Author's Note: FINALLY, yes, the repost of the REPOST, begins! And honestly this is only happening now because I've been on a re-read of Girl recently to help my brain stay focused on the spinoff reposts (reading Girl proper keeps their voices clear in my head) and I started thinking about some scenes I couldn't find. Then I remembered those scenes were actually in THIS story! Ha, ha! So I started reading THIS story over, and, well, here we are. Plus I have had a decent number of requests for it recently (it averages two a month) so I decided it might make some people happy to at least get a taste of it. Again, it's not finished, but I did get 31 chapters redone last time, and I AM hopeful that maybe I can get the entirety reposted this time because it actually was totally completed, once. But please let's keep our expectations low on that latter point. We can just all keep a good thought… quietly, to ourselves :)

Actual Story Notes

If you're new here, this is the second story in the main Girl'verse. I'd REALLY suggest going over and reading Falling in Love With a Girl first, because this one picks up just three days after that one ends, and we're walking into a new situation.

Now, everyone who has already read Girl knows that in this story Emily is diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. However, as I've said before this is NOT a sad, maudlin, story. It's the same H/P you know from Girl, and I promise, SHE LIVES! As I tell people, if you start to get a little antsy about that (there are a few more dramatic chapters in here) you can always skip ahead to the third story, Life & Such, and you'll see that she's just fine :)

This story overall is about Hotch and Emily settling into full blown couplehood, with her illness as a backdrop. Her cancer is not the focal point of this story. Instead, as in Girl, the focal point is their relationship. And here, rather than the initial bond forming and them falling in love, it's now them solidifying their commitment and building on their little family unit.

All that said, the opener is heavy on the illness, but we had to get up to speed on Em's situation and what needs to be done about said situation, and there wasn't really any way to do that obviously without discussing it.

We're opening here with Hotch, it's early Tuesday morning. Two days post The Talk in the hospital.

Mid-December: Tuesday

Evidence of Things Not Seen

Hotch stared up at the ceiling of Emily's bedroom. Even though he hadn't looked at the clock recently, he knew that it had to be close to six.

He'd been awake since two fifty-three.

But he'd had a horrible nightmare, the Great Falls one again, and he'd woken up with a startled jerk, terrified that Emily was already gone. But of course that was just his subconscious torturing him, because his girl was still sleeping safe and sound in his arms.

Though she had started to stir at his movement . . . and the last thing he'd wanted to do was disturb her rest . . . so he'd stifled his panic as much as possible as he began rubbing small circles on her back.

His hand only stilled once he was sure that she was fully out again.

With her diagnosis on Sunday . . . he took a breath . . . the brain tumor, all he could think about was what was best for her health. And she'd already exerted herself that night so he'd wanted to make sure that she had a solid night's sleep to keep up her strength. The earlier exertion had been for a good cause though.

They'd made love for the first time.

Of course . . . his fingers stroked along the curve of her hip . . . making love to Emily had been just as amazing as he'd imagined it would be. More so perhaps given their bitter reminder yet again of how fragile life was. So he had no regrets at all about them waiting for these last few weeks. In fact, even last night he'd tried to convince her that they should hold off for a couple more days just to give her body time to heal from the fall.

His stomach hurt every time he saw those horrible bruises on her body.

At the time he'd made his plea to wait, they'd been standing in the middle of her living room, having just finished reading over the doctor's literature on her biopsy. And when he'd finished speaking Emily had taken his hand as she shook her head and a sad smile touched her lips. Then her eyes had started to well up when she told him that they'd waited long enough, that she was as well today as she was going to be for some time, and that she wasn't going to waste any more of her days putting off things that would make her happy. Then she'd pressed her lips to his and whispered that nothing in the world would make her happier than to be with him.

And although it broke his heart to consider even the possibility of her days running out before his, in his heart, Hotch had known that she was right. If they now had a ticking clock running against them, they needed to stop waiting for just the RIGHT time to do things.

The time was now.

So he'd temporarily pushed away all of his new-found fears, while he'd simultaneously brushed aside the tears slipping down his girl's beautiful face. Then he'd scooped her up off the living room floor . . . and carried her up to bed.

And even if Emily had insisted that she was okay, he'd still been as gentle as he could be. After everything that had already happened that weekend, he had just been so afraid of hurting her.

