A/N: This starts where S6x18 Lauren ends. This story will be Emily-centric, but the prologue is set in Virginia during the time when she was in Paris so we don't see much of her in it. That will change after this chapter.

"I'm having this nightmare. It's a recurring nightmare. There's a hill, and there's a little girl on top of the hill. She's, like, six years old. Dark hair. And she's just dancing in the sun. But, somehow, I know that she's waiting for me so I start to walk up the hill, but the hill gets steeper and steeper, and by the time I climb to the top, the little girl's gone. And I look everywhere for her, and when I can't find her, I start to panic. And I panic because I know what's waiting out there for her."

Prologue

March 2011

"Where is he? Where's Declan? Emily, tell me."

He got only a pained groan in response.

He shifted so he was practically on top of her, his light blue eyes fixed intently on her. He felt no remorse as he took in the cut on her right cheek and her bloody nose. She brought this on herself. It was the stab wound on her abdomen that would ultimately kill her, but he kept his gaze on her beaten and bloody face. "Where is he? Emily, tell me where he is."

"No," she said in a weak voice, refusing to tell him where his son was even now. She would take that secret to the grave.

He heard gunfire and glanced over his shoulder. Her team was there. But, by the time they got to her, it would be too late to save her. As it was, she was barely breathing.

Knowing he was out of time, he took one last look at the woman who had taken the only thing that mattered to him – his son – and then left her there to die on the floor in the same warehouse where, up until now, he believed his son had died.

It wasn't until his torturers showed him the staged photos of his boy with a gunshot wound in the middle of his forehead that he knew for sure who betrayed him. There was only one person who knew Declan was his son - Lauren Reynolds. Of course, he didn't know the photos were staged at the time. But, from that day on, Ian knew she took his son from him.

Lauren Reynolds died in a car accident, but there was no Lauren Reynolds. There never was. It was an alias. She was an undercover agent, but for who? Interpol?

He vowed then and there that he would find out who she really was, and when he did, he was going to take the only thing that mattered to her – her life.

A woman who would use his son as a promotion couldn't be a mother. Whoever she was, she wouldn't have a family. She said she wasn't the marrying type, and that might be the only thing she told him in the time they were together that was true. She would live alone and die alone.

He spent the better part of his seven years in that hellhole in North Korea planning how he was going to kill her. And, now, he had.

Oh, Emily Prentiss wasn't dead yet, but she was dying. He took solace in that fact as he slipped out of the warehouse and onto the dark Boston streets, unseen by the FBI agents.

It was only fitting that she die in the same place where she staged his son's death. Was Declan afraid when the duplicitous woman he let into their home and into their lives held a gun to his head? Or did Declan trust her, even then, because Ian trusted her?

Ian Doyle trusted the wrong person.

Liam never trusted her. She's too good to be true, and you're too blind to see it.

He should have listened to his most trusted lieutenant's warning, but he thought he knew her. How could he have been so wrong about her?

She was good – he'd give her that. She beat him back then, but not this time. Now, he knew Declan was alive, and he would find his son if it was the last thing he did.

While her team was burying her, Ian Doyle went through Emily Prentiss' apartment, meticulously searching every square inch of the brownstone. He didn't know exactly what he was looking for, but if there was anything there that would lead him to his son, he would find it.

The last time Emily was in her apartment she left in a hurry. She was less worried about covering her tracks and more worried about following him to Boston before her team realized the true nature of their…connection.

David Rossi and Derek Morgan had already gone through the apartment the day Emily left her phone and her gun and badge in her desk drawer. When they did that, she was still alive, and they were looking for anything that would help them find her. They didn't bother with any of the fake IDs that she left behind. If she left them there, that meant she wasn't using any of those aliases.

Unlike the men who had searched the apartment before him, Ian Doyle was only interested in what Emily did and where she went seven years ago. Lauren Reynold's death gave Emily Prentiss her life back, but there were seven months in between the time Lauren died and the time when she resumed her life as Emily again. There was no record of any property or lease in Emily Prentiss' name until September 2004. What was she doing during that seven month period? Where was she? And, more to the point, where was Declan?

Emily had said only that she relocated Louise and Declan. If she was telling the truth, his son was with Louise somewhere, but his old housekeeper wouldn't have been able to establish herself in a new country without help from Emily, and a lot of it.

Ian rifled through the passports and driver's licenses in the safe that had been conveniently left open, looking dispassionately at the many names and faces of Emily Prentiss.

He could tell from the pictures which of the IDs were created around the same time as his arrest. She cut her hair, but she didn't change the color. It was the same medium brown that it was when he met her. Pretty, deceptively so. She was beautiful, but she was so much more than just another pretty face.

