No-one had seen Annabel Bradey in a decade, that was until she resurfaced in SSA Aaron Hotchner's office in Quantico. She was carrying scars both physical and mental, but wouldn't share her story. Or at least not until everyone she loved was in dang...
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Penelope Garcia was adamant that something had happened between Aaron Hotchner and Annabel Bradey; their behaviour having changed so much that it didn't take a profiler to notice that something had occurred between the duo. From the moment that she had met them from the jet, she had become aware of the new tension that had built between them during the case. However, the technical analyst didn't know what exactly what had triggered the change, but she knew for sure that something had happened since they had left for the Bristol.
The idea had once again entered Penelope's mind when the duo had walked past her office, engulfed in an uncomfortable silence with at least a foot of empty space between them. For any other pair of Bureau employees that distance would have been a perfectly normal, although overly exaggerated, display of professionalism. However, for Annie and Aaron, this was out of character, the duo often being so close that the intrigued woman was frequently unable to determine whether or not they had entered the building with their fingers interlocked.
As she was leaning back on her chair, keeping the duo in her gaze, Penelope's assumptions were confirmed when Annie left Aaron stood in the middle of the bullpen. The man lingered for a moment, his gaze following the woman as she walked away from him, not a word being uttered in his direction before she crossed the floor to her office. From where the technical analyst was sat, the Unit Chief seemed to recover quickly, gripping his briefcase as he walked, in an overly direct fashion, towards his own office.
Derek noticed the woman who had migrated towards the door, and looked at her with an expression of curiosity, but she simply raised her shoulders unsure of the situation herself. On the plane, the agent had seen the interaction that had created the coldness between Annie and Aaron, but he hadn't heard the words that had been uttered from the woman's mouth. He was sure that it must have had something to do with whatever conversation Aaron and David had shared that caused the former to become defensive, but other than that he had as little clue as Penelope.
For a while after the silent conversation, Penelope went back to work. As with every case the team worked, she had many choices that she had to justify. That was the one downside of rarely doing her job by the book, the amount of paperwork that followed each of her actions. Yet, she knew that, if she wanted to stay with her team, she had to cover any and all of her possible legal mishaps.
However, that day the woman couldn't concentrate on her work, her mind continued to filter back to the interaction between her boss and newest friend. The same window had been open before her for the last quarter of an hour, but she wasn't able to concentrate enough to even remember why she had done what she had. There was an internal worry filling Penelope, that stemmed from her tendency to assume the worst when she didn't know all the details. It was part of the reason that the blonde was so overly invested in her friends lives, the more she knew the less she could worry about.
That was why, having locked the computer, Penelope took hold of an empty file and left the comfort of her personal work area. She knew that her cover was barely viable, if anyone stopped her on the way to the ginger woman's office she would most likely freeze before blurting out the truth, but that didn't matter to her. Penelope needed to run diagnostics on her friends, admitting them to triage if necessary.
