Not with a Fizzle

For the May Dearly Departed Challenge over on the Chit Chat on Author's Corner forum.

My assigned character was Erin Strauss... So I had some fun here.

Everyone always assumed she would go out with a fizzle.

Burn out.

Claw her way to a promotion.

Step on fingers and crack skulls to get where the going was good.

Lose herself in the horror of the job and slowly fade away.

(It didn't help she used to be an alcoholic.)

Everyone was waiting for that other shoe to hit the earth.

And that would be when the dragon would depart, the politically driven and suit clad deputy director would exit stage left and no one would see her again.

The members of the BAU expected it.

In fact, several of them held in bated breath for the time when they would come into work and Erin Strauss would simply be gone.

Vanished.

Poof.

But they were wrong.

The dragon loved her job. She would fight to stay where she was (despite the appearance otherwise) and she would fight for the people beneath her (also, despite the appearance otherwise).

She just... never really showed it.

So when she stepped in front of a bullet meant for Aaron Hotchner's spine, no one saw it coming.

(Of course, they didn't see a crazed brother hell bent on revenge for the BAU putting his sibling in the ground... But that's beside the point).

And as Erin lay dying in the centre of her very heart and soul, blood slowly seeping into the floors of her home as Emily and Derek emptied a clip into the shooter, no one could find words.

No one was able to wrap their minds around the fact the woman they saw as the hungry monster in their own house was actually the mother to every profiler there.

She would give her life for them.

She gave her life for them.

And she had a smile on her face as she went out.

With a bang.