Keeping Her Safe

Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don't.

No one was surprised on the sixth floor when they came into work and saw Sera pacing from one side of her office to the other. 'Do you think she went home?' Prentiss asked as she placed her bag on the desk and glanced at Reid.

'I don't know. She doesn't look well rested,' Reid responded.

'She looks like shit,' Rossi hummed as he walked in, greeting the agents around him with a polite nod.

While no one liked how blunt Rossi was, they didn't, or rather couldn't, disagree. 'What did Hotch say when he came in?' JJ asked.

'He just gave her a funny look,' Reid answered. 'But Hotch has been working all morning, and Vilein has been pacing since I got here,' he added, answering their silent questions.

'I thought Rossi and Hotch were dysfunctional parents, but these two are clearly only staying together for the kids,' Garcia remarked as she walked over with a fresh cup of coffee in her hands.

Rossi sent a sly glance to Garcia, but she was too focused on the two offices to notice. 'I am the father out of the two of us, right?' He asked, sure that the answer was not what he was hoping for.

When everyone glanced him over with disapproving looks, Rossi felt his scowl grow as he realised that the team had silently delegated him to the role of mother. 'You kids scare me,' he hummed.

As Rossi walked over to his office, Sera nearly ran into him before she stepped back and apologised. 'How much sleep did you get last night?' He asked.

'Enough,' Sera replied without looking up from the file in her hands.

Like the path was carved into her mind, Sera didn't look up as she walked over to the conference room with her coffee that was nearly empty in one hand and an open file in the other. 'Is that a fact or your opinion?' Rossi asked.

'They're the same thing,' Sera called before walking into the conference room and finding a seat that let her easily see the screen.

Hotch soon followed as he held files in his arm. A small stack were tucked away, and unlike his colleague, he looked around him and nodded to greet those who had arrived already.

'What were you doing here so early?' He asked once he took the seat beside her.

He needed to know that the team weren't going to fall in love with her and then watch her die. Real or not. There was never going to be another Ian Doyle situation.

'I didn't want to get sunburnt walking to the car,' Sera sarcastically responded before finishing her coffee and harshly placing her mug down on the table. 'Working,' she finally drawled.

'But you can't have that much work to do. I left just after five and I've hardly got much more to do right now. We've not flown out for a case in a while, and our current cases aren't anything unusual,' Hotch responded.

Yeah, but I need to learn what a fucking spreadsheet is meant to look like.

'Do you want to breathe down my neck all day? Because if so, I'll buy you some gum and reapply my perfume,' Sera dryly responded.

Clearing his throat, Hotch angrily glanced down at Sera, but as he studied her, he pondered on why she would behave so coldly. Especially since she was clearly a nice woman who wanted to help people. If the medals weren't enough, the raving recommendation her old section chief sent was enough to paint a very different woman.

Why, or rather how had Sera gone from the bubbling, bouncing agent who could light up a room to a woman who couldn't even string a sentence together? Something unexpected had been hinted to. "following recent events" was written, and made him wonder if she was cold, alone, and hurting after a traumatic case.