With good reason though.

Sunday night was when the shadow had shown up on her MRI. And that was the MRI necessitated after her second serious fall in almost as many days. Again, the bruises made him sick to see. The shadow though . . . his jaw twitched . . . that wasn't a trauma he could see, but it was the one that was doing all the real damage. So that was the one they needed to focus on. And by focus on, the doctor had said that they were going to need to do a biopsy.

Through her nose.

Her NOSE!

That procedure sounded absolutely HORRIFIC to Hotch, but he knew that the alternative was them cracking open her skull and digging around with a scalpel. So by comparison, obviously the horrific nose procedure was definitely the lesser of the two evils.

Either way . . . Hotch's eyes began to burn as he pressed his lips to Emily's temple . . . he was absolutely terrified that he was going to lose her. But the biopsy had to be done, and it had to be done today. They still didn't know if the mass was malignant, and they wouldn't know that until they got out a piece of it out to test. But even if it wasn't . . . his thoughts stuttered for a moment . . . cancer, the tumor had already grown large enough to cause pressure on her brain, so there was no doubt that radiation would be required. Radiation was treatment though, he reminded himself, and they weren't ON treatment yet.

They still needed to get through the damn biopsy before he even started to think about what came after.

And even though Hotch just wanted this THING out of her head, Emily had told him that she was actually grateful for having this forty-eight hour delay between the MRI and the biopsy. Now she knew for sure that it was a tumor . . . that was one thing . . . so she had started mentally preparing herself for the possibility of malignancy. Cancer.

And cancer was another thing entirely.

Hotch was also trying to prepare himself for the C word. But whenever he thought about it too much he'd start to go into a blind panic. So he'd decided it was best to just keep the idea of it on the periphery and accept what came when it came.

The good news though . . . as far as the term applied to situations where there was a foreign invader in his girlfriend's brain . . . was that the mass was still quite small. And Emily's new neurologist, Dr. Hsu, had said that it was in a "good" location. So regardless of whatever else was going on in there, she said those two things were factors working in Emily's favor.

As was her otherwise general good health.

She was also young, strong, mentally stable, and she had an emotional support system. So Dr. Hsu had told them that she was cautiously optimistic that this would be a very "manageable" situation.

Hotch knew that was doctor talk for, "it could be much worse," so he had to just keep telling himself all of the positives about this situation and not the negatives. The biggest negative of course being that Emily could lose control of her mental faculties and he'd have to watch the woman he loved die a slow, painful, death.

Not helpful Aaron . . . he berated himself . . . focus on the positives!

Okay . . . he took a breath . . . positives. Well, all right, another positive was that they had access to excellent hospitals here in DC. But of course if they were told that the resident expert on whatever was wrong with her was halfway around the world, then Hotch had money in his savings, and insurance policies that he could cash out. Because if it came down to flying Emily off to Sweden or Quebec or Australia to get her what she needed, then that's where they'd go. Cost was not going to be even a MINUSCULE factor in her treatment. Whatever they said that she needed, she was getting it.

Because if it came down to just dollars and cents . . . his eyes began to burn again as he cradled her closer to his chest . . . then his girl would live forever.

Knowing that he was again allowing himself to think too much about a situation that still had so many unknowns . . . a new occupational hazard for him . . . Hotch blinked away this fresh batch of tears as he swallowed over the lump forming in his throat. Then his gaze began to follow the shadows creeping across the room.

The sun was coming up, and that meant that they were going to have to get up soon too.

It was hard to believe, but it was actually a work day. And for the first few hours of the day, he had to go into the office and pretend to focus on things that, at this moment in time, he really didn't give a shit about at all. Yes, he knew that was horrible, because their work was SO important. But as soon as he'd heard that her biopsy had been scheduled for today, he'd had that momentary flicker in his brain as he took note of the fact that it was going to be in the middle of the work week. In essence . . . for just a split second . . . he'd had the chance to choose between the job that he loved and the woman that he adored.

There had been no contest.

That had been both a moment of both relief and shame for him. Because he was left briefly wondering why he couldn't give up this job for Haley, but the SECOND he'd found out that Emily was sick, he'd have gladly quit his job today, if that's what she'd asked him to do.

He'd like to believe that he'd have had the same instinctive reaction to throw it all away if Haley had been struck ill, but . . . again, he felt a stab of shame . . . he honestly didn't know for sure what he would have done.

