Archive of Our Own

“Hey, babygirl,” Luke said as he slid into a seat next to Penelope in the cafeteria, kissing her on the cheek.

She shuddered. “Ew. No. I don’t like that one.”

Luke smirked. “Okay. Chica?”

“Maybe.”

“What about, hey, Beautiful. Better?”

Penelope smiled at him and leaned in to kiss him properly. “Much.”

“Get a room, you too!” Their friend Jerry, who happened to be walking by, called out to them.

Luke flipped him the bird and kissed Penelope again. 

“When’s the wedding?” Sarah, Jerry’s girlfriend, asked.

Luke shrugged and shouted back, “Soon enough!”

Penelope smiled as their friends continued on their way. “Soon enough?”

Luke smiled at his girl, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her to him. “You act like I don’t always tell you that I’m going to marry you one day.”

She leaned into him with a smile. “I love you to the moon…”

He smiled too. “And back.” That was their thing that they always said to each other. “I love you” simply wasn’t enough for them. 

Growing up, Luke had always secretly adored the love stories from the Disney movies his sisters made him watch with them. He had always wanted the happily ever after kind of love he saw there, but he wasn’t quite sure he believed it worked that way. Until he met Penelope. Well, it wasn’t that he’d met Penelope. He had always known her. He’d moved to the neighborhood from New York when they were six, and she’d taken to calling him “Newbie.” They were great friends. His mom always teased him about having a little crush on her, but he always brushed it off or denied it. Then, in the ninth grade, he realized that his feelings for her went deeper than the feelings he had for his other friends. His mother had laughed when he had told her. “You should listen to your mother more often, mijo,” she had told him. “I’ve known that for ages.” Luke decided to tell Penelope about his feelings for her. He trusted their friendship was strong enough to survive if she didn’t feel the same, so what did he have to lose? Besides, he’d be a bad friend if he harbored those feelings for her and never told her. To his utter delight and surprise, she returned his feelings. And that was it. They had started dating, and they were ridiculously happy. And ridiculously in love. “I love you and I will love you forever” was frequently said between the pair during their relationship of four years and counting. And it wasn’t your normal kind of High School love, it was actual, true, deep love. Everyone knew it. Their friends, their parents, them. Even their teachers were expecting to get a wedding invitation from them one day. Penelope and Luke knew that they were it for each other, that they were soulmates, that they would get married one day. They didn’t have an exact timeline, but it didn’t matter. This was their forever, so they didn’t see a need to rush. Luke had a plan, however. But first, before he got to that: the end of their Senior Year.

Luke hadn’t even needed to ask her to go to prom, they just knew it would happen. They’d been discussing their outfits since the beginning of the school year. Penelope wore a light pink sleeveless floor-length dress with a black lace sash around her middle like a belt, and matching black lace gloves that went up to her wrist, right where the light pink rose corsage Luke gave her sat. 

Luke, who was wearing his older sister’s boyfriend’s old prom suit and a light pink tie, was absolutely stunned when he saw her. He always thought she looked beautiful, but he was completely breathless just watching her come down the stairs. He couldn’t believe he got to be the one to love her. 

Surprising no one, they were named Prom Queen and Prom King. They had the time of their lives that night, just laughing, dancing, and being young and deliriously in love.

Then, their High School Graduation. They locked eyes across the school gymnasium as they threw their caps up into the air. They found each other after and held each other for a few minutes. They were so happy. For most people, graduation was an ending. For them, it was the beginning of the rest of their lives. They had a lifetime ahead of them, a future full of marriage, children, laundry, and taxes. And they had the summer. 

It was a beautiful summer. They spent nearly every waking hour of every day together, and many of their sleeping ones. They watched sunsets, they went to parties, they went to the beach, they spent their days and nights loving each other every way that was humanly possible. 

Until one morning. Penelope woke up on that day in late August with a smile on her face, excited to see Luke and excited about what they would fill their day with. When she got down to breakfast, she was met with the somber gazes of her family members.

Suddenly worried, she asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Liliana stopped by early this morning,” her mother said, referencing Luke’s older sister. “She dropped this off.” She handed Penelope an envelope.

