"Garcia, when you applied for this job, you gave me your resume on homemade pink stationary. I realized then that you were… unique. And I wouldn't want you to change that." - Aaron Hotchner

Garcia knew she was running on borrowed time. She had made the mistake of trying to hold in her tears, thinking she could make it back to her apartment before breaking down. She didn't want to cry at work, not in front of the prying, judgmental eyes of every stringent, morally rigorous, holier-than-thou agent she worked with.

You're the Black Queen, she told herself. If they see you cry, they'll take advantage of you.

That had worked for a while, the internal mantra coupled with survival instincts keeping her tears at bay. She focused on her office—her den, really, her cave—and simple tasks like paperwork and filing. It was boring. It was tedious.

But it was better than thinking… and then it wasn't.

It wasn't enough, and her eyes started to burn, and her chest got tight, and she pressed herself with a new tactic. If you cry, they'll take advantage of you, and no one is here to stop them. You don't have anyone to protect you. You're alone, Penelope.

Fear was a better motivator, and the tightness she felt soon turned to a rapid pounding. She couldn't contact any of her friends without getting in trouble—not now, not ever—and she certainly couldn't rely on anyone inside the FBI. She had no family. She was alone.

She hated being alone.

You gotta be chill, Penelope. If you freak out, you have no back-up. I repeat: there is no back-up. She ranted internally, hoping it would be enough to keep her eyes dry, and that worked for a while, too. In fact, it almost worked for the entire while that she needed, but then she went to turn off the monitor.

Her finger froze on the power button, glassy eyes landing on the photo of the unsub. She couldn't stop herself then; not looking at his smiling face, not looking at his parents in the background.

Unfortunately, she spent the first one hour and forty-five minutes of the team's two-hour flight home holding it in. If she wanted to grieve, she had about twenty minutes before they returned.

Twenty minutes was not nearly enough.

She sat there, in the dark, with her face in her hands, sobbing. She cried for the unsub, a boy who never had a chance. She cried for the victims, forced to suffer the rage of a wounded, lonely young man. She cried because she didn't know if she could do her job, and if she couldn't do her job, she was going to go to prison. She cried because she wanted to help people, but she didn't want to spend the rest of her life surrounded by the same suffocating darkness the internet had freed her from.

She cried for twenty minutes, and then she forced herself to stop. She took deep breaths and ran her hands through her hair and wiped her face. All she had to do was wait until they were all settled in their offices and then make a bee-line for the door.

She could do it. She could do it.

She could totally do it.

Garcia typed idly, not really writing anything of consequence but wanting something to do with her hands while she waited for the right amount of time to pass.

I just want to go home. Of course, she couldn't do that. I want to go back to my apartment and snuggle with my animals and forget about all the horrible things in the world.

Garcia froze. Footsteps? She gulped.

That was bad.

She didn't have enough time to do anything more than wipe her face and adjust her glasses, but she did her best to look very busy before her visitor arrived.

"Garcia, I need a word with you in my office."

Garcia wet her lips and kept her back to the door. "I'm actually gonna go straight home as soon as I'm done with this—thing. Maybe tomorrow?"

There was a slight pause, and then Agent Hotchner spoke again. "Miss Garcia, that was not a suggestion or a request. My office, five minutes."

She could hear him move, clearly intending to leave, but he didn't get very far. "I'll be there first thing tomorrow morning. Have a good night, sir."

Deep down, Garcia knew there was nothing she could do to deter her new boss, but she had to give it a try. She had to do what little she could to wall him off, so when she was crying alone in the dark, she would be able to tell herself she did her best.

"Garcia." There was a definite tone of disapproval in his voice, the words clipped and businesslike, but then he fell silent. That silence lasted for twenty seconds or so, and then he spoke again, his tone considerably softer. "Garcia, turn around."

He knows. Garcia fought the urge to wipe her eyes again, keeping her fingers glued to the keyboard. What do I do?

There was a quiet swoosh followed by a click, signaling the closing of a door, and then there were footsteps. She turned her face to the left, futilely pretending to look at another one of her screens, and he came to a stop on her right.

"Garcia, look at me."

"Leave me alone." It came out before she could stop it, before she could process the fact that she was talking to her boss, not Shane.

"I can't do that." Agent Hotchner reached out and took the mouse, sliding it over and closing the window that covered the photographs from the case. "Is this the problem?"

Garcia put a hand to her head, fingers tangling through the locks. "My problem is that you won't go away." That was what she said, but her voice cracked at the end, and who was she kidding? His actual job was to see through people. "I didn't do anything wrong."

"I believe you," his voice was soft, but not quite warm, and the words came with no hesitation. "It's understandable to be overwhelmed by what you see here. I've been doing this job for seven years, and I was a prosecutor before that."

Garcia only shook her head, still refusing to look at him. You are not me, she wanted to say. You are cold and calculating and emotionless, and I'm not. You're a fed. This is just a job for you, it's not for me, it's people. She wanted to say that, but she didn't.

"Why don't you come with me to my office, and we can talk about it."

"I said no!" She pushed off from the desk and spun away from him, getting to her feet and trying to make the door.

Of course, she was in five inch heels, and he wasn't.

"Penelope, stop." Agent Hotchner easily got in front of her, blocking the doorway.

She stared down at her shoes, hot tears falling from her eyes as her tiny, feeble dam began to splinter. "What do you want?" she breathed.

"I want you to talk to me." Agent Hotchner didn't force her head up, and he left his arms relaxed at his sides. "I know how hard it is to see what we have to see. There are a lot of horrors we would rather not think about."

