Side by side || Emily Prentiss

1.

«The thing about me is that I know
my worth and what I deserve.»

She had never entered the rooms of the BAU. Her department was on the third floor, but the one she was entering was on the seventh. It wasn't that different from hers though, in Quantico all the walls were the same as each other.

The seventh floor, however, was by far the most important and renowned one, the one that all the FBI agents would have wanted to enter, but also the least accessible one. Daisy felt ungrateful for not being even a little happy to be there.

She didn't want to get into the BAU; organized crimes were and had always been her passion, ever since she was a child and she spent all her evenings watching documentaries on the mafia and terrorism with her father.

She cared little about serial killers, she was interested in bombs, genocides, the slimy secrets that were passed down from generation to generation, drugs and the terror of an entire country. She hated that a son of a bitch had managed to distance her from everything for which she had sacrificed her entire life, compromising her daughter too.

The sound of her low heels resonated in her thoughts as she walked through those anonymous corridors. Her attention was caught by one of the walls of the last corridor she had to pass through before arriving at Emily Prentiss' office.

She didn't know that the wall of the federal victims was on the seventh floor, but it clearly couldn't be anywhere else but there. She had tried to avoid that wall with all her being since the day of the fire and the idea of ​​having found it in front of her by mistake made her want to take down all those photos from the wall.

She couldn't help herself, however, from stopping to look at the photo of her Claudia, while maintaining a neutral expression. She had known her at the age of thirteen and had loved her until they were twenty eight, until she was forcibly taken away from her.

"She's too young to be here, right?" - she heard a high-pitched voice behind her say.

When she turned she saw a short, plump woman, with blond hair and the most hideous and colorful outfit she had ever seen an adult woman wear, and not even that young.

"There's a whole legend around her, you know?" - She continued to say, since she had not received any response from Daisy

"A legend?" - replied the agent with dark hair

"Yes, the story is that she met a girl at the beginning of high school and it is said that never have two souls been more made for each other. They eventually settled here, but then a terrible tragedy occurred: a fire broke out mysteriously at their house one night and killed them both."

Daisy couldn't believe her ears. She had no idea that that story was being spun around those walls in such a distorted but accurate way. She was the only person who knew what really happened that night, but she would never tell a soul the truth, at least not before getting her little girl back.

"The legend is wrong. She's the only one who died." - she replied with all the acidity she was capable of and, without saying anything else, continued on her way, swearing that she would never cross that corridor again.

Before opening the clear glass doors that would take her into the room where all the profilers had their desks, she took a long breath, then she opened them. If the geography of this place was identical to her old floor, Chief Prentiss' office must have been the first door on the stairs.

She crossed the entire room, aware that everyone was watching her: it must have been strange for them to see someone new enter those rooms. When she reached the door, for a microsecond before knocking, she instilled a great deal of courage to herself by remembering that the difficult part of her mission was starting exactly at that moment.