Penelope took it from her mother, and her heart dropped when she saw her name written across the back in Luke’s familiar handwriting. Penelope was worried. What could he possibly have to say to her through a letter that he couldn’t say to her face? Hands shaking, she opened the envelope to reveal a short letter. 

My darling Penelope,
I know you’re probably a bit confused, and I’m sorry. Let me explain. I’ve enlisted. I know we talked a lot about this being something I wanted to do, but I never told you that I had gone and done it. Last week I got a letter that told me I was expected at Basic Training by the afternoon of the day you’re reading this. I didn’t tell you any of this because I didn’t want some big dramatic farewell for a separation that’s only going to be temporary. I have to do my duty to my country, but I will come back to you, Penelope. I promise. I promise you I will come back and I’ll ask you to marry me. I’ll even marry you right then and there if you want me to, if you’re not too mad at me for this letter as a goodbye. I do hope that you’re not too mad, and that if you are, you’ll be able to forgive me. I promise you that I will come back to you, and I promise you I will write you more letters. I love you with everything that I am, and I can’t imagine my life without you in it. You are my future, my forever.
Love always, Luke

Wordlessly, Penelope walked over to the phone and called the Alvez family number. The first number other than her own family’s that she ever memorized.

“Hello?” Luke’s mom answered.

“Hi, Luisa,” Penelope answered.

“Penelope,” she replied, her voice without her normal warmth. “I was surprised to not see you at the bus stop this morning. And a little disappointed, to be frank. You understand he’s going to be gone for three months?”

“He didn’t tell me,” Penelope said, voice thick with tears. “Liliana came by this morning to drop off a letter from him for me, he didn’t tell me. I would have been there if he did.”

“Oh,” came Luisa’s stunned reply.

“Could you… could you put Liliana on the phone, if she’s there?”

“Yes, one moment.” 

Penelope heard the other woman call for her daughter, then waited a moment before the phone was picked up again.

“Penelope? I’m guessing you read the letter?”

“He didn’t tell me, Liliana, I swear. You know I would have been there if he had.”

“I know. I know. Do you want me to come over?” 

“Please.”

Despite the two-year age gap, Penelope and Liliana were quite close friends. Since the Alvez house was just down the street, Liliana was over in less than a minute. Penelope was waiting upstairs in her room for her, and was instantly enveloped in a tight, sisterly hug.

“I’m so sorry,” Liliana whispered as Penelope cried with hurt and confusion. “I can’t believe he would do that. I have no idea what he was thinking.”

“Did you read what he wrote in the letter?”

“No, I wouldn’t dare. I came right here after he got on the bus.”

Penelope pushed the paper over to Liliana, who picked it up and read it.

She sighed. “Okay. So. I might know what he was thinking. He was probably trying to do some sappy, rom-com-esque thing where he leaves you with only a letter and a promise. Like an idiot."

“That’s what I think too,” Penelope agreed. “And I’ve already forgiven him for being stupid, I just… miss him. I don’t get to see him for three more months. I’ve seen him every day since we were six. I just wish I’d gotten the chance to give him a proper goodbye.”

“I know you do,” Liliana replied, wrapping her arms around the younger girl again. “And if it helps, I think he wishes the same. He looked sad looking out at the people who were there, and when he was giving me the letter. I think he regretted not telling you. I think he wished you were there, and sad that you weren’t. I know he’s going to miss you, Penelope. I mean, come on, he could barely go through the weekends without seeing you. You were why he was excited to go to school.”

“I’m mad at him,” Penelope stated.

“And you have every right to be.”

“But I know he didn’t really want to hurt me, and that he loves me, and I love him. So I forgive him.”

“And he promised he’d write more letters,” Liliana reminded her.

“And he promised he’d write more letters.”

Luke didn’t write any more letters. Penelope waited and waited, but nothing ever seemed to come. She would get home from her part-time job, or from spending time with her friends, or even just come downstairs and ask if there were any letters for her. Nothing.

After a week, Penelope finally got the courage to ask Liliana if she had heard from him. She had. And Penelope’s heart broke all over again. She reasoned that maybe he was just waiting for her anger to cool down a bit and then he’d write her.

By week two, there were still no letters.

Eventually, a month had gone by, and Penelope had not heard a word from him. 