When he left her apartment, Ian Doyle had three possible names. He had one of his contacts run them all. His people were good, maybe even as good as the lovely Penelope Garcia. It didn't take long for his contact to get back to him with an address in Fairfax, Virginia. Emily rented a house there under the name Sophie Moore.

Fairfax was in Northern Virginia. It was twenty miles outside of D.C. It was a thirty-minute drive from the Pentagon and National Mall with light traffic and as much as an hour and fifteen minutes with the heavy traffic that was normal in the Washington Metropolitan Area.

While his contact looked into the property owner and the rental history of the house Emily rented, Ian Doyle went to check the house out in person. It was a townhouse in a kid-friendly neighborhood where there was no shortage of bicycles left in front of friends' houses or baseball mitts discarded on front porches. Did one of those bicycles belong to Declan? Did Declan play baseball?

When a big yellow school bus stopped on the street, Ian parked across the street from the bus stop and watched for a boy with the familiar head of blonde curly hair. Ian would know his son when he saw him, but Declan wasn't on that bus.

For a week Ian Doyle spent his days sitting in a parked car on that street, hoping to catch a glimpse of his son or his old housekeeper. After one week, he was sure they weren't there, if they ever had been.

Was it just Emily or was it the three of them in that townhouse seven years ago?

Ian went back to the neighborhood one last time with a photo of Emily Prentiss. He'd taken the photo sometime in the month he had her under surveillance. She didn't know she was being photographed and wasn't looking at the camera, but it was a clear shot of her face.

He went door-to-door, introducing himself as the attorney representing a recently deceased friend of Sophie Moore. He told the neighbors that his client was an old friend of Sophie's who had named her as guardian of her only child, a boy who was the same age as Sophie's boy, and this was the address on file for Ms. Moore when the will was made. He watched carefully when he referenced Declan as Sophie's boy, measuring the neighbors' reactions, but none of them remembered a boy.

The last door he knocked on was the townhouse directly across the street from the one Emily had rented. It belonged to a seventy-five year old widower named Ruth Brown whose children and grandchildren lived out of state. She was lonely and bored. She was delighted to have someone to talk to, even if that person was a stranger, and promptly invited Ian in. He followed her back into the living room and accepted her offer of coffee and a slice of pound cake that was left over from a bridge party.

Ian Doyle could be very charming when he wanted to be, and he had Ruth Brown charmed in a manner of minutes. He complimented her cooking and dutifully looked at pictures of her grandchildren.

By the time he showed her the photo of Emily, Ruth was completely at ease and talking to him like they were old friends. She put the glasses that were hanging around her neck on and peered at the photograph. "I remember her. She hasn't lived here for…well, it has to be right about six years now. She was in the house right across the street. She didn't stay there very long though."

"Was her boy with her?" Ian asked conversationally.

Ruth looked momentarily surprised by the question. "She hadn't had the baby yet," she told him. "As I said, she didn't stay long. I always thought maybe she made up with the father and went home. One can only hope. I never liked the idea of her pregnant and all alone in that house."

"The baby?" Ian repeated back to her as he wondered if the little old lady sitting a foot away from him on the couch was more senile than he originally thought.

"Well, yes. You were asking about her boy. Of course, I never even knew she was having a boy," Ruth went on. "You see, she wasn't very friendly. She kept to herself."

"You're sure it was her?" Ian questioned uncertainly.

"I'm sure," Ruth insisted confidently. "I never forget a face."

He wasn't sure if Ruth Brown was to be believed. Could Emily really have been pregnant or was that just the ramblings of a crazy old lady?

It was as he left the Fairfax neighborhood, turning onto the Little River Turnpike, that Ian Doyle remembered with a sudden clarity one of the last meals they had together, he and Lauren, in his Italian villa.

He had opened a bottle of Masseto. It was one of the most famous – and expensive – Super Tuscan wines. Growing up in an orphanage where he had nothing, it was a point of pride for him that he could have anything he wanted now. He had the best of everything in the villa that was his primary residence.

Personally, he preferred Irish whiskey, but he knew Lauren liked wine. He poured two glasses and took her one, pausing in the doorway to watch her with his son.

She was sitting in a chair on the covered patio with Declan on her lap. Ian smiled at the sight of the small blonde-haired boy cuddled comfortably into the dark-haired woman. She was talking animatedly, telling his son a story. It must have been a funny story because Declan was giggling. Lauren was the only one who could make the quiet, shy little boy laugh like that.

