stress relief she'd hoped for.
"You know that shit'll kill you, right?" inquired Frank, her research partner. Emily hadn't heard him sneak up behind her, light brown eyes narrowed behind his oversized glasses.
"I'm counting on it," she quipped. "Get me out of finishing these stupid revisions."
"Fat chance," Frank replied. "I'd still make you help me if you were dead. I'm not doing these by myself. Besides, I thought you'd quit."
"I think that was officially my last drag," she answered, putting the cigarette out in the big outdoor ashtray next to the door. From the looks of it, nobody had cleaned it since the spring semester ended.
"Good, but I didn't come to lecture you. There are a couple of guys looking for you up in the office."
"What? Who?"
"I don't know, definitely government dudes."
"State?" she inquired.
"I guess," Frank answered, taking a swig from his Coke bottle. "The one guy seemed like a real asshole, so I didn't really stick around to ask."
"Great," Emily muttered, rolling her dark eyes. "Better go get this over with."
"Good luck," Frank answered sympathetically. After years of friendship going back to their undergraduate years at Yale, he was well aware of how much Emily hated anything to do with her mother.
Emily retreated into the building behind them, silently thankful that the school had finally installed air conditioners in the psychology building. The sticky sweat on her t-shirt cooled pleasantly as she made her way up the stairs to the cramped second-floor office she and Frank shared with a few other graduate students. There, amongst the scattered papers, errant pens, and dog-eared citation manuals were the two "government dudes" in question. One, a thrity-fiveish man with thick brown hair was leaning against Emily's battered desk and appeared to be reading through her notes. The second man was older. Emily pegged him as late forties. He had graying, slightly receding hair that was clipped into a neat buzz cut and fierce blue eyes. Emily guessed that this was the asshole, and it was he who spoke in a clipped, demanding tone:
"Miss Prentiss," he said, extending his hand. Emily was nearly crushed by his vice grip. "I'm Jack Peterson. This is Michael Foley."
"Hello," the brown-haired man said without looking up from Emily's notes.
"Hi," Emily said impatiently. She didn't particularly appreciate the fact that a totally stranger was currently flipping through her work. "Look, let's just get this over with. My mother is the same as she's ever been. She's self-promoting, self-centered, and a meddling pain in my ass. But she's not a security threat and I haven't noticed any changes in her. Can I go now?"
To Emily's surprise, Peterson cracked a wry smile, suggesting that he might be slightly good-natured under his tough exterior.
"You think were from State?" he asked, laughing slightly. "Here to do your mother's regular background check."
"I take it you're not, then?" she answered.
"No, but, uh, we'll be sure to pass along the message," Peterson answered. "We're with the Defense Department. Actually, I'm going to be blunt with you, we're with the Central Intelligence Agency."
A long moment of silence passed.
"CIA," Emily finally managed, incredulously.
"Indeed," Peterson answered. Out of the corner or her eye, Emily noticed that Foley had stopped reading her notes and started watching her intently.
"So…uh, how can I help you?" Emily asked.
"We've been reading your work," Foley interjected. '"The Effect of Language Barriers on the Accuracy of Cross-Linguistic Psychological Analysis.' Franklin Mueller and Emily Prentiss. Quite impressive."
"You read our paper?" Emily inquired, mildly surprised. "How? It's not even ready for publication yet."
"Your advisor, Dr. Holt, is an old friend. He sent it to me. He thought we might find it…promising. And 'publication ready' is a matter of the style. I'm more interested in the content. There are some keen observations on this. Some observations we haven't considered before."
"Thanks, but what exactly does this have to do with the CIA?" Emily pressed.
"Are you familiar with the work of David Rossi and Jason Gideon?" Peterson asked.
"Somewhat. FBI guys, right? Use psychological profiles to narrow down criminals and predict behavior. What about it?"
"We utilize similar techniques at the CIA. Though we don't have the luxury of writing nice books about it," Peterson said somewhat bitterly. "We use profiling to identify and track terrorists, spies, drug cartels, you name it. But there's a problem. As you might imagine, most of the people we're tracking don't speak English, at least as a first language. We've found that this language barrier leads to inaccuracies in our profile. Even if some of our profiling agents speak the subject's language, there seems to be a problem generating profiles that a primarily English-speaking intelligence agency can deal with. Your paper offers some interesting approaches that might help solve our problem."
"So you want a copy of our paper?"
"No," Peterson clarified. "We want you."
"Me?"
"Indeed."
"Why?"
"I've just told you why. We think your aptitude is impressive and your insights valuable. And you speak six languages. I need hardly point out what an asset that would be in our line of work."
"Five, really. My Russian is crap," Emily muttered. "How the hell do you know this anyway?" she demanded.
"We do our research," Peterson said matter-of-factly.
Emily didn't particularly appreciate his answer. She fiercely valued her privacy and was none too pleased that, after dodging her meddling parents with relative success for her entire life, she was suddenly confronted with a pair of complete strangers who seemed to know far too much. Nonetheless, she couldn't deny she was starting to feel slightly intrigued as well. Peterson and Foley seemed to notice. They were scrutinizing her carefully. Emily put on her best poker face. She still had a few questions answered before things went any further.
