Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The night air smelled like smoke, dirt, and fear.

It clung to skin, hair, breath; thick and metallic, as if the ground itself had coughed up every bad memory it had ever buried. Red and blue strobes fractured the darkness, painting the crumbling facade of the abandoned house in flickers of emergency. Bricks, once dull red, now glowed purple in pulses, their mortar cracked and bleeding ivy. The windows gaped open like broken mouths, jagged with glass, staring blankly at the chaos below. Shouts crackled over radios. An EMT called for more gauze. Somewhere, a dog barked, sharp and distant, like a warning no one could decipher.

The building moaned in the wind, a long, guttural creak that carried over the hum of generators and the steady thrum of boots on gravel. Foil blankets rustled like paper wings, wrapped around fragile shoulders. An EMT lifted a shaking kid onto a stretcher while another offered a foil blanket to a boy with blood in his hair. Agents moved between them, slow and efficient, boots crunching through glass, hands steady even when their eyes were not. It was over. But not done. Not really. Above it all, the sky loomed black and cloud-choked; too low for stars, too dark for comfort. A moon tried to break through but failed. Even the night didn’t want to look.

But Emily Prentiss had to.
She stood at the edge of the chaos, shoulders squared against the cold, eyes sweeping across the remnants of a nightmare that wore her team’s past like a second skin.

The building in front of her loomed, blackened around the windows, sagging under its own secrets. From the outside, it looked like every other condemned property she’d seen in her career – forgotten, gutted, empty. But below the floorboards, beneath the rotted stairwell and shattered tile, was a basement that told another story. She’d seen it with her own eyes. A concrete warren of rooms, wired top to bottom with surveillance equipment and soundproofed panels. Every corner rigged with cameras. Every wall painted the same sickly beige. Crude replicas, handmade with obsession and hate.

Two weeks ago, he sent the live feed straight to Garcia’s encrypted line. No ransom. No manifesto. Just a chilling subject line: “Watch.”

And they did.

They watched as six teenagers were paraded in front of the camera, stripped of their names and reshaped to fit someone else’s. They watched as he gave them assignments, uniforms, roles. Trying to break them. Mold them. Force them to become ghosts of the team he blamed for everything he’d become. Emily could still hear the static hum of those videos. Could still see the way each kid sat under harsh fluorescent light, flinching when the basement door creaked open. She blinked, pulling herself back into the present.

Now the kids stood in clusters – wrapped in blankets, eyes glassy, limbs shaking in the cold. No longer bound, but not free either. Not yet. Not in the ways that mattered.

Maya Brooks stood near the open ambulance doors, arms crossed tight across her chest. Blonde hair tangled and damp. Blue eyes rimmed red, but defiant even now. The first one he took: JJ’s double. A runaway, always toeing the line between missing and just gone. Her parents thought she was partying. She was screaming into a soundproof basement.

Noah Sullivan, just fourteen, sat on the bumper of an EMT van, legs swinging. The smallest of them all. Wiry frame, dark curls matted to his forehead. He hadn’t come home from piano class;  a quiet Tuesday night turned into silence. His hands still shook. He kept glancing down at his fingers like he wasn’t sure they still worked. He was meant to be Reid, bright in the same quiet, internal way. Music instead of math. Sound instead of theory.

Jordan Foster, fifteen, leaned against the SUV with Tara nearby. He barely spoke, even during the extraction. Kept his eyes on the ground. Kept his body tense like he was waiting for someone to hit him. Or call him out. Emily knew that posture. The way some kids walked around in their skin like it never really fit. Like it never got to be just theirs. He was Derek Morgan’s echo: strong, fast, defensive. Someone the unsub wanted to mold into muscle and loyalty and heat.

Miles Thompson, sixteen, Hotch’s mirror. Tall, sharp-featured, already carrying the weight of someone twice his age. He stayed near Rossi, watching everything. Calculating. Protective, but distant. She wondered if it was natural or learned. Nature or survival. There was a coldness in his stare that reminded her of leadership, of the burden that came with always being the one expected to stay standing.

Ben Holloway, the oldest at seventeen, sat by the med tent with gauze on his temple. He was Rossi’s match: precise, quiet, analytical. Kept looking at the building like he couldn’t stop analyzing it even now, even after. The way he crossed his arms. The slight nod he gave the agents moving around him. He had been watching the others, too; cataloging them, protecting them, in his own silent way.

And then there was Charlotte Winters. Fourteen. Raven-black hair tangled across her cheeks. Pale skin, smudged with weeks of dirt and bruises. Her posture was too still. Her face too calm. And her eyes; wide, dark, haunted; were hers. Not just similar. Identical. A mirror too sharp, too close, too honest.

The unsub had saved her for last. He had studied her the most. Because Emily was the one who had saved him.

Back then, he was just a kid; small, quiet, scared in a way most children didn’t have words for. His father had been a serial killer, brutal and precise, luring victims through his son like bait on a hook. Emily remembered the house. The smell. The long, dark hallway. She remembered kicking the door in and seeing the boy curled in a corner while his father held a knife to someone’s throat. She was the one who fired the shot that ended it. The one who dragged him out. Wrapped him in a jacket. Told him he was safe now.

She meant it when she said she’d check in on him.

But she never did.

Somewhere along the way ­– between cases and promotions and trauma stacked on trauma – she just… let him be. Let herself believe that getting him out was enough.

It wasn’t.

And now, here they were. Full circle. A boy they failed, building his own twisted version of the team that left him behind. Reconstructing a BAU that wouldn’t abandon him. Wouldn’t outgrow him. Would stay.

Of course he focused on Charlotte. Of course he made her his version of Emily – the one who would never walk away. The one who would sit beside him in the dark and call it home.

Emily’s stomach clenched as she looked at the girl now. Standing near the SUV, shoulders hunched, blanket drawn tightly around her like it could make her invisible. She looked afraid, and small, and so damn tired, like her bones had learned the shape of fear and forgotten everything else. But she didn’t cry. Not yet, at least.

When they’d breached the basement, Charlotte hadn’t screamed. She hadn’t run or lashed out or begged. She’d looked at Emily. And in that second; blood drying on her scaped knees, her lip split, fingers trembling; she looked at Emily like she knew her. Not just recognized her. Knew her. Part of it was true.

The Sicarius case files, the ones Elias Voit had leaked last year, had found their way into the wrong hands. Again. And Ethan Hayes had devoured them. Every page. Every photo. Every surveillance note. He’d built boards in that basement. Lined the walls with names and timelines and psychological profiles. The kids had been made to study them like scripture. Had to recite back facts. Roles. Patterns. Weaknesses.

And now she stood here, not in Emily’s shadow, but trapped in it. A girl whose life had been burned down and rebuilt in someone else’s image.

Something tugged at Emily’s chest, sharp and deep, the kind of grief that moves in before it has a name.

Charlotte didn’t know.

Not yet.

She didn’t know that when Ethan Hayes came for her, her parents didn’t beg. They fought. Her mother; a junior political staffer with no combat training, just a sharp mind and a sharper voice; had stepped between her daughter and a man with a gun. And her father, a seasoned D.C. patrol cop with twelve years behind a badge, had gone for his weapon, even knowing he wouldn’t be fast enough.

Not against someone like Hayes.
Not with an unconscious Charlotte in the room.
Not with what he came there to do.

But they tried. God, they tried. And they died for it.

Emily swallowed, the taste of ash sharp at the back of her throat. The lie waiting for her at Quantico was already tightening like a knot. The parents’ hallway. The reunions. The screaming and hugging and sobbing and shaking. And then… Charlotte. Alone. Looking.

They’d told her she was being rescued.
They hadn’t told her she was being orphaned.

Emily exhaled through her nose, steadying herself. Charlotte’s feet shifted slightly on the gravel. Her gaze swept across the field – at Maya, at the agents, at the building behind them. But not at Emily now. Not again.

She looked like she wanted to disappear. Or maybe like she already had.

Emily’s chest ached with it. She took a step forward. Not as Unit Chief. Not as the profiler. Just… as the woman who’d once failed to follow up on a broken boy.

You’re not him, she thought, looking at Charlotte. And I won’t let you carry the weight of what he became.

“Let’s start moving,” she said quietly, turning to the nearest agent. Her voice was low but firm, the kind that meant no argument. “Get the kids into the SUVs.”

The team moved instantly, Tara and Luke guiding Jordan and Ben to the second car, Rossi and Tyler helping Miles and Noah. JJ was already by the lead vehicle, opening the passenger side and speaking softly to Maya as she climbed in.

Emily approached Charlotte slowly, the cold gravel crunching softly under her boots. The girl looked smaller up close. Fragile in a way that went beyond the bruises or the foil blanket wrapped tight around her thin shoulders. She looked like a sketch someone had started and never finished, lines fading at the edges, too tired to hold their own shape.

Her face was blank, but not empty. It held too much, too many expressions crowding just behind her eyes, none of them making it all the way out. Fear. Shame. Grief. That deep, twitchy exhaustion that clings to people who haven’t been allowed to rest even in their own heads. She didn’t flinch when Emily stepped into her space, but she didn’t reach out, either. Just stood there like she was waiting to be told what to do. Like she still thought that rescue came with rules.

Emily’s heart twisted in her chest. No sudden movements. No clipped orders. Just presence, warm, steady, human. She softened her voice. “Hey.”

Charlotte blinked slowly. Didn’t answer.

“Let’s get you out of the cold, okay?” The girl didn’t nod. Didn’t speak. But when Emily reached out slowly and laid a gentle hand against her elbow, Charlotte moved. A quiet shuffle forward. Just enough.

Her arm was thin under the foil, bones sharp beneath Emily’s fingertips. Every inch of her trembled with a tension that hadn’t left her body yet. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t lean in either. Just let herself be steered, one step at a time, toward the waiting SUV. Like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to say no.

Emily guided her forward, careful not to grip too tightly. As if the wrong pressure might shatter whatever fragile hold this girl still had on the moment.

The SUV waited just ahead, engine humming low in the dark. Emily reached out and opened the rear door, the hinges groaning softly as the interior light spilled into the night. Inside, Maya Brooks sat curled in the far seat, arms wrapped tightly around her knees. She looked up at the sound, her tired blue eyes flicking toward Charlotte. And then, just for a second, she offered a small, tentative smile. It wasn’t much. Just the barest lift at the corner of her mouth. But it was enough. Charlotte’s lips twitched in return. Not a smile. Not really. But something close enough to count.

They’d been there together, after all. Two weeks in hell. Whispered comforts in the dark. Silent promises passed back and forth when the cameras weren’t watching. They weren’t strangers anymore, they were tethered in that unspoken way survivors sometimes are. And that mattered.

It was why JJ and Emily had already decided they’d ride together. Not just for safety, but for presence. For proof they weren’t alone now, not anymore.

Charlotte stepped forward, hesitating only when her toes reached the edge of the floorboard. She stared into the dark interior like it might swallow her whole. Emily crouched beside her, voice gentle but grounded. “You’ll be with Maya. Just a short drive. I’ll be right in front, okay?”

Charlotte gave the faintest nod. Then, carefully, she climbed in slowly, like she wasn’t sure the seat would hold her. Like she wasn’t sure she deserved to take up space. Emily leaned in behind her, moving gently, like one wrong motion might make the whole moment collapse. She reached for the seatbelt and buckled it in with quiet precision, fingers brushing briefly against Charlotte’s arm.

“There we go,” she murmured, barely above a whisper. Charlotte didn’t look at her, but she didn’t pull away either. Emily paused, then offered a small, steady smile, not too bright, not too forced. Just something warm. Real. Something that said: You're safe now.

She waited until the girl was settled, hand reaching out to pull the door closed, when a voice, small and thin as thread, slipped out from the shadows inside.

“…Could you leave it open? Just for a bit longer?”

Emily froze. Looked at her. Charlotte wasn’t looking back. She was staring at her lap, fingers clenched in the silver folds of her blanket. Her body curled in like she was bracing for something.

Of course.

Of course.

After two weeks locked underground; after cement walls, and false light, and sealed doors she couldn’t open; the idea of being shut in again must’ve felt like drowning. Emily’s heart cracked open at the edges.

“Sure, sweetheart,” she said, her voice catching just slightly. “We’ll leave it open as long as you need.”

She left the door wide, and stayed close, standing guard beside it like it was her duty to hold the night at bay, for as long as it took. No rush. No pressure. Just space. Just air. Just the slow, steady rhythm of survival. Emily kept her gaze averted from the SUV, giving Charlotte the space she’d asked for. Not just the open door, but the air around it. The silence. The dignity. Instead, she let her eyes sweep the rest of the scene. The gravel crunched softly under boots as the last of the kids were guided to their vehicles. The movement around her was steady and deliberate, no urgency, no raised voices. Just the kind of careful calm that came after chaos, when every gesture meant something.

She glanced toward Tara, who stood by one of the SUVs, her body turned slightly to shield the boy she was settling inside. Their eyes met across the distance. Tara gave her a nod, small, composed, but reassuring. All good here. A few steps beyond, Rossi was speaking quietly with one of the EMTs, his hand resting briefly on the shoulder of the teen he'd just helped into the back seat. His expression was unreadable in the strobing red-blue light, but Emily recognized the weight in his posture; the slow, practiced bearing of a man who’d done this too many times.