And that really bothered him.

It bothered him even though he knew it was a theoretical scenario that was now never going to even be posed. But the fact that he'd barely slept for the past two nights had unfortunately given him too many hours to fill, and all of that time was left for him to think about all of the what ifs in his life.

But he needed to stop doing that.

He took a breath . . . he needed to just focus on Emily and what she needed right now. The rest of it was all just pointless worrying for worrying's sake. Because right now, as he watched the sun begin to peek around the curtains, he needed to start thinking about waking Emily up.

Her procedure wasn't until this afternoon, but she was insistent about going into work this morning. Of course he wanted her to stay home and rest, but again, she'd pointed out that she was as well as she was going to be for awhile, and that she wasn't going to sit around the house by herself moping in the meantime.

Not when there were things to be done.

She was most definitely dealing with this situation a hell of a lot better than he was. If it was up to him not only would she be staying home, but he'd have her secured in bubble wrap and locked up behind bullet proof glass. Not that he felt that was a practical approach to dealing with life in general, but given that Emily's body was already attacking her from the inside, Hotch wanted to make damn sure that nothing attacked her from the outside. He'd even half heartedly made his bubble wrap joke to her as a way of not so subtly raising his worries about what could happen if she went in to work. She'd just given him a sad smile before she'd squeezed his hand and told him that she loved him and that it would be okay.

That was the end of the discussion.

So they were both going in to work today, but they still hadn't decided what they were going to tell the team. Of course they wanted to wait until they had more news . . . cancer or no cancer was a big question mark . . . so there definitely wouldn't be a sit down with them about anything today.

He and Emily were going to discuss it further tonight.

Eventually of course everyone would have to know, because at some point she was going to have to go on leave. Actually, he would as well.

He was going to be the one taking care of her.

As it was, he was sure that he'd probably get some raised eyebrows simply for all the time off he was taking this week. Emily hadn't been discharged until almost two pm yesterday, so he'd called them both out for the whole day under the pretext of her needing a ride to the doctor after taking another spill over the weekend.

He hadn't yet decided what excuse he was going to use for leaving early today.

Perhaps just the truth again. Emily had a follow up doctor's appointment, she couldn't drive on her pain medication, and she needed a ride. Yeah . . . he sighed . . . the truth probably would be best. Because he really didn't want to lie to anyone if he didn't have to. Not only just on principle . . . these were his friends and colleagues after all . . . but also, you lie too much and you end up tripping yourself up.

That was especially a problem when you're lying to a group of behavioralists.

So regardless of what they decided to tell the team over the short term and long term, all of their explanations needed to be kept simple. Well . . . Hotch let out another sigh as he leaned over to turn off the alarm before it started beeping . . . he and Emily could talk more about it later.

One thing at a time.

And the one thing they had to do right now . . . he yawned into his shoulder . . . was get out of bed.

So he leaned down to press his lips to Emily's ear.

"Sweetheart," he whispered, "it's time to wake up."

/*/*/*/

Emily looked up from her pamphlet to see that there was flour on the tip of Hotch's nose. It was one of the few times in her life that she could recall him being even slightly disheveled.

"Everything going okay over there, honey?" She asked with a faint twitch of her lips.

Hotch looked up from the griddle, a hint of a smile touching his lips as he wiped the back of his hand across his cheek.

"Yeah," his eyes crinkled slightly, "just a few more minutes and they'll be done."

She huffed to herself . . . and now he had flour on the side of his face too.

Emily slipped her phone off her belt to surreptitiously click a quick picture.

'Jack would enjoy that one,' she thought to herself as she gave Hotch a little smile.

"Okay, just let me know if you need me to do anything."

It was the third time she'd made this offer to him, and just like the first two times, he simply harrumphed at her and looked away.

Translation = Not happening.

And the thing that wasn't happening was that she wasn't allowed to help him make her pancakes. It was his grandmother's special recipe that he'd asked his mother to email him last night.

So while he was preparing her pancakes . . . and insisting that she do absolutely nothing at all . . . Emily was sitting at the breakfast bar again reading over the literature her neurologist had given her before she'd left the hospital yesterday.

