Disclaimer: Unfortunately, Criminal Minds and their characters do not belong to me (if they did Prentiss and Jareau would have been canon years ago). They belong to the CM writers, Erica Messer, Jeff Davis and CBS.

AN: Hi there. Technically this is my first story for the lovely pairing, Jemily (even though I have a couple of other stories in the wind for these two). It takes place two years after Emily's showdown with Doyle and most of the canon events that have happened up until "Lauren".

In this version, JJ is told that Emily was apprehended and killed by a contact of Doyle's and Hotch knows that Emily is currently alive somewhere.

Hope you enjoy this story and feel free to offer any feedback, criticism and what not. It's always appreciated.

"Vengeance, retaliation, retribution, revenge are deceitful brothers; vile, beguiling demons promising justifiable compensation to a pained soul for his losses. Yet in truth they craftily fester away all else of worth remaining." - Richelle

A long day suddenly became an even longer night for media liaison and recently certified profiler, Jennifer Jareau. With one grey sweat pant clad leg tucked underneath the other, blue eyes scanned through the profile for the case that the team has been working on for the last three weeks. It was a case that they should have been able to close tonight and have the next couple of weeks off to recuperate. But unfortunately for them, the unsub had been a few steps ahead of them, like he had during this entire investigation, had gotten away. The team planned to go over the unsub's profile to see if there was anything that they could have missed and how this unsub always seemed to know what the team was going to do next.

On top of that, she had a couple of reports from their case in Florida that she had yet to finish up and about twenty different case files on her chaotically organized desk that still needed consulting on.

Before becoming a profiler, she had given her teammates a hard time when it came to getting their paper work in on time. Since returning to the BAU, the blond had relaxed her paperwork policy considerably.

Before she became a profiler, JJ had never really understood all the work that the profilers did or why took the other profilers so long to finish their reports by the deadline she had given them. But when she had resumed her old job while filling in the role as profiler after Seaver left, she began to understand them better. After her finishing her first disastrous and exhausting case back in her new dual position, JJ promised to put less pressure on the other profilers to get their paperwork in on time.

As much as the new profiler hated the extra work, as the last year and a half flew by, JJ became accustomed to and grateful for the extra work load at work and outside of it.

When she wasn't preoccupied with raising Henry on her own, she was offering a place for Reid go to if he needed to cry. She also helped him deal with his feelings about Emily's death and move on. In return, the eccentric doctor became Henry's new playmate and favorite occasional babysitter on the night's that Garcia was able to convince her to go out for a girl's night.

Unofficially, the liaison was also helping Morgan find Doyle. Ever since Emily's official death, Morgan had been on a mission to find the former arms dealer and bring him into custody himself. Although he would have loved nothing more than to give Doyle the same kind of beating that he gave Prentiss. They also managed to locate Declan Doyle, who was living happily in a suburban neighborhood a few miles outside of DC, with his nanny and a man named Tom. She and Derek alternated weeks when they would run surveillance near his home. They knew that it was only a matter of time before Doyle would find his son and they wanted to be there when he did.

JJ also served as the one woman welcoming committee for Dr. Alex Blake, a linguist professor at Georgetown, who had taken the open position last year. The liaison made sure that Blake felt as welcomed on the team as she could be, in spite of its current state. Whenever they didn't have a case outside of the city, JJ would offer to take the new agent out to lunch. She even as far as invitingAlex to go out on one of she and Garcia's girl's nights in with the ulterior motive of getting Garcia to warm up to the new brunette agent.

She had wanted to show Garcia that Blake was alright and not trying to replace Emily. After a rough start and a couple of drinks, the technical analyst eventually came around and on the Saturdays when Blake is not with her husband, she would come out with the two of them.

Lately, JJ has even taken the liberty of being a love guru of sorts for Garcia in her relationship with her mystery man, who's identity the technical analyst had still refused to share with her. Even though he and Garcia had been dating since she broke off her relationship with Kevin. All the other blond would tell her is that he had been a visitor during one of the support groups. He also worked for the FBI, but wouldn't say what department he was in and that he was her complete opposite. He completely understands who she is and accepts her fully for it. The feelings that Garcia's developed for this guy were starting to scare her, so she started going to JJ for advice on how to deal with them. The liaison tries her best to guide her best friend, but she honestly didn't think that she was the best person to go to for this kind of thing. Especially since her own relationship with Will crashed and burn as soon as she came back from Paris.

