Not Everyone || Emily Prentiss

4.

«Life is still good.»

Emily Prentiss stared at the Starbucks cup still sitting in the corner of her desk like it was poison.

If she took a sip from it, it would be like admitting defeat and accepting a thank you which had been as succinct as the resignation from the days of notes-left-behind-in-hotel-rooms past.

Thank you, Emily.

Thank you for what exactly?

Thank you for taking a chance on me even though I was unprepared for following your footsteps, had terrible sense of duty and absolutely no knowledge of the managerial work in this industry?

Thank you for not destroying my career when you had the chance?

Thank you for in fact giving me a reference, even though I didn't deserve it, enabling me to join Interpol and do allegedly quite good work?

No, no. She didn't want, nor did she need a thank you from April Kipling.

She did, however, need coffee.

It would be cold by now. She knew it even as she stared at it.

You really need to work on your caffeine addiction, she thought as she stood up, snatched the cup from the desk, and stalked through to the kitchenette to reheat it.

She paced back and forth in front of the microwave.

The woman was obviously mentally ill.

Never in her life had anyone dared to speak to her in such a manner. Especially after she had gone out of her way to do them a favour. April Kipling should have been falling at her feet and fawning all over her Prada platforms. She should have been grovelling for forgiveness for her past actions, apologising for her childish behaviour.

But no, she had, what exactly was that?

Sass, she thought. That's what that had been.

April Kipling, lowly twenty-something, the world's most disappointing ex-employee, had come up to her window of her own volition and had sassed her.

The woman was an absolute mess. What little she had learned at the BAU had obviously slipped out of her vacant little head. Her hair was a disaster, she obviously hadn't slept, and yet she still had the gall to act lofty and superior.

Emily glared at the cup still making its way around slowly.

Perhaps she had been drunk. That would certainly explain the bravado.

Either that or the last eleven months or so in the bullpen of the Interpol had seen the woman develop a spine.

And an attitude, she thought dryly.

Emily's mouth quirked at its edges before she could stop it.

She growled aloud at herself before snatching the coffee out of the microwave.

It absolutely was not funny.

_____

"Coffee, Emily?" - Rossi asked as they drove through the streets of D.C. again the following Saturday.

She glanced up from the article she was reading, catching his eye and raising her brow.

"Very funny." - she said as she returned to her copy of the Washington Post.

After close to fourteen years of working together, she was quite certain that Rossi knew her better than she knew herself, although she would never admit it. He had borne witness to her lengthy workdays, the subsequent exhaustion that followed her fake death and attempting to return to work for the FBI as soon as humanly possible. He had been there through all the dramas, and the devastating death of her mother.