“Do you want me to ask in my next letter why he’s not writing to you?” Liliana asked as she once more held a crying Penelope.

Penelope shook her head. “No. It’s been a month, Liliana. You guys receive letters almost every other day. If he had wanted to write to me by now… he would have done so.”

Liliana hugged Penelope tighter. “I’m so sorry, Penelope. I can’t imagine why he would do this to you.”

Penelope finally asked the question that was weighing on her heart like a bag of bricks. “Am I… a horrible person if I end things?”

“After the way he’s been treating you? No, not at all. Don’t get me wrong, I’m heartbroken for you two, I really believed you two were it, that you’d make it work, but I support you one hundred percent, Penelope. Even if he’s my baby brother. He was stupid and he hurt you, and you don’t deserve that, especially not from someone who claims to love you.”

Penelope took a deep, shaky breath. “Thank you. Could I use one of your letters to copy the address I’m going to need to send mine to?”

“Of course.”

That night, after several internal debates and many more tears, Penelope sat down to write.

Luke
I never wanted it to come to this, but at this point, I have no choice. There are no words to describe the hurt I have felt this past month because of your actions. I have no idea how you could hurt me like this, how any part of you thought that this was okay. I love you so much, Luke, but I love myself too, and I will not allow myself to be hurt so deeply by someone who claims to love me. So this is the end. We are done. And my heart is breaking as I am writing this but my heart has been breaking since you left. You have to understand that this is the best path right now.
Penelope

Luke read the letter again and again, wishing he was misunderstanding. Knowing he wasn’t. He had been so excited when he saw a letter from her… she hadn’t written him yet. He wiped his tears away with his sleeve. He knew he shouldn’t have left the way he did, should have said a proper goodbye, should have done anything other than what he did. And now he had gone and lost her because of it. Heartbroken as he was, he knew she had every right to end their relationship. He had been callous with her. He would never make that mistake again. Not when it cost him the best thing that had ever been his. He was beyond furious at himself for messing things up to that extent.

He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small drawstring pouch. Inside was a picture of Penelope—slightly worn from kissing it each night before he went to bed—and a ring. It wasn’t much, but he’d been saving up and had gotten a little extra money from his family to be able to buy it. There were three stones on it. The center, larger, one was pink, of course, and it was framed by two smaller regular diamonds, all three sitting atop a white gold band. It would have looked perfect on her left hand. He kissed the photo one final time before slipping it back into the pouch. He was about to do the same with the ring, but something stopped him. He weighed it in his hands for a moment before taking off his dog tags necklace and slipping the ring on alongside the tags, where it would hang forever. An eternal reminder.

The breakup destroyed Penelope. Yes, she’d been the one to call it off, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t desperately hurting. It also didn't help that many of the people who had bullied her throughout High School, telling her she wasn't good enough for Luke, that he'd eventually get bored of her and leave her had doubled down since the news got out. They began not-so-subtly hinting that Luke would rather die off in a war than stay with her or break up publicly with her.

One night, her friends Jenny and Sarah convinced her to come out to a party with them, convinced it would boost her spirits. Her parents had given their permission for her to go, provided she was home by midnight.

Penelope was not home by midnight. She figured, I’m heartbroken, and I’m having fun for the first time in a month. An extra hour won’t kill them.

When Penelope got home, there was a letter there for her from her parents instructing her to stay where she was, they were out looking for her and would be back soon. Well, an extra hour might not kill her parents, but it might definitely kill her. She briefly found herself wishing her parents didn't come home just to save herself the trouble, but she instantly caught herself. No. What would she do without her parents? What about her brothers? 

She soon found out. No less than twenty minutes later, their driveway was lit up with the lights of a police car and two officers knocked on the door. "Are you Penelope Garcia?" They asked her. 

"Yes, I am." 

"What's going on?" Came a small voice behind her. 

She turned back quickly. "Nothing. Go back to bed, Carlos." 

He listened to his older sister. 

Penelope turned back to the officers and repeated her brother's question. "What's going on?"

"We're so sorry to tell you this ma'am, but your parents were hit head-on by a drunk driver who had drifted into their lane. They died on impact." 

Penelope fell to the floor. All she could think was, this is all my fault.

