Hi everyone! Sorry it's been so long- grad school is kind of crazy and I've had some computer issues lately. Also, this last POV was difficult to write and it took a while to get the voice how I wanted. I know nothing about undercover work, especially the kind Prentiss did and is presumably completing, but I've given Emily more identities than the show did. Thank you to everyone who's followed this story, especially to those who have reviewed.

If anyone's following my story "Should Have Known," please sit tight. School is insanely busy, so that story may be put on hold for a while.

Happy reading! :)

"But I live, I live a hundred lifetimes in a day, but I die a little in every breath that I take. Amen, omen. Will I see your face again? Amen, omen. Can I find the place within to live my life without you?" –Ben Harper, "Amen, Omen"

These days, she pulls at old identities, grabbing charades like they are worn, moth-eaten overcoats stored and forgotten in a dusty attic among water-stained books and faded photographs. She floats from place to place, cover to cover, like a ghost that haunts endless foggy moors and twisted wooden hallways that lead to a series of locked doors. There are times where she waits in an idling car on warm summer nights under star strewn skies, in a bustling square filled with mid-morning shoppers and gawking tourists, and in dingy hotel rooms with plaster walls and squeaky beds, and she wonders when this game will end. She whispers new names and backgrounds to herself in an endless mantra because these days are filled with murmured information, quick steps, and monotony that stretches forward, as blurred as speeding train over steel tracks. These nights find her reaching for her gun at every sound and, soon, they become a lonely tribute to and penance for her crimes. She waits in darkness because, these times, she knows she is very close to disappearing.

These days, she tries to keep control, to keep record, of who she is, was, just so someone will remember. In between times when the pretense of finding a man skilled at hiding becomes too difficult, she allows herself to remember what she once had, what once was, even if these acknowledgements cripple and overcome every notion she's ever had of leaving everything behind. During these times of desperation, she can see the past, her life, flickering in clips, like a film projector splatters scenes against white washed walls. But the reminders are everywhere; they're in everyone and everything, and, suddenly, nothing is more difficult than forgetting.

The languages are what startle her the most not because she knows many, but because Rossi, even at his most infuriatingly wise, calm, and accepting moments, knew how to mumble just one foreign phrase that could stop her blood from boiling. She's sees his face occasionally in the bearded men who sell bread at the local French market and in the shadowed, half-obstructed expressions during an Irish mass chanted in ancient Latin. But she sees him the most in every lingering expression and hearty laugh that floats through and off the cobblestones encompassing Italian streets. On the nights she manages a few hours of sleep between tangled, sweat-soaked sheets, Rossi appears, eyes twinkling and understanding, and he tells her to be strong and to find Doyle for him. When she wakes, the sun is kissing the sky with rosy pinks, and she watches its full expanse and spread, saying a quick prayer over her meager breakfast of bread and coffee. On the beginning of these days, she hopes he is not waking from his own nightmares or with an all-too familiar hangover. Before she leaves, yet another, cockroach infested hotel, she lingers at the paned view of morning, squeezing her eyes shut as she silently sends a message of strength to the man that was more of a father to her than her own. These days, this hope is the only thing that keeps her together.

On slow days when any trace of Doyle has all but disappeared and her leads are non-existent, she walks through crowded streets, stopping to admire local foods, trinkets, and markets. There are people everywhere, and she sometimes grabs a strong coffee, one that she knows would make Reid salivate, and she watches. She knows this break is wasting precious time, but time does not feel real these days as it crawls its way to the present.

There are mothers pushing strollers and laughing at their children. There are chubby-cheeked teenagers with thin rolled cigarettes that dangle off glossed lips. There are old men on park benches with veined hands that snake in another wrinkled hand or around smooth chess pieces, and, for a moment, she thinks that Reid would be happy here. She can see him reading under gnarled park trees, or sitting on granite stools, studying a chess board with a determined, yet hidden, expression. He'd love the too sweet baked goods, coffee the color of potting soil, and the libraries filled with dusty books and echoing corridors. Sometimes, when she pauses long enough to imagine this hypothetical life for Reid, she forgets that he is grieving, struggling with headaches he mentioned lifetimes before, and mourning her death. She stares at her coffee mug and her stubbed, cracked fingernails against the ceramic. She hates herself for this nervous habit. She hates that Reid noticed. She hates that he cared. She hates that she hid from Doyle, Reid, and the team. If anything these days, she drains the last bits of her caffeine and decides to start working because, these times, she cannot allow herself to remember the young genius who, about now, would be buried under files while trying to avoid her abandoned desk. This bitter motivation stings the most because, these moments, she knows that Reid would never forgive her for such a blatant betrayal.