She exhaled slowly, pressing her palms into her coat pockets, fingers curling against cold fabric. Then, footsteps behind her. Light. Familiar.

JJ.

Emily stepped slightly away from the open door, giving Charlotte more space and giving herself room to breathe. JJ joined her side without a word, their shoulders just shy of touching, both women looking out at the slow orchestration of the scene around them.

“All settled,” Emily said, her voice low.

JJ nodded, but her eyes were already drifting; past Emily’s shoulder, to the girl curled inside the SUV. “She looks like Henry did after that home invasion case,” JJ murmured. “Small. Like her body forgot how to grow around the fear.”

Emily’s throat tightened. She didn’t look at Charlotte, didn’t have to. JJ’s words landed sharp and sure, because they were true. “She doesn’t know about her parents yet,” Emily said quietly.

“God.” JJ closed her eyes for a beat. Her arms crossed over her chest, not defensive but protective. Of herself. Of the truth.  “When Will died… Henry and Michael – they broke in different ways. But they had me. They had people to catch them.” She looked at Emily now, her voice barely above a whisper. “Who catches her?”

Emily didn’t answer right away. The question sat heavy between them, too big to fix. Too real. Her gaze drifted to the SUV again, to the small figure silhouetted in the open door, still sitting perfectly still. Still silent. A shape carved by trauma. Not moving forward yet, just… not running anymore.

“I’ve got Garcia looking,” Emily said finally, her voice quiet. “Extended family. Cousins. Anyone who might be out there.” She swallowed hard. “But I don’t think there’s anyone left.”

Emily kept her arms crossed; her shoulders locked into something tighter than cold. “When we get back, I’m setting up therapy for all of them. The best. Specialized trauma counselors, long-term support. Whatever it takes.” She hesitated, voice thinning. “No one’s going home without something in place. No one’s going to carry this alone.” The guilt laced every word. It wasn’t just about Charlotte, not really. Not entirely. It was the boy she hadn’t followed up on. The one she'd once rescued and never checked on again. The one who grew into Ethan Hayes.

JJ heard it. Felt it. She didn’t push, didn’t press, but her eyes softened as she looked at her. “You’re doing everything you can, Em.”

Emily’s jaw clenched. “I should’ve done more before.”

JJ’s voice was gentle, but it didn’t flinch. “You were new in the Bureau. You did what you were trained to do. You saved him from his father.”

Emily looked away, jaw tightening further. “But I didn’t see him,” she whispered, barely audible. Her voice cracked like splintered glass. “Not really. Not after. I didn’t stay. I let the system take him and I never looked back.” She didn’t have to look at JJ to feel her presence shift, a step closer, a breath nearer. Still not touching, but near enough that Emily could feel the heat of her. It wrapped around her like gravity, like safety, like a pull she’d been resisting for years.

“That’s not your weight to carry alone,” JJ said, softer now. There was something in her voice, something warm and worn and knowing. Something that might have broken Emily open if she let it.

Emily shook her head once. “It feels like it is.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It pulsed. Thick with everything neither of them had said in all the years between war zones and hospital rooms, late nights and almost-confessions. A silence heavy with grief. And want. And history. JJ’s eyes were on her now – Emily could feel it. She didn’t have to turn to know it. She felt it like a hand pressed to her ribs, steady and close. God, she wanted to look back. She wanted to lean.

“She’s not him,” JJ said at last, voice a little rough, like the words hurt more than she expected. “And she’s not alone. Not anymore.”

Emily nodded once, fast, because anything more would unravel her. Her throat burned. She didn’t say thank you. She couldn’t. But the look she gave JJ said enough, full of things she hadn’t let herself feel in years, not out loud. Not where anyone could see.

For now, all she could do was stand in the dark and keep the door open.

As long as it took.

Chapter Text

The elevator hummed softly, the sound too clean, too civilized for what it carried.

JJ stood near the panel, hands loose at her sides, trying to look calm. Trying not to let her body betray how hard her heart was beating. The ride from the garage to the sixth floor wasn’t long, barely a minute, but every second felt too loud against the silence pressing in around her. Six kids. Six lives stitched together by two weeks of fear and darkness. And not one of them made a sound.

Maya Brooks leaned against the cold wall, arms wound around her body. Blonde hair knotted and damp, eyes rimmed red, staring at nothing. Noah Sullivan stood just beside her, foil blanket clenched in white-knuckled fists. The youngest, barely fourteen, so slight he looked like the blanket might swallow him whole. His dark curls stuck to his forehead; his eyes stayed down, locked on the floor as if it might disappear if he blinked. Jordan Foster stood in the far corner, his shoulder to the wall, his head tipped forward. His body was still, but tense in a way JJ knew, like a coiled spring that hadn’t been given permission to uncoil. Miles Thompson and Ben Holloway stood side by side, not touching, but close. Their stillness matched. A survival stillness. They didn’t even glance at each other, but their presence seemed tethered, like they’d silently agreed to hold each other upright.

And then there was Charlotte Winters. So small she could’ve passed for younger if not for the hollows carved under her eyes. She stood with her back pressed to the wall, arms folded under the silver blanket like armor, her dark hair falling across her face. Watching without moving. Breathing without sound. Her wide eyes flicked once to JJ, then away again, quick as a secret.

It should’ve been chaos in here. Six teenagers in a small metal box. Whispered questions. Nervous laughter. The restless shuffle of feet desperate to be anywhere else. But there was only silence. Thick. Breathless. Unnatural.

They didn’t fidget. They didn’t speak. They didn’t know they were safe yet.

JJ swallowed down the urge to fill the space with words. Anything she could say would feel too sharp, too bright, like fireworks going off in the ashes. So she stayed still, let the quiet exist, even though it made her chest ache.

The elevator slowed. A soft chime cut the silence.
Sixth floor.

The doors slid open and light rushed in.

The hallway stretched wide and long, pale walls glowing under warm overheads. It was lined with agents; Rossi and Tara among them; and med staff, clipboards in hand, voices low but trembling at the edges. And behind them there are five pairs of parents. They surged forward before the doors were fully open, pulled by something primal, unstoppable.

Maya darted out first, the blanket slipping from her shoulders as her mother caught her in a crushing hug, sobbing against her hair. Maya clung back, shoulders shaking, her small defiant frame collapsing in on itself as her name was whispered over and over. Noah’s blanket hit the ground as his father swept him up mid-run, lifting him clean off his feet. Noah’s thin arms locked around his neck like a vise, his cries muffled in his father’s collar. Jordan was folded into both his parents’ arms at once, stiff at first, then trembling hard enough that his knees gave out. Miles and Ben disappeared into the crowd of arms and cries and shaking hands, into the chaos of love.

The hallway was filled with sound. Weeping. Laughing. Gasps and whispers and the staccato rhythm of kisses pressed to damp hair. A cacophony of reunion. Of relief. Of home.

And then there was Charlotte.

She stepped off the elevator slowly, as if the floor might not hold her weight. Her eyes were wide, blinking against the light. She moved like someone surfacing from deep water, unsure if she was allowed to breathe yet. Her gaze flicked down the hallway, catching on each embrace: Maya’s mother sobbing, Noah’s father clutching him like he might disappear, Jordan’s parents stroking his hair, whispering into his trembling shoulders.

Confusion flashed across her face, then faltered into something smaller. Something that cracked, then quickly sealed itself over. She searched again. And again.

No one stepped forward. No one called her name. No arms opened. No voices broke on her name the way they were breaking on everyone else’s.

Charlotte stopped walking. The motion drained out of her all at once, like someone had pulled the cord on a marionette. One second she was moving with the rest of them, tentative and small, and the next she was rooted to the tile, utterly still.

She stood perfectly still in the middle of the bright, echoing hallway, the crowd flowing around her. Everyone else coming home, wrapped in joy and tears and trembling relief, while she stood in the empty space left behind.

The hallway bloomed around her with sound and color. Laughter breaking apart into sobs. Mothers whispering names like prayers. Fathers clutching their children so tightly it seemed like they feared they might dissolve. Tears hit the floor in soft, erratic rhythms.

And in the middle of it, Charlotte stood alone.

The silver emergency blanket still clung to her shoulders, its edges crushed tight in her fists. It caught the fluorescent lights in jagged shards, glinting like fractured glass. Her arms stayed locked around herself, not in comfort, but containment; like if she loosened her grip even a little, she might simply come apart.

Her chin lifted just barely, stubborn in its small defiance, though the motion trembled at the edges.
Her eyes didn’t move. Wide. Dark. Searching. And then her gaze broke, piece by piece, when no one came forward.

She looked… small. Smaller than she had in the elevator. Smaller than she had in the basement footage. Like the hallway was swallowing her, its clean brightness making her edges blur.

The air smelled of coffee drifting faintly from the breakroom down the hall. Of the sterile tang of disinfectant, scrubbed into tile and air vents alike. Of safety. Of home.
And Charlotte stood in the center of it all, wrapped in silence, looking like she didn’t belong to any of it.

JJ felt her own breath hitch, sharp and hot, like something tearing at the base of her ribs. She took a tentative step forward, wanting to be there for the young girl, but then the glass doors at the far end of the hall hissed open.

Emily stepped through from the bullpen, the echo of her heels soft against the polished floor. Her gaze swept the chaos instinctively: counting heads, cataloging movement, assessing threats that weren’t there anymore.

She had wanted to be here sooner.
She should have been here sooner.

But the FBI Director had stopped her just outside the war room; three minutes, maybe four, to debrief in hushed tones about jurisdiction and optics and press coverage. The words had blurred in her ears. All she’d seen in her head was the elevator rising, Charlotte inside it. Walking out into this hallway alone.

And now she was.

The rest of the world blurred at the edges as Emily’s eyes found her.

Charlotte stood still in the middle of the storm of reunions, silver blanket crushed in her fists, wide eyes searching faces that didn’t belong to her. Everyone else was being caught – wrapped in shaking arms, kissed through tears – and Charlotte was standing in the empty space they’d all left behind.

Emily’s stride slowed, her chest tightening. Her shoulders eased down from the taut line they’d held since the raid, but guilt curled sharp at her ribs. She’d left her to endure this part alone. The part Emily knew could hollow you out worse than anything that came before it.

She moved forward, cutting gently through the reunion chaos until Charlotte stood just in front of her. The girl didn’t look up, didn’t even flinch.

Emily crouched, lowering herself into Charlotte’s line of sight. Close, but not crowding. Her voice softened, the edges of command worn off.

“Hey,” she said quietly. “It’s a lot, isn’t it?”

Charlotte blinked, slow, like she was surfacing from underwater.

Emily let her hand rise, careful and warm, settling it lightly on the girl’s fragile shoulder. “Come with me,” she murmured. “Just for a bit. Somewhere quieter.”

Charlotte’s fingers tightened on the foil blanket, but she nodded. A tiny motion, barely there.

Emily stood and stepped back, giving her space to move on her own. Not pushing. Just waiting, anchored and steady, until Charlotte’s small feet began to follow her across the hall.

The bullpen’s noise faded behind them as Emily led Charlotte through the glass doors. The chaos of the reunions dimmed, muffled by the thick walls, until the only sounds were the soft whisper of their steps and the low hum of the air vents.

Emily slowed her pace just enough for Charlotte to keep up without feeling hurried. Every few steps she glanced down, checking that the girl was still there, still following, silver blanket dragging like a ghost’s shadow across the floor. They stopped at her office. Emily keyed the door open and held it for her.

Inside, the lights were low, softer than the harsh fluorescents of the hall. The blinds were tilted halfway closed, letting in thin slats of golden light from the dying afternoon. The air smelled faintly of coffee and paper and the lavender oil Garcia had once teased her for keeping in her drawer. It was hers. And it was quiet.

Charlotte hesitated just past the threshold, wide eyes sweeping the room like she was trying to locate the danger. “There’s no one else here,” Emily said gently. “Just us.”

Charlotte’s shoulders eased a fraction, though her hands still clutched at the edges of the crinkled blanket like a lifeline.

Emily crossed the room slowly, not turning her back on the girl, and gestured to the black couch tucked against the left wall. “Here,” she murmured, keeping her voice soft, low. “It’s more comfortable.”

Charlotte moved like someone walking on thin ice, every step cautious. Emily didn’t touch her, not until Charlotte had perched on the edge of the couch, small and stiff and trembling just under the surface. Then she crouched slightly to catch her eye.

“I’m just going to sit right here,” she said, motioning to the coffee table in front of her. “So I’m close, okay? You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to do anything.”

Charlotte nodded once, sharp and tiny, staring at the floor.

Emily lowered herself onto the table, folding her hands loosely between her knees, keeping herself smaller, less towering. She let the silence stretch for a while, soft, not pressing. Just letting the room breathe.

Finally, in the quiet, Charlotte spoke. Barely a whisper. “I thought… they’d be here...on time.”

Emily’s throat tightened. She kept her voice gentle. “Who?”

Charlotte blinked rapidly, lashes clumping from tears she hadn’t let fall. “My mom. My dad.” Her voice cracked on the second word, splintering like thin glass. “I waited… they are never late… not once, but I waited.”

