AN: Reposting this from my old account. First chapter has been slightly edited. I apologise for all the liberties I took for this story to *work*.
Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds. All mistakes are mine.

They all sprang into action when they heard JJ's terrified piercing scream. It bounced off the empty walls, echoing through the entire house, lingering in their ears as if set on a loop. Screw protocols, one (or two) of their own was in danger.

"Go! Go!" Their unit chief yelled unnecessarily, waving his left hand. The team was already in motion.

Prentiss was the first to reach the narrow staircase and climbed the steps two at a time, followed by Rossi, Reid and Hotch covering their backs.

"Oh god, JJ! What the hell have you done to her, man?" they all heard Morgan yelled.

"I'm not going back to jail. Enjoy your second chance at life, agent," an unfamiliar voice said.

"Wait! No, don't!"

A shot rang out. Prentiss ran to the end of the hallway and entered the last room on her left.

"JJ, Morg..." When her brain caught up with what she was seeing, she stopped dead in her tracks, feeling Rossi bump into her. She lowered her weapon, unable to tear her gaze off her friends.

"Oh my god..." Reid breathed out, blinking several times.

"What the..." Rossi murmured, holstering his firearm.

Hotch had remained characteristically quiet, taking in the scene before him. The room was small and dark. The two windows had been covered up with what appeared to be black extra-strength garbage bags. Sunlight filtered through the clear duct tape that held the makeshift blinds, casting an eerie glow into the room. Just like the rest of the house, the room had been packed. A couple of carton moving boxes were stacked by the door. Empty wooden shelves lined the back wall, and the only furniture left was an old oak desk. Their UnSub, Doctor Nathaniel Cook, wanted for murder and illegal human experiments, was lying motionless on the floor, a pool of blood expanding slowly underneath him. If he wasn't dead, he was close, but not a single one of them took a step forward to check or call for the medic.

On the other side of the room, a little blonde girl was sitting on the floor, her head poking out of a Kevlar vest. A boy stood by her side, holding up his pants up to his chest so they wouldn't fall. Both were staring at each other in shock. The rest of the team stood in the doorway unable to move, dumbfounded to find that their friends had been turned into kids.

Hotch finally step forward, his hand hovering over Emily's shoulder for a second as he walked past her. He kicked Cook's tranquilizer gun away, before crouching down next to him. He pried the revolver out of his limp hand and checked for a pulse.

From what the unit chief could tell, Nathaniel Cook had felt cornered and decided to take his own life. It wasn't uncommon for UnSubs to commit suicide when the police closed on them, but it didn't make it any easier to witness.

"He's gone," Hotch said, looking over his shoulder.

His words seemed to pull everyone out of their trance. Prentiss walked up to the...kids, and kneeled down in front of them. She grabbed both of their guns and threw them to the other side of the room. No child should have a weapon at their reach.

"JJ, Morgan?" she said tentatively, resting her hands on her thighs, unsure of what to do or say. Her best friend looked up, her big blue eyes swimming in tears.

"Em, Em, please tell me that this is a dream. A really bad dream," JJ pleaded, tears running freely down her cheeks. "Please, this can't be real. I'm not a kid, this is wrong. I…What is happening to me?" she whispered more to herself, staring vacantly ahead of her and shaking her head in disbelief.

Not knowing what to say to comfort her friend, Prentiss unfastened the velcro straps and got the vest off the little girl carefully. Once she made sure her t-shirt was long enough to cover her bottom and lifted her gently, pulling her onto her lap. She wrapped an arm around her small shoulders protectively.

"It'll be okay," Prentiss said finally, stroking JJ's hair reassuringly.

"What the hell happened?" Rossi asked, taking a step into the room.

"I think we sorta figured out how he did it, uh?" Morgan answered, stomping his little foot in frustration. "Cook shot her with some kind of dart, I don't know. And JJ…she just shrank right before my eyes. I guess it was filled with a de-aging serum or something, and then…"

"Did it hurt?" Reid blurted out impulsively, his insatiable curiosity getting the better of him.

Four pairs of eyes turned on him, glaring. The genius shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at his feet, looking apologetic, a bright shade of pink staining his cheeks.

"Sorry," Reid muttered.

"Are we gonn' die?" JJ whimpered, nervously raking her fingers through her messy hair.

"Nobody is going to die," Rossi assured calmly.

"We need to get them to a hospital," Prentiss said urgently. She had almost added 'we have no idea what they've been injected with,' but decided to keep the last part to herself. Everyone was stressed enough already. Seeing JJ – who usually had perfect control over her emotions – so distressed made her feel uneasy.