JJ made sure to keep herself as busy as busy meant that she didn't have to think about how much the team dynamic has changed in the last two years. Which in her opinion, had been for the worse. Hotch had taken on more reassignment missions overseas, with Rossi and Morgan alternating taking turns leading the team. Even though she was still close to Reid, she noticed that he had started to distance himself from the rest of the team. The playful banter that had once been a staple in their work area, at least it had when she would give her folder to the guys and Emily, had become nonexistent. The boys would occasionally trade barbs and Reid would quietly work on a crossword puzzle with Blake. But every so often, she would catch one of the boy's line of sight drift longingly over to the empty desk in the corner that for some reason, no one had the heart to put back into storage, when they thought no

one was watching.

The makeshift little family that she had proudly been apart of for the last nine years, was falling apart. It was only a matter of time before it all came to a head. JJ didn't want to think of the possibility of losing anyone else from their family, so she made it a point to be as involved with their lives on her off time as much as she could to hold off what she saw as the inevitable.

She also found that being busy kept her mind off of the fact that the anniversary of death was next week and the team would try once again, in vain, to get her to go out with them and drink in Emily's memory. They had tried to get her to go on the first anniversary and she was able to get out of it because Henry had gotten sick with a stomach flu going around his school.

JJ tosses the profile on the black applewood coffee table, placing it on top of her gun and sinks herself exhaustedly into the green couch. She couldn't believe that it had only been two years since Emily's official death. The events that had transpired in Boston and their aftermath had seemed like another lifetime ago for the blond profiler. Watching the doctors revive the brunette and her vital stabilize as they worked. Being ordered by inconspicuous plain clothes agents from the State Department to inform everyone but her former boss, that Emily Prentiss had died on the table. Telling Hotch about what was going to happen with Emily next. Her funeral. Then Paris, where she slipped Emily various identities and bank accounts for her to use until they found Doyle. Emily walking away, the last fleeting moment that the blond had seen her dear friend alive.

The note the brunette had sneakily left behind in her wake, in which the brunette had told her how much she had meant to her. She then confessed to wishing that they had met in another lifetime and under different circumstances, then she would have had the courage to tell the blond how she truly felt about her. That maybe, they would have had a chance to have a beautiful life together.

It took the former liaison months after that night to realize that she had wanted the same thing with Emily. She re-read the brunette's note hundreds of times, analyzed every single touch and meaningful interaction that she had with her before Will and after him, to see how she could have missed the former agent's feelings for her. It finally hit her, after Will's quiet drawl announced that he had met someone else and would be going back to New Orleans with her. He told her that he knew that JJ only ever loved the idea of a life with him, instead of actually having a life with him. That he knew all along of JJ's feelings for the brunette agent, even if the blond didn't know or wouldn't accept them.

As he closed the door, with a promise to come back up and see Henry after he settled back home, the only thing he asked of the woman he thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with, is that she find her happiness. Even if it couldn't be with the one she wanted it to be with. As the door closed, the former liaison had something that she hadn't had since resigning from the BAU and starting her work at the State Department, hope. She resolved to tell Emily in her own way, the next time the brunette had made contact with her, that she needed to come home safe because she had someone worth waiting for back home. Unfortunately for her, that contact was never made and nine months later, JJ found herself entering the doors of the BAU, with an ecstatic Garcia who happily handed over her liaison duties back to her best friend.

Two months after her return, the liaison officially became a certified profiler.

JJ had been a different person back then, the year after Paris. She wholeheartedly believed that everything would work out the way that it was suppose to in the end. She had no doubt in her mind that Emily would return home and to her, although not without visible and invisible scars. She would come home to the family that loves her and will help her heal those wounds, as well as their own. And JJ would have the opportunity to heal the scar that she had left on the brunette from Miami all those years ago.

Unfortunately for her and Emily, exactly eight months ago yesterday, the fates decided not to be kind to either of them. With a call from her former boss told her that the Doyle asset had met an untimely end in Dublin after being overpowered and outnumbered by a few of his old associate's from Valhalla. Someone within the State Department, who had ties to his old associates had apparently leaked the information that Emily was still alive and what her current whereabouts were.

She remembers calling in sick and spending the rest of the day, at least until it was time to pick up Henry, crying in her bed with the note clutched tightly in her hands and a heavier heart filled.

JJ shook her head, deciding that she was not going dwell on losing the former agent or any might-have-beens any longer than she necessary. Instead, she would think about the positives of the day.

After nearly two years of searching and overtime investigations, Ian Doyle was finally in their custody. The superficial wounds that the former arms dealer had sustained during his fight with their latest unsub, were patched up by the paramedics within minutes before he was handed over to them for processing. She had called Hotch, as soon as Derek told her that he had Doyle under control, and told him that they finally had him. The unit chief informed her that he would be on the next flight back to DC immediately. He also made it a point to order her and Morgan to continue to be professional, at least until he got there.

