A/N: Ever since Paget Brewster announced that she will leave the show, and the writers/producers made public that – SPOILER ALERT – they won't kill her character off but that Prentiss will leave to proceed other goals in life, this story begged to be written. I wanted Hotch and her to somehow skip through the time they spent together and relive some of the memories. And, of course, I wanted Hotch to try and convince her to stay.

Unfortunately writing the story was more like pulling of teeth, and I honestly don't know why. Jeez! I think I rarely had such a difficult time writing a story, and I'm still not completely satisfied with the outcome (well, on the other hand, I seldom am). So, I'm quite uneasy and thus would really appreciate your feedback.

Special thanks to greengirl82 for giving me tips how to overcome a severe writer's block.

This will most likely be a two- or threeshot with references to seasons 2-7. R&R please.

Disclaimer: Not mine. Otherwise things would be different, believe me. But... I have to face the harsh reality... Criminal Minds is owned by CBS.

Afternoon

So, this is it.

Aaron Hotchner sits in his office and tries to calm down his breathing. He never thought this day would come. Yet it is here, and he had not enough time to prepare. Scratch that! There is not enough time in the world to prepare for this.

His thoughts race even if he tries to focus. He should have seen it coming, he should have reacted differently, he should have... It doesn't help; his thoughts always find their way back to what happened a few hours ago...

Morning

She comes into his office, and he immediately senses that something is wrong because she is nervous and agitated – just like she was in the early days when he... didn't exactly treat her with the respect she deserves.

When she starts to speak, the reason for her behavior becomes obvious. "I'm leaving the BAU," Emily tells him softly, almost sympathetically, and presents him with an envelope. "I just informed the personnel department. This is a copy of my resignation. I've been offered a job overseas as a foreign affairs adviser that is too good to turn down." She knows that this is a decision that will affect all of them – especially since she only just is back from the dead so to speak. When Emily's eyes darken, he realizes that he hasn't taken the envelope from her, her outstretched hand still holding it and hovering in the air.

Hotch takes the envelope or rather whips it out of her hand. Something he only becomes aware of when he notices her perplexed expression. She might have been prepared for a reaction but obviously not for an emotional one – at least not from him.

"Why?" he asks her, oblivious to the fact that it sounds like an accusation. After all it is meant as one.

Emily takes a deep breath. This will be the hardest part.

Afternoon

Hotch's phone rings and vaults him back into reality. A reporter has some questions about an old case. When the call is finished, Hotch's thoughts for once don't snap back to what happened this morning. Instead he allows himself a moment of weakness, leans back and lets his mind wander...

There are so many memories he shares with his team – good ones and bad ones balancing each other. They all are professional agents, brilliant profilers and can rely on one another. They all care deeply for the well-being of others even if years of exposure to evil dulled them a little. All that, they have in common. Yet there is something special about each member of his team, he can name off the top of his head.

Emily Prentiss is a lot of things, but above all she is resilient, fiercely loyal and incredibly affectionate beneath her outer strength.

She is resilient, perhaps in comparison the most resilient one of them, considering what she had to go through. Back then she explained it casually away with her ability to compartmentalize when in fact it is a trained skill due to her past as an undercover agent she couldn't reveal to them until it almost was too late.

She is loyal to the point where she decided to give up her career rather than to sell him out and whisper in Strauss' ear. For crying out loud, she even risked sacrificing herself to save her team – how much more loyal can someone be?

She is affectionate. More than once he watched her inner struggle not to empathize too much with one of the victims. He winces at the thought how he reprimanded her because she let him in on her reflection to take care of a girl whose family just had been killed. I need to know that I'm human, she told him, confided in him, and he rejected it with a shrug and told her that she shouldn't get too involved when he should have appreciated it instead – her ability to remain human despite the monsters they fought and still fight every day.

But if Hotch is perfectly honest, it is not her resilience, loyalty or kindness he remembers when he thinks of her. Most of all he remembers... her. Her infectious laughter, her witty remarks, her attractiveness. Things he always noticed but never allowed himself to see because they were part of the team, colleagues, supervisor and subordinate even, forbidden territory. Were... In fact that ended the moment she handed over her resignation to him – and with this his thoughts jump back to that moment.

Morning

He drops her letter of resignation onto his desk and realizes that she hasn't answered his question.

"Why?" Hotch repeats as he meets her eyes and detects with some satisfaction the slight flicker of discomfort in her gaze. She might have just told him that he no longer is her superior, but his legendary stare is still able to make her feel uneasy.

Emily holds his gaze before she eventually looks away with an almost inaudible sigh, shakes her head and looks back at him unwaveringly. His stare might be able to make her uncomfortable, but she isn't, wasn't he corrects himself, the most resilient of his team for nothing.

"You really don't know?" she then answers his question with a question and tilts her head a little in the way he knows so well.

