Title: A New Reason
By: saneoblivion
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Pairing: Emily/JJ
Disclaimer: Obvioulsy no one in this story belongs to me. I bow down to the superior characterisations of the creators, writers and actors. Please don't sue me, I can't afford it!
Summary: Just a brief little thing about what's in JJ's mind post-Penelope.

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The glass door to her office had already been mended. The bureau hadn't wasted much time. For most people it would be difficult to see the traces of last week's events but not for JJ. The scars were there, in the too transparent glass of the new door; in the ripple of tension through Morgan's body if a stranger came too close; in the odd flash of remembered fear in Garcia's eyes. They had all came too close; to losing a friend, a colleague, a piece of themselves.

Everything happened for a reason. Garcia, after all of it, still believed that. And JJ was beginning to come around. Because, as terrible as it may seem, the one moment that stood out for JJ in the entire harrowing mess had been entirely unexpected. Not the quietly flailing panic in Hotch's eyes when the call had first come in; not the engulfing relief flooding the entire team when the doctor had pulled off his scrub cap and promised that Garcia would be fine. A week on, it wasn't even that moment when he had turned, and her finger had flinched, and as the kickback jerked against her steady hand the glass had splintered and shattered and crashed to the floor; a curtain of ice as she took one life to save another. What JJ remembered, through the mist and fog of all the fear and pain, was one moment where the world stopped spinning. When Emily Prentiss had reached out to her the raging storms subsided. Just for a moment. Elegant fingers squeezed at her wrist, 'JJ' and reached down to take her hand ‘I'm here'. And it wasn't the time or the place and Emily, in that moment, wasn't offering what the two agents had been dancing around for weeks. But in the grasping of two desperate hands held the strength needed to face the trouble of now, and the hope of a future, for the two of them together, as well as Garcia.

Everything happens for a reason. It was a week on. And the glass wasn't the only new addition to B.A.U. The profilers knew that the door to JJ's office was a replacement. What they didn't know was that, as JJ left her office and turned off the light, she was heading home to Emily. Their relationship was new too, but as they fell asleep together again, grasping each others hands, they were holding all the promise of tomorrow.

***