Jennifer Jareau | Mr. Howard

Jennifer Jareau had learned to smile the summer Roslyn stopped coming to dinner. Not all at once. Roslyn had still appeared, had still sat in her chair, had still passed the potatoes when asked, and had still answered their mother's questions about the University with the right number of syllables. But the woman who had spent every June afternoon teaching JJ to cartwheel in the backyard, who braided dandelions into crowns and declared them both princesses of Pennsylvania... that woman was gone.

In her place sat someone who flinched when the screen door slammed. Who wore long sleeves in August. Who looked at Mr. Howard, the University advisor, the way rabbits looked at headlights, paralyzed between running and staying perfectly, dangerously still.

JJ mostly didn't understand. She hadn't had the vocabulary for what she was seeing, but she had known the shape of it. She had known it the way you knew a storm was coming before the first drop fell: by the pressure change, the strange green light, the too quiet birds.

She had asked once. Only once.

Roslyn's bedroom, door cracked, JJ standing in the hallway in her nightgown. "Roz? Are you okay?" with the blood welling up against Roz's sweater. Her sister had turned from the window, old enough and already carrying something too heavy for her frame. The smile she had given JJ had been the saddest thing JJ had ever seen. "I'm special," Roslyn had murmured. Her voice had been far away. "He told me I'm mature for my age."

JJ hadn't understood. She had wanted to, though, so she had stepped into the room and Roslyn's face had changed, had sharpened into something fierce and protective. "Don't tell Mom. Promise me, Jenny. She wouldn't understand."

So JJ had promised, had kept her sister's secret the way teenagers did, with the whole unquestioning gravity of their hearts, had kept it through the rest of that summer, had kept it through the autumn when Roslyn started missing lectures. Had kept it through the winter when Roslyn had done it, and Sandy Jareau found her too late, too cold, too far gone for even the hospital's best efforts to pull her back, while Jennifer sat traumatized against the door. She'd found her first.

The police had come and had asked questions. Adults had whispered in corners about depression, about warning signs no one had seen, about what a tragedy it was. At the funeral, Mr. Ethan Howard had wept louder than anyone.

JJ, 19, then and holding the truth like a stone in her throat, had learned that some secrets devoured the keeper. She had also learned that crying didn't bring Roslyn back. But smiling, oh, smiling helped people look away. Smiling made adults comfortable. Smiling was armor. So she had smiled.

Jennifer Jareau only wanted her sister back.

One and a half decades later, JJ was still smiling.

It was 11:47 PM, and she stood in an alley that smelled like piss and rotting food, watching a man named Aaron Yates unlock his car; he whistled. Actually whistled, off-key and cheerful, like a man who never feared the dark. But he would.

Her hands were steady. They were always steady now.

Yates didn't hear her approach; she learned long ago how to make her footsteps disappear, and he didn't see her until she was close enough to smell the gin on his breath or the cigarette smoke in his hair. When he turned, his expression cycled through confusion, annoyance, then something uglier when he saw it was a woman.

"Help you?" He looked her up and down. JJ wore clothes she would burn later: jeans from Goodwill, a dark hoodie, boots with no distinguishing tread. Her hair was tucked under a cap. No jewelry. No perfume. Nothing that left trace evidence.

"Aaron Yates." She didn't make it a question.

His eyes narrowed. "Do I know you?"

"No. But I know you." JJ kept her voice level, almost conversational. This part was important. She learned that predators needed to understand why. It didn't absolve anything, didn't make what came next justice instead of murder. JJ had no illusions about what she was, but they needed to know someone saw them. Someone knew.

"I know about the forums. The chats with user Butterfly, whose real name is Sophia Chen, and who is not interested in a man like you. I know you sent her bus fare to meet you at the Greyhound station downtown. I know you told her she was mature for her age."

Yates' face did something complicated. The drunk-friendly openness hardened. "I don't know what you are."

"I have screenshots," JJ continued. "Seven months of you talking to her. You told her you loved her. You told her she was special, and you told her your wife didn't understand you." She watched him recalibrate and try to figure out if she was law enforcement. But she wasn't reading him his rights, not pulling a badge, not calling for backup.

