Not Everyone || Emily Prentiss

5.

«As soon as I saw her
I felt like I could breathe better»

September 2023
(Months since Atalanta: 23)

Her two-year anniversary at Interpol was fast approaching, and April never had gotten around to acknowledging Emily's email.

Well, it never really invited a reply in the first place, and after mulling over a variety of ultimately anaemic responses she decided some things were better left unsaid.

In fact, the only reason she was thinking about Emily and her email at all right in that moment was because of the invitation currently clutched in her hand.

April,
I'm pulling you out of exile.
Congratulations on the promotion.
JJ.
P.S. Yes, she will be there.

"Fuck" - she swore under her breath as she read over it for the fourth time.

"You alright, Sachs?" - Daniel, another agent, asked as he strolled up to her desk.

"Yeah, yeah, fine." - she replied, waving him off.

"Good. This is politics." - he said by way of explanation about the documents he put on her desk before walking off.

She stared at it and resisted the urge to scream.

Her little jaunt into front page about that very difficult case had, as JJ acknowledged, resulted in a promotion. She was now officially chief of the minors's protection department of Interpol in Washington D.C. She had broken all the rules, failed to defer to her senior colleagues as was expected, and Greg, her boss, had seen fit to promote her for it.

You have balls, Kipling. I like a woman with balls.

She hadn't delved too deeply into that one, but the sentiment had been appreciated nonetheless.

Looking back it had been ballsy doing those actions and going over the Lion's and London's departments's heads, directly to Greg.

Well, ballsy and incredibly stupid.

The fallout hadn't been pleasant. She had seen her chance and taken it, but that didn't mean work had been easy once her promotion was secured. If she thought the old guard was pissed about her little stunt, it was nothing compared to their ire when they found out one of their colleagues had been bumped to make way for new blood, as Greg had not-so-delicately put it.

At not quite twenty six, April was by far the youngest amongst the chiefs of crime justice's departments. There was little doubt in her mind that she was partially an experiment aimed at drawing a younger directorship, but that didn't mean the old boys on the pedophilia and children abuse desks were prepared to give her a break. They felt like she hadn't done her duty in the trenches, and as such, decided to bring the trenches to her.

She had managed to keep up so far, and she was slowly beginning to earn their respect. Not that they would ever admit it.

April sighed as she glanced between the notes and the invitation.

To be honest, she would take whatever shit storm Daniel had just dumped on her desk over an FBI party any day. JJ might have thought she was doing April a favour, but attending a party with all those she had left behind in Atalanta sounded more stressful than going toe-to-toe with the Governor in a live press conference. She hadn't seen them all in two years. It felt odd to be popping back into that world, if only for a night.

Before she could dig too deeply into her FBI issues, Alice popped up waving a familiar gilded envelope.

"You'll never guess which party I'm going to." - she said in a sing-song voice.