Sure, Louise took care of Declan, but she didn't play with him or tickle him or do voices when she told stories. Only Lauren did that. He loved watching her with his son. Declan was crazy about her.

With the familiar ache in his chest that he felt whenever he thought about what a good mother Lauren would make for Declan, Ian crossed the patio to them and gave Lauren her glass.

What had she said? "Oh, thank you. You know, I wish I could, but I have this headache. I think I'll stick with water."

When they sat down to eat a little while later, she only had one small bite of her pasta before suddenly excusing herself from the table. He heard her in the bathroom and knew she was sick.

He believed her when she said it was probably just a stomach bug or something she ate, but was that just another one of her lies?

She wasn't drinking. And she was sick to her stomach.

He knew the term morning sickness was misleading. When Chloe was pregnant with Declan, she was sick to her stomach morning, noon, and night.

Ian Doyle's mind raced as the signs led him to one logical conclusion. Emily was pregnant. She must have known she was pregnant. That was why she wasn't drinking.

If Emily was pregnant, the baby was his. It had to be. He would have known if there was someone else.

She knew she was pregnant with his child, and she still had him arrested.

Ian Doyle crumpled the copy of the adoption papers signed by one Sophie Moore in his fist angrily.

He recognized the handwriting. It was hers, and the timing fit. The baby was born on August 30, 2004.

It was a girl. He had a little girl out there somewhere.

Emily Prentiss hadn't just taken his son from him. She'd taken his daughter, too.

It took his contact a few days to find the record of the adoption. They already knew which alias Emily was using and the address where she was living, but it still wasn't easy to find or access adoption records from a closed adoption.

Emily could have raised their little girl on her own, but instead she pawned his baby off on perfect strangers. Was the idea of raising his child so bad that she couldn't be a mother to their daughter?

The best revenge on a dead woman would be through her only child – their child. He would raise their daughter the way he wanted to raise her. He would raise her to be a warrior, brave and strong.

Ian imagined his little girl growing up to be just like Lauren Reynolds. Turning her daughter into the same kind of person Emily had to be in order to make him love her would be the ultimate revenge. It would be a sort of poetic justice that would make Emily Prentiss roll over in her grave.

His men went into the modest one-story first, with Ian going in last and bringing up the rear. They knew the floorplan. With military efficiency, his men headed straight to the end of the long hallway where the master bedroom was. Ian entered the hallway behind them, but he stopped at the first door on the right when he saw the wooden block letters on the door spelling out "Kate." Every letter was a different color – pink, yellow, green and blue. His daughter was behind that door.

Ian opened the door and was at the bed in three long strides. He looked down at the little girl who was sleeping peacefully, her dark hair splayed out on the aqua blue pillowcase. Of course. She looked like Emily.

He pulled the polka dot covers back and picked the sleeping child up carefully, managing not to wake her. She was young enough that it wasn't uncommon for her adoptive father to carry her to bed if she fell asleep when they were all watching a movie in the living room. Not knowing the difference in her current state, she instinctively snuggled into Ian's chest and laid her head down on his shoulder.

Ian held his daughter securely as he moved to the door, knowing what was waiting for them out there. He smelled the acrid smoke from the fire his men had started in the master bedroom before he saw the smoke and flames that were already spreading into the hallway.

As soon as the little girl drew in a breath of the smoke-filled air, she woke up coughing. Disoriented and confused, she lifted her head from Ian's shoulder and looked up at him through bleary eyes. That was when he saw that her eyes were the same shade of light blue as his and Declan's.

She saw the fire behind her as Ian carried her toward the front door and squirmed frantically in his arms, trying to get down as she cried out for her adoptive parents. "Mommy? Daddy? Mommy! Daddy!"

Ian knew they wouldn't respond to the child who was calling out for them with increasing desperation. They couldn't.

He told his men to kill the adoptive parents before torching the master bedroom. Emily signed their death warrant the moment she gave his daughter to them.

"They're dead. The fire killed them." Ian delivered the news of her adoptive parents' deaths to the agitated child calmly, his voice as gentle as it had ever been when he was speaking to his son.

The news that her parents were dead was shocking enough that the little girl stopped squirming, going still in his arms as she tried to comprehend the fact that the mom and dad who had just tucked her in and read her a bedtime story were dead. She didn't understand. They couldn't be dead. They just couldn't.

"They can't be dead," she said. "I just saw them. And they're not old like my grandpa was when he died," she reasoned with childlike logic.

"It was the fire," Ian explained patiently, prompting the little girl to look at the growing flames behind her in terror.

Six was old enough to know how dangerous fire was. Last year when she was in kindergarten, two firefighters came to her class to talk to them about fire safety. They were taught to "get out, stay out" and "stop, drop, and roll."