"Emily is right. Dave, call the ME and crime scene techs in," Hotch instructed, "The two officers outside can wait for them. Reid, go back to the lab in the basement and look for a cure. Bring everything you find to the hospital with you."

The BAU had received a call asking for a consult on a case in California. Seven bodies had been found in the Los Angeles area. The victims had nothing in common, except for the cause of death which had been a fatal dose of potassium chloride.

The ME and the local authorities had been at loss. Four bodies were found with their IDs putting them in their mid-twenties. The families confirmed they were all wearing the clothes they had last been seen in. Piercings and tattoos on two of them verified their identities, yet the victims appeared to have been aged a few decades.

Three of the victims were young children between the age of six and ten, but when the medical examiner ran their fingerprints to see if they could find a match in IAFIS, two of them turned out to be young adults in their early twenties; a young marine and a nurse working at the UCLA medical center. The last victim's prints hadn't turned up in any database, and considering the strange and unexplainable circumstances in which adults seemed to be turned into children or elderlies, the police weren't exactly sure how to narrow down the search throughout the list of missing person.

Morgan and Prentiss had joked, in a moment of desperation, that their UnSub was a mad scientist who had somehow figured out how to de-age or age human bodies, but so far his attempts to bring them back to their original age had failed. Giving them the lethal injection had only been his way of getting rid of his failed experiment subjects.

Reid, of course, had argued that this scenario was highly unlikely; biological aging scientists had only recently started to focus on telomeres and their role in human aging.

"A telomere is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences at each end of a…"

"Reid, Reid, we were only kidding," Prentiss had interrupted him before he could recite the entire article she was sure he'd read and memorized in some scientific magazine.

Little did the team know that for once, Spencer Reid was wrong.

"So you're saying we're stuck in these ridiculous bodies?" Morgan screamed, wincing at the high-pitch timbre of his own voice.

"Until we can figure out how to safely age you back, I'm afraid so, yes," Doctor Lambert said apologetically.

The little girl sitting next to Morgan on the examination table buried her face in her hands and started crying once more. Prentiss rubbed her back reassuringly, telling her for the umpteenth time since they had left Cook's house that it would all be okay.

The brunette glanced at Morgan. The boy was sitting still, arms crossed over his chest with his feet dangling from the table. If JJ had been overly expressive since being shrunk, Morgan had been the exact opposite. At the exception of one or two choleric outbursts, he had remained impassive.

When the children had been brought to the ER by their team, the nurses had thought Rossi was joking when he had showed his team's credentials and told them what had happened. FBI Agents turned into kids by a mean man with a shrinking gun, really?

It had taken a couple of hours to convince Doctor Lambert and his staff of nurses that they were telling the truth. They had interrogated the 'children' separately, and if these kids weren't geniuses, they were obviously telling the truth. Morgan had actually made the nurse blush when he told her in great details how his last date had ended.

Once everyone believed them, the nurses had checked the kids' vitals and asked them a few questions. One of the nurses kept hovering, asking over and over if they were feeling sick or dizzy. JJ who hated being fussed over had told the nurse she was actually starving and asked her if she didn't mind getting her a candy bar. Surprised, by the snappish tone of her voice, the nurse had complied and left the room. Morgan had shot her an admiring look and chuckled. Hotch, on the other hand, hadn't been amused.

"Agent Prentiss," Doctor Lambert started, "if you want you can take Agents Jareau and Morgan up to the fourth floor. There's a shop where you can get them both proper clothing," he said gesturing to the children wearing hospital paper gowns. "I'll work on their release papers with Agent Hotchner here."

The doctor actually wanted to let Hotch know what was going on with his two shrunk agents without upsetting the children. They already had been through enough for the day.

"I think they also have an ice cream shop," Hotch added. "I don't know about you, Prentiss, but I'm in the mood for a cone." He gave her a tight smile. Ice cream always made Jack feel better, and he was hoping it would cheer his two young agents. She nodded in agreement, and Hotch asked her to send Reid in on their way out.

The older woman picked a teary JJ up, and swung her onto her right hip, "Let's go get some clothes and ice cream!"

She offered a hand to Morgan to help him climb off the table, but he swatted her hand away rudely.

"I can do it by myself, I'm not a child!" He jumped to his feet, but swayed slightly before regaining his balance. "And I don't want some stupid ice cream! I'm not four. Ice cream won't make anything better. Do you think I'm dumb as well as short? I just want to go home! Let's get out of here. This is a freaking nightmare."

"Well, you are acting like a kid," JJ pointed out, sniffling. "You keep throwing tantrums since we got in the car. And ice cream is not stupid! I want some," the little girl squeaked pathetically.

"Yeah, well you're stupid then," Derek retorted pettily, stomping out of the doctor's office to join Reid and Rossi in the waiting room where they were sitting.