Emily felt her breath catch, sharp and hot in her chest. God. She wanted to lie. She wanted to wrap this child in her arms and tell her they were just running late, stuck in traffic, filling out forms downstairs. She wanted to buy her a few more hours of hope.

But that would be cruelty dressed as comfort.

Emily leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping even lower, softer than she thought she could make it. “Charlotte…” The girl’s wide, hollow eyes lifted to hers. There was so much raw hope in them it physically hurt to look at. Emily’s own voice wavered. “They’re not coming.” The words hung there like shrapnel, sharp and merciless.

Charlotte blinked once. Then again. As if the meaning might change if she just gave it enough time. Her lips parted, but no sound came. The first tear slipped silently down her cheek.

Emily moved before she could stop herself, slow enough not to startle her, and placed a warm hand over Charlotte’s clenched fists. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” she whispered, fierce and trembling. “None of this is your fault. Not one bit.”

Charlotte’s small shoulders shook, silent sobs hitting like aftershocks. Emily stayed still for a long moment, her hand resting lightly over Charlotte’s clenched ones, feeling the tremor running through them. She could feel her own pulse pounding in her ears, could feel the way her chest ached with something too big to name.

Then, slowly, she shifted. Careful not to jolt her, careful of every inch. Emily rose from the coffee table, her knees protesting faintly, and eased down onto the couch beside her instead. Close enough that their shoulders brushed. She turned her body toward her, not crowding, just there. A steady line of warmth and quiet.

Charlotte stiffened at the nearness, breath catching like a startled bird. Emily didn’t move. She kept her hands loose in her lap, her posture open, her voice almost a whisper.

“You don’t have to,” she said softly. “But if you want… I can stay right here. And you can just… let it be too much.”

Charlotte’s lips trembled, eyes glistening, a storm she was trying so hard to hold back. She looked down at her fists, still knotted in the silver blanket. Her whole body was shaking now, small tremors rippling through her frame.

“Charlotte,” Emily murmured, leaning just slightly closer, “you don’t have to be strong right now.”

For a heartbeat, nothing.

Then Charlotte moved; suddenly, desperately; like something inside her had cracked wide open. She turned toward Emily with a sound that wasn’t quite a sob yet, and stopped, hesitating just short of her shoulder. Fourteen years old, caught between being a child and trying to be more, trying to survive the impossible with dignity.

Emily didn’t reach for her. She simply lifted one arm, slow and steady, and held it open like a quiet invitation. It was enough.

Charlotte crumpled, folding herself into the offered space, her forehead pressing into Emily’s chest like a collapsing wave. The sob finally tore free, small and raw, and then another, and another, until they came in a flood.

Emily’s arms closed around her, sure and gentle. She felt the sharp bones of her shoulders under her palms, too light, too tense. She tucked Charlotte carefully against her, one hand cradling the back of her head like she was something fragile and precious.

“Shhh…” Emily whispered, low and steady, as Charlotte shook with silent grief against her. “Shhh. I’ve got you.”

Charlotte’s fingers clutched at her blazer, bunching the fabric tight in desperate fists.

Emily rocked her just barely, a subtle motion, instinctive. The scent of Charlotte’s hair filled her lungs. And under it, that aching truth: this girl had no one left in the world, and yet here she was, trying so hard to stay upright.

“I’ve got you,” Emily said again, firmer this time, as if she could make it true just by sheer force of will. “You’re safe. I promise.”

Charlotte didn’t answer, only buried herself deeper against her. Her tears soaked through the fabric over Emily’s heart.

And Emily held her. Held her like she could absorb the breaking and leave Charlotte whole. Held her because someone had to. Held her because she wanted to.

It was quiet when Emily finally eased her arms out from beneath Charlotte.

The girl had gone limp against her somewhere between sobs and silence, her tears tapering off into small, shuddery breaths. Now her face was turned toward the back of the couch, lashes casting faint shadows on her cheeks. The lines of tension had melted from her shoulders, leaving only exhaustion in their place, so total it made her look even smaller. Fourteen. She was only fourteen.

Emily pulled the soft throw from the back of the couch and draped it over her with deliberate care, tucking the edges lightly around her sides. She hesitated, brushing an errant strand of hair from Charlotte’s damp cheek with the barest touch of her fingers. Then she rose.

Her knees protested again, and her back cracked in quiet rebellion, but she ignored it. Moving like every sound might splinter the fragile calm, Emily crossed the office and eased the door shut behind her with a muted click. She let out a slow breath the second the latch caught.

“Em.” JJ’s voice was soft, almost careful.

Emily turned.

JJ was just stepping out of the conference room across the platform, a folder tucked under one arm. The overhead light caught the pale strands in her hair, and for a moment, just a fleeting moment, it made her look like something luminous breaking through gray.

Her gaze slid past Emily to the glass-paneled office behind her. Through the dimmed lights, Charlotte was barely visible, curled on her side on the black couch, swallowed by the blanket, a small fragile shape in a space built for steel.

JJ’s eyes came back to Emily. They caught on the dark bloom of wetness spreading across the shoulder of her blouse. The fabric still clung faintly to her skin where Charlotte’s tears had soaked through.

“She cried herself out,” Emily said quietly, by way of explanation. Her voice was steady, but the edges were frayed. “She’s asleep now.”

JJ nodded, but her expression softened, something sinking low behind her eyes. “How… how is she holding up?”

Emily followed her gaze back to the sleeping form behind the glass. She let the silence linger for a moment, like maybe there was a right answer if she waited long enough. There wasn’t. “She’s… here,” Emily said finally. “That’s what I’ve got. She’s here.”

JJ’s throat worked around a swallow. She stepped closer, slow, like approaching a wounded thing. Her voice dropped to something even softer. “And you?”

Emily blinked at her. “Me?”

“Yeah.” JJ’s eyes were steady, though there was a shadow of worry tucked at the edges. “How are you holding up?”

It was such a simple question. It landed like a stone.

Emily opened her mouth, closed it again. Her hands were still curled faintly like they were around Charlotte’s shoulders. She forced them to relax, sliding them into her pockets to hide the tremor that had settled in her fingertips.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, barely above a whisper. “It… it doesn’t feel like enough. Any of it.”

JJ’s expression softened further, and for a second, something flickered between them; old, familiar, unnamed. It tightened in Emily’s chest like a pull she’d spent years refusing to follow.

“It’s more than enough,” JJ said gently. “You’re here. She needed someone, and you… were here.”

Emily’s breath hitched, shallow. JJ’s words landed closer than they were supposed to. Too close. And JJ was still standing close enough that Emily could see the faint freckles scattered at the bridge of her nose, could feel the warmth of her presence even without touching. For a heartbeat, it felt like the air between them might crack open.

Emily looked away first, back through the glass, to the small figure on the couch. “I just… don’t want her to carry this alone.”

JJ’s voice was quiet, but certain. “Then she won’t.” Emily let out a slow, shaky breath she hadn’t meant to. JJ watched her like she could see straight through her armor. Like she always had. JJ’s eyes flicked toward the office one more time, as if making sure Charlotte was still there, still breathing, still whole. Then she sighed, and her voice gentled into something almost reluctant, like she hated saying it out loud.

“Garcia dug through everything she could find.” A pause, a swallow. “There’s… nothing, Em. No grandparents. No aunts, uncles. Not even a second cousin twice removed who could take her in. It’s like her whole family line collapsed at once.”

Emily’s shoulders went rigid. She had suspected it, but hearing it confirmed still sank through her like a stone dropped in cold water.

JJ went on quietly. “We had to notify Child Services. It’s protocol. They’ll come by in the morning.”

Emily’s jaw tightened at the word protocol. It tasted clinical. Detached. She pictured a stranger in a suit walking into her office tomorrow, clipboard in hand, seeing a name on a form instead of a fourteen-year-old girl curled up on her couch with a tear-stained face.

Her gaze drifted to the glass again, to Charlotte, still cocooned in the throw blanket. The rise and fall of her chest was shallow but steady. Emily had watched every one of those breaths like they were fragile things that might stop if she looked away.

“She’s been through enough for five lifetimes,” Emily murmured. “And they’re just going to… uproot her again.”

JJ didn’t answer right away. The silence stretched between them, the whole floor hushed around it. Somewhere far below, an elevator dinged faintly, distant and hollow.

Emily dragged a hand through her hair, the movement sharp. The bullpen beyond the platform was dark and deserted, the only light the faint glow from the night security lamps. The desks sat abandoned, files half-open, chairs pushed back in mid-motion, like the aftermath of some quiet exodus. Everyone had gone home hours ago.

Everyone except them.

Emily turned back toward JJ, something tightening in her chest. “It’s the middle of the night, JJ. What are you still doing here?”

JJ’s lips curved into the faintest wry smile, but her eyes stayed serious. “Didn’t want to leave you alone.”

The words landed softly. Too softly. They sank straight through Emily’s ribs before she could stop them.

For a moment, she just stood there, caught off guard by the way they threaded warmth into the cold exhaustion sitting heavy in her bones. By the way JJ was looking at her, steady and unflinching, like she could see the cracks forming and wasn’t afraid to stand close to them.

Emily swallowed, her throat tight. “You didn’t have to.“

“I know.” JJ’s voice was quiet, certain. “But I wanted to.“

And that, God. That was somehow worse, and better, all at once.

Emily looked away before it showed too much, eyes finding Charlotte again through the glass. The girl hadn’t stirred. The blanket had slipped a little off her shoulder; Emily made a mental note to fix it the second she got back into her office.

The clock on the far wall read 2:03 a.m. The building felt like it was holding its breath. Emily exhaled slowly, grounding herself in the sound. Beside her, JJ stayed silent, her presence warm and unwavering. Close enough to touch, if Emily were someone who let herself reach.

Chapter Text

Morning filtered gently through the blinds of Emily’s office, thin bars of pale gold cutting across the floor and the edge of the black leather couch where Charlotte lay curled on her side. She hadn’t moved much through the night. The soft gray throw blanket Emily had wrapped around her was bunched up to her chin now, pulled tight in her small fists, as if it alone tethered her to this place, to this moment.

The bullpen beyond the glass was silent. That in itself was strange, the BAU was never really quiet. But now, just past dawn, the air outside Emily’s office held that particular stillness that only comes when the night crew has gone and the day crew hasn’t yet arrived.

It was the kind of quiet that made you lower your voice without realizing it.

Charlotte had slept here because there had been nowhere else to take her.

There was no foster home waiting at two o’clock in the morning for a fourteen-year-old girl pulled from a hell no child should have survived. There was no safe placement ready on short notice, no “somewhere else” to hand her off to. And until Child Protective Services could officially step in, until the paperwork caught up to her trauma, she was in federal custody.

Which meant she had to stay with them.

It wasn’t unusual, not really. The Bureau had done this before. There was a small “victim support suite” two floors down, an unused office with a couch, clean blankets, bottled water, and a few comfort kits tucked into plastic bins, but Emily hadn’t even considered taking her there.

Charlotte had been standing in that hallway last night like someone stranded on the edge of the world, and Emily hadn’t been able to make herself walk her anywhere else.

So she’d brought her here. To her office. To somewhere warm and quiet and solid.

JJ had stayed too. Technically, they could have rotated out, called one of the others to sit watch, but neither of them had even mentioned it. Someone had to stay; legally, yes, but more than that. Charlotte had been surrounded by strangers for weeks, held captive in rooms where every adult was someone to fear. Emily wasn’t about to let the first safe night be spent alone under fluorescent lights with a locked door and no familiar voice nearby.

So they had stayed.

JJ had taken the armchair near the door, tucking her long legs up and curling into the thin blanket someone had scrounged from the supply closet. She’d been awake until nearly four, sitting upright, keeping quiet vigil until sheer exhaustion dragged her under.

Emily hadn’t even tried to sleep.

She sat now on the floor at the edge of the couch, one knee bent, the other leg stretched out, her shoulder resting against the cushions just beneath where Charlotte lay. Her back ached dully, and her grey hair was mussed from hours of restless fingers combing through it. Her blazer was folded over the arm of the couch, and her blouse bore the faint, wrinkled imprint of a fourteen-year-old girl who had cried herself to sleep against her chest.

Emily’s eyes were open. They had been for most of the night. Watching. Listening. Guarding.

Every so often, Charlotte would shift; a small, half-panicked jolt as if her body still didn’t trust safety when it found it. Each time, Emily would rest her hand on the blanket near her shoulder, not touching her, just there, a steady presence, until the tension bled out of the girl’s frame again.

Now, with the soft light threading into the room, Emily’s gaze softened. She could see Charlotte’s face more clearly than she had in the dim glow of the desk lamp. Pale skin, lashes clumped from dried tears, the hollowed look of someone running on empty. And still, she slept. Because her body finally could.

Emily let out a slow, quiet breath, her chest easing for the first time in hours. She let herself look, really look, at the small figure on her couch, and let herself feel the weight of it: the sharp ache of relief that Charlotte was alive, and the bone-deep sorrow for what she had lost. For a single, suspended beat, Emily allowed herself to take the girl in.