Whenever she sees woman sauntering by in endlessly tall high heels clanking a path that is accented by trailing perfumes, she grins at the thought of Morgan. Like Reid, he'd enjoy life here too, although for different reasons. Sometimes, when she feels a deep, sudden ache for home, she imagines his smile and how the corners of his dark cheeks dimpled into two neat ovals. When nightmares have her bolting upright covered in a cold liquid and panicked that she will never be free again, it's Morgan's voice she hears, begging her to stay and to keep hanging on just a bit longer. Sometimes while holding train or metro schedules or when her hands are uncovered against a vinyl steering wheel, she studies her hands and wonders if Morgan's blood could be caught with her fingers in the same ways his capable palms covered her wounds. Sometimes, especially during the endless days and desperate nights, she wishes Morgan had let go. She wishes that he had believed she was human enough to fail so glorious. There are days she wants to call him just to hear his voice once more because, some days, the memory of his reassuring tone has all but faded from her mind.

One week after agonizingly following dead ends, she made her way to the very hill she detailed between tiles, warped mirrored images, and dripping faucets. The sun extended long bands of morning light over the tiny village below, illuminating its leaning wooden structures and green, rolling pastures. Dew stained her worn sneakers, seeping through the mesh patterns and, by the time Emily reached the top, the stitch in her side had blossomed into a cramp. She clutched her ribs, inhaled and exhaled slowly, and, when the pain passed, she stood to her full height as ribbons of purple, blue, and red colored the sky with another day. The tints warmed her cold appendages, sending life to every defense that she was forced to haphazardly build. Suddenly, Garcia is everywhere. She is the in sage colored blades of grass, the dew now soaking through her jeans as she sits onto the damp earth, and in the lengthening rays, kissing every bit of the earth with color, beauty, and truth. How long she sat on a hill in the middle of the countryside, she wasn't sure, but, the sun singed the top of her head when she finally made her way downwards, slipping on loose rocks and clumps of dirt parted by herds of sheep. These days, she touches her face, feels the cool saline, tilts her cheeks upwards, and vows to Penelope that she will save herself for no reason other than she promised she would.

Some days, when she's closer to Doyle than she's been in many weeks, she searches within herself for a place where her composure and strength once were stored. These days, the search is hard, the journey long, and, at the end of most days, she changes into a ratty t-shirt and cotton underwear, crawls underneath musty hotel covers, sticks a fist between her teeth, and quietly sobs until her body heaves with waves of silent shame. This ritual always leaves her throat hoarse, knuckles bleeding, and her cheeks burning. Underneath her bare feet, tiles feel painfully cold as she stumbles to the bathroom, pausing to flick a switch that sends a flickering overhead light outwards. She always splashes cool liquid over her face. This pattern does not cease, although sometimes she cannot cry because her tears have run dry. Still, she continues this routine because it feels like she should suffer too, just like she knows her former friends are. It's only right, she tells herself. It's only fair.

But, one day when the hunt for Doyle seems impossible and her memories faded, Emily rises from the bathroom sink and, in the cracked, cloudy mirror, Hotch's steady gaze meets hers. He's not behind her, this much she's sure of, but he's in the reflection, staring at her hard, like she remembers. She blinks, he doesn't, and they continue the battle of wits.

"What do you want?" She manages to say. He sighs, but his gaze does not penetrate any less than before.

"You need to stop this, Emily." His voice is soft, concerned, but firm, like a leader's should be and like his has always been.

"I'm trying," she argues and his look intensifies, narrowing at the center. The look was not real, but it had to be because the last time she had seen it was about a week after Doyle's escape and her impalement:

In the hospital room removed from the bustling recovery ward and guarded by two plain clothes agents, she saw those same eyes when waking from a drug-induced coma. It was a few days after her "death" and Emily had blinked to make sure Hotch's profile wouldn't disappear.

"I can't stay long." His eyes already told her that much. The creases by his lids were more defined. In a minute that felt like hours, the years arranged themselves, piling against the man she had once believed was unflappable.