Penelope's lasting friendship with Liliana was somewhat of a blessing and a curse. A curse because it just kept reminding her of him. A blessing because Liliana told her when Luke was coming back so she could avoid him if she wanted to. 

She wanted, so she did. She took her things and ran, never looking back. Her brothers had been taken in by another family, they didn't need her. And that's when she met Shayne Wyeth.

Shayne was instantly taken to Penelope, and he spent months pursuing her. Eventually, he broke down her defenses. He treated her well enough, and he was okay to look at, and she was desperate to get over him. It kind of worked. 

She received a few calls from Liliana not long after she knew he had come back home. She ignored them and changed her number, cutting out the last piece–barring her brothers that she barely spoke to regardless–of her past life for good. The death of Penelope Garcia, the birth of The Black Queen.

Penelope knew her relationship with Shayne was nothing like her relationship with him , that it never would be, that nothing would ever compare, so she just had to look for second best.

Well, "second best," or more, what she was desperately trying to convince herself was second best, landed her in an interrogation room in dark clothes and makeup across from two intimidating FBI agents. Agents Hotchner and Morgan, they'd said their names were. How the mighty had fallen. She was facing a solid amount of jail time for the the hacking she'd done under Shayne's "watchful eye." Unless she took the opportunity offered to her to join the BAU, the FBI team that had arrested her. 

So Penelope did what she had been doing since two years before when he left and she ended things. She ran. She ran headfirst into a new job, dyeing her hair back to blonde, wearing the same bright and colorful clothing and accessories she always used to wear. And for the first time in years, she felt like herself again. The death of The Black Queen, the rebirth of Penelope Garcia.

"Excuse me, Gomez," came a voice from somewhere behind her. 

Penelope didn't answer, not realizing the person was calling out to her but accidentally using the wrong name. 

"Hey, babygirl!" 

She whirled at the nickname. "Babygirl?" She had only heard that once before, and it felt wrong coming from his lips. But this was different. 

"Forgive me, I–" Agent Morgan–if she remembered correctly–began to ramble. 

Penelope smiled. "Don't worry about it. What can I do for you?" 

Maybe this would be okay. Maybe this could be second best.

It wasn't. But that was okay. She and Morgan became the best of friends, she wouldn't trade that for the world. 

She had told the team of her almost-fiancé from High School, her "one that got away." 

She started to believe that maybe that kind of incredibly attractive man wasn't the kind she was supposed to end up with. After all, how well had that worked the first time? 

But then she met James Colby Baylor. An incredibly attractive man at the coffee shop she went to each day. She fixed his computer. He asked for her number. She gave it to him. Something felt off, but she decided to ignore it. She wrote it off as not being use to a conventionally attractive man showing such open interest in her. Morgan told her to listen to her gut, that something was clearly off about him, which caused a huge fight between them. He told her not to go. She went anyway. And then she got shot. 

Well that was what solidified it for her. She believed everything happened for a reason, and the universe was clearly trying to send her a message: hot guys? Not for you. They will hurt you.

So then, Kevin. He was sweet enough, she supposed, and they had a lot in common. The beginning of their relationship was rocky, especially with him not really accepting the boundaries she set down, but they got over it. And things were… good. Penelope finally felt like she had found second best, the closest to what her love with… him had felt like. But then she found out Kevin wanted to propose and she freaked out. The last time someone had said they wanted to marry her they ended up running away from her. And sure, this was fifteen years later, but that kind of hurt, that kind of betrayal, that kind of scar doesn't go away. She wasn't putting herself through that again. She tried to explain that to him. He wouldn't listen. 

"Are you against marriage? Or are you just against marrying me?" 

"Kevin, I, I'm just not ready yet." Maybe one day… maybe she could be… but she had told him about her past, why was he acting like that? 

"Yeah, well, I am." And then he did exactly what the last one had done. He walked away from her, like four years meant nothing.

And then she met Sam. He was sweet, they had fun, but it was nothing serious. There one day, gone the next without really leaving much of a mark on her life. 

And then Shayne Wyeth waltzed back into her life. Well, hacked. That was quite the case. And coming right after a workplace sexual harassment seminar revolving around the nicknames she and Morgan called each other… what a week. 

"So, I have a confession to make,” Penelope told Morgan as Shayne was being taken away by ambulance. 