Dark hair, soft and tangled now, the same near-black shade Emily’s had once been before the silver began to streak through. Pale skin washed in the thin morning light. A delicate, pointy nose and heart-shaped lips pressed into an uneasy sleep-frown. And her eyes; closed now, but Emily remembered them clearly from last night. Dark brown, almost black, bottomless in a way that had made her heart stumble for just a moment when they’d first locked on hers. She looked so much like Emily had at fourteen it almost hurt.

Ethan Hayes had an eye for detail. Too much of an eye. Every teenager he took had been chosen to mirror someone from the old BAU team, picked for small, eerie echoes: a familiar tilt of the chin, a voice, a knack for strategy, the same facial features. They’d all seen it in hindsight.

And Charlotte… Charlotte was Emily’s ghost. If Emily didn’t know better, if she let her tired mind blur the edges of logic, the girl curled on her couch could have been a Prentiss through and through. But she wasn’t. She was just a child. A child who had survived him.

Emily swallowed hard, forcing the sharp spike of guilt back down where it couldn’t reach her chest, and let her gaze soften again, just watching the slow, even rise and fall of Charlotte’s shoulders beneath the blanket.

JJ shifted in her chair, murmuring softly as she stirred. Her head tilted back, blinking herself awake, and for a second her eyes flicked around as though she’d forgotten where she was. Then her gaze found Charlotte, still curled in sleep, and something in her face gentled.

She looked at Emily. Emily didn’t move or speak. She was still watching the slow rise and fall of Charlotte’s breathing.

“You didn’t sleep,” JJ said quietly. Not a question.

Emily’s lips twitched like she might argue, then didn’t bother. “Didn’t want her to wake up alone.”

JJ’s gaze lingered on her, soft and worried. “Your eyes look like you wrestled a grizzly all night.”

“Feels about right,” Emily murmured.

They both went quiet for a breath, the silence thin and fragile, like glass. The bullpen beyond the windows was still dim, all muted gray and soft gold light.

JJ eased her legs down from the chair and pushed herself upright, voice dropping to a near-whisper. “I’m going to get us coffee. You want your usual?”

Emily’s mouth curved, barely there. “Please. And something sugary, if there’s anything left. She might… want something small when she wakes up.”

JJ nodded. “Coffee and sugar. Got it.”

She moved quietly toward the door, steps soft on the floor, pausing just long enough to watch Emily for a moment, before slipping out into the quiet bullpen, leaving Emily with her silent watch.

Emily shifted just enough to stretch one stiff leg, then settled back into her place on the floor, spine resting against the couch. Her eyes stayed on Charlotte, the steady rise and fall of her breathing beneath the gray throw blanket, the faint twitch of dreams still flickering across her face.

For a moment, Emily let herself imagine that she could stay like this forever. Just… holding the quiet. Keeping watch.

Then Charlotte stirred.

It was subtle at first, just the faintest shift under the gray throw blanket, a tiny rustle of fabric against the couch cushions. A crease pinched between her brows, delicate and sharp, like something painful had passed through her dreams.

Her fingers, pale and small, curled tighter in the blanket’s edge. Her lips parted like she might form a name; Mom or Dad, maybe; then pressed shut again without sound, as if even her voice had forgotten how to work.

Her eyelids fluttered once. Twice. Then opened. And for a heartbeat, she wasn’t here.

Emily saw the exact moment the world snapped back wrong around her, the way Charlotte’s whole body went rigid, like a wire pulled too tight. Her breath caught, quick and sharp, shoulders flinching as though bracing for a blow that didn’t come.

Her gaze darted wild and fast, ricocheting from corner to corner, the glass walls, the pale stripes of morning light, the shadowed shape of the desk, the open door. All of it too strange. Too open. Too silent.

Emily could almost see the panic building, not loud, but coiled and swift, spooling up behind her eyes like a storm ready to break.

Before it could crest, Emily spoke. “Hey.” Just that. Soft and low, a voice like a warm hand smoothing back tangled hair. Charlotte’s eyes snapped to her instantly.

Emily stayed perfectly still. She didn’t reach. Didn’t move closer. Her hands rested loose on her knees, palms open, showing they were empty. Harmless. “It’s okay,” she said, her tone even and steady, anchored deep. “You’re safe.”

She held Charlotte’s gaze, slow and unwavering, until she saw the first flicker of breath in her again.

“It’s morning,” Emily added gently, her voice soft as the light creeping through the blinds.

And something in Charlotte’s rigid frame eased. The wild, sharp panic that had flooded her eyes dulled at the edges, thinning to something more fragile. More breakable.
Like she might almost believe her.
That it really was just morning.
Nothing more.

But Charlotte didn’t move. Her breathing stayed shallow, like her lungs were afraid to pull in too much air. Emily could see the tension humming through her small frame, the way her body seemed coiled, waiting, like she was braced for someone to grab her, drag her back, slam the door closed again.

Emily let her own posture soften deliberately. She eased her voice another shade lower, gentler, like smoothing silk. “No one’s going to touch you,” she murmured. “No one’s going to take anything. You’re here. With me.”

For a long second, Charlotte just stared at her, unmoving.
Those dark eyes, too big for her thin face, stayed fixed, wide and hollow, but steady.

Emily let out a slow breath through her nose, careful to keep it soundless, not like relief, relief might sound like pressure. Like expectation.

“Here,” she said quietly, moving with careful slowness. She reached toward the low table beside her, fingers brushing over the clutter of files and pens until they closed around the unopened bottle of water she’d left there last night.

She cracked the seal with a soft hiss and held it out, not pushing it into her space, not even close enough to touch. Just an offering, suspended halfway between them.

Charlotte’s eyes flicked to it, wary, then back to Emily.

“It’s just water,” Emily said gently. “Only if you want it. Tiny sips.” For a few heartbeats, neither of them moved. The quiet stretched between them, tender and taut. Then Charlotte shifted. Slowly, like she was testing the air for danger, she sat up, the gray blanket sliding slightly down her thin arms, still wrapped around her shoulders like armor. Her movements were careful, like she wasn’t sure she deserved to take up the space.

She reached out, hesitating halfway. Her small fingers brushed against Emily’s as she took the bottle, cool skin, trembling faintly. Emily didn’t react. Didn’t flinch or pull back, just let the contact happen, grounding and calm.

Charlotte lifted the bottle to her lips, both palms cupped around it like it might vanish if she didn’t hold on tight enough.

Emily stayed silent. Not staring, not studying. Just there – steady, present, letting her have the quiet dignity of it, letting her find her footing one sip at a time.

When Charlotte finally lowered the bottle, her breathing had steadied, still cautious, but steadier. Her shoulders had dropped a fraction from her ears. A tiny shift. But real.

“There’s a locker room here,” Emily said softly, her tone still low and even, like she was speaking to a pair of skittish birds she didn’t want to startle. “There’s a shower. And we’ve got…” She paused, picking her words with care. “…some clean clothes in one of the support lockers. Just sweats and T-shirts, really. They’re meant for people who need a reset: fresh, soft, warm. They might be a little big, but… they’re clean. And they’re yours if you want.”

Charlotte’s eyes flicked up, quick and dark, then dropped again to the blanket curled around her shoulders. She didn’t speeak. Didn’t nod. But she didn’t shake her head, either.

Emily let her own mouth soften, the closest thing to a smile she could manage, gentle and small. “Okay,” she murmured. “We don’t have to do anything yet. We’ll just sit for a while, then.”

She didn’t move closer. She just stayed where she was on the carpet, cross-legged and steady, her presence soft but solid, like an anchor quietly waiting for the tide to come back in.

For a long moment, the room was wrapped in quiet.Only the hum of the overhead lights, the soft rasp of fabric as Charlotte’s fingers fidgeted with the blanket, and their slow breathing breaking the stillness.

Then a shadow moved in the doorway. Emily’s eyes lifted, instinctively alert even in the quiet, and found JJ leaning against the frame. One shoulder braced there, ankles crossed, her hair tucked back in a loose, half-hearted sweep that hadn’t survived the night.

There was a softness on her face Emily wasn’t sure JJ knew she was wearing. Something warm. Something that tugged faintly at the corners of her mouth and at the line of her shoulders, as if some small, hidden part of her was exhaling.

Her gaze moved between them , Charlotte, small and bundled, knees drawn up under the blanket like a fortress, and Emily sitting so still and steady on the floor, voice quiet, body angled to make herself smaller, safer.

JJ didn’t speak. Not at first. She just watched. And something about it tugged deep and unexpected in her chest; the way Emily’s hand rested loose on her knee, the way her voice had dropped to that warm, almost-lullaby register, the way she seemed to be holding still on Charlotte’s behalf, like she’d folded herself into calm just to give the girl something solid to lean on.

JJ’s throat ached with it.

Finally, softly, she said, “Coffee’s ready.” Her voice was hushed, careful not to startle the fragile quiet. “And there’s breakfast in the kitchen. Garcia came by, she brought fresh bread.”

Emily’s gaze flicked up to her. There was a ghost of a smile there. Tired, grateful, fleeting. It caught JJ’s chest off guard in that way Emily sometimes did without even trying. JJ let herself smile back, just a little, then pushed gently off the frame and stepped into the room.

Charlotte’s eyes tracked the movement, quick and wary. JJ slowed. She crouched a few feet away, far enough to leave space, near enough to join the circle of quiet Emily had drawn around her.
“Nothing big,” JJ said softly. “Just… toast. Fruit. You don’t even have to talk if you don’t want to. We could just sit.”

Emily nodded, picking up the thread like they’d practiced it. Her tone stayed feather-light. “And maybe warm bread smells good, hm? It’s still soft. Still fresh.”

Charlotte’s fingers worried at the edge of the blanket. She didn’t answer, but her gaze flicked between them; Emily’s calm steadiness, JJ’s quiet patience; and something about the way they both waited, not pushing, not reaching, just there, seemed to ease the tension in her shoulders.

“Only if you want,” Emily murmured, almost a whisper.

JJ caught Emily’s eye over the top of Charlotte’s bowed head. And for a heartbeat, they both smiled small, tired, soft, like two people who’d been holding their breath for too long and could finally let a little of it go.

Then, tiny as a whisper of wind, Charlotte gave a single nod. It was barely more than a dip of her chin, almost invisible if you weren’t looking for it. But Emily saw it. JJ did too.

“Okay,” Emily said gently, her voice catching on the edges of relief. She rose slowly, careful not to scrape her chair too loud. “Let’s go.”

Charlotte’s hands clutched the blanket tighter as she slid off the couch, her feet making no sound on the carpet. She didn’t speak. But she stood.

The walk down the hallway was slow. Not because Charlotte dragged her feet, but because Emily and JJ didn’t rush her. Emily walked at her side, matching her small steps, keeping her hands loose at her sides like she might offer them but wouldn’t presume. JJ trailed just half a pace behind, close enough to catch her if she wavered, far enough not to crowd.

Charlotte stayed wrapped in the gray blanket, shoulders hunched, the hem trailing soft along the floor. Her dark hair hung in messy strands around her face, still tangled from sleep, her socks soundless on the carpeted corridor. She didn’t speak. But she came. And that was everything.

As they neared the kitchen, the faint scent of coffee and warm bread curled through the air: soft, homelike, impossibly gentle after everything sharp and brutal that had come before.

Garcia was already there. The lights were low, golden, not harsh,  just enough to paint warmth across the room. She’d set the small round table by the window for three: mismatched mugs, a plate of sliced fruit, still-warm rolls wrapped in a cloth napkin to keep their heat. A jar of honey stood like a tiny sun in the middle.

Garcia was sitting at the table when they came in, hands curled around her coffee mug, but she rose as soon as she saw them. Her smile wasn’t the usual effervescent burst of color she wore like armor; it was softer, quieter, aching around the edges.
“Hey, little starlight,” she murmured, voice like velvet as her eyes landed on Charlote. “I thought maybe some warm bread would feel nice in your belly.”

Charlotte’s eyes flicked up at her, quick and wary, then back down. Emily felt the subtle brush of Charlotte’s shoulder against her own as they crossed the threshold. It was barely there, the ghost of contact, but it felt like the first crack in an armored wall.

Emily guided her gently to a chair at the table, taking the seat right beside her. JJ slipped into the one across from them, her smile faint and quiet.

Charlotte sat stiffly at first, blanket still clutched around her like a shield. But when Emily reached to break open a roll, steam curling into the air, and set half on the plate in front of her, Charlotte’s eyes tracked the motion.

“Still warm,” Emily said softly.
“Try a bite,” JJ added, her tone warm, almost coaxing. “Just a little. No rush.”

Charlotte hesitated. Then, almost without realizing, she leaned in. Just the slightest shift, her thin shoulder brushing Emily’s sleeve, like her body had decided before her mind could.

Emily didn’t move, didn’t even let herself breathe too deeply. She just stayed still and solid beside her, the quiet space of safety Charlotte’s tired body seemed to be seeking.

Garcia’s breath hitched.

She blinked quickly, swiping her thumb hard under one eye, and moved toward the door with a forced brightness in her voice. “I’m just…” she cleared her throat softly, “…going to go find more… napkins. Right, napkins!” She left before they could see her tears.

