This story was nominated for Best Angst for the Profiler's Choice Awards. It blows my mind to get to say something like that about one of my stories, especially when I see the awesome stories that are in that category and to be put in that group is really an honor. Thank you to all who nominated this story. For more information on the voting go to .net/topic/74868/51253709/1/.

A/N: General warnings and disclosures for the story: This story contains potential spoilers for any of the episodes that have already aired from the time that Emily joined the team in Season 2 up until her departure in Season 6. Anything mentioned in the episodes in relation to Emily's present and past is fair game. There will be some profanity. There will be references to sex (het & femslash), but nothing graphic.

A/N2: Thanks to kdzl for the beta and encouragement.

2006 – Quantico, VA

"I don't know about you, but if I have to look at or think about another policy or procedure, I think the right side of my brain is going to shrivel up," JJ announced, leaning away from the desk. Emily didn't understand why it fell to the unit's media liaison to orient her before her first day, but never-the-less that was who had been walking her through the BAU's protocol for the last four hours.

Emily looked sheepishly at her papers and felt her cheeks flushing.

She realized that JJ had noticed her reaction when she assured her, "You know that I don't blame you for this brain-shriveling drivel, right?"

Emily looked up and gave a small, hopefully convincing, nod. It was a beautifully sunny and unseasonably warm Saturday morning, and JJ had been clearly working overtime to get her ready for her first day. It was just another reminder for Emily that this transfer had not gone as planned. She wondered how much everyone on the team actually knew about it.

"How about I show you the best place to eat lunch outside in all of Quantico?" JJ offered. "There's a cute little place about a mile away."

Emily nodded again. "Would you mind walking?" she asked, realizing that her legs had been in the same bent position for the last four hours.

JJ shook her head. "Not at all. I'd love to stretch my legs and stretch our time outside. But maybe we could bring along one of the books, so that we're not here until the wee hours of the night."

"It's a plan," Emily said, offering a small smile.

.oOo.

"So, Agent Jareau, what do you recommend?" Emily asked, glancing at the menu.

"First off, I recommend that you call me JJ." She gave Emily the same bright, reassuring smile as before. "I would prefer if you call me JJ both in the office and out, but if you'd prefer, we can just start with out."

"All right, JJ," Emily agreed. "Then you can call me Emily."

"Oh, don't worry," JJ assured her. "I was planning on it."

"But to answer your question, the roasted beet salad is a work of visual and gustatory art," JJ added, looking down at her menu.

Emily couldn't help but laugh at JJ's tone of reverence.

"No really, it is," JJ insisted. "And their homemade bread is great. If today is rosemary olive oil bread, I'd recommend getting anything that would get you some of that. I've never had the carrot soup, but Garcia raves about it constantly. Pretty much anything that mentions pesto is guaranteed to be delicious."

JJ paused as though she was reconsidering her recommendation. "On second thought, we're going to be back trapped in a tiny room in about an hour and a half and their pesto has a lot of garlic."

"Say no more," Emily said. "Either we both get it or neither of us does." She was starting to feel a little more relaxed with JJ, but didn't want to let her guard down given all the uncertainty about her official start with the team.

Emily saw their waiter on his way over and quickly scanned the menu before she made her final decision.

"I'll have the BLAT sandwich," JJ said. "On the whole wheat French bread. And with sweet potato chips on the side."

"And I'll have the beet salad," Emily told him. The waiter listed off the bread options.

"With the lavender sourdough," she decided, disappointed that it was not rosemary olive oil day.

"So after all the build up for the beet salad you go for a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich?" Emily asked.

JJ nodded. "First off, it's bacon, lettuce, avocado, and tomato. Not to mention the fact that it is a masterful combination of sweet, savory, and salty."

"And besides," she added with a shrug, "I figured you would get the beet salad and give me a bite."

Emily was taken aback by JJ's immediate comfort with her. They'd known each other for all of half of a day and JJ was already insisting on nicknames and sharing food. Emily actually wasn't sure how to respond to these overtures; it had been a while since she had made any new friends that weren't part of an assignment. Emily felt woefully out of practice and nervous because she knew there was a lot, both professionally and personally, on the line.

"So, tell me a little bit more about yourself," JJ said, leaning forward. "Usually I get a new agent's file before orientation, but I've gotten zilch on you so far."

Emily's cheeks reddened as she thought back to her encounter with Agent Hotchner last week. Needless to say, her first day at the BAU had not gone as expected.

"There's definitely been a mistake. I didn't approve this transfer, Agent Prentiss. I'm sorry for the confusion, but you've been misinformed."

