JJ walks slowly back to the waiting room where her team is waiting. Usually, she could give into the numbness and the shock that is plaguing her. Usually, she would be allowed to grieve, just as they are. Instead, she has to focus. Concentrate. It's vital that what she is telling be believed. If not, Emily's life - which is currently hanging by a thread - is in very real danger.

She finds she cannot go directly from her own waiting area to her team's without a detour. Yes, she is sad now. But for this, she needs to be heartbroken. Her imagination alone is not up to the task. She is not that great an actress. If she has to convey real sorrow, she needs to feel that sorrow. That's why she goes to the pediatric oncology floor. She walks the halls, not breaching privacy, but just on the perimeter of it. She watches children with no hair laughing and playing with one another, though they look too sick to enjoy much of anything.

Among the kids playing, she sees a little girl with darkly shadowed eyes. She is very pale. Her eyes could be Emily's for the amount of wisdom JJ sees in them. Her skin has taken on a strange cast that lets JJ know this girl is close to death. She lies on a bed, playing video games for a few minutes here and there. She can barely speak, but she turns to JJ, and somehow, she smiles.

JJ's eyes are full of tears. The grief is real now. Because as unthinkable as it is to lose your best friend - a grown woman - to an injustice like Emily's…it is somehow worse still to lose a child, who has not even begun to live. JJ scans the room and spots the girl's parents easily. She hasn't prayed for many years, but she prays now. For this little girl and for her parents. For the loss they are preparing to endure. The loss that will come whether they are ready for it or not.

She keeps walking. Keeps watching. Continues forcing herself to watch what most would turn away from, if given the choice. She knows loss. But in JJ's life experience, it has come suddenly, without warning. She has not often stopped to consider what the process of actually dying might feel like, and how long it might take. She is grateful, for now, that Emily is hanging on.

Taking a deep breath, JJ steps back on the elevator and presses the button that will take her to her team. To her friends.

For months, she has wanted to come back. She has wanted Hotch to keep his word and find a way for her to return to the people she loves. She has hoped, but she never thought to hope with contingencies. Because she wanted to be back, but not like this. Not in this context. Not to help find a friend. To help hide her. To tell the people she loves the most the lie that she is dead. Not to bury a friend. Not to stand here now, and watch them mourn.

She takes a deep breath, and without warning, JJ thinks of the little girl up in oncology.

"She never made it off the table…" she says, her voice breaking.