The kitchen settled into hush again, only the faint clink of mugs and the soft sound of Charlotte’s first careful bite breaking the silence.

They didn’t rush her. No one mentioned finishing the food or drinking the juice.

Charlotte ate in small, measured bites, every movement careful, as if each swallow had to be negotiated with her own body first. Emily stayed beside her, quiet but steady, while JJ made soft, ordinary comments about the weather outside, about how Garcia had bribed her way into the building at dawn with cinnamon bread. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make the air feel gentler.

When the last bite was gone, Charlotte sat still for a long moment, blanket pooled in her lap, staring at the empty plate like she didn’t know what came next. Emily did.

“Hey,” she said softly, crouching a little to get in her line of sight. “How about we go to the locker room just down the hall. It has warm showers. JJ will grab some soft clothes from our locker. They’re clean and they’ll be yours to keep. It might feel… good. To wash this night off your skin, mh?”

Charlotte’s gaze flickered up, wary, uncertain, then down again. But she didn’t shake her head.

JJ smiled gently, holding out her hand without pushing it closer. “Just us,” she promised. “No one else will be there.”

And somehow, that was enough.

The locker room was quiet, the air warm and faintly scented with soap. JJ laid the folded sweats and T-shirt on a bench, the fabric soft and a little too big, and set a fluffy towel on top like a shield.

Emily stayed close, not inside, just leaning quietly against the wall near the door, her presence steady as a heartbeat.

It took time. But eventually, Charlotte stepped out with damp hair combed carefully free of knots by JJ’s gentle fingers, clean clothes hanging loose on her small frame. Her skin looked warmer, her shoulders not quite so tight around her ears.

Emily caught her eye. “Much better,” she said softly, and meant it.

Slowly, the bullpen came alive: voices rising, phones ringing, the clatter of keyboards as the day spun itself back into motion. Emily steered them past it all, her hand hovering near Charlotte’s back but never touching, and opened the glass door to her office.

Inside, it was quiet. Dim light slanted through the blinds, and the faint hum of the building seemed distant here, softened by the walls. Safe. Charlotte sank onto the familiar black couch without needing to be asked, tugging the throw blanket over her legs. Emily sat across from her in the chair, leaning forward on her knees.

“Someone’s coming by soon,” she told her gently. “They’re from Child Protective Services. Their job is to help. To make sure you have somewhere safe to stay. They’ll talk to you for a little bit, just to get to know you. I’ll be right here the whole time.”

Charlotte’s eyes stayed low, but she nodded, a small, almost imperceptible dip of her chin.

Emily let out a slow breath she didn’t let her show, and sat back in her chair.
Waiting.
Guarding.

Chapter Text

The bullpen had woken up around her.
Not all at once, not with the sharp crack of a starting gun, but with the slow swell of sound that meant the day had begun; chairs rolling back, muted voices trading files, the hiss of the espresso machine from the break corner, the elevator chiming on its steady loop.

JJ sat at her desk in the middle of it, pen in hand, eyes on the half-finished report in front of her. She’d been staring at the same paragraph for ten minutes. Maybe more. Her hand moved, underlining a word and circling a date, but her mind wasn’t here. Not really. It kept tugging her gaze up and to the right, toward the row of glass offices above them. Toward Emily’s.

The door was closed, but the blinds weren’t drawn. Through the clean lines of the glass, JJ could see them, Emily and Charlotte, sitting together on the couch. Emily’s shoulders were angled toward the girl, close but not crowding. Charlotte was curled on the far end, knees drawn up under the gray FBI sweats that dwarfed her, damp hair tucked behind her ears where Emily’s fingers had smoothed it earlier.

JJ had watched that moment, Emily crouching gently in front of her, coaxing her upright enough to sip from the water glass, tucking a strand of hair back with the same careful reverence you’d use to right a toppled wing. She hadn’t spoken much. Just… been there. A steady weight. A warmth that didn’t press.

And now, as CPS sat across from them with a clipboard perched on her knees, JJ couldn’t stop watching.

Emily was soft around her.
Softer than JJ had ever seen her.

Like she’d lowered her whole voice, her whole frame, like she was trying not to cast a shadow.

It made something in JJ’s chest ache, low and quiet and deep.

She’d always known Emily was good with kids, she’d seen it over the years in flashes, rare little moments that cracked through her composed armor. But this… this was different. This was instinct. This was something Emily maybe didn’t even know she was doing. And God, JJ thought, she’d been right back then, that offhand comment years ago, saying she could see it: Emily, and kids. She hadn’t meant it as anything more than a soft little truth. Now, watching her through the glass… she thought she’d been painfully, absolutely right.

JJ let out a slow breath through her nose, grounding herself before her thoughts could spiral any further. She’d been here all night, just like Emily. She should be thinking about sleep. About going home to Henry and Michael. But she wasn’t ready to leave. Not while this was still so fragile.

Her eyes flicked to the CPS worker again, noting the rigid spine, the clipped motions of the pen across her form. JJ felt a pulse of protectiveness rise sharp in her chest. God, she hoped they didn’t treat Charlotte like a case file. Like a number.

There were so many kids in the system, JJ had seen enough to know how easily they got swallowed up, how quickly they became statistics instead of names. It always hurt. But when the kids carried trauma this deep, when they were already half-drowned in it… It broke her.

Emily had told her, quiet but fierce, that she made sure every single child they pulled out of hell got the best treatment the Bureau could possibly secure. JJ had believed her. Emily would keep her word. She always did.

JJ’s pen stilled on the page. She didn’t even pretend to look away anymore.
Not from Emily.
Not from Charlotte.

Emily’s office had gone still. Outside the glass, the bullpen thrummed with the slow heartbeat of midmorning, the rise and fall of voices, the muted trill of phones, the clatter of keys as agents eased into their day. Normalcy. Predictable rhythm.

But in here, the air was hushed. It felt like someone had cupped their hands around a flickering flame, not to snuff it out, but to guard it, to shield the fragile light from the slightest breeze.

Charlotte sat curled on the far end of the couch, a small bundle of limbs and shadows. The clean gray sweats they’d found for her hung loose on her thin frame, the cuffs puddled around her ankles. Her knees were drawn up, toes tucked under the hem, shoulders rounded as if trying to take up less space. Her hair was still damp from the shower and now it lay smooth and dark, clinging in fine strands to her temples. She smelled faintly of the mild lemon soap they stocked in the locker room.

Emily sat beside her. Not close enough to crowd, but close enough that their knees nearly touched. Her body was angled subtly toward her, her posture lowered, softened. Her hand was wrapped around Charlotte’s smaller one, and Charlotte’s fingers were clenched tight in hers, a constant, quiet grip. She hadn’t let go since they’d walked back from the locker room.

Across from them, in the guest chair near Emily’s desk, the CPS caseworker sat with a slim notepad balanced on her knee. She wore a calm gray blazer, her blonde hair drawn back into a neat twist, wire-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. Her expression was professional, composed  and the polite smile curving her mouth never quite reached her eyes.

“Thank you for having her stay here overnight, Agent Prentiss,” she began. Her voice was soft but clipped, the tone of someone who’d done this too many times. “I understand she was… recovered during an active operation?”

Emily inclined her head once, her voice even but quieter than usual, as if the air in the room required it. “That’s correct,” she said. “Her name is Charlotte Winters. She was taken by a subject we’ve encountered before, a former child victim from an early BAU case who resurfaced. He’s been abducting teenagers who resemble members of our old team… or share similar backgrounds. Recreating us.” Her jaw tightened just slightly. “The others he took are alive, and with their families now.”

A small pause. Charlotte’s grip pulsed faintly tighter, almost imperceptible, and Emily’s thumb brushed slow and reassuring over the back of her hand.

The caseworker – Linda Carver, she’d introduced herself as – nodded once, the motion precise, practiced. Her pen whispered briskly over the page in looping strokes that somehow felt too loud in the hush of the office. “And she’s been in your direct care since?” she asked without looking up, her tone clipped, professional.

Emily’s gaze flicked briefly to Charlotte before she answered, grounding herself in the small anchor of that fragile hand curled in hers. “Yes,” she said, voice low, even. “She’s been with me since the moment we brought her in.”

Her thumb moved, tracing a quiet arc over the back of Charlotte’s hand. It was the only part of her expression that softened, the rest of her held together by sheer discipline.

“She stayed here overnight,” Emily continued. “In my office. She ate, she rested. She hasn’t spoken this morning.”

Linda hummed lightly under her breath, eyes still on the page as she added another line of neat ink. “Any physical injuries noted?”

Emily’s jaw worked once before she replied. “Superficial abrasions on her wrists and ankles, consistent with restraints. No signs of acute malnourishment or dehydration, but she was… exhausted.” Her voice caught the faintest edge there, quickly smoothed away. “The Bureau medic cleared her last night. Vitals are stable.”

“Thank you,” Linda murmured, and the words were almost kind, but they landed flat in the air.

Emily’s shoulders tightened, then eased just enough to speak. “She’s been through hell,” she said evenly. “She needs consistency. Calm. And choice. Especially choice.”

That made Linda look up for the first time, slowly, the older woman inclined her head, something cautious but genuine passing over her face. “Understood,” she said softly.

For a moment, the only sound was the faint hum of the HVAC and the muted rise and fall of voices from the bullpen beyond the glass.

Then Linda set her pen and pad neatly aside, folding her hands over her knee as she leaned forward just slightly. Her voice gentled, slipping into a tone meant for children, though it still carried the careful structure of her job.

“I’d like to speak with her now,” she said, and her gaze shifted toward Charlotte, who hadn’t moved, still curled small on the far end of the couch, knees hugged close beneath the loose gray sweats. “Just her and me. Sometimes it helps if we talk alone.”

Emily nodded once, already loosening her hold on the small hand in hers. “Of course,” she began quietly, shifting her weight as she started to rise and then felt it. Charlotte’s fingers tightened suddenly around hers. Not hard enough to hurt, but firm. Desperate. Emily stilled instantly, looking down.

Charlotte’s dark eyes had snapped up, wide, unblinking. Not panicked. But pleading.
Like a silent please don’t go. Something in Emily’s chest cinched.

Yesterday, Charlotte had spoken…only scraps, really. Shards of words flung out by someone cornered, meant to keep the world from coming closer. Her voice had been all edges then: hoarse, small, a skittish thing trying to survive the chaos around her. But today was different.

The chaos had burned out overnight, leaving only stillness in its wake. The world wasn’t on fire anymore. It was quiet. Too quiet. And in that silence, truth had begun to creep in: slow, heavy, inexorable.

Her parents weren’t coming. No one was coming.

Emily could see it settling over her in layers, as visible to her trained eye as the gray sweats hanging loose from her frame. The way her thin shoulders had begun to hunch inward as if to make herself smaller. The way her gaze never lifted for long, like looking too far up might make the emptiness yawn wider.

The other kids she’d been taken with, the makeshift stand-ins for people Charlotte never knew, were gone now, back into the safety of their homes. The strange, frantic little world they’d been trapped in together had shattered overnight.

Yesterday had been chaos. Today was real. And real was so much heavier.

Emily knew this pattern, she’d seen it before, in bomb survivors, in children pulled from collapsed houses, in victims who only crumbled after rescue. When the noise stopped, when the adrenaline ebbed, when their bodies finally believed they were safe… that was when the weight of what had happened slammed into them like gravity returning to a body that had floated too long.

She could almost feel it pressing down on Charlotte now, invisible but crushing. A leaden grief anchoring her in place.

Yesterday she had fought to stay alive.
Today she had to figure out how to keep existing.

Emily’s chest ached with a quiet, protective sorrow. If Charlotte spoke, even a single word, it would make it real. It would give shape and air to the truth currently locked behind her ribs. And maybe she wasn’t ready for that truth to exist outside her chest.

Emily’s fingers softened where they cradled hers, careful not to try to pry loose, not to force motion from stillness. Just… holding. Offering gravity of her own.

Charlotte’s knuckles were bone-white against Emily’s skin, tendons taut with the strain of holding on. If she lets go, Emily thought, she might float off. And she knows it. So Emily held tighter. Quietly. Steadily. A single unmoving point in the spinning aftermath.

She crouched back down into her seat, angling her body toward the girl, keeping her voice soft and low like she was speaking to a wild thing that might bolt.
“Hey,” she murmured, thumb brushing slow over the back of that small, cold hand. “Do you want me to stay?”

For a heartbeat, Charlotte didn’t move. Then, the smallest nod. Quick, tight, as if she thought she might be told no. Emily’s throat ached. She turned her head just enough to meet Linda’s eyes. Her voice stayed quiet, but there was steel under it now.
“I’ll stay,” she said. “She talks when she’s ready. Not before.”

Linda studied them for a long moment, Emily steady and still, Charlotte curled close with her small hand fisted tight in Emily’s. Her expression softened, the rigid professionalism thinning out to something human.
“…Alright,” she said gently.

Emily didn’t look away until Linda gave that soft, human alright. Only then did she let her shoulders ease, just a fraction, her thumb brushing gently over Charlotte’s knuckles. The girl’s grip didn’t slacken, not even a little.