In the span of ten seconds, Agent Hotchner managed to negate all of Emily's hard work in favor of a paperwork error and didn't even stop consider the possibility that she was qualified for the position. What actually hurt more than the implication that she hadn't earned her spot on the team was the implication that she was some debutante flitting around the FBI, trying out the BAU on a whirl.

She wondered if the other members of the team knew the details of her transfer. Perhaps they were all thinking that her mother pulled the right strings for her. Which she hadn't, by the way. Or maybe they were thinking that Emily hadn't taken the right profiler classes and gone through the training. Which she had. She knew for certain that they didn't know about her prior postings, which was just as well, but would have provided additional proof that she had the training and experience to be at the BAU. Emily knew that she belonged in the BAU and if she had to work ten times harder than everyone else just to prove it to them, she was prepared to do that.

Emily started to worry that this lunch was JJ's way of trying to get the dirt on her. Perhaps Hotch had set JJ up to report back on any information obtained about her. Her worry started to grow into disappointment as she considered that possibly this whole lunch was a set up and JJ's overtures of kindness were merely part of a ploy to determine Emily's true intentions and reasons for being on the team.

On the other hand, JJ's smiles were sincere and Emily saw no evidence to confirm that JJ's intentions were anything other than just to find out more about her. Emily's usual doubt about being worthy of getting to know crept into her thoughts before she was even aware of it. Emily picked at her nails, all of her worries and insecurities rising to the surface with that single question. And to make things worse she could almost hear her mother's voice nagging her to stop picking her nails.

"Emily?" She suddenly snapped out of her thoughts and looked up at JJ.

"I wasn't expecting you to compose a five hundred word essay to recite to me. I just wanted to know more about you." There was that reassuring smile again.

"Of course," Emily shook her head slightly, trying to convince herself that this was actually a normal question during one of these casual professional lunches and that there was probably nothing sinister behind JJ's question. "I, uh, well, I was transferred here from St. Louis, where I learned that I hate the Midwest. My favorite color is red and I love socks. Sometimes I choose my entire outfit based on the socks I want to wear that day." She pulled up her pant leg to reveal the red plaid socks she'd chosen that morning. JJ nodded her approval and admitted she had a similar penchant for shoes.

Emily had answered the question in her standard fashion: offer up some professional information and a bit of personal, but not too personal, information and most people feel like you've bared your entire soul. She was hoping those answers would stave off any further questions. And to ensure that, Emily asked one of her own.

"How long have you been at the BAU?" By asking JJ about work, she was almost guaranteed that the next reciprocated question would also be work-related. Hopefully there would be enough work-related questions to fill the time until their food arrived. The feeling of being hopeful about a potential friendship was still overshadowed by the fear that this was all about getting information that could one day be used against her.

Emily was all too familiar with that process.

"Well, I've been at the BAU for just under two years, but it feels like twenty," JJ told her. "But in a good way," she quickly added.

"My assignment after the academy was at the field office in El Paso, Texas, and I was there for two and a half years before coming to the BAU."

Emily raised her eyebrows at hearing this. "Wow, El Paso. That must have been…" Emily let the sentence drift off realizing that just because being stationed in western Texas would be her own personal hell didn't mean JJ felt the same way.

"If you were thinking hot, horrible, and pretty much any rookie agent's nightmare, then yes it was," JJ said. "I was actually worried that I'd royally messed up at the academy and they were punishing me for something I didn't know I had done.

"I did the media relations for all of the units there. I was told it was a compliment to my skills that I had been assigned there given how complicated it is with all of the immigration and drug trafficking that goes on down there.

"But really I think they told me that so that I wouldn't step in front of a pick-up truck," JJ confided. "I was thrilled to be transferred to the BAU for so many reasons."

"So, Emily, where was your first assignment?" JJ asked.

Emily hesitated before saying, "New York." By this point she was convinced that JJ had to think she was rather daft. Emily silently cursed herself for hesitating; she'd given this answer often enough that it should just be rote. Her first real assignment was in Boston, but her official cover assignment at the time was the New York field office. And when she was nervous she tended to confuse the two.

The waiter arrived with their food and pulled Emily out of her head before she went too deep. Both women were silent as they started in on their meals.

"What was your first assignment?" JJ asked.

"I worked in linguistics doing translating and such. Mostly counter-terrorism, some organized crime." Emily told her. "But when I was in Chicago and St. Louis, it was mostly for white collar and organized crime."

"Translating. Really? What languages do you speak?" JJ asked.

"I did mostly Arabic translations. Sometimes Turkish," Emily realized that she was eventually going to be asked about how she learned those languages. She shrugged to herself, deciding it didn't matter since Agent Hotchner already knew of her mother's position. It's not as though telling JJ would provide additional ammunition against her.

"My mother is an Ambassador and so I spent a lot of time overseas growing up," Emily explained before JJ had the opportunity to ask. Again, Emily controlled the information flow.