Although she tried to be discreet about it, she couldn't stop the occasional glance into the kitchen to see how things were progressing. For one thing, she always liked to watch Hotch cook, but for another . . . even though it was a work day and they needed to get going . . . he was putting himself through the ringer for her right now.

And that was just so sweet.

There were dirty measuring cups on the counter, the hand mixer was in the sink, and he'd been in such a hurry when he'd first started his prep, that he'd dropped an egg on the floor.

Of course he'd refused to let her help him clean that up either.

As soon as she'd made a move to get the paper towel, he'd caught her hand, kissed her cheek and guided her back to the chair. Then he'd told her to sit tight and he'd take care of everything. She'd rolled her eyes good naturedly but had still acquiesced without argument.

Because she knew that he REALLY needed to do this for her.

This afternoon they were going in for her biopsy and she knew that he was terrified of the outcome. Obviously she was too, but their personalities were so different. She was more neurotic, which could make her a bit obsessive (hence her fifteenth read of these tiny pamphlets) but Hotch was a Type A, Alpha Dog, Control Freak. One who had just been plunged into a situation completely beyond his control or expertise.

Which meant, in that respect, her diagnosis was probably even harder for him to accept than it was for her. So he was trying . . . in his sweet, inimitable, Hotch way . . . to find some means to cope with this hell that they'd been plunged into.

Which was how they had arrived at these special pancakes.

Even though he couldn't tell her that she was just fine, that the tumor was benign, and that there was no cancer . . . he could do this. It was something special, something tangible . . . her eyes started to burn as she watched him across the room . . . it was a way for him to show her how truly IMPORTANT she was to him.

Not that she had any doubts at all about his feelings for her, because long before he'd actually said the words she'd known that he loved her. But over the last two days especially, she was starting to understand just how much he loved her. Because although they had yet to take any vows promising to stay together through sickness and in health, he clearly was approaching this situation as though they had.

Since he'd arrived in her hospital room two days ago, he'd been her conjoined twin.

Yesterday morning she'd woken up in the hospital bed with him curled around her like a pretzel. And then this morning, when they were back in her bed again . . . a little smile touched her lips . . . she'd been wrapped up in his arms with their bare legs were tangled together. She'd been sore both from her two falls and from making love . . . it had been a long time since the latter . . . but that hadn't diminished her happiness at finally being with him. Of course that happiness had been notably tempered by her diagnosis and the fear of what the additional tests would show.

Basically it was only Tuesday, and it had already been a hell of a week so far.

Although she'd suspected that the tumor was a distinct possibility, nothing really prepared you for the reality of hearing those words spoken aloud by a person who, five minutes earlier, had been a complete stranger. And now this complete stranger was telling you that she wanted to poke something up your nose and take out a piece of your brain. Well, perhaps not exactly her brain . . . but damn close enough.

Surreal didn't even begin to cover it.

But Hotch had been just unbelievable through the whole thing. When the initial shock of her diagnosis had worn off and she'd started to shut down and disengage from the conversation . . . at the ten minute mark she was just trying to keep from bursting into tears . . . he'd simply squeezed her hand and finished asking all of the questions that needed to be asked.

Then after the doctor finally left them, he'd climbed up into the bed with her again and held her while she cried. And over and over he'd told her that he loved her and that everything was going to be all right. That the doctor had said that she had a lot of things in her favor and that she just had to keep a positive attitude. That they both already knew, the only way to get through the hard stuff was simply to believe that you could.

And then he'd said that she would beat this, because she was the strongest person that he'd ever met.

As he'd whispered those words of love and encouragement to her over and over again, she'd started to once more get those little snippets from her earlier dream back.

They were pictures from a Happily Ever After future that she wanted so badly, that she could taste it!

Slowly, her tears had begun to taper off, and then they'd disappeared completely. And again after she'd fallen asleep in his arms, she'd dreamed about that perfect little baby, with the perfect little dimples just like his daddy.

And that wonderful dream was all thanks to him.

He'd been her rock, completely unflappable Hotch face firmly intact.

But then early yesterday she'd been in the hospital bathroom brushing her teeth, when she'd heard him call Dave from the other room. Hotch was telling him that the team was off rotation through at least early January. That they were backed up on consults and he wanted to start the new year fresh. And then he'd added on . . . almost like an afterthought . . . oh, by the way, Emily tripped again on the damn boots, this time she'd ended up needing stitches in her forehead and that she couldn't drive on her pain medicine so he was giving her a ride to the doctor for a follow-up.