"I know. You shouldn't be here right now." She said. Hotch blinked, as if flinching at her honestly, but he did not falter more than a few fluttered eyelashes.

"I figured out what happened a few days ago," she continued. "Clyde explained what he, you, and JJ decided, but I knew after surgery." Hotch's eyes bore into hers, and she couldn't look away.

"I knew when I the anesthesia wore off and I came to…no one was at my bedside..."

It was foolish to admit, selfish even, yet the sight of a vacant plastic chair told her everything. The plastic seat was void of Morgan's steady presence, Reid's eyes racing over some small text, Garcia's sniffling, JJ's comforting blue orbs, Hotch's stoic demeanor, or Rossi's worn rosary beads and mumbled prayers. The emptiness had signaled a small implosion that Emily understood would shatter the sense of family she managed to rebuild.

"You know how this works." Hotch said. At his words, the tears collected behind her lenses before she could stop them. The plastic hospital bracelet with a scribbled alias, one many, maybe hundreds, she now cannot remember, became very interesting.

"JJ will meet you in a few months once you've recovered and been relocated. I know you're prepared for what's next." It was the insinuated order masked in a clipped tone that made the tears stop. She struggled to sit upright, but stopped when the pain surged through her stomach.

"Hotch…" But the explanation would not come, although she wanted words more than she wanted Doyle dead, her life back, and her past erased. Red, hot shame welled, staining her cheeks and, that day, she wanted to evaporate into nothingness, floating through life on an aimless breeze where she never stayed anywhere too long and never learned enough to hurt another.

"Good luck, Emily." He stood and the plastic chair pushed over the ground, scraping metal legs against the linoleum tiles. She watched his familiar stride to the door, storing the pressed suit, jet black hair, and set jaw into memory. When he paused in the doorway that day, Emily saw his lips part, clamp shut, but his body still turned to face her. Even these days, she imagines what Hotch might have said, but the fact that he didn't say much of anything meant he understood. Somehow, he always did.

"Good luck to you too, Hotch." And, with another brief nod and a firm expression, he left the room.

These days, she can't help but think that Hotch's silence said more than a thousand words and, when and if she finally returns, he may have no way to explain that he, a man set by rules, honestly, and integrity, had deliberately misled the very team he once swore to protect.

There are days when the memories are everywhere, and they come in blinding rushes that leave her unprepared for the onslaught of warmth, pain, and the remnants from another life- the one she once was foolish enough to believe would not change. Yet, when the thin woman with flax colored hair sits across the table, she smells her vanilla-scented perfume and sees her resolute blue eyes, she feels more alive than she has in months. Emily manages to take the manila envelope that's bulging with lies, grabbing it with stubbed, raw fingernails. She cannot meet the gaze, cannot admit the smallest exhalation of air. Shame wells in her cheeks when JJ wishes her luck, and she is moving before she acknowledges the motion. She walks fast, high heeled boots clicking off stones, running from someone who knew her as Emily Prentiss, and someone who now must pretend she is dead. She doesn't get far, only a deserted alley lined with garbage cans, but she leans against the bricks as her abdomen aches painfully while she retches onto the ground. This release does not take more than a minute, and she straightens, pulls at her skirt and flips her hair behind her ears. The paper envelope crunches slightly under the pressure applied by her fingertips, but she clutches her new lives. This day, she feels just how fucked up everything is when the cold stone does not leave her stomach. She is no longer young, naïve, or even whole. There are times when she closes her eyes and all she can see is JJ's determined, concerned expression waiting for an explanation she may never have.

In one cold hotel room that smells like cigars and creeping, hidden mold, she listens to the patter of rain against the windowpane, which rattles the old wooden frame against the rickety building. She's exhausted, half-frozen, but far from sleep. She is not Emily Prentiss. Since she's entered the Czech Republic, she's Amalie Slovak. Before that, she was Jeanne Marcoullier and Maria Contabella. There are more false identities hidden in the envelope. These days, there are more reasons to forget and move on than there are to dwell and remember.

The bedframe in the adjacent room begins to rhythmically pulsate against the wall and, over the loud moans of its two entwined occupants, Emily sighs, throwing her own blankets aside. The movement, like many, is too quick, and her hardened abdominal scars surge with pain. She stops, catches her breath, applies the smallest bit of pressure against the scar tissue, and waits for the pain to subside. She limps on tingling ankles to the small bag containing her possessions. If she can't sleep, she might as well decide which person she will become next.