"I'm not stupid," JJ muttered, hiding her face in the crook of Emily's neck.

"Of course you aren't, Jayje," Emily said, rubbing circles on the little blonde's back. She exchanged a baffled look with her boss who simply shook his head, before walking out of the room.

"This is what I thought would happen," the doctor confessed. "Your agents will keep their memories, but their child instincts will be stronger. They cannot be left by themselves. In a couple of days, they'll be acting like children again."

Hotch stared blankly at the doctor, raising a questioning eyebrow.

"Let's say they fall," Lambert started to explain, "even if it didn't hurt, they'll cry. They might be able to fight it at first, but I don't know for how long."

Reid chose that moment to let the two men know he was in the room.

"So you're saying they will retain their full memories, but will have the logic of what, seven and nine year-olds? Fascinating..." Reid murmured, tapping a long finger on his chin. Hotch shot him a severe look, not appreciating the young doctor's enthusiasm about their colleagues' predicament.

"Actually Agent Morgan has the child emotional development and motor skills of a eight year-old and Agent Jareau of a five year-old," the doctor corrected him.

"When can I expect my agents to regain their original bodies and faculties?" Hotch inquired. It really was all he wanted to know. He didn't care about medical and psychological talks. He was their unit chief, this was on him. He had one pissed off Morgan and a traumatized JJ waiting for him in the waiting room, not to mention he would have to deliver the news to Strauss.

"I can't say. I have never seen anything like this. It could be a few weeks, months...years," Dr. Lambert answered dejectedly. "It'll be easier to estimate once my team gets the cure samples you have recovered from the suspect's lab."

"Years? And what exactly am I supposed to do with Agents Jareau and Morgan in the meantime? I can't exactly send them home and tell them I'll call when the cure is ready, now can I?" Hotch questioned, hitting Dr. Lambert's desk with an open palm.

"Hotch!" Reid exclaimed, surprised by his boss' outburst. "I…I read somewhere that children are highly adaptable to any kind of situations. JJ and Derek are little kids now, they'll be okay."

Hotch sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. Feeling guilty for losing his temper in such an unprofessional manner, he apologized. The doctor waved off his excuses assuring him he understood; he couldn't imagine how stressful the situation was for the FBI agents.

"I suggest you go back home, and decide of a plan of action. Agents Morgan and Jareau should be taken care of like you would any children their age, but do not baby them. They should be able to make rational decisions if prompted. They definitely should have a say in what will happen to them while we work on a cure. Don't take what little power they have left away from them; they could resent you for it. My team and I will do our best to get your agents back to normal as soon as we can, agent Hotchner," the doctor promised.

Reid and Hotch rose from their seat and shook the doctor's hand in turn.

"I think it goes without saying that you are to keep this dire situation confidential. The press cannot hear about this," Aaron said sternly.

"Of course," Dr. Lambert nodded.

"Would it be okay if I called you sometimes, and we could discuss further about what's happening to my friends?" Reid asked, "I would really like to..."

"Reid," Hotch interrupted. "We really should get going now. Thank you, doctor."

"Yes, of course," Doctor Lambert said, answering Reid's question. Then turning to Hotch, "I'll call you as soon as I know anything."

Hotch and Reid walked out into an empty waiting room. Figuring Prentiss and Rossi were still on the paediatric floor with JJ and Derek; they made their way to the elevators. The agents were both quiet, trying to process everything that Dr. Lambert had said.

The fourth floor was loud and crowded. The ambiance resembled more one of a mall than a hospital. They found Morgan sitting by himself on the floor near the gift shop. Hotch noticed he had changed into a pair of tan cargo shorts and a white t-shirt and he was wearing black rubber flip-flops.

"Hey, Morgan!" Reid greeted him. "Where are the others?"

The boy looked up, eyes shooting daggers at the two older profilers. He pointed behind him at the store.

"Blondie can't fucking choose an outfit!"

An old lady passing by gasped as she heard Morgan swearing, and gave Aaron a reproaching look, shaking her head and muttering to herself about how children were so disrespectful these days. Hotch had the decency to look embarrassed and apologized. He was about to reprimand Morgan when JJ came out of the store running. She was wearing a bright pink t-shirt with a huge lollipop under which was written 'suck it, cancer' in glitter, a multi-coloured skirt and lime green crocs. She smiled brightly at Hotch showing him her new clothes.

"Ho'ch! Look at my shirt! Isn't it funny? It says ss-suck it! And it's a lollipop! You get it, Spence?" the little girl giggled to herself, unaware of the bewildered looks that were exchanged between the adults.

"You look ridiculous, JJ," Morgan said scornfully.

