Chapter 12: The Invitation
Three days after Seattle, I called Elle.
She answered on the second ring.
"Took you long enough. I was starting to think you'd lost the card."
"Busy week. Paperwork doesn't file itself."
"Excuses." But there was warmth in her voice. "So. That bar I mentioned. Tonight work?"
"Tonight works."
"Eight o'clock. The Rusty Anchor—it's about ten minutes from the Academy. You can't miss it. It's the one that looks like it should have been condemned in 1987."
"Sounds charming."
"It's not. That's the point." A pause. "See you there, Mercer."
She hung up.
I stared at my phone for a long moment.
This is different from professional drinks with the team. This is... something else.
Back in my old life, I'd been married for twenty-three years. Divorced for eight. Dating hadn't been a priority—my work consumed everything, and by the time I realized that was a problem, it was too late to fix it.
Now I was thirty-two again. In a body that still felt foreign, in a world that still felt like a fever dream, reaching toward a woman whose future I already knew.
Elle Greenaway. Will be shot by the Fisher King. Will kill William Lee in what she'll claim is self-defense. Will leave the BAU destroyed.
Can I change any of that? Should I try?
The system offered no guidance. For once, the interface stayed silent.
Some things aren't for the system to calculate.
I left the office early, went home, changed into something that wasn't a suit. Jeans. A dark blue henley that Ethan Mercer's previous tenant had left in the closet. Casual but not too casual.
The Rusty Anchor lived up to its description.
A squat building with peeling paint and a neon sign missing half its letters. The parking lot was half-empty, the clientele mostly locals who looked like they'd been drinking there since Reagan was president. Classic rock bled through the walls—Springsteen, Petty, the soundtrack of blue-collar America.
Elle was already inside, sitting at the bar with a whiskey in hand.
She'd changed too. Dark jeans, a leather jacket, her hair down instead of pulled back. She looked different outside the office—softer somehow, but also sharper. Like she'd shed one armor and put on another.
"You found it," she said as I sat down beside her.
"Hard to miss a building that's actively dying."
"That's part of its charm." She signaled the bartender. "What's your poison?"
"Whatever you're having."
"Dangerous words." But she ordered two whiskeys, neat, and slid one across to me.
We drank in comfortable silence for a moment.
"So," Elle said. "First few weeks at the BAU. What's the verdict?"
"It's not what I expected."
"Better or worse?"
"Different." I turned the glass in my hands. "CID was about catching criminals after they'd already done damage. You build the case, make the arrest, hand it off to prosecution. Clean lines."
"And the BAU?"
"The BAU gets there before the lines are drawn. You're not just catching killers—you're trying to understand them. Get inside their heads. Predict what they'll do next."
"Does that bother you?"
"Sometimes." I met her eyes. "Understanding monsters means seeing the world the way they see it. That's not always comfortable."
Elle nodded slowly.
"Most people can't handle that. They think profiling is about logic, about science. It's not. It's about empathy. And empathy with killers..." She took a drink. "It leaves marks."
"Speaking from experience?"
"Aren't we all?"
The question hung between us.
"You've seen my file," I said. "You know the official version. CID, Kosovo, war criminals. What you don't know is what it felt like to sit across from men who'd ordered mass graves dug and filled. To listen to them explain why it was necessary, why it was justified, why they'd do it again if they had the chance."
Elle watched me. Not judging. Just listening.
"Some of them believed it. Genuinely believed they were soldiers doing their duty. Others knew exactly what they'd done and didn't care. And the worst ones—the truly dangerous ones—they enjoyed it. The power. The fear. The feeling of deciding who lived and who died."
I finished my whiskey.
"You learn to see them. The patterns, the tells, the way they think. And once you learn that, you can't unlearn it. You start seeing it everywhere. In strangers on the street. In coworkers. In yourself."
Elle's glass paused halfway to her lips.
"You see it in yourself?"
"Sometimes. Don't you?"
The silence stretched.
Then she set down her glass.
"I don't save people because I'm good," she said quietly. "I told you that before. But it's not the whole truth."
She turned on her stool, facing me directly.