Linda drew a slow breath, setting her pen carefully across the notepad in her lap, as though even she realized that the clinical rhythm of note-taking had no place in this fragile room. “She’s… formed a very quick attachment,” Linda said carefully, her voice pitched low, as though even gentleness might risk startling the girl. “That’s not uncommon in children who’ve gone through something traumatic. The person who makes them feel safe in the aftermath can become… well, an anchor.”

Emily’s gaze slipped down, drawn to the tiny hand wrapped so fiercely around her own. Charlotte’s fingers were pale and tense, pressing into her skin like she was afraid Emily might vanish if she didn’t hold tight enough.

And God, Emily felt it like a blow.
This small, breakable human being, with all the jagged pieces of her life scattered around her, had chosen her as the one solid thing to cling to. The trust of it was so raw it ached in her chest, sharp and overwhelming, a kind of responsibility she could feel sinking deep into her bones. Emily had stood in war zones, stared down unsubs, carried secrets that could level entire lives, but nothing had ever felt quite this delicate. Nothing had ever asked her to be so gentle.

Linda’s eyes followed the link between their hands, then lifted to the subtle tilt of Charlotte’s thin shoulder, leaning ever so slightly toward Emily’s side. “That bond can be stabilizing,” she said quietly. “But it can also complicate transitions, when it comes time to move her into a safe placement.”

Emily’s jaw flexed, her throat thick. Complicate transitions. It sounded so sterile, so detached, when what it really meant was tearing away the one tether keeping a drowning girl above water. She forced her voice to stay calm, even though every instinct in her screamed to shield Charlotte tighter.

“Right now,” she said, the words low but steady, “I’m less worried about transitions and more about making sure she feels safe this minute.”

Her thumb brushed instinctively across the back of Charlotte’s knuckles, the smallest, protective arc. This minute was all Charlotte could survive right now. And Emily knew she would fight like hell to give it to her.

Something flickered across Linda’s face, agreement, maybe even respect. She closed her notepad altogether, folding her hands over it. “Fair enough.”

A quiet knock tapped against the glass. Both women glanced up to see JJ standing in the doorway, her expression warm and careful, like she’d been standing there long enough to sense the fragility in the air and didn’t want to shatter it.

She stepped inside, her voice pitched in that easy, maternal cadence she carried like second nature. “Hey,” JJ murmured, crouching near the couch but leaving enough space so Charlotte wouldn’t feel crowded. “How about we go see if Garcia has hot chocolate in the kitchen? I think I saw marshmallows, too.”

Charlotte’s dark eyes darted instantly to Emily, her fingers tightening around her hand with sharp, silent plea. Emily turned toward her, lowering her voice until it was meant for Charlotte alone. “It’s okay,” she whispered, steady and soft. “JJ will stay with you. And I’ll be right here when you get back.”

There was a beat, a long, tight hesitation. Then Charlotte’s knuckles loosened, not all the way, but enough for Emily to feel it: a surrender, fragile and reluctant. Emily let her go carefully, almost reverently, like she was unwrapping glass.

JJ waited, patient as stone. When Charlotte finally allowed herself to shift, JJ eased her up with infinite gentleness, her palm hovering near but never quite touching her back, a quiet promise that the support was there if needed.

Emily watched them go, her chest tightening with something that was equal parts ache and gratitude. Charlotte trusted her most, she felt the weight of that like a brand, but the girl had also watched JJ through the night, seen the quiet constancy in her, and it meant something. JJ was good with kids, JJ was wonderful with kids. And Emily let herself silently thank her for stepping in, for sharing the burden, for making this less terrifying for a girl who had already lost too much.

When the door clicked softly shut behind them, the office fell back into stillness. Linda leaned back, exhaling like she’d been holding her own breath. “She’s terrified to let go of you,” she said quietly. “And given what she’s survived, I can’t blame her.”

Emily pressed both palms flat to her knees, grounding herself against the ache swelling up her ribs. She lifted her gaze to meet Linda’s, her voice low but threaded with steel.
“So what happens now?”

The kitchen smelled of coffee and cocoa, Garcia’s doing, of course. She was already stationed by the counter, sleeves pushed up, bracelets clinking softly as she fussed with mugs.

Charlotte hesitated in the doorway, pressed close to JJ’s side, her fingers caught in the fabric of JJ’s cardigan like it was a lifeline. JJ didn’t move too fast. She crouched a little, tilting her head so Charlotte could see her eyes. “Hot chocolate?” she offered gently. “Extra marshmallows. Garcia makes the best.”

Garcia turned with a flourish, holding up a steaming mug like it was a treasure. “Not just hot chocolate,” she declared, voice softened from her usual sparkle, “but deluxe, five-star, Garcia-certified cocoa. Marshmallow ratio perfected through years of trial and error.” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “We’re talking science.”

She poured with exaggerated care, bracelets sliding down her wrists, and gave the mug the tiniest twirl before setting it down on the table with a grand, quiet voilà.

JJ caught it first, the faintest twitch at the corner of Charlotte’s mouth. Barely there, almost gone as soon as it appeared, but there. A ghost of a smile, startled up by Garcia’s gentle theatrics. JJ felt it like sunlight breaking through fog.

“See?” JJ said softly, coaxing but not pushing. “Pretty serious credentials.” She guided Charlotte toward the chair beside her, keeping close but never crowding. Charlotte slid into it, shoulders hunched, her hands wrapping instantly around the warm mug.

Garcia stayed where she was for a moment, hands braced lightly on the counter, her bracelets stilled against her wrist. She watched the girl cradle the cocoa like it was a shield, her small fingers curved around porcelain as if the warmth might keep her from disappearing altogether. And God, it undid her.

She blinked hard, tugging her glasses a fraction higher to cover the quick swipe of her thumb beneath her eye. Because when she closed her own eyes, she could still see the other image burned into her skull: Charlotte Winters on the grainy livestream Hayes had forced on them, sitting on the cold floor of that makeshift prison, hair tangled, her dark eyes vacant and hollow as the camera lingered too long.

Two weeks.

Two weeks of static-filled feeds, of clustered cameras he’d planted in every corner, letting them watch but never reach. Every click of Garcia’s keyboard had been frantic, furious, scouring the streams for even the smallest detail that might give them a lead. Every waking hour had been hers to shoulder, every failure to crack Hayes’s trail her personal ghost. And through it all, Charlotte had been there, the tiny shadow of Emily in that twisted tableau. And now, here she was.

Not in a file, not in a feed. Real. Alive. A fourteen-year-old girl in borrowed sweats, holding hot chocolate in both hands like it was the most precious thing she’d ever been given.

Garcia felt her chest swell and splinter all at once. The tears pressed sharp behind her eyes, because no child should ever have to look that grateful for something so small. She swallowed hard, her throat tight, and forced herself to breathe through the crack in her heart. To stay soft, not shatter. Charlotte didn’t need anyone else’s grief weighing her down.

So Garcia pasted on a smile, quiet but true, and murmured, “Yeah. That’s yours, sweetheart. You hold on to that.”

And she turned back to the counter, letting her hands fuss with nothing at all, giving JJ and the girl their moment  and herself a second to keep from breaking.

The office felt cavernous without Charlotte in it.
For the first time all morning, Emily sat on the couch alone, her hand empty, the imprint of small fingers still lingering against her skin. The absence pressed in harder than the silence did. She could only imagine JJ’s blonde head tilted low in the break room, Garcia’s bright silhouette hovering nearby. Charlotte was safe with them, Emily knew that, but her chest still ached like she’d left something vital behind.

Across from her, Linda Carver had set her notepad aside, the pen neatly clipped against the spiral, hands folded in her lap. The professional mask had returned to her face, the one Emily recognized from years of interviewing witnesses, parents, survivors. A look that said I’ve seen this before. I can hold it.

“Given the circumstances,” Linda began, her voice measured, “I think it’s best if we coordinate with Victim Services. She’s clearly bonded with you, Agent Prentiss. For now, she can stay here, under your supervision, until we arrange something stable later this day.”

Stable.
The word hooked hard in Emily’s chest, jagged and unrelenting. Nothing about Charlotte’s world was stable. Her parents gone, her home gone, her childhood split clean down the middle.

Linda continued, tone steady, like she’d walked this path a hundred times. “Our immediate options would include a therapeutic foster placement, families trained to handle acute trauma cases or, if her needs are more complex, a short-term residential program. We’ll also schedule an appointment with a child trauma psychologist as soon as possible. She’ll need ongoing therapy.”

Emily’s jaw shifted, her teeth pressing together. She didn’t argue, couldn’t, not yet. Procedure was procedure. She’d lived her life inside systems like this, the bureaucracy that caught you when you fell. But her gut rebelled at the words residential program, the clinical neatness of them, like Charlotte could be slotted into a line on a spreadsheet.

Linda must’ve read the flicker in her eyes, because she adjusted in her seat, smoothing the edge of her blazer. “I do have a foster home in mind,” she said. “It’s licensed, vetted, safe. There are three other kids there, teenagers as well. She’d be the youngest.”

Emily’s head lifted, dark eyes narrowing. “What kind of teenagers?”

“Mostly behavioral cases,” Linda replied, not defensive, just factual. “Runaways. Truancy. Some oppositional defiance. Nothing violent. The couple has experience.”

Emily let out a long, thin breath, her voice dipping into something quieter but sharper. “Charlotte isn’t… problematic. She’s traumatized.” The word carried weight, cracking just slightly on her tongue. “There’s a difference.”

Linda didn’t flinch, but she didn’t retreat either. “I know. Believe me, I do. But the reality is we have limited openings. We place children where there’s space, not always where it’s perfect. I wish it were different.”

Emily sat back, but every line of her body still leaned forward, protective. Her hand curled tight against her knee, an unconscious mimic of the way Charlotte had clung to hers. On a couch in my office, that was where Charlotte felt safe. Not in some stranger’s living room, surrounded by kids with their own storms raging.

Her lips pressed thin, the guilt cutting deep. She’d told JJ she wanted every rescued child to get the best, the right therapy, the right placement. But looking at the reality now, staring at the system’s tidy boxes, she felt the certainty burn in her chest: Safe enough wasn’t going to be enough for Charlotte Winters.

Chapter Text

The morning had settled into its rhythm outside, the bullpen alive with the thrum of work. Phones trilled, agents passed files from desk to desk, the murmur of voices rose and fell like the tide. From Emily’s office, it all blurred into a muffled wash of sound, a life continuing as if nothing had fractured.

Inside, the air was still.
The couch where Charlotte had sat earlier was empty now, its cushions faintly indented, a damp ring from her glass ghosting the table beside it. JJ had coaxed her down the hall with Garcia, leaving behind the faint echo of their soft voices. The hush that followed felt cavernous.

Emily sat on the edge of her couch, spine straight, hands braced loosely at her sides, as though keeping herself from folding inward. Across from her, Linda Carver had removed her notepad entirely, setting it aside with deliberate care. Her hands were laced neatly in her lap, but the return of her posture, upright and composed, signaled the pivot back to business. Years of walking into rooms steeped in trauma had given her that air: steady, professional, almost antiseptic.

And yet, when her gaze met Emily’s, there was no mistaking the gravity there. She was not unkind. She was simply… the system made flesh.

“Given the circumstances,” Linda began, her voice low but measured, “I think it’s best if she stays here, under your supervision as we coordinate with Victim Services.” A small tilt of her head, acknowledgment rather than dismissal. “But only until we arrange something stable.”

Emily inclined her head, though the word stable sat in her chest like a jagged stone. Nothing about this was stable. Charlotte’s silence, her white-knuckled grip, the way she curled toward shadows when voices rose too loud.

Linda continued, hands folding more tightly. “Our immediate options would include a therapeutic foster placement as already mentioned or, if her needs prove more complex, a short-term residential program. And of course, we’ll schedule an appointment with a child trauma psychologist as soon as possible. She’ll need ongoing therapy, that much is clear.”

Emily listened, her dark eyes unwavering. She’d heard a thousand briefings in her life, summaries and projections boiled down to sterile terms. This one cut sharper than most. She forced her voice steady, quiet. “When?”

Linda didn’t flinch. “I’ll return this evening. Six o’clock. By then we’ll have a placement ready. She can’t remain here indefinitely.”

The words thudded into Emily’s chest like a countdown clock starting. Six o’clock. A handful of hours. Then Charlotte; small, silent, clinging to the only sliver of safety she’d found; would be taken from this office, folded into a file, absorbed into the machinery.

Emily’s jaw tightened, but she kept her tone even. “She’s not ready.”

“She may not be ready for months,” Linda said gently, but with a finality that made Emily’s throat burn. “And we don’t have the luxury of waiting. I don’t expect her to be fine, Agent Prentiss. I only expect her to be safe.”

Safe. The word rang hollow. Emily thought of Charlotte’s hand wrapped tight around hers, the way her damp hair clung to her temples, the haunted wideness of her eyes when Linda had tried to separate them. Safe, the system’s way, was a bed somewhere, paperwork filed, boxes ticked.

Emily pressed her palms flat against her thighs, grounding herself against the urge to snap. She had told JJ last night she wanted every rescued child to get the best treatment, the right placement. But as she sat in her office now, the indent of Charlotte’s small body still warm in the couch cushions, Emily knew the system’s “safe enough” wasn’t going to be good enough.