"Is it gonna get us, too?" She asked fearfully as she watched, transfixed by the red and orange flames chasing them down the hallway, close enough that they could feel the heat from the fire.

"Don't worry. You're safe with me. I'll get you out," Ian told her confidently.

Everything was going just as he planned, and he had planned meticulously for this.

There was a reason he didn't just shoot the adoptive parents and take his daughter - he didn't want her to be afraid of him.

Ian Doyle carried the little girl out of the burning home like a hero. That was how she would see him - as a hero.

She would never know her adoptive parents died because of him. She would believe the fire killed them.

He would be her savior, not her parents' killer or her abductor.

And then he would be her father.

In the days following the fire, the little girl started to understand that her adoptive parents were really gone, and they weren't coming back. They were in Heaven with her grandpa.

When her grandpa died, everyone said he was in a better place, but her mom was really sad and cried a lot.

At first she was worried about what would happen to her and where she would go, but Ian promised he would take care of her.

He tried to distract his daughter from her grief with extravagant gifts. He bought toys that were sure to capture the attention of any child and keep them entertained for hours. Some of the gifts served a greater purpose. The laser tag blasting game set would get the girl used to the idea of holding a 'gun' and shooting it. He splurged on the best laser tag guns and vests on the market and was pleased when playing laser tag quickly became one of the little girl's favorite things to do.

Unfortunately, she wasn't always easily distracted with a new toy or fun activity. For the most part, she was happy, but sometimes she just really missed her mom and dad. When she got like that, Ian comforted his daughter as she cried for her adoptive parents.

"I want my daddy," she said tearfully one night that first week after waking up from a nightmare about the fire, the memory still fresh in her mind.

Ian had heard her crying and gone into her room to check on her. Every time she referred to another man as her dad or daddy, it infuriated him. His fury wasn't directed at the innocent little girl who didn't know any better. No, it was directed solely at Emily Prentiss. She did this. She was the reason his family was torn apart. They could have been a family. They could have raised his son and their daughter together.

Sitting down on top of the lavender canopy bed fit for a princess, Ian gathered his daughter into his arms. She snuggled up against his chest, her tears soaking through his cotton shirt. He stroked her dark hair and decided to tell her who he really was. The girl wanted her daddy, and he was right there.

"He wasn't your father," Ian said, causing her to look up at him questioningly, her brow furrowed in confusion. "I am," he told her. "And you have me now."

"You're like my dad now because I live with you and you take care of me," the child tried to rationalize.

"It's more than that. You're mine. Your mother never loved me. She didn't want you because you were mine, so she gave you away," Ian began to explain, allowing his endless fury toward the woman who had taken not just one but two children from him to affect the way he approached this conversation with their six year old. "That's why you were with them. You think they were your parents, but they weren't."

Ian Doyle wanted to turn his daughter against Emily. Emily Prentiss may be dead, but he never wanted his daughter to grow curious about her. He knew by now that his daughter was bright and inquisitive. The six year old was too young and naïve to think an adult she trusted would lie to her or mislead her. It made her gullible, but she wasn't stupid. She asked good questions. If the girl were ever to go looking for information on her mother, it could alert Emily's team to her existence.

No one would ever take his daughter from him again. She was his.

"I'm your father. You're mine, love," Ian told the little girl.

He knew it would be hard for a child that age to understand what he was telling her and decided to try to show her instead. He scooped her up and carried her into the bathroom, where he set her down gently on the counter. He used a damp washcloth to gently wipe away the tear tracks on her face. Once her face was clean, he set her down on her feet and had her look in the mirror. Standing right next to her with a hand on her shoulder, he pointed out the features she had inherited from him. "You have my eyes and my nose."

Loathe as he was to do it, when she asked, he produced a photo of Emily. He told her to get back in bed while he went to find it for her.

"She's pretty," the little girl said as she stared at the picture of the mother who didn't want her.

"You're prettier," he told her with a fond expression, making her smile. "But you still need to get your beauty sleep," he said as he tucked the girl back in. "Go back to sleep."

The girl was young enough that she started calling Ian 'Daddy' once he told her who he really was. She hadn't lived with him for very long, but he was her dad. For a six year old, it was that simple.

She had a harder time learning to answer to a new name. He told her that because her mother gave her away when she was a baby, she didn't belong to him. The police and FBI were looking for her. They knew she didn't die in the fire. If they found her, they would take her to live in an orphanage. He had told her a little bit about what it was like for him to grow up in an orphanage, and she knew she didn't want that. She wanted to stay with her father – her real father. She promised she would never tell anyone she was Kate Olsen, but she wasn't used to listening for the new name he gave her – Grace O'Malley – and didn't always respond to "Grace."