"Morgan!" Prentiss exclaimed, shocked by her partner's rudeness.

"What? It's true, you all are thinking it…" he shrugged. "And she doesn't even have cancer!"

JJ turned to face her best friend, tears already flowing down her cheeks, "Why didn't you tell me I look stupid? You said it was cute!" The blonde had hurt written all over her face.

JJ ran to her boss, hiding her face in his legs, unashamedly holding her arms up for him to lift her up.

Hotch bent down and awkwardly picked her up. As soon as she had her face buried in his chest, his paternal instinct kicked in, and he found himself bouncing her gently and smoothing down her hair.

"Emily was right, JJ. Your outfit is adorable," he tried to comfort her. "That shirt is awesome!" He pinched the bridge of his nose, not believing what he was saying. Reassuring his agent over her choice of clothing? That's what's ridiculous.

"Everyone is a bit emotional today," Hotch went on. "Morgan didn't mean to hurt your feelings, he's just overwhelmed too," he assured her.

Hotch could feel her sobs subsiding. He put a finger under her chin, and tilted her head so she was looking at him.

"Do you like your outfit?" he asked intently. She nodded shyly. "Then that's what matters. Now how about we get that ice cream?"

"Can I get two scoops?" JJ asked hopefully, holding up two fingers, tears forgotten at the mention of the frozen treat.

"I think that can be arranged," Hotch winked at her, before putting her down on her feet.

"Even if you'd ha' said no I woulda got two because I'm a fully grown adult," JJ stated very seriously, oblivious to the fact that she was childishly chewing her words.

Emily laughed frankly, "Nice one, Jayje!" She walked past her boss, and patted him lightly on the shoulder. "You invited, you pay." Hotch shook his head, smiling.

Everyone headed to the ice cream parlor, JJ skipping ahead of the team. Rossi turned around when he noticed that Morgan wasn't following them.

"Aren't you coming?"

"Nope," Morgan was still sitting on the floor, his arms resting on his knees. He wouldn't meet the older profiler's stare.

"What was that earlier?" the Rossi demanded, "You are never this callous, especially not to JJ."

"She was acting like a freaking baby, man! Hotch, look at my sparkly shirt!" he mimicked his friend. "What the fuck? She's a fucking thirty-two year-old woman!" he spat angrily.

"And you were acting like a seven year-old boy with no manners!" Rossi retorted. "Listen, Derek. We can't imagine what you are going through, you and JJ. This situation is frustrating, scary, but it's temporary. So why don't we all try and make it easier for everyone? JJ is also having what is probably the worst day of her life, and she didn't deserve your disobliging remarks."

"I know, you're right," Morgan said pitifully. He wasn't going to admit that he was scared; terrified that this situation would be permanent.

"Good, now how about we join the rest of the team? We haven't eaten in almost ten hours, and I'd kill for a fudge sundae," the older man said.

"If JJ gets two scoops, I want three!" Morgan replied, grinning.

After everyone had finished their treat, Hotch gathered all the empty cups and dirty napkins to throw them away while Prentiss wiped ice cream off JJ's face.

"Are you sure you know you are supposed to eat with your mouth and not the rest of your face?" Emily teased JJ. The little girl had melted ice cream all over her shirt, all around her mouth, on her nose and she had even managed to get some in her blonde locks.

"It's not my fault! It was melting too fast!" JJ complained, not fazed by Emily's actions. She knew she should be feeling self-conscious about the fact that her best friend was cleaning her up, but instead she just leaned closer to Emily, pursing her lips and scrunching her nose as the older agent washed her face and her sticky hands.

Rossi noticed Derek was chuckling at the exchange between the two female agents.

"What are you laughing at, mister?" Dave inquired, arching a brow. "You made just as bad of a mess on the table earlier and Hotch cleaned it up for you."

"It's not the same," Derek disagreed. "The lady didn't make it right! I just licked it and the scoop of ice cream fell off the cone!"

"That was funny!" JJ giggled, remembering the expression on Morgan's face when it happened.

"And picking it up with your hand and wiping your fingers on your shorts was also the lady's fault?" Rossi questioned the boy.

"What was I supposed to pick it up with then?" Derek asked.

"Is everybody ready to go?" Hotch interrupted when he reached their table. Pocketing his phone, he added, "The jet is ready to take us back home."

JJ and Morgan exchanged an apprehensive look, not sure what that meant for them. They nodded their heads, and pushed themselves off their chair. The two child-size agents walked in front of the adults, leading the way. JJ pushed the elevator call button at least five times 'to make sure it really was coming.' When the doors slipped open, JJ grabbed Derek's hand, and he gave her a reassuring squeeze back before stepping in the lift.

AN: Feedback is always greatly appreciated xx

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