"Look, lady, I don't know who you think you are—" He started getting angry, indignant. "She told me—. She pursued me—"

JJ felt it then. The cold clarity that always came at that moment. The absolute certainty. She thought of Roslyn, who never got to live her dreams, who never learned that the man who told her she was special was just a predator with a vocabulary. Who died thinking she was the problem. "Her name was Roslyn," JJ said quietly.

Yates blinked. "What?"

"My sister. She was my older sister, actually. An University advisor told her she was mature. That she understood him in ways other women didn't. That what they had was special." JJ's voice didn't shake. She perfected that years ago. "She killed herself because she thought it was love, and then when she was old enough to know it wasn't, the shame was bigger than her whole life."

"I'm sorry about your sister, but I didn't—"

The knife was in her hand before he could finish. A Benchmade folding knife, purchased with cash three states away, serial number filed off. She was fast; years of tactical training, muscle memory, and the absolute commitment of someone who did this before.

Yates tried to block. He was too slow, too drunk, too unused to anyone fighting back. The blade slid between his ribs, angled up, like they taught her at Quantico, except they taught her this for survival. For self-defense.

This was something else.

He made a sound. A wet, surprised grunt. His hands came up to clutch at his chest and JJ stepped back, watching. She learned not to look away. Roslyn didn't get to look away.

It took longer than the movies suggested. Yates slumped against his car, sliding down to the asphalt. His breathing turned ragged. He tried to speak, but blood filled the space where words should be.

JJ crouched down, out of the spray radius. "Sophia Chen is going to therapy now," she told him. "She thinks it's her fault, the way my sister did. But she is alive to learn it isn't. You don't get to take that from her."

Yates' eyes glazed. She watched until they stopped focusing entirely.

Then she stood. Stripped off her gloves—latex beneath leather, both going into the bag she would burn. Wiped the knife on a cloth already soaked with bleach solution. Every movement was practiced and efficient. She learned this the hard way, the first time.

That time she shook for an hour afterward, threw up twice, and nearly turned herself in. But she thought of Roslyn. Of all the girls who came after Roslyn. Of how Howard died of a heart attack three years prior, comfortable in his bed, having never faced a single consequence.

Now her hands didn't shake at all. She wasn't sure if that was better or worse. JJ took the long route back to her car, parked six blocks away. She kept her head down, avoided cameras; she memorized the blind spots in that neighborhood.

When she reached it, she changed clothes in the backseat, stuffing everything into a plastic bag. The knife went into a separate bag, disassembled.

She drove. Not home. Not yet. First she stopped at a 24-hour laundromat, the kind with the industrial incinerators in back. A twenty-dollar bill ensured the attendant didn't notice her feeding the incinerator. Then she drove to the Potomac, found the spot where the current ran fastest, and dropped the knife components off the bridge one by one.

It was 2:15 AM when she finally pulled into her driveway.

The house was dark except for the porch light, which Will always left on. JJ sat in the car for five minutes, breathing. Becoming herself again. The woman who worked for the FBI. Who had two sons sleeping upstairs. Who kissed her husband goodnight and meant it every time.

She checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. No blood. No evidence. Just a blonde woman who looked tired, but she always looked tired. Profilers kept brutal hours. Inside, she moved quietly through the dark house. Will was asleep, sprawled across his side of the bed the way he always did. JJ stood in the doorway watching him for a long moment. He looked peaceful. Innocent.

She wondered what he would do if he knew. If he would understand that she was protecting their sons. That she was protecting every child from men who thought "mature for your age" was a compliment instead of a threat. Or if he would be horrified. If he would see her the way she sometimes saw herself in the bathroom mirror at 3 AM, not as a mother, not as an agent, but as something that learned to kill and discovered it had a talent for it.

JJ showered. The water ran hot enough to pink her skin. She scrubbed under her nails even though she wore gloves. She washed her hair twice. When she finally climbed into bed, Will shifted, mumbled something.

"You're late," he said, sleep thick.