He told her that he named her after an Irish warrior because he was from Ireland and she was his little warrior princess. Once she knew the story of the real Grace O'Malley, she decided she liked her new name.

After three weeks of the police investigating the disappearance of six year old Kate Olsen the night of the house fire in her family home and the tragic death of her parents, she was presumed dead. Her picture gradually stopped appearing in the local news. By that time, the little girl answered to "Grace" without any hesitation. Ian Doyle felt like it was finally safe to hire someone to look after his daughter while he resumed the search for his son.

Six Months Later

September 2011

"Guess what, Daddy?" Grace said as she raced into the house. The housekeeper, Gloria, had just picked her up from karate. She was still wearing her white uniform with an orange belt tied around her stomach. Without waiting for him to guess, the newly seven year old announced, "I'm going to test for my green belt on Saturday! My instructor thinks I'm ready."

"That's my girl," Ian said, smiling proudly.

He signed her up for karate as a way for her to learn how to fight. She was his child, and he was going to make a warrior out of her.

She mastered the basics quickly. In just six months total, she had earned a yellow belt and then an orange belt.

Grace wanted more than anything to make him proud, and it showed when she excelled at everything he wanted her to do. She had always been eager to please.

Ian practiced with her at home consistently. He had her demonstrate the punches, kicks, and blocks for him and had been pleased with her effort and progress. After she had the basics down, sometimes they would even spar.

The seven year old grinned at the praise, showing off the gap in her teeth where one of her baby teeth had recently fallen out. "Can we have ice cream to celebrate?" She asked hopefully, already knowing how to negotiate.

"We can," Ian agreed easily. "We have more than one thing to celebrate tonight. I found Declan."

Grace knew her mother had taken her older brother when he was even younger than she was now. She knew her dad was looking for Declan.

"Did my mother hurt him?" Grace asked in a soft, hesitant voice. In the last six months, Ian had effectively demonized Emily Prentiss in their child's eyes. The little girl really thought her mother was capable of hurting an innocent child.

"No," Ian answered, touched by the girl's concern for the brother she had never met. "She didn't hurt him."

"I'm glad," Grace said. "Is he going to come live with us?"

"He is. I'm going to go get him," Ian told her.

"Can I go with you?" Grace asked with a pleading expression. She was excited about the idea of having a big brother to play with.

"Not this time, my love," Ian replied gently.

His son was living in a house Emily set up for him on a cul-de-sac in Reston, Virginia. Her people could be watching it, waiting for him to make his move. He was confident he would see them before they saw him, but he wasn't going to take his daughter there. He didn't want Grace in any surveillance photos. He also didn't want her there if it turned into a shootout.

As it turned out, Emily's team was watching the house his son lived in.

They knew he found Declan, and they weren't the only ones. One of his enemies must have been watching him. Someone took Declan - someone who wouldn't hesitate to hurt Declan to get to him.

His son had been missing for several hours now. Ian Doyle should be out there trying to find his son, not sitting in an FBI interrogation room in Quantico, Virginia.

The BAU had wasted time questioning him about his son's whereabouts when, to the best of his knowledge, Declan was safe.

At first he hadn't believed them when they said his son was missing, but now he knew they weren't playing games. He was finally answering Derek Morgan's questions, but they were still no closer to finding Declan.

When the door opened again, Ian looked up, expecting it to be Derek back with more questions, but this time it wasn't Derek. It was her. Emily Prentiss was standing there in the flesh.

She always had been full of surprises.

A/N: Thank you for reading. For anyone who has read my other story, as you can tell, the premise of this story is somewhat similar, but it will definitely not be the same story. I got this idea in my head and couldn't stop thinking about what it would be like for Emily to try to get close to a child that had spent seven months with Ian Doyle, especially if he used that time to turn the child against her. Please let me know if you want to see more of this. If you do, there are two different directions I could take it:

1. Doyle tells Emily he has Grace before he dies. Emily meets Grace when she is seven years old

2. Doyle doesn't tell Emily where Grace is, which I think is more realistic to be honest. She didn't tell him where Declan was, and I don't really think he would be the bigger person. He's too vindictive in my opinion. In this case, Emily would find Grace when she is thirteen or fourteen and has been in foster care.

I have a little bit written for both scenarios, but I probably have more ideas for scenario #2. Just because Emily's daughter would be the same age as in my other story does not mean scenario #2 would be the same story - the ideas I have for it are different from anything I've done in Can't Go Back Now.