And she had until six o’clock to figure out what to do about it.

Linda had finally gathered her files, promising to return in the evening once the placement was ready. She’d left with the kind of brisk efficiency born from years of navigating red tape, murmuring something about calls to foster families, signed forms, and arranging transport. Emily had walked her to the elevators, her stride measured, her expression polite, but her chest had stayed tight long after the doors slid shut.

Now, the bullpen’s hum chased her down the corridor, voices rising and falling over the static of phones, the low clatter of keyboards. Normal life resuming, as if the walls weren’t still carrying the weight of last night.

But as Emily neared the kitchen, the noise gentled. Warm light spilled into the hall, tinged with the faint sweetness of cocoa that clung in the air. She slowed instinctively, the soles of her boots quieting on the linoleum, and stopped just shy of the doorway.

Inside, Garcia had claimed center stage at the small table. She sat with her own mug of hot chocolate in her hand, eyes wide behind her glasses, her whole frame alive with animated energy. She leaned forward, elbows planted, voice pitched in theatrical cadence as though she were performing to an eager crowd. One hand swept through the air in wide arcs, punctuating every phrase with flair.

Emily caught her midstream, already deep into some tale, she couldn’t tell what kind, but the rhythm was magnetic.

“– and then, bam!” Garcia clapped her palm to the table for emphasis, sending Charlotte’s cocoa trembling in its mug. “Out of nowhere comes this heroic cat… not a regular cat, mind you, but one with a jewel-encrusted collar, because, of course, he was secretly guarding the crown jewels of Norway!” Garcia lowered her voice conspiratorially, leaning closer across the table. “But here’s the kicker, cupcake, the cat could talk.” She tapped the side of her nose, eyes sparkling. “In perfect French.”

Emily blinked once, her mouth curving despite herself. The story was absurd, classic Garcia, spinning something wild and whimsical out of thin air, but Charlotte was transfixed.

The girl sat curled in her chair, knees drawn. Strands of dark hair clung to her cheeks, but her eyes were wide, fixed on Garcia like she was afraid to miss a single word. She hadn’t moved much since breakfast, hadn’t spoken at all.

But here, here, Emily saw it. The tiniest tilt at the corner of her mouth. A twitch, hesitant and fragile, like a smile learning to exist again.

And Emily’s chest ached with warmth so sharp it almost hurt. She pressed a palm against the doorframe, steadying herself against the sudden swell of relief, of gratitude. For the first time in hours, Charlotte’s face looked a fraction lighter, the tension carved into her shoulders softened by Garcia’s exuberance.

A quiet step joined hers. Emily didn’t need to look to know who it was. JJ’s presence carried its own kind of gravity: soft, grounding, never rushed. She slipped up beside her at the doorway, careful not to intrude on the fragile cocoon inside the kitchen, her expression gentling in the low wash of light.

For a moment, she said nothing. She simply followed Emily’s gaze to the table, where Garcia’s hands painted arcs through the air, her voice rising and falling like a spell. And there was Charlotte, small and hollow-eyed, hanging on every word like it was oxygen.

Emily felt JJ’s shoulder hover a fraction closer, close enough that warmth threaded into her own. Neither of them spoke. They just stood there in the silence, guardians at the threshold, watching Garcia’s whimsy become a bridge Charlotte could step onto, just barely, but enough.

Finally, JJ’s voice brushed the air. Low. Careful. “What did she say?”

Emily didn’t move her eyes from Charlotte. She couldn’t. “Carver will be back at six,” she murmured, the syllables heavy. “Until then… she stays here. With us.”

The answer settled between them, weighty. JJ’s jaw tightened, though she tried to hide it behind a small nod. “And after?”

Emily’s exhale slipped sharp through her nose, a breath heavier than she meant it to be. Her hand twitched against the doorframe, like she needed something solid to grip. “She’ll be placed. Foster, most likely. A house with other kids. They’re trained, but…” Her voice snagged, roughened, the word trained catching like gravel in her throat. “It’s not the same.”

Silence stretched. Emily’s shoulders stiffened, bracing for a response she wasn’t ready for. But JJ didn’t push, not yet.

Instead, she turned her head slightly, studying Emily out of the corner of her eye. The look wasn’t sharp, wasn’t pressing. It was softer, steadier. A quiet knowing that threaded through the air between them, the kind of knowing born only after years of carrying each other through fires.

JJ’s presence was enough, unspoken and unwavering, the anchor Emily hadn’t asked for but leaned into anyway.

Inside, Garcia must have hit the punchline, because she threw her arms out with dramatic flair, eyes wide behind her glasses. Charlotte startled faintly at the sudden gesture, then stilled again, her fingers tightening around her mug. For a beat, Emily’s heart squeeezed, afraid the bubble of safety would shatter.

But instead, Charlotte’s head turned. She looked back toward the doorway, wide eyes searching until they found Emily. She blinked once, slow, then her lips shifted in a tiny, wobbling tilt. The barest ghost of a smile, uncertain and fragile, but real.

Emily’s breath caught. She let herself smile back, warm and steady, her chest loosening as if that small, tremulous curve of a mouth had untied something knotted inside her.

From the table, Garcia caught the exchange. Her face softened instantly, her exuberance dimming into quiet fondness. She didn’t say a word, just gave a tiny, conspiratorial nod in Emily’s direction, as if to say, look: she’s still in there.

Emily’s throat ached, but she didn’t look away. Not from Charlotte. Not from the flicker of light she had just fought her way to the surface. And in that fragile moment; warm kitchen, cocoa mugs, Garcia’s steady presence, JJ close enough to feel her shoulder; Emily felt the countdown to six o’clock like a clock hand pressing hard against her ribs.

The day moved in fragments, broken pieces of glass Emily tried to hold without cutting herself.

On one side was duty, the steady rhythm of conference calls, reports, the clipped, efficient voice that belonged to Agent Prentiss. She sat through debriefs with her team, gave updates to Quantico brass, her words sharp enough to slice through protocol. She kept her shoulders square, her tone professional. Every few minutes, her eyes betrayed her, flicking toward the clock, toward the hallway that led back to her office.

Because the other side of her day lived there.

Charlotte had carved out a nest on Emily’s couch, small and still, the blanket JJ had draped around her shoulders cocooning her frame. The sweats swallowed her, sleeves dangling past her wrists until only the tips of her fingers showed. She hadn’t spoken since the night before. Not one word. But she held a pen loosely in her hand like a talisman, as though if she gripped it long enough, language might seep back into her bones.

Sometimes she lowered the nib to the paper balanced on her lap, poised there, hovering. Emily would watch from the doorway, breath caught, hoping this would be the moment speech returned to the girl’s world. But instead, Charlotte’s hand would drift, dragging faint lines that wandered across the margin, not letters, not shapes, just marks. The motion of someone who needed to feel movement under her fingers, even if meaning never followed.

Every time Emily slipped away to her office, she felt the change. The air shifted. Charlotte’s eyes found her instantly, snapping up from the page as if she had been holding vigil. She never reached out, never spoke, but her gaze clung like a lifeline. She didn’t move. She didn’t ask. She just looked.

And Emily felt it like a pull deep in her chest, a tether drawn tight, binding her more securely than any assignment ever had. The girl’s silence wasn’t empty, it was heavy, loaded, pressing into every corner of the room. And still, Charlotte’s stare told her everything Emily needed to know: You left, but you came back. You’re still here.

It was enough to keep Emily coming back, again and again, torn between the work demanding her attention and the fragile life waiting in her office; the life she wasn’t sure she could protect, but already couldn’t imagine letting go.

JJ became a constant presence too. She slipped in with quiet snacks, setting them within reach, her voice pitched soft and easy. “No rush, sweetpea. Just here if you want it.” Sometimes Charlotte reached for the apple slices, sometimes she didn’t. Either way, JJ never pushed. She just sat a while, her calm filling the silence, the gentleness in her glance at Emily saying more than words ever could. Emily caught those glances every time and even when she tried not to read into them, the warmth in JJ’s eyes lingered like an ache she couldn’t quite shake.

Later, Luke appeared with Roxy trotting happily at his side, her leash loose in his hand. The dog’s nails clicked softly on the tile as she padded into the office, her whole body wiggling with the contained joy of a well-trained companion. Emily glanced up from her desk, one brow lifting in quiet question.

Luke paused just inside the door, his hand resting lightly on the leash. His voice was pitched low, careful not to carry too far toward the couch. “You know,” he said, “when I worked with vets coming back from deployment, half the time it wasn’t the therapy sessions that got through to them. It was the dogs. The simple stuff. Touch, trust, something breathing next to you that didn’t ask questions.” His eyes flicked briefly toward Charlotte before returning to Emily. “Sometimes that was the first step, just letting their guard down long enough to pet a dog.”

Emily felt something tighten in her chest. He was right. Trauma carved walls so high words couldn’t climb them, but a dog could slip right past. She gave a small nod, her voice softer than she meant it to be. “Good call.”

Luke’s mouth curved faintly, and he dropped into a crouch so Roxy was eye-level with the couch. “Thought she might help,” he murmured, scratching gently behind the dog’s ear. “She’s good at making friends. No pressure.”

Roxy sat patiently, tail thumping once against the floor, her gaze steady on Charlotte like she had all the time in the world. Charlotte froze, her pen stilled in her hand, wide eyes fixed on the animal. Emily held her breath, watching the silent exchange. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Charlotte’s fingers edged forward. Tentative, shaky, they brushed against Roxy’s fur.

The dog leaned in, slow and steady, as though sensing the fragility of the moment, offering herself without demand. Charlotte’s hand stayed, resting more fully now, the faintest losening in her tense shoulders. And then it came  fleeting, fragile, but real: almost a smile.

It was gone in a blink, but Emily saw it. Felt it. Her chest burned warm and tight, something between relief and ache, like watching sunlight spill through a crack in storm clouds.

Through it all, Emily moved between her desk and the doorway, shuttling between duty and the small universe that had formed around Charlotte. Each time she returned, she met one of her team members and found family keeping eye on the girl.

JJ came and went with her quiet constancy, always knowing when to slip in with a snack or a gentle word, always knowing when silence was better. Garcia turned Charlotte’s cocoa into a ritual, her stories spilling bright color into the air until even Emily felt the corners of her mouth soften. Luke left Roxy for a few hours, the dog curling loyally at Charlotte’s feet like a living shield. Tara stopped by, a book in her hand, setting it gently on the table with a quiet, “Whenever you’re ready.” Even Rossi and Tyler lingered in the doorway, their steady gaze grounding.

Emily realized, with something hot tightening behind her ribs, that she didn’t have to juggle this alone. Charlotte wasn’t just under her watch, she was under all of theirs. Her team. Her family. They were weaving a net around her without even needing to be asked.

And yet…

Hayes’s shadow slid into her thoughts like smoke under a door. Ethan Hayes. The boy they’d once handed over to the system, a decision Emily had signed off on without hesitation, believing the right structure, the right therapy, would give him a chance. Instead, he’d grown into a monster who had reconstructed their team out of children like dolls, who had murdered, who had made victims out of kids like Charlotte.

She couldn’t stop replaying it: We put him in the system. We thought it was enough.

Her gaze drifted to the couch, where Charlotte sat hunched in her borrowed clothes, the blanket pooled around her shoulders, one hand buried in Roxy’s fur. Safe, for now. But the clock was ticking. Six o’clock would come, and Linda Carver would walk her out of this building, out of Emily’s line of sight, and hand her over to the same system that had failed before.

The excuses lined up neatly in her head, like cards she’d been shuffling all day. She was too old. Too busy. Too gone half the time. Charlotte needed someone steady, someone present, someone younger. Not a woman past fifty with a job that tore her out of bed at three in the morning.

But she didn’t believe herself. Not really. Every time Charlotte’s eyes found her , every time that small, pale hand reached out as if Emily was the only solid thing in the room, those excuses fell thin. She could feel it, like a truth pressing up against her ribs.

She wanted to keep her.

And the wanting terrified her almost as much as the idea of letting her go.

The thought followed her out of her office, clinging tight as she closed the door behind her. The bullpen had quieted into its afternoon lull, keyboards tapping softer now, voices little more than murmurs. Emily’s steps felt heavy, her shoulders drawn tight, breath shallow, like the air inside her office hadn’t been enough and somehow the air out here wasn’t either.

She kept moving, eyes fixed ahead, until another presence matched her pace. JJ slipped in beside her without a word, her approach so seamless it felt intentional, like she’d been waiting for the moment Emily finally needed to step away. They walked together through the dimming bullpen, the hum fading until they reached the row of tall windows where light spilled tired and thin across the floor just outside the bullpen.

Emily folded her arms tight across her chest, the gesture half-armor, half-desperate attempt to hold herself together. Her jaw worked as though she was chewing down words too sharp to let loose. Her eyes stayed fixed on the skyline, the last streaks of gold sinking into the darker wash of evening.

JJ didn’t press. She never did. She simply stood a pace away, her hands tucked loosely in her pockets, her presence quiet but anchoring. She gave Emily that space; that impossible, infuriating grace of waiting until Emily was ready to cut through her own silence.