"Why just me?" she demanded. "Why not Frank? He did as much work on this as I did. He speaks four languages."
"It's not just a matter of aptitude," Peterson said. "There are concerns of temperament. Mr. Mueller doesn't seem to seem to be cut out for it."
Emily didn't appreciate this dig at Frank. Foley quickly intervened.
"What Jack means is that your friend Frank's interests lie elsewhere. We understand he's set to begin studying pediatric psychiatry at Duke Medical? It's a noble field, but it doesn't exactly scream CIA. He's set himself a very clear post-graduation trajectory in the opposite direction. You, on the other hand..."
"I have plans after my Master's," Emily interrupted.
"Yes, Berkley," Peterson said wisely. "Arguably the top psychology PhD program in the country. Very impressive. Especially considering you applied well beyond the deadline." The implication in his tone was unmistakable, and Emily didn't have a good answer.
"Your heart isn't in it," Peterson pressed. "You're very intelligent, Ms. Prentiss, but you're no academic. You've grown up around the globe and you aren't about to settle in an office. You want something more challenging, more adventurous. But you haven't found the right outlet. I'm offering you that."
"So, you know I'm the slightly aimless daughter of a diplomat who happens to be good at psychology and a few languages, and from that you've decided that what I really want to do is run off and joint the CIA?" Emily replied dryly. "That's quite a leap."
"But it's not wrong, is it?" Peterson pressed.
She decided not to answer directly.
"What exactly are you offering?"
"I want you to join us as a full agent and specialize in profiling," he answered in a matter-of-fact tone. "You build on the work you've done here to develop an approach to analyzing foreign enemies of the United States, maybe even teach other agents, and you help us stop threats. Sometimes that will mean assisting in interrogations, sometimes that will mean narrowing down a list of potential suspects, sometimes that will mean helping us determine where a particular person will strike next and stopping them. But I promise you, it will never mean boredom."
"Stopping enemies of the United States?" Emily asked. "Being a good government servant like my mother?"
"Your mother's job is about optics and politics. About taking credit." Foley insisted. "We aren't interested in that. If we do our job right, nobody knows about it, much less takes credit. We worry about results. And in our business, Ms. Prentiss, results means a lot more than just serving some government interest. It means saving lives, American or not."
"Sure there are some politics," Peterson admitted. "But we have a few heads at the top to deal with that shit. You just do your job. That's it."
Emily considered everything for a moment. In a way, it was everything she wanted. To do challenging work and to do work that might make a real difference. And to prove she could do it without the manipulative and attention-seeking behavior that characterized her mother. Emily knew it wouldn't be as simple as Peterson and Foley were making it sound. She didn't quite trust them. This was the CIA, after all. There were bound to be strings attached. Probably a lot. Still, this was too tempting to pass up. To not at least find out what the strings were and see if she could tolerate them.
"I'm listening," Emily allowed. "What's the catch?"
"The catch, is that you will have to give everything for this job, and it's a job I cannot guarantee you until you've proved yourself a hundred times over. There will be physical training, psychological tests, stress tests. If you make it through the screening, in the unlikely event that you find much time for a personal life, you must be willing to compromise that. You may have to lie to your family, your friends, your spouse. You may be required to drop everything at a moment's notice and travel to places that are remote, dangerous, even deadly. And you will have to do all this without hesitation. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"And are you still interested?"
"I am."
"Good," Peterson said, studying Emily closely. "Because I don't know quite what it is about you, but I think you have what it takes. I really do."
"Now what?" Emily asked.
"Now nothing," Foley said. "You will rejoin Mr. Mueller. You will tell him that we were from the State Department here to conduct your mother's annual background check and it took a long time because Mr. Peterson had to take a phone call. You will publish your paper and receive your Master's degree. You will proceed as if nothing happened, and we will be in touch."
It wasn't a request. Emily wasn't even in the CIA yet. Wasn't even sure she ever would be, but she was receiving her first orders.
"Alright," she agreed, with only the slightest bit of reluctance that the successfully repressed.
"Good. You'll be hearing from us," Foley said. He extended his hand again and Emily returned the gesture. She did the same with Peterson and the two men left the room, but not before Peterson threw in one last remark that fed Emily's distinct impression he could read her mind.
"I know we gave you a lot to think about, Ms. Prentiss, but try and deal with it some other way besides smoking. There will be a health screening fairly early on."
A minute after the stone-faced agents departed, Emily went back outside to find Frank.
"Jesus, that took forever," her partner groaned. "What the hell did they want?"
Emily looked at her friend since their freshman year at Yale, the nicest guy she knew, and with an ease that somewhat scared her, she lied.
"Nothing, just the stupid background check for my mom. Took forever because the asshole just had to take a phone call. Couldn't ignore his stupid pager for just a few minutes."
"Well, at least you're done with it," Frank remarked. "I suppose we better go back in get to work."
As Emily followed Frank back inside, she grabbed the crumpled package of cigarettes from her pocket and tossed it in the trash.