Deep down the knowledge that he won't see this small gesture again in the near future, maybe never, starts to spread a nagging pain. "Know what?" Hotch asks in return and doesn't even try to soften the harshness in his voice. This is personal. He did everything to make sure she is safe – participated in faking her death, feigned her funeral, lied for her, lied to his team, to the people he cares most about aside from his family – and she just decides to leave. Yes, this definitely is personal.

Emily opens her mouth to say something, then seems to think about it, and Hotch can literally see her replace the words she originally wanted to say by what she tells him now.

"When I came back to join the team, I thought things would be different," she eventually says. "But... they weren't... aren't... and that's why I think it's time for a change."

Once she mentioned foreign affairs, it was almost plausible. He always knew that it would happen. With so many talented people in his team, one of them was bound to leave rather sooner than later. His bets had been on Morgan, though, not her. No, not her, he thinks, and the nagging pain sends a shiver through his body. And as if things weren't bad enough, she basically just admitted that she's not leaving because of the great new job offer but because something wasn't right, because she had expected things to be different.

"Different – how?" Hotch is confused. He assumed she was glad that things were back to normal, that the team had readjusted.

Again her gaze lingers longer on him than necessary as she weighs her options before she starts to speak, "Do you remember when I joined the team? How you... resented me for being here? How difficult you made it for me to become a part of the team?"

Hotch can't help it. He has to break the eye contact, the guilt catching up with him even after all these years. He cringes at the thought how openly he rejected her, distrusted her, even if she never gave him any reason to do so. This is past, and he revised his attitude long ago. Yet this is the first time that she voiced what happened between them, and it hurts to hear her speak her mind aloud.

When he wants to say something, to apologize, Emily holds up her hand to stop him. It's a gentle gesture, not confrontational at all, a sign that she has forgiven him, and Hotch is relieved. But there is more.

"Did you notice how happy I was when you came to my apartment after my resignation due to Strauss' scheme some years ago and asked me to come back, to work this one last case with you?" her voice almost breaks, and Hotch becomes aware that the emotional turmoil is not only inside him, it is fighting inside her, too.

"Of course, I remember," he answers and realizes at the same time that this wasn't her question. She didn't ask him whether he remembered the moment, she asked him whether he had noticed how happy his actions had made her and to be honest – no, he hadn't noticed back then and hadn't given it a second thought until this day. Somehow he had taken it for granted that she had come back and stayed. Just like he had always believed that they would catch Doyle so that she would come back again. And it had happened. Save that she didn't come back to stay this time.

"What else do you remember?" Emily asks after a short pause, and her disappointment that he didn't really answer her question is obvious. This time Hotch thinks about her question, doesn't want to disappoint her once more, and there is so much he remembers, he doesn't know which memory to pick. Most of all, though, he remembers, no, discernswith a sudden clarity,that he shouldn't have taken it all for granted – that she offered herself as a bait several times to catch the unsub, flirted with despicable monsters like the Fox or less abhorrent ones like Viper and took care of him without hesitation after New York and Foyet. He took it all for granted, never thanked her, never even acknowledged that he appreciated it, let alone returned the gesture when she needed him after Cyrus, Doyle or when she was shot recently.

The memories are still flooding through him when the silence between them reminds Hotch that he still owes her an answer. "I don't know where to start," he finally says, hoping that she'll understand.

She doesn't. "Sure," Emily sighs resignedly, and he knows immediately that time is running out and mentions the first thing that comes to his mind, "Too many look like you." With this Hotch at least has her undivided attention. She frowns and looks at him, waiting for an explanation.

"The victims," he adds. Most of the time the victims were women, and often they were her type. To this day Hotch hardly bears to look at the dead bodies – tortured, mistreated, thrown away like garbage. Successful, beautiful women in real life, just like her. It is always bad, but these cases are even worse. "They often resemble you or at least your type," he admits haltingly. Hotch usually doesn't talk about his inner fights, rarely lets someone else glimpse at what is going on at heart.

The look in Emily's eyes softens. "I never thought it would affect you, too," she says, apparently touched by his admission. Of course, she recognized the resemblance between herself and some of the victims, but she never gave it a second thought that her colleagues, especially Hotch, would also be affected by it. As much as she is touched, though, she is also disappointed and angry because it is one more burden they could have shared, and yet Hotch decided to let them both deal with it alone.

They are sitting face to face – she in front of his desk, he behind it – like many times before. If someone told him this morning that today would be the last time, Hotch would have laughed at this person. Right now he feels as if he will never be able to laugh again. He knows that he still owes her so many answers to so many unspoken questions. But there is the one question she hasn't answered as yet.

"You said that you thought things would be different when you came back to join the team. Different – how?" he repeats his former question, still at a loss for an answer and the meaning behind her words.