Neither of them would be in that day.

His voice hadn't wavered once through the whole thing. And she'd stood in the bathroom doorway watching him as he told Dave he'd give her his best right before he'd hung up the phone.

When he'd looked up . . . their eyes had caught . . . she'd seen the tears glistening.

Her heart had begun to ache as her own eyes had started to water.

His Unflappable Hotch face had finally slipped, and underneath it, all she could see was pain.

Pain that he'd been hiding to stay strong for her.

She'd crossed the room to tuck her head under his chin. And he had wrapped her up in his arms, his voice crackling as he'd whispered that he was, "all in, no matter what happens." Then he'd sniffed, wiped his face. and told her that when they got home he wanted to make her pancakes. Was that okay?

She had smiled into his chest as she told him that was just fine with her.

And as she looked over at him now with the flour smeared on his face, and his tie flipped back over his shoulder, she felt a fresh burst of love for him.

Though she was of course "distressed" (horrified, terrified) about her diagnosis, overall she felt that she was handling things pretty well. Or at least as well as could be expected under the circumstances. She'd been crying off and on, but she hadn't gone completely hysterical.

But the lack of hysteria was due to this man's continuous physical presence.

If she hadn't had his support over these last few days, then she would most likely be a total basket case right now. Scratch that . . . there was no doubt . . . without him, she would ABSOLUTELY be a total basket case right now!

But with him as her touchstone . . . that physical reminder of the Happily Ever After plans that she had for the future . . . it hadn't taken long for her to successfully push "Panic" into the box marked "Unproductive Emotions."

It served no purpose.

The bottom line was that they were together last week, they were together now, and they would stay together for the foreseeable future.

Her diagnosis didn't change that fact.

And if this tumor was malignant, if she did have . . . she swallowed . . . cancer, well that wasn't going to change anything either. People all over the world lived with cancer every day. They fought it and they beat it, and they were still were able to mine joy out of life in the process. And if God forbid that was her diagnosis, then that would be her attitude as well.

Their attitude, she corrected, thinking back on Hotch's words.

All in.

Well, she was too. They would simply live their lives as they had been before. Granted, they were under a great deal more stress now, but this situation had given her an even greater appreciation for how lucky she was to have fallen for such a wonderful man.

His love was not something that she would ever take for granted.

"Honey, I don't want to tell the team," she suddenly blurted out.

The utterance came as much a surprise to her as him. They hadn't decided yet what they were going to tell anyone . . . they were going to discuss it tonight . . . but suddenly she just knew.

She didn't want to tell them anything.

Hotch was just sliding their breakfast off the griddle and onto the plate, and he paused with one chocolate chip pancake half out of the cast iron to look up at her quizzically.

"I didn't think that we were planning on doing it today. Didn't you want to figure out your treatment, and then we could talk about a time table on bringing them into the fold?"

That was his recollection of what she'd said.

Emily had been nodding her head at Hotch's response and then she cut back.

"Yes, you're right that's what I was hoping to do about the bigger uh . . ." she stumbled for a word, "situation. But I don't want to tell them about us yet either. We're going to be keeping something bad from them, and, well," she took a breath, "for now, I'd like to have something good that's just ours too. It kind of evens the scales." She tipped her head to the side.

"Does that make sense?"

Their relationship was going to eventually have to come out, but for the moment . . . to her . . . it seemed like a karmic evening of the scales to keep it as just theirs alone.

Hotch's eyes crinkled as he looked back at Emily . . . he loved following along the winding path of her reasoning.

"It does to me, sweetheart," he said softly, "so we'll wait on all of it until you're ready."

Seeing her relieved smile, Hotch moved quickly to distract her from these heavier thoughts by focusing on more mundane matters.

"So," he said brightly while slipping the dangling flapjack onto the plate, "are you ready to try Grandma Charlotte's World Famous Chocolate Chip Pancakes?"

Grandma Charlotte was his mother's mother, and this was his favorite breakfast when he was a boy and his parents would send him to visit his grandparents in South Carolina.

They did that when his father's depression would creep up and the drinking began to get bad.