Finally, Emily spoke, the words scraped raw from somewhere deep in her chest. “I can’t do this.”

JJ shifted, just slightly, enough to look at her. Her face was unreadable, but her eyes, soft and steady, held patience that made Emily’s throat ache. She didn’t ask what this was. She knew.

“I’m fifty-six,” Emily pressed on, arms locking tighter, her voice sharper than she intended. “My job doesn’t end at five o’clock. Half the time I don’t even know what city I’ll be in the next day. I don’t have…” She faltered, shaking her head as though finishing the sentence would make the whole thing real. “I don’t have what she needs.”

Silence stretched. JJ didn’t contradict her. Didn’t offer neat assurances or quick fixes. She just let the weight of Emily’s confession breathe, her gaze unwavering.

When she finally spoke, her voice was low, carrying the kind of certainty that didn’t need volume to have power. “I can see it, you know.”

Emily frowned, turning her head enough to catch the words. “See what?”

JJ’s lips curved, soft, sad, but knowing. “You. Kids.”

The words struck with a familiarity that made Emily’s chest seize. Her eyes widened, and for a moment she was thirty-eight again, sitting in the BAU jet on the way home, JJ in front of her, steady, reassuring her with that same quiet certainty: I can see it… you… kids. She hadn’t forgotten. She’d never forgotten.

Emily’s throat closed, the memory slamming into the present with brutal clarity. She swallowed hard, her gaze darting back to the skyline, because meeting JJ’s eyes felt impossible.

JJ’s voice gentled further, threading through memory and now. “That hasn’t changed, Emily. Not then. Not now.”

The city lights flickered alive in the glass, bright against the encroaching dark, and Emily stood caught between past and present, the words she couldn’t say burning just behind her teeth.

JJ shifted a little closer, just enough that the warmth of her shoulder brushed against Emily’s arm. It wasn’t much, barely a touch, but it landed steady, grounding,  the same way JJ had always been when Emily’s thoughts turned sharp and dangerous.

“I’ve seen you with them for years,” JJ murmured, her voice pitched low, intimate in the hush of the corridor. “Victims. Survivors. Henry. Michael.” She tilted her head, the faintest smile tugging at her lips, softened with memory. “When they were tiny, red-faced, screaming their lungs out. You never flinched. You were always… steady,.”

Emily’s breath left her in a sound caught between a scoff and a sigh, the corners of her mouth twitching with something that wasn’t quite humor. “That’s not the same as raising one.” Her voice cracked on the word raising, rough around the edges.

“No,” JJ agreed easily, her tone holding no judgment, only quiet fact. She let her hand drift, fingertips brushing over the fabric of Emily’s sleeve, fleeting but deliberate, before she let it fall again. “It’s not.” She paused, studying Emily’s profile against the fading skyline. “But don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.”

That made Emily turn, sharp, her dark eyes cutting to JJ with something dangerously close to defense,  a reflex, an instinct. But JJ didn’t flinch. She held Emily’s gaze the way she always did: steady, open, unwavering. Not prying, not pushing. Just knowing. And Emily hated, hated how much JJ could see. How easily she peeled back the layers Emily kept cemented in place for everyone else.

Her mouth opened, ready with denial, with the practiced ease of shutting down things too raw to name. But the words caught, brittle and thin in her throat, because JJ’s eyes were too kind, too certain. Emily looked away first, dragging her gaze back to the glass where the city had turned fully to light now, pinpricks glittering against the dark. The reflection staring back at her looked tired. Guarded. But beneath it, that flicker she couldn’t smother fast enough. JJ had seen it. She always did.

Emily had thought about it. God help her, she had.

Not often, not recklessly, but enough that it lingered in quiet corners of her life. In the way her arms had once tightened instinctively when she held Henry as a baby, in the way she lingered too long at toy aisles while shopping for birthdays, in the quiet, dangerous ache when she watched other people’s children run laughing into waiting arms. The thought of a family, of a child who wasn’t just a fleeting case file, had brushed against her like a ghost she never dared touch.

And every time, she’d folded it away. Buried it beneath duty, time, the armor of a life built on sacrifice.

She shook her head now, too sharp, as if to scatter the thought before it grew teeth. Her voice, when it came, was raw but forced steady. “Thinking about it and… doing it… that’s not the same thing.” Her arms folded tighter across her chest, like a barricade she could still hold together. “I’m not…” She exhaled, a rough, shaky breath. “I can’t give her what she needs.”

JJ’s eyes softened, deeper than pity, gentler than reassurance. She didn’t argue. She didn’t try to convince. She just stayed, her silence speaking the way words never could, looking at Emily like she always did in these rare moments, like she could see through every wall, every excuse, down to the raw, trembling truth Emily wasn’t ready to name.

The silence stretched, heavy but not suffocating, filled only with the hum of the building and the glow of city lights bleeding into dusk. Emily stood rigid, arms locked tight as if to hold herself together. JJ stayed beside her, close enough that her presence eased the edges. No pushing. No forcing. Just there.

Emily didn’t decide. She didn’t admit. But the ache in her chest told her that JJ already knew.

The stillness by the windows fractured with a sound so sharp it made Emily’s shoulders snap taut. The elevator chimed, clear and clinical, echoing across the hallway. She and JJ turned in unison, both instinct and dread pulling their eyes toward the source.

Linda Carver stepped out. Neat blazer, hair tucked smooth, a manila folder hugged tight to her chest like a shield. She moved with the same unflinching composure she’d carried all morning, the kind honed by years of walking into rooms where grief hung heavy in the air. Professional to the bone. Detached enough to do her job.

But her presence, her early presence, sent a crack clean through Emily’s ribs. She felt her pulse jolt, the thin thread of calm she’d managed unraveling. Emily’s hand curled hard at her side, nails biting into her palm before she even realized it. Not yet. God, not yet.

“It’s five,” Emily heard herself say as she strode forward, her voice tighter than she intended, words clipped at the edges. “You said six.”

Linda’s step faltered just slightly, though her pace never broke. Her eyes flicked toward Emily, carrying the glint of apology, but not retreat. “We were able to finalize arrangements sooner than expected,” she explained evenly, her voice professional, practiced. “A spot opened. I thought…” she hesitated, just a fraction, then softened her tone in a way that still felt rehearsed. “…it would be better not to delay.”

Better. The word wedged itself into Emily’s chest like a splinter. Better for who? For Charlotte, who was barely breathing under the weight of the last twenty-four hours? Or for the system that needed every case neatly processed and moved along? She bit back the response that rose sharp in her throat. Not here. Not now.

Beside her, JJ’s presence shifted closer, deliberate and quiet. She didn’t say anything, didn’t need to, she simply fell into step beside Emily, the way she always did when Emily’s edges frayed. A steady shadow, soft at the corners but unwavering.

The three of them moved through the bullpen, past the low hum of agents at their desks. Keyboards clattered, phones trilled, voices rose and fell in a steady rhythm, the background music of the Bureau. Normal. Everyday. And yet every step Emily took felt like walking into a storm.

As they approached her office, her chest cinched tight. Through the glass door, the sight waiting for her nearly undid her. Luke sat in the chair across from Charlotte, his posture relaxed, his voice pitched low and easy. At his feet, Roxy sprawled in a soft heap of fur and warmth, her dark eyes tracking the girl at her side. Charlotte’s small hand rested against the dog’s fur, hesitant but steady now, her shoulders looser than they had been that morning. She looked fragile still, wrapped in borrowed clothes and silence, but there was something in the way her fingers curled into Roxy’s coat that made Emily’s throat close. A tether. A lifeline. For a fleeting second, Emily could almost believe she was safe.

And then the sharp click of her heels on the floor reminded her of the truth: Linda hadn’t come to witness progress. She’d come to take Charlotte away.

When Luke spotted them in the doorway, he was on his feet at once. His eyes moved from Emily to Linda, then to Charlotte, and something in his expression shifted, an understanding, quiet and immediate. “We’ll give you space,” he said gently, already reaching for Roxy’s leash. His tone was calm, threaded with that same steadiness he’d carried all day, the kind that never needed explanation. With a soft murmur to the dog, he clipped the leash to her collar, Roxy rising obediently at his side.

He paused only long enough to tip his head toward Emily, a silent acknowledgment passing between them. No fuss, no ceremony, just Luke being who he always was: solid, dependable, a buffer in the storm.

“Thank you,” Emily said, her voice low. Too low. The words came weighted, thick with more than simple gratitude. With everything she couldn’t say out loud.

Luke gave a single nod, his gaze flicking briefly to Charlotte; gentle, protective, lingering; before he slipped past them. The door closed behind him with a quiet click that seemed to echo far louder than it should. The room shifted with his absence.

Charlotte’s head lifted instantly, her wide dark eyes darting to the door, then to the three women left inside. She felt the change like a current snapping through the air. Whatever ease Roxy had coaxed into her shoulders dissolved. She pulled inward, small, folding into herself, her fingers knotting in the blanket pooled across her lap until the fabric bunched tight beneath her fists.

Linda crouched, her movements smooth and practiced, careful not to crowd. Her folder was still tucked under her arm, her voice pitched soft. “Charlotte?” she said, her tone as even as it was familiar. “It’s time to go, sweetheart. We have a safe place for you.”

The words were meant to soothe, but Charlotte didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Her breath caught instead, jagged and shallow, like the room had thinned of oxygen. Slowly, almost unwillingly, her gaze slid sideways, not to Linda, not to JJ. To Emily. Those eyes; dark, brimming, desperate; locked onto her. And in them swam a question Emily had no answer for. Why? Why do I have to leave?

Emily’s jaw clenched so hard it ached. She forced herself to breathe evenly, to hold on to protocol, to remember the litany of reasons why this was the right thing, the only thing. She wasn’t the right person. She couldn’t give Charlotte what she needed. The words rattled in her head like armor.

But then Charlotte’s lips wobbled, her face crumpling under the weight she’d held in all day. Her eyes glossed wet, the tears trembling on the edge, threatening to fall. She didn’t cry loud, didn’t make a sound, it was quieter than that. A breaking that came silently, shattering just the same.

Emily’s entire body went rigid. Her chest constricted, her throat burning raw, every wall she had built through years of training, years of practice, buckling under the sight of that one small, wordless plea.

Linda shifted slightly closer, her folder tucked tighter under her arm. Her voice was soft, coaxing, measured the way only someone trained for this work could make it. “It’s alright, Charlotte. I’ll be with you. You’ll be safe.” She extended a hand toward the girl, her movements careful, practiced, as though this might ease the inevitable.

But Charlotte didn’t reach for her. Her gaze never wavered from Emily, fixed and desperate, her small frame curling tighter in on itself. Her hand clutched the blanket in her lap so hard her knuckles blanched, as though letting go meant losing everything…again.

JJ’s hand brushed against Emily’s sleeve, a grounding touch, warm and steady. But instead of calming her, it sharpened the ache in Emily’s chest, every nerve stretched taut.

Linda tried again, her tone gentler now, coaxing like she would with a spooked animal. “Come on, sweetheart. Just a step. The sooner we go, the sooner you can settle.”

Charlotte’s lips trembled. Her head shook in the tiniest, desperate denial. And then, for the first time all day, sound broke from her throat. Fragile. Broken. A whisper barely there. “Em-ily?”

Emily froze. The word, soft and shattered, hit harder than any plea could have.

Linda’s face softened, but her hand didn’t falter. She leaned closer, determined to make the transition swift. Quick pain, clean cut, like ripping a bandage. “I know it’s hard. But you have to trust me. It’s time to go.”

Charlotte’s whole body recoiled. She shook her head harder, shrinking back into the couch cushions, trying to make herself smaller. When Linda reached again, Charlotte flinched and scrambled sideways, her movements jerky, panicked.

“No,” she mouthed soundlessly, her lips shaping the word even if her voice wouldn’t come. She twisted against the blanket, trying to pull away.

Linda, prepared for resistance, adjusted quickly, moving with brisk efficiency. She reached for Charlotte’s elbow, gentle but firm, ready to guide her up before the panic could escalate further.

But Charlotte’s struggle, the way she dug in, the tears spilling now, silent and hot down her cheeks, split something raw and irreparable inside Emily. It wasn’t calculated. It wasn’t professional. It wasn’t even thought. The words tore from her chest before she could stop them, raw and jagged, more plea than promise.

“S-stop. I’ll take her.”

The room stilled instantly.

Linda froze, her hand hovering just short of Charlotte’s arm. Her eyes snapped to Emily, sharp, startled, her practiced calm cracking for the first time all day. JJ didn’t move, her hand still at Emily’s sleeve. If anything, her grip steadied, but her face held no surprise. Just quiet, knowing acceptance.

And Charlotte… Charlotte stopped fighting. Her breath hitched, tears clinging to her lashes as she blinked up at Emily, wide and stunned. For the briefest second, silence reigned and then the smallest sound broke from her, a fragile gasp.

Emily stood rooted in the center of the room, her chest heaving with the weight of what she had just done. Her declaration hung between them like a live wire, impossible to take back. But looking at Charlotte, at the girl’s tear-brimmed eyes clinging to her like she was the last solid thing left in a fractured world, Emily knew she didn’t want to take the word back.

She couldn’t.

Not anymore.