Right now, he would be stewing in an interrogation room handcuffed to the table, probably sweating under the bright lights that would be turned up the highest that they would be able to go. Doyle would sit there with those lights with the air conditioned room blowing heat, until one of them came in to interrogate him. It would most likely alternate between Rossi and Blake grilling him. Hotch had not been pleased to know that she and Morgan violated his orders of letting the Doyle case go. Which was one of the reasons why he would not be let either one of them to interrogate the arms dealer. The other reason being that he felt like out of all of the members of their team, that she and Derek were closest to this case. That they were the ones who wanted to make Ian pay the most for what he had done to Prentiss. He didn't want to lose two of his best agents because they had let their emotions overrule their judgement.

He ordered them to go home immediately, not leaving any room for arguments. Dave and Alex were to interrogate Doyle first thing in the morning, after a well deserved night's sleep. Hotch also recommended that they both work from home for the next couple of days, until he arrived back in DC, to rest. But the blond and Morgan knew that he was punishing them for defying his orders on Doyle. He probably would have sent Garcia home too if the team didn't need her to run background on some of their cases.

JJ was ecstatic at the reassurance that Emily's nightmare would finally be over. She was tempted to call up her old boss to tell him to contact Emily and inform her that she can come home now. Then she frowned, remembering that there would be no more contact to be made with the brunette ever again. She just hoped that wherever Emily was right now, that she would be proud of the work Morgan, Garcia and herself had put in to capture her boogeyman.

She stands up from the couch and raises her hands above her head, slowly moving her head from one side to another in order to get the knot that had formed in her neck. She opens her mouth and yawns. The blond then picks up her glock, placing it back in its holster on her left hip and leaves the files sprawled across the table. She figured that she wouldn't be getting anything more out of this unsub tonight, so she would go over the profile again in the morning, with a fresh set of eyes.

The blond walks around the couch and up the stairway, to say goodnight to Henry and maybe read him a bedtime story. She hadn't had the chance to tell her son that she would be home with him for the next couple of days. But she had a feeling that the little boy would be thrilled to find her making his breakfast before he went off to school instead of Hannah, the nanny who looked after him while she was at work or away on a case.

Lately, Henry had become restless whenever she had to travel for a case. To her surprise, he had adjusted well to the breakup and Will moving back to New Orleans. Occasionally, he would ask for his daddy especially during the times that she had to be away from him. He understood that his mommy was off chasing and bringing in the bad guys, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt sometimes to not have her there.

While she was working at the State Department, Henry had gotten used to their new route of seeing JJ getting home in time to hear about his day at school and a story before bedtime.

But now that she was back at the BAU and her unpredictable schedule, the five year old had been having a hard time adjusting to it the last couple of years. It was hard for JJ and tore her up sometimes at all of the changes and adjustments that they've had to make over the last couple of years. Sometimes the blond found herself second guessing her decision to resign from the State Department to go back to her hectic schedule at the BAU. JJ had to constantly remind herself that she was doing this job for Henry's sake, to make his world a little safer place for him to live in. It was one of the only reasons the liaison had left for not turning in her resignation from the BAU and running back to the State Department.

JJ gets to the top of the steps, she walks over to the slightly cracked door with the name 'Henry' in gold, wooden letters with three gold stars surrounding the 'H' and the 'Y'. She lightly touches each letter, like she always had whenever she stopped by her son's room. It was the last thing Emily had given Henry, before everything that happened with Doyle, as a gift for the the little boy's new big boy room. The blond liaison sighs and shakes any thoughts of Emily away quickly.

JJ reaches for the door knob and immediately notices how quiet Henry's room was. Normally as she was getting ready to go tuck him in for the night, she could hear the five year old's thumping from her spot on the couch. When she came upstairs to his door, he played animatedly on the floor with his toys making various noises and gesturing wildly. Most of the time, he didn't even notice she was there until she called out to though, the only sounds that could be heard were the sounds of silence.

For any other parent, the silence would welcomed break from the usual insanity and chaos that five year olds were capable of committing with an extended period of time alone. But for JJ for some reason, felt a wave of unease at the lack of noise. She didn't know if it was her maternal or profiling instincts, but something just did not feel right. The blond silently chastises herself for not noticing it sooner.

Not wanting to startle the preschooler, in case he was sleeping or preoccupied with something else, JJ carefully cracks the door open a little further than it had been. The sight that the blond is greeted with when she does causes her blood to run cold and her complexion to pale in shock. Her blue eyes widen as she feels her body stiffen.