Emily's reaction is similar to the one she had earlier. She looks down, sighs and shakes her head. Obviously she doesn't want to explain it to him. She wants him to know it without having to give him an explanation. And Hotch wants to know it, desperately, the nagging pain in light of her impending leave creeping through his body like an unwanted intruder. He might not know why she wants to leave, but he knows for sure that this nagging pain will accompany him for the rest of his life if he doesn't manage to convince her to stay or at least to tell him about her reasons why she is going to abandon the team and him.

Right now, however, it seems as if she has nothing more to say. She even avoids eye contact, looking down at her hands, and as well as Hotch is convinced that she has a relapse and is picking at her nails again, he is acutely aware that time is slipping away much too fast. Any second she will stand up and just walk out.

His thoughts jump back to the memories that crossed his mind earlier, and he picks one randomly. How they walked down the hall in the secure unit of the prison to interrogate the Fox. How one of the inmates threw himself against the safety glass and scared her. How he was completely oblivious to the situation he deliberately had put her in because all that was on his mind at the time was to solve the case and to get the Fox to talk. Must be distracting, working with someone so beautiful, the Fox tried to provoke him, and suddenly Hotch realizes that he murmured the words as he remembered them.

Emily has looked up again, most likely because she heard what he said. "The Fox," she confirms his assumption.

"Yes," Hotch nods. "I know I never told you – at least not that expressively – even if I should have, but I hope you know how much I appreciate your work. You are an excellent profiler." He uses the present tense on purpose. For a man like him this is almost an emotional outburst. He praises rarely, if ever. But what he really wants to tell her, is something else. Stay. Don't leave. Words he doesn't speak aloud because he isn't used to begging, and he never would have thought that he would have to deal with such a situation in the first place. Yes, it is distracting to work with someone so beautiful. But it will be even more distracting not to work with her anymore, not to be able to look at her every day. There is a reason why she has the desk across from his office. "It will be a tremendous loss if you decide to leave the team," Hotch adds, almost painfully aware how stilted and formal his words sound. Why isn't he able to say what he really wants to say?

At the moment, though, whatever he tells her seems to be too little, too late. "You're right," Emily responds, only to amend with brutal honesty, "I assumed it, like we all do, but you're right, you never told me that expressively." It's only now that he sees it in her eyes – perhaps because she lets him see it deliberately – the hurt, the disappointment. "Solely one time I really felt your support," she continues, and it dawns on Hotch that what he had thought to be a good idea to convince her to stay – namely telling her how much he appreciates her work as an agent – just completely backfires. "When you talked to me, offered me to confide in you whenever I had a bad day," her voice catches in her throat, and she has to look away. When she looks back at him, he sees nothing but determination. "That was the moment when I thought things would change. Unfortunately I was wrong."

And just like that she told him why she is leaving. Somehow between the lines. But he heard her – loud and clear. And that's when the profiler understands that his profile of her was wrong, so utterly, devastatingly wrong that he can't even begin to point at his mistakes. The way she looked at him the day she came back. He was her ally, her only ally at that time, considering that the team was shocked and in denial. Yet he never talked to her about her near death experience or about her time away in Europe. And when he found out that she had lied on purpose to her therapist to receive clearance for field duty, he for once did the right thing and confronted her with it. But did he really believe that this was all it took to help her through this? One moment to offer his support, another moment to listen to her admitting that she had a bad day and on with the show?

Emily Prentiss is no weak, dependent woman. She needs no shoulder to cry on. But she is human and when she came back, she hoped for, waited for, the team to show her that they were glad to have her back, that they forgave her for the necessary secrets and the heavy burden of loss and grief. And they all showed her their support. It wasn't easy at the beginning. Trust didn't need to be earned again, it was still there, but wounds needed to heal first. And once this had happened, their bond was stronger than before. There was only one person that kept the distance except for some encounters on a personal level – Hotch. And these encounters weren't enough neither in terms of quantity nor quality to convince her that he not only was glad that she was back as an agent but simply that she was back. Hotch made the same mistake again. He took her for granted and doesn't know which words he could possibly find that would make it up to her.

"Please give me some time to tell the others," Emily almost pleads wistfully and gestures toward the bullpen. He was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn't recognize that she stood up and is about to leave. The rest of the team has arrived, oblivious to the fact that things are about to change for good.

Again his silence, his inability to voice his thoughts, has given her the wrong impression that he doesn't care. The nagging pain is back with full force. But he knows, just knows, that whatever he will say now won't change anything. She has already set her mind.

Emily shirks from his look as she turns around and walks out of his office. Hotch can't believe that this really is happening.

"Stay. Don't leave," eventually he is able to utter these words, his voice a whisper. But there is no-one around anymore to hear him. His office is empty.

To be continued

So, what do you think?

Should Hotch get another chance to convince her to stay?

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