Among the passports, forms, and paperwork there is an envelope she has never seen before. It is taped to the inside of the folder and covered with identical paper. The sides are unequally thick, but she has been too preoccupied with Doyle and her own depression to give the quirk a second thought. Now, with shaking fingertips, she reaches for the pristine white scrap, opening the flap to reveal glossy photographs. When her breath hitches in her throat, she manages an astonished cry, and the tears are ready before she can even stop them. In her shaking hands, are the years, the people, who made her life matter. With bitten, cracked nails, she traces their familiar faces, lingering on Reid's high cheekbones, Morgan's dimpled smile, Garcia's cheery outfit, Rossi's smirk, JJ's caring expression, and Hotch's deadpan stare. She stares at the small bundle until her eyes burn, her body trembles, and, when a hidden, tiny white parchment flutters to the tiled floor, she reaches for it immediately, desperate for contact.

Never forget who you are.

The loopy penmanship is hastily scrawled, as if the words were important yet rushed, but the handwriting is definitely JJ's. The frolic in the room next door has reached its climax, and Emily laughs loudly over the continual thumps, cries, and moans. She holds photographs from a past, her past, to her chest, lying with her hair sprawled against the floor as she squints through tears at the water-stained ceiling. This time, she knows what to do, what she must finally accomplish, and there's no going back. There's no way to undo what has happened, but she must create a future that could set her free or destroy them all. This time, she pulls herself together for no reason other than the people captured on the glossy prints deserve far better than she was able to provide.

These days, she returns to her work, to her task, with straightened composure and recovered strength. The past is still everywhere, but the reminders are not crippling anymore. Instead, there are a moments, days, and times where she sees her team everywhere, in everyone, and she smiles at the memories. Morgan is grinning at her with a flash of pearly whites. Reid is mumbling in Russian so no one else will overhear or understand their joke. Seaver places an espresso on her desk with a tentative smile. Rossi calls her 'kiddo' after a trying moment. Garcia's voice resonates through her voice-mail, promising more love than she knows how to accept. Hotch proudly brags about Jack, who is probably growing faster than even she can imagine now. She carries the fading note and one folded group photo underneath her bullet proof vest, close to Doyle's scars and even closer to her heart.

They are with her always, as she hopes she is with them, and, these days, she's not sure that her past matters. She chooses identities on a whim, and throws herself shamelessly onto airplanes, trains, and boats that fly, chug, and bob towards every new destination that is miles and miles away from her team. These days, not much really matters, not her old aliases, job, or even lies. All that matters, she understands while waiting it a darkened bar as rain slams against windows and a cold draft rolls across the floor, is who she is, was, and who she may be. She is Emily Prentiss and, when the contact approaches, brushing stay remnants of rain off his jacket, she narrows her eyes in focus, mentally reviews the deception ahead, and swears she will, finally, do what's right. As she sits and eyes the opening to destroy a man who destroyed the family she held so close, she recalls a life that meant more than any one person ever did.

"Hello, Anastasia. You look well, even though I believe the journey has been rough." The stranger says. His eyes twinkle, and she nods curtly, leans forward, and plunges straight into the story.

"True," she catches the man's gaze, "But I think I've weathered the storm." These coded words are not references to the tempest outside, but they are magic: The man's eyes light, acknowledging the encryption they've woven into an abstract conversation, and he reaches into his overcoat, pulling a large, crinkled folder from its depths.

"I believe it may be hard still, but this can help." The paper scratches lightly against the wooded table decorated with cigarette burns and ringed imprints from wine glasses. She eyes the offering, but does not sweep the confidential, yet extremely important information, from sight. Instead, she holds the man's look, nods, and speaks words that have become a testament, an omen, to the fight ahead.

"What haunts you never leaves without a fight."

Emily shoves the file under he own coat, pushing the wooden chair backwards as the man signals for the bartender while nodding and simultaneously ending their brief, cryptic, encounter. This night, she does not glance backwards before disappearing into the rainy, windy street.

These days, she understands that the battle may never be won, she may never return home, yet, still, these days, she reaches down, reaches out, and braces for the final amen.