A figure donned in black from head to toe, who was wearing a matching tactical full face mask, sat in Henry's rocking chair while her son leaned against him. The figure used his gloved hand to brush the blond boy's recently trimmed, short locks down as he looks down at the book. Henry then looks up to the figure and places one of his hands on the mask and smiles shyly after. The bile begins to rise in her throat as she remembers that the steel, mesh mask that her son innocently poked had just hours ago stared down at a petrified looking Ian Doyle pleading for him to stop. His blood splattered all over the googles as the unsub proceeded to beat him within an inch of his life. The same look this unsub's victims more than likely had in the final moments of their lives.

The unsub appeared to be about an inch taller, without the combat boots, than her own five foot seven frame. Whoever this person is, they were a lot shorter than the profile that the team had originally given the police. Because the unsub was wearing head to toe tactical gear and loose clothing, she couldn't definitively determine the gender of the unsub. But she did know that this unsub was considerably strong. Their last victim, Michael McFadden, was strangled outside of a nightclub that he owned. Then dragged to an open house in a nearby neighborhood, where he was found dangling upside down from a chandler.

The unsub lifts his head and glances up at her, as if this person were waiting on her to make a move. JJ moves her left hand and hovers it over her holstered gun. The unsub subtlety lifts their shirt up to reveal a loaded Sig sitting in a holster, causing the blond to slowly lower her hand. The unsub waits for her to lift her hands up in surrender, before they lower their shirt back down.

The movement causes the little boy to look up and then over to the doorway. A big, bright smile appears on Henry's face and bounce up and down on his new friend's lap.

"Hi mommy!" he said enthusiastically, causing the liaison to smile hesitantly at him. " My friend Bucky came to see me and he's going to read me a bedtime story tonight! Aren't you, Bucky?"

The unsub looks down and nods at Henry as JJ looks on questioningly.

"Bucky?" the liaison asks, trying to stay as calm and casual as possible. She did not want to take the risk of having Henry think that something was wrong and having him possibly do something to upset the unsub.

"Uh huh. I'm Steve and this is Bucky." he explains excitedly. "We were playing Captain America earlier and beating the bad guys at Hydra. Just like in the movie we saw last week. Did you know Bucky was there with us too."

JJ could feel a bead of sweat drip down her her forehead at Henry's revelation. This unsub had been following her for god knows how long and not once did she notice it. They followed her to the movies with her son. They followed her home and managed to sneak in without her noticing. She wonders how long this unsub had been following her and if the figure tailed any of her other teammates as well?

Looking away from Henry, JJ turns her gaze towards the unsub.

"No I didn't. Does 'Bucky' happen to have a name, little man?"

Henry nods happily towards his mother.

"Bucky has a name." he states obviously. " But Bucky said that it's top secret. The people from Hydra might come after him if he tells me. So I call him Bucky."

JJ takes a deep breath, trying to come up with a way to get Henry out of here as quickly as possible, so that she could deal with the unsub. If she walks away from them, the unsub could take Henry or worse. And if she tries to subdue the unsub, whoever it is could hurt Henry and she did not want to take that chance. The profiler takes a few seconds to come up with her last resort that isn't guaranteed to work, especially if Henry doesn't follow along.

"Sweetheart, Bucky can read you a story some other time." JJ says softly, but in a tone that won't leave any room for the preschooler to object. She keeps her eyes on the unsub. " Bucky has to go home now."

"Why mommy? You said that Bucky could come over and read to me anytime." he asks as his smile turns into a pouty frown. He quickly hops off the unsub's knee, causing the liaison to squirm a little. But when the unsub did not respond to the loss of contact, JJ silently sighs in relief. She looks at the little boy curiously, wondering when she said that.

"I know honey, but we can't tonight." JJ says, taking a cautious couple of steps into the room. She smiles at her son. "Because, we are going to visit your aunts and uncles at Quantico." The profiler takes another step towards the preschooler. When she is close enough, she places her hands on his arms and lightly strokes them up and down.

"Don't you want to see your Aunt Penelope and Uncle Reid?" JJ asks as she leans down and puts on a pout of her own, while the five year old looks down. " I know they're still there and they really want to see you."

Henry looks back up at his mommy and smiles wide. He shakes his head excitedly and JJ pulls him into a hug that ends with a kiss on the forehead. He moves out of his mother's arms and looks over her shoulder towards the unsub.

"Now, go wait in mommy's room with the door closed and call Uncle Reid. Tell him we'll be at the office in ten minutes. When you're done, just stay in my room and watch cartoons until I come to get you, alright bud." the liaison tells him, her hand ruffling his hair a little as she stands up. He nods and makes his way out of his room. Henry stops and turns around to look at his friend.

