Author's note: I've been meaning to try my hand at Criminal Minds fanfic for a while now, and finally have a bit of time on my hands. This is just a prologue. Short and sweet, and hopefully intriguing. The title seems either inexplicable or hokey now, I'm sure, but it'll go somewhere, if there's any interest in my continuing this.

Hope you enjoy. Feedback rocks my world.

Face

Prologue

It was like she was surrounded by dogs.

The thought hit Reid as he noted the slight tremble of JJ's fingers as she reached for her ringing cell phone.

That look seemed to live in her eyes now.

It was familiar to him.

For the past few months, he'd noticed a silent, subtle reaction in her every time they had to call in the canine unit.

Her fingers would drift down to her gun. Repeatedly. Like she just had to keep checking. Making sure it was there.

She'd get quiet. Try so hard to be inconspicuous that she became… well… conspicuous. At least to him.

And there would be a look in her eyes. Like something he couldn't see was trying to crush her.

Like she was just forcing herself to get through the moment.

Now, it seemed she was just forcing herself to get through the day.

Those moments had actually been a comfort to him, when they were relatively few and far between. It wasn't that he took joy in seeing her suffer. Far from it. But if she could deal with a trauma – a smaller trauma than his – and be oh-so-slightly impaired in her work, and yet keep working efficiently overall… well, then maybe so could he.

There was no joy in seeing her like this, though. This wasn't about little moments that made him feel like he wasn't the only one struggling along.

Two weeks ago, she had called in sick for only the second time in the three years that they had been working together. The other time, she'd had a fever of 102.6.

Upon returning to work, she had offered little more explanation than that she'd caught a flu bug. She'd seemed a little disoriented, but when he dared to express concern - after the third time he'd called her name and gotten no response – she'd assured him she was just trying to remember her 'to do' list. She just wasn't herself without her PDA, she said.

That had been her excuse a lot lately. If she was late to a meeting, if she forgot that she was supposed to return a call… it was all the fault of her lost PDA.

'Forgetting' things and showing up late wasn't like her, and he didn't buy that she couldn't keep track without some kind of digital organizer.

Something was wrong. Something had happened.

While he was mulling all of this over, she looked up and caught him watching her. Their eyes met and held across the space between them in the small jet, and after a moment of awkwardness on his part and something he couldn't read on hers, she forced a simple little friendly smile, and turned back to flip through the same thin file folder for the sixth time.

She clearly couldn't concentrate.

It was all a mystery to him. A mystery he cared to solve. For her sake, and maybe a little bit for his. She'd been his best medicine over the past few months since the Hankel case had gone so horribly wrong.

He had seen her on a Friday. The weekend had gone by. Something had kept her away from work on the Monday. Over those three days, she'd lost her PDA.

In the two weeks that had passed since then, she had been distracted. Tired. Jumpy. Defensive.

And she had that look in her eyes.

Like she was surrounded by dogs.

…