"Case ran long." The lie was smooth. She had practice.

He reached for her, pulled her close. JJ let herself be held, fitting against his warmth. He smelled like home—like laundry detergent and the mint toothpaste he used. Normal things. Safe things.

"Love you," he murmured, already sinking back into sleep.

"Love you too." She meant it. That was the worst part. She meant it completely.

She lay awake long after his breathing evened out. She stared at the ceiling, thought about Roslyn, who would be older now. Who might have her own husband, her own children. Who might have learned that the shame wasn't hers to carry.

JJ did this eleven times by then. Eleven men who thought they were smarter than law enforcement. Who thought the kids they groomed were willing participants, who faced no consequences until they faced her.

She knew it would never bring Roslyn back. Knew it didn't even help, not really. For every predator she removed, a dozen more were out there, lurking in chat rooms and youth groups and anywhere the vulnerable gathered.

But she did it anyway. Because someone had to. Because she had the skills and the access and the absolute certainty that those men would hurt someone if she didn't stop them.

Because late at night, when she couldn't sleep, she still saw Roslyn in that too-big coffin. Still saw her mother's face, blank with grief. Still saw Mr. Howard at the funeral, weeping crocodile tears.

And because part of her—a part she didn't examine too closely—liked it. The hunt. The moment of recognition in their eyes when they realized they had miscalculated. The absolute power of deciding who lived and who died.

That was the part that scared her most.

JJ closed her eyes. Took steady breaths. Counted backward from one hundred the way the Bureau psychologist taught them for managing stress. By the time she reached zero, she was smiling.

She was very good at smiling.

The BAU briefing room was sun-filled and loud when JJ arrived at 7:45 AM. Prentiss already held court, telling some story about her weekend that involved a farmer's market and apparently a rogue chicken. Morgan laughed, shaking his head. Garcia perched on the edge of the table in a dress that looked like a sunset, giggling. Reid did the crossword, half listening, occasionally interjecting with random facts about poultry domestication.

Normal. It was all so beautifully, painfully normal.

"There she is," Morgan called when he spotted her. "JJ, you gotta hear this—"

"Morning." JJ smiled, set down her coffee. She already had two cups at home but she needed the prop, needed something to do with her hands. "What'd I miss?"

Prentiss launched back into the story. Something about a chicken escaping its coop and wreaking havoc, the farmer chasing it through the crowd, Prentiss trying to help and somehow making it worse. It was funny. JJ laughed in all the right places.

She was aware, distantly, that she slept four hours and spent one of them scrubbing phantom blood from under her nails. That there was a man cooling in the morgue right then, a man whose death she caused. That she was a federal agent tasked with bringing killers to justice, and she was one.

But that lived in a different compartment. Right then, in that sun-filled room with her team, she was just JJ. Media liaison. Mom. Friend.

"You okay?" Reid asked during a lull. He looked at her with that particular intensity he got when he noticed something. "You seem tired."

"Late night," JJ said easily. "Will Jr. had a nightmare. You know how it is." Reid accepted that. Why wouldn't he? JJ was always the steady one, the normal one. Soccer mom who happened to hunt serial killers for a living. No one suspected she might be hunting them for other reasons too.

"Missing persons case in Baltimore," Hotch said, entering the room with a file. "Local PD requested our help. Three women in six weeks. Similar victimology."

JJ took the file he handed her, flipped it open. Saw the photos—young women, smiling for the camera. Trusting the world to be kinder than it was.

Something twisted in her chest.

"I'll prep the media strategy," she said. Her voice was steady. Professional. Hotch nodded, moving on to the next detail. He didn't see the way her fingers tightened on the folder. Didn't see the calculations already running behind her eyes—not about press conferences, but about what happened if they caught that unsub and the system failed. If he got a plea deal, a reduced sentence, a chance to hurt someone else. Didn't see her already planning for that contingency.

JJ looked down at the girls' photos. Made them a silent promise the way she made a hundred times before.

Then she looked up, smiled at her team, and got to work. She was very good at her job. Both of them.

(Create your own scenario)