And although he'd eaten countless plates of these pancakes when he was a child, Hotch had actually never made them before himself. Haley wasn't a big fan of pancakes, so he'd never had occasion to make them for his ex-wife.

Which was why he'd really wanted to make them for Emily.

They were something special in his family, and it was something he'd never done for anyone else.

Emily looked down at the platter of perfectly shaped silver dollar pancakes, and then back up to see Hotch looking down at her expectantly.

She gave him a big smile as she leaned over the countertop to wipe the flour from the tip of his nose. Then she gave him a kiss, and as she pulled back, she patted to his cheek.

"Silly man," she shook her head, "when am I ever not hungry?"

Seeing one of his dimples slide out, Emily winked back before she picked up her fork.

Yep . . . her eyes crinkled as she watched him slide half of the pancakes onto her plate . . . as long as she had him with her, then all the rest of it would fall into place.

A/N (this is a long one): And we're up and running AGAIN, again! Literally, Take THREE! If that troll turns up again to start harassing me about incompleteness, and this story comes down again, I think I am ALL done here. For good. So, troll, fuck off. Just all the way off. Nobody wants to hear from you.

Anyway, to the story! This chapter was transitional, necessary to move things forward and set the tone for this segment of their lives. If you read this story the first time around you might occasionally glimpse the skeleton of those original chapters in what's going up now. But for the most part, even the scenes that have been covered before have been majorly fleshed out and have so much padding on them that you have to kind of squint to see what was there originally. Those of you who discovered me much later will perhaps find it amusing that my main "complaint" from my original readers was that my chapters were too short :)

Unlike with the original posting of this story, before I started working on the "redux" I gave myself a little crash course on brain tumors, biopsies and methods of treatment. Granted, my ninety minutes of intensive Reid'esque focus on this topic didn't perhaps left me qualified to get a passing MCAS score, but I did at least feel confident enough to move forward again with posting. I have much knowledge of real cancer, but not this particular type, and fingers firmly crossed, that's how it shall remain. So for all of my general efforts at making Fake Life as real as possible, here we're fudging a bit more than I usually do. As I said in the beginning (as in the beginning of time) this is "soap opera cancer" as in you must suspend some medical disbelief for the few spots where I brush over her illness more directly (which I avoid doing too often). The reality is that in all likelihood Emily would have to have a major brain surgery to resect the tumor before they moved on to additional treatments. But remember that when I originally wrote this story, I had NO idea that I was actually becoming a "writer" and that this was going to be a 'real' world that all of you nice people actually enjoy visiting with me. And I didn't want to lose the focus of that original story, which (rough spots and all) I thought came out pretty well given how I didn't have the first flipping clue what the hell I was doing back then!

But the focus of that original Hours, which we all liked, was simply them living their lives as a regular couple with her illness as a backdrop. And in that version, they did keep things from the team for awhile. But on the repost, if I'd gone through all of the grueling trauma of actual real life treatment, that would have made the cancer the focal point of the story, and that would have made this a totally different tale. It also would have been impossible to keep things from their colleagues, so I would have lost like a half dozen chapters completely. So instead I fudged around the medical facts here. Yes, it's true that you can have a brain biopsy done through your nose, BUT, obviously they can only get to certain locations from that approach. And from what I could find, those types of brain tumors are generally more serious (as beyond just the norm of having a tumor in your brain), often have a higher mortality rate, and traditionally are found in populations of different ethnic descents than Emily. Yes, I really did do more than just go to wickipedia! :) So, regardless of those points of inconsistency, for purposes of our little Fake Life story, I decided that this is the type of biopsy I'd give her so that we can quickly get her diagnosed through an out-patient process and they can move on to treatment.

And long ago credit to my OG beta Arc for reminding me of the nose biopsy as a means around the full blown brain surgery. I was getting depressed thinking about points I had to fix here, and I was convinced I'd have to write this whole upsetting subplot with actual surgery and real complications following up the real surgery (4 weeks at least would have needed to be devoted to recuperation) to give the story a bit more depth than it had the first time. But this way works better. It still adds in a note of realism (to a degree) that wasn't fleshed out in the first version, and is honestly less depressing overall than going the other route.

We won't be with them at her initial doctors' appointments. It's still only mid-December, so we'll pick up with them in about a week and then go forward with them regularly from there.

And hopefully I've made some of you happy getting this up again :)