"I grew up in a neighborhood where the cops didn't come. Where people learned to protect themselves or they didn't survive. I watched my father try to do the right thing and get destroyed for it. I watched my mother give up piece by piece until there was nothing left."
Her jaw tightened.
"So yeah, I see it in myself. The anger. The darkness. The part of me that doesn't just want to catch the bad guys—that wants to hurt them. Make them feel what their victims felt."
"Is that why you became an agent?"
"It's why I almost didn't. I was scared of what I'd become if I had a badge and a gun and permission to pursue that darkness." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Turns out the badge keeps it in check. Barely. Most days."
This is who she really is. Not the confident agent, not the sarcastic colleague. This is Elle Greenaway with her walls down, showing me the cracks.
And she's showing me because she saw the same cracks in me.
"Thank you," I said.
"For what?"
"For trusting me with that."
She held my gaze for a long moment.
"Don't make me regret it."
The door burst open behind us.
"Why is it," Morgan announced loudly, "that every time you two go somewhere without me, I have to hunt you down like a bail-skipped fugitive?"
Elle rolled her eyes.
"Maybe because no one invited you?"
"Details." Morgan dropped onto the stool on my other side, already signaling the bartender. "I heard Mercer was buying. I'm not about to miss that."
"I'm buying?"
"You owe me. Remember Seattle? 'We go, but smart'? That was practically a war bond."
"Pretty sure I saved your life."
"Pretty sure you owe me drinks." He grinned. "House rules, man. New guy always pays."
I looked at Elle. She shrugged, fighting a smile.
"House rules."
The next two hours dissolved into something I hadn't experienced in years—genuine laughter, easy conversation, the simple pleasure of being with people who understood the darkness but chose the light anyway.
We played pool. Morgan lost twice and blamed the table, then blamed the cue, then blamed me for "distracting him with my newbie energy." Elle beat us both and collected her winnings with the smugness of someone who'd been hustling since childhood.
Garcia called at one point, demanding to be put on speaker so she could participate remotely. Her voice filled the bar with warmth and color, somehow making the grimy dive feel like home.
Even Reid texted—a Wikipedia article about the physics of billiards angles that made Morgan groan and Elle laugh until she choked on her drink.
This is what I was missing. In my old life, in the world I left behind. Connection. Belonging. A team that becomes a family.
By midnight, the bar was closing. We settled the tab—Morgan was right, I paid—and walked out into the Virginia night.
The parking lot was quiet. Stars visible despite the nearby city lights. The kind of moment that existed outside of cases and killers and the weight of what we did.
Elle's shoulder brushed mine as we walked to our cars.
"This was good," she said. "We should do it again."
"Yeah. We should."
Neither of us specified when. Neither of us needed to.
Morgan climbed into his truck, waved, and pulled out with a honk that was probably meant to be suggestive.
Elle and I stood beside our cars.
"Mercer."
"Yeah?"
"Whatever you're carrying—the stuff you didn't tell me tonight, the parts you're still hiding—I get it. We all have things we don't share. But if you ever need to talk..." She shrugged. "I've got good ears and bad judgment. Seems like a combination that might work for you."
I smiled despite myself.
"I'll keep that in mind."
She got in her car, started the engine, rolled down the window.
"See you Monday, partner."
Then she was gone, taillights fading into the darkness.
I stood in the empty parking lot, breathing in the night air, feeling something I hadn't felt in months.
Hope.
[RELATIONSHIP DYNAMIC: ELLE GREENAWAY — TRAJECTORY UNCLEAR — CAUTION ADVISED]
The notification appeared in my peripheral vision—cold, clinical, completely inadequate for what had just happened.
I dismissed it.
Some things aren't for the system to calculate.
Driving home, I thought about Elle's future. The Fisher King. The shooting. William Lee. The spiral that would destroy her.
I know what's coming. The question is whether I can stop it—and whether I should try.
She showed me her darkness tonight. Trusted me with the parts of herself she keeps hidden.
Maybe that's the first step. Maybe trust is the foundation that everything else gets built on.
Or maybe I'm just a man from another world, falling for a woman whose fate was written before I ever arrived.
The system stayed silent.
For once, I was grateful.
Some questions didn't need calculating.
They just needed answering.
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