"You're right, by the way, the beet salad is amazing. I never would have thought about bleu cheese and beets together, but this is great." Emily put a little of everything onto her bread plate and passed it across the table to JJ. "And there's just a hint of anise in the dressing."

"Where did you live?" JJ was not to be distracted by proffered food, though she accepted it without hesitation. While she was waiting for Emily to answer, she cut off a corner of her sandwich and placed it on her bread plate along with some of the sweet potato chips and offered it to Emily.

"I lived in Egypt the longest," Emily told her, pausing to think about it. "My mom's first posting after I was born was in Bulgaria. Then Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and Italy. But I finished up high school in the States."

"Wow." JJ's widened eyes were typical of the reaction Emily got when she talked about her upbringing. "That must have been an amazing way to grow up."

"It had its benefits," Emily told her. It also had its drawbacks, which in Emily's opinion far out-weighed the benefits, but JJ didn't need to know that. "After all, speaking Arabic kept me from being assigned to El Paso."

"I knew I shouldn't have listened to my mom when she encouraged me to take Spanish," JJ joked.

The two women continued their conversation as they finished lunch. After they paid the check, JJ stood from the table and excused herself to the restroom.

"Too much iced tea," she said apologetically.

Once she was gone from the table, Emily pulled out her pen and notebook that she carried with her everywhere. She opened to the first blank page and wrote,

11/18/06

Lunch w/ JJ – fave color red, like socks! Worked in St. Louis, Chicago, and Boston. Speak Arabic & Turkish. Didn't mention Belgium. Beet salad – delicious. Played lacrosse and field hockey in high school.

She finished jotting down her notes just as JJ was returning to the table. She put the notebook back into her bag and stood up to leave. The walk back was a bit slower as both women wanted to put off the inevitable tedious banality that awaited them.

They never did look at the protocol book they'd brought with them at lunch, so there was a bit of catch-up to do. The afternoon was considerably more tolerable than the morning's session had been as they continued getting acquainted.

"If I promise to review these manuals at home, can we stop for the day?" Emily asked, seeing that it was already getting close to six. She had an hour's drive back home and was starting to crave some alone time. She couldn't remember talking this much with anyone, let alone sharing so much of her personal life in the span of a few hours. The feelings of being overwhelmed and anxious had transferred from being about her new position in the BAU to being about her new position in JJ's life. Or more accurately, JJ's new position in hers.

"There will be a pop quiz on Monday then," JJ told her. "We can meet back in my office at eight? Provided nothing major comes up, we should get through things pretty quickly on Monday and you can rest up for your big day on Tuesday."

At the mention of Tuesday, Emily's eyes widened a bit and she sucked in her breath. JJ leaned across the desk and put her hands over Emily's.

"I'm not going to waste my breath telling you to not be nervous, but I just want you to know that we're all excited to have you on the team. It's an interesting mix of personalities, but it works. I have a feeling you're going to fit right in," JJ assured her. "Besides, I'm sure Reid is going wet his pants when he finds out you know every episode of The Twilight Zone. Just make sure you have a few hours to spare when you share that information."

Emily smiled. JJ's reassurances had the surprising effect of actually making her feel reassured. The pit of anxiety that had taken up permanent residence in Emily's stomach seemed to shrink and for the first time in a week, Emily felt better about joining the team. She allowed herself to feel the same excitement she'd felt when she was told about the transfer. Emily was fairly certain that anxiety would be back to reclaim its stake and push excitement out of the way, but she decided to enjoy the time until that happened.

"Thanks, JJ. I needed to hear that," she admitted.

"Well, I'm happy to say it again whenever you need to hear it again," JJ assured her. "Let's get out of here."

They walked out to the garage together but had parked on separate floors so they parted ways at the staircase. Emily climbed into her car and before starting the ignition pulled out her notebook and added,

Like Twilight Zone. Don't eat zucchini. Like to cook, especially Italian. Prefer beer to wine, unless it's a Petite Syrah. Favorite vacation was to Venezuela - Angel Falls.

It was an old habit that Emily had started during her first undercover job. She'd write down the small details that she'd shared with her mark so she could review them and keep track of who she was. The key to a good cover was to lie about the big stuff, but include enough small details that were true. Part of the problem she'd been having on her last few assignments was that she was beginning to forget which details of her life were true and which had been invented.

Emily realized it was probably ridiculous to be keeping track of these things now when she was no longer undercover. She wasn't Bianca Moretti, Katherine Pennington, Lauren Reynolds, or Caroline Prentiss. She was Emily Prentiss being Emily Prentiss.

The problem was that after all these years she was no longer sure who Emily Prentiss really was.