She started to shake her head. "No."

"There's nothing to be ashamed of."

"No, no, that's not—" She shook her head again. "That's not it."

"Tell me what it is, then."

Garcia opened her mouth and stuttered for a moment, losing the words to describe what she felt. "I… the—the unsub, the—David. He…" Tears welled up and started to roll down her cheeks, taking her mascara with it. "It's just so—so sad, and so unfair. It's—his dad left him, and his mom—his mom did that—" She couldn't say the word 'rape.' She just couldn't, not about a twelve-year-old boy. "He was all alone."

"I know," he whispered, clearly trying to comfort her.

"No, you don't. You don't—you don't know what that's like. You don't know what it's like to—to know that you could be the one getting tortured and killed in some—some—some alley in the middle of nowhere, and no one would ever come looking for you." Her voice got faster and higher in pitch as she continued, tears streaming freely down her cheeks as she finally got the courage to look at him.

Blurry, barely defined, but oddly compassionate him.

"You don't—you don't know what it was like for—for him. He—he would have a bad day, and lay awake at night, crying, and know that—that—that there was no one in the world who would care. That he could—he could drop dead, and—and no one would care. You don't—you don't know."

"And you do." His voice was full of compassion and understanding. He was in no way, shape, or form judging her. "You do know what it was like for him."

"And I—I got a second chance to—to be something better, and I'm working—I'm working for the FBI, and he's dead. It's—" She shook her head, lifting a hand to her mouth to cover the ugly twist in her lips as she sobbed. "It's not f-fair…"

Garcia brought her other hand up and covered her mouth and nose, eyes squeezing shut as the sobbing returned with the force it first had a half an hour prior. Her shoulders shook, her chest ached, her cheeks were rubbed raw from the incessant wiping of tears. She was out of breath, torn between the fear of what ridicule might follow and the overwhelming need to relieve the pressure in her chest.

Then two arms wrapped around her. Then a hand gently landed on her head, stroking her hair and pulling her closer. Then her face was flush against a white shirt she knew would not survive the aftermath of her make-up. Then she heard her boss—her strict, no-nonsense, epitome of professionalism, federal agent boss—speak lowly in her ear.

"You aren't alone anymore, Penelope. You may not feel like it yet, but you are a member of this team, and this team will be there for you." He rubbed her back, and she could hear his heart beating through his shirt. "You are empathetic and sincere, and if you would let that show a little more, I think you would be able to see the good in this team."

Garcia tensed slightly, afraid he was shifting the conversation from comfort to confrontation. She couldn't handle confrontation, not in the state she was in.

"It's not an admonishment." He chuckled softly, taking her by the shoulders and putting a bit of space between them. He smiled, and his countenance warmed. "But as scared as you are, they are, too. They know who you were and what you stood for, and they aren't sure whether or not you hate them for what they do."

Garcia sniffled and wiped her eyes again. "R-right. I got it, sir." She wasn't sure how she felt about trying to cozy up to the other agents, but that was a crisis for another day. She couldn't argue. She just couldn't.

"You can call me Hotch. Everyone on the team uses that nickname."

Garcia managed a weak smile, wiping her eyes again and getting a long, black streak on her hand. "Well, I'm not really a go with the flow kind of person."

"I know, and that's one of the reasons I hired you. I don't want you to ever change that." He removed his hands from her shoulders and reached into his suit jacket, feeling around for a moment before producing a small, sparkly, pink, kitten bobblehead. "I saw this at the airport, and I thought you would like it."

Blinking, she reached out and cautiously took the figurine from him. "I…"

"What I need to talk to you about is a psych evaluation."

She opened her mouth to object, but he put a hand up to stop her.

"It does not mean I think you're crazy. I'm making Reid take one, too. You're both new at this, and I think you need to keep a close eye on how the job affects you. Furthermore…" he gestured to the toy in her hands, "…when the evaluations are reviewed, you often get some helpful tips on how to cope. For example, decorating your office so it helps to get your mind off the things you see on the screen."

Garcia looked at the kitten, then at Agent Hotchn—Hotch, eyes widening as realization dawned upon her. "You mean—?"

He gave her a light smile and nodded. "It's not exactly protocol, but you can decorate this room however you like." He paused. "Within reason."

Garcia stammered, torn between looking at her toy and staring, awestruck, at Hotch. "I—th-thank you. Thank you, sir!"

Hotch gave her another one of his slight nods and turned to leave, apparently unbothered by the make-up smeared on his shirt and what that might imply. However, he only took two steps before he stopped.

"Morgan held his hand."

Garcia blinked, confused at first, and then she let her gaze drop to the floor.

"We couldn't save him, but we didn't let him die alone." Then, without another word, Hotch was headed down the hallway once more, his call echoing a moment later. "My office, first thing tomorrow morning, Garcia."

Garcia felt herself smile, though she wasn't sure her heart was really in it. "Yes, sir!"

She stood in the empty room and listened until the footsteps were gone, fingers rubbing the plastic cat head idly. Still in a bit of a daze, she wandered over to her chair and grabbed her purse, putting it over one shoulder and tucking the bobblehead inside.

She would decorate her office as soon as she had the chance, but she couldn't leave the bobblehead on her desk until then. It would be all alone.

And while she still wasn't sure how she felt about working for the government or spending hours a day looking at dead bodies and rap sheets, she was sure of one thing: Agent Hotchner and his team didn't leave people alone.

Not even when people wanted them to.

And she really, really hoped they never changed.

"I know you see the good in people, Penelope. Always. And I would never want you to change that." - Aaron Hotchner