"Bye Bucky. You'll come back and play with me tomorrow will you?" he asks shyly.

The unsub nods at Henry and the little blond boy runs happily out of the room.

When JJ hears her bedroom door shut, she immediately turns around to face the unsub. She carefully pulls out her glock. As soon as it is out of the holster and gripped in her hand, the masked unsub rises carefully out of the rocking chair. A move that surprises the blond profiler.

Considering the way this unsub brutally killed their twelve victims, she was fully prepared for an all out brawl to the finish. Then again, this could all be a trick and as soon as JJ show a little sign of weakness, the unsub could kill her then.

She aims her weapon at the unsub's head and takes a step back. The unsub takes a step forward, with their hand making its way towards their waste.

"Don't move and put your hands in the air." JJ says sternly as she takes the safety off of the glock. "I will shoot you."

"I have no doubt that would, Jennifer." the distorted voice agrees calmly, startling the blond profiler for the second time this evening.

Unfortunately for JJ, her pause was long enough for the unsub to yank the gun from her grasp and knock her to the ground with their shoulder. She looks up to find the unsub with her gun aimed at her forehead.

"I didn't come here to hurt you nor Henry." the gravelly voice tries to reason with her.

"Oh really? Breaking into my house and holding me at gunpoint, with my own gun, in my son's room doesn't exactly scream I'm not going to hurt you." JJ said sarcastically, rolling her eyes at her captor.

The unsub loses control for a moment and angrily shoves the muzzle of the gun deeply into her forehead. The liaison closes her eyes preparing for the shot to come. She was happy that Henry was in the other room and wouldn't be around to hear or see what was about to happen to her.

A couple of minutes go by and the kill shot doesn't come. Instead, the profiler feels the unsub move the muzzle away from her head. She opens her eyes to see the masked figure point her weapon away from her and unload it. The unsub throws the remaining pieces of the gun to the floor when they're done.

The figure then takes a gloved hand and reaches into the holster and unloads the magazine of its Sig. The unsub then points the unloaded gun and in her direction and waves it up and down, telling her to get up. Then they step away from her and walks over to the middle of the room.

JJ hesitantly does what she is told and stands up, just as the unsub takes a knee to the ground. The figure then raises their hands in the air and lowers their head.

The profiler does not make the same mistake that she had made with this unsub earlier and acts quickly. She quickly walks over to the unsub, taking out her handcuffs in the process. The blond takes one of the unsubs arms and makes sure to cuff them tightly. When the handcuffs were on, she forces the unsub to their feet and takes the figure out of Henry's room.

She leads the figure down the staircase and surprisingly was met without challenge. When they entered the living room, JJ throws the unsub onto the couch and watches the dark figure before her motionless. She couldn't shake the feeling that this unsub, for some reason, wanted her to catch them. But the question was why?

This person could have left her for dead and made their way out the door without Henry knowing that anything had gone wrong. They had done it before with victim number three, Duncan Flanagan. The unsub had killed him in his study, while his wife and two kids went about their nightly routine. His wife, Leanne, hadn't even suspected that anything was wrong until the next day, when she noticed that Flanagan did not come to bed the following evening. The next morning, she found him tied to a chair with a shot to the head and two to the thigh, with a four leaf clover branded into his chest.

So why did this unsub not kill her and run away? Why did they let her live? Just like the rest of this case, this unsub's actions did not make any sense.

JJ turns away from the figure on the couch, comfortable that this unsub was not going to try anything else. She walks over to the house phone and Morgan groggily answers after the second ring. She tells him everything that has gone on within the last twenty minutes or so and he tells her to sit tight. That he was on his way to pick all three of them up and personally escort them back to Quantico. She tells him that they'll be waiting.

As she hangs up the phone, JJ thinks about something that has haunted her since the confrontation with the unsub began. Why was Henry so comfortable with this unsub, when he closes up and hides behind her leg whenever any other stranger approaches him? Had this unsub been under the nose of JJ and the rest of the team the whole time? Had they worked with this person and they had gotten close enough to the team, to Henry without her or them realizing? Was it someone close enough to the Doyle investigation that they would target all of his old contacts, who had supposedly gotten out of the business after Valhalla fell apart and were now living quiet lives of their own?

JJ inhales a deep breath in, taking comfort in the fact that they now had now apprehended two dangerous unsubs that would not hurt anyone else again. She moves towards the couch and takes her seat next to the unsub and waits for Morgan to arrive.

AN: Well that's all for this chapter, hope it wasn't too bad. Next chapter and the next few chapters or so, will go back to the beginning of the case and then it will go back to the present. Thanks for reading and comments are greatly appreciated!