He smirked. “Uh-oh.”

“You are not the first guy to call me ‘babygirl.’”

“Get out of here,” he joked, gently elbowing her in the side. 

“It’s true.”

Morgan leaned past her to look at Shayne. “It better not be that guy!”

“Oh! No! Uh-uh. Actually, it was a different guy.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow, clearly waiting for her to elaborate.

“You remember how I told you about my High School boyfriend? The almost-fiancé?”

Morgan’s jaw nearly hit the ground. “And you still let me call you that?”

“He only called me that one time!” Penelope explained. “And I didn’t like it when he said it, but when you did, I didn’t mind! And I believe that everything happens for a reason, right? So maybe I didn’t like it when he called me babygirl because the universe knew it would be important to me long after him because of you!”

Morgan smirked. “Okay, then. Now, please, tell me, what the hell is a Flarpy Blunderguff?”

That was two years before Morgan left. She knew why he was leaving, and not a part of her blamed him… but it still destroyed her. The universe must have had it out for her. It just loved taking important people from her, didn’t it? Even if it had been twenty years by that point, since he left, it still stung fresh every time someone else did.

They didn’t get a replacement for Morgan right away. Penelope didn’t know how she’d react when they finally did. It might take her a bit, but she was sure she’d eventually come to love their new team member, like it had when Alex replaced Emily. But for the moment, she was happy there was no one.

The breakup destroyed Luke. He was so angry at himself for losing Penelope because of his own idiotic teen actions. She deserved so much better than what he had done, and he knew that. As brokenhearted as he was, not a single part of him blamed her for ending things. He tried to focus on his training, on anything, really, but his mind always seemed to be bouncing, spinning, running. The only thing that had ever calmed him was the girl with the colorful rings and glasses and clothes and hair clips. Penelope. She was his peace.

When Luke came home from Basic Training he was hoping that he would run into her so he could talk to her. Not that he expected her to hear him out or take him back, but just so he could apologize to her properly. She at least deserved that. Liliana told him that Penelope had left not long after her parents died, and she had encouraged her to do so. She told Luke how furious she was at him for how callous he had been with Penelope, and the two siblings talked about it for hours. And then Luke asked what had happened to Penelope’s parents. Liliana explained everything to Luke the way it had been explained to her by Penelope. The guilt Luke felt was unimaginable. If he had only been there… he always made sure she was home in time for curfew. Or maybe if he hadn’t left her the way he had… she wouldn’t have been so heartbroken, she wouldn’t have gone, she wouldn’t have stayed. He couldn’t help but think that if it hadn’t been for him, that Penelope would have been spared so much hurt.

Luke began to run. To chase. He ran all over the world with the army, doing his best to make sure that if he could prevent someone else’s pain, he did. But no matter what he did, where he went, who he helped, it was never enough. He was always missing a feeling of completion. Of peace. He hadn’t known peace in years. On the outside looking in, though, all you would see was a dedicated soldier. Luke quickly climbed the ranks, becoming one of the best of the best, but it still wasn’t enough. He was still missing something. He had never felt that urge before, to run, to chase, like he was never in the right spot. But he followed it. When his sergeant mentioned an opening in the FBI to him, Luke put his name down and was selected. He had always had a strong drive and work ethic and seemed to excel wherever they placed him, so he kept bouncing from unit to unit, always chasing that feeling. 

In his down time, his quiet nights, he let himself think about Penelope. He wondered what her life was like. If she had moved on. He hoped she had, even if it killed him inside to admit that. He hoped she found someone who loved her better than he had. He wondered if she had gotten married, if she had kids, if she had put her tech skills to use in her career helping people like she had always wanted to do, or opened an animal shelter, or both. Luke occasionally considered looking for her, trying to track her down, but he ultimately decided against it. She had removed him from her life, and he wanted to be respectful of that. And  he was also scared. He was terrified of her still hating him. At least if he never met her, he could pretend, but he could never handle her hating him. He figured she probably did, and she had every right. But to know it? To see it? The woman he was incapable of not loving hating him? No, thank you, he’d rather not. 

He went stargazing sometimes, like he and Penelope used to do when they were younger. When he got Roxy, his dog, he brought her with him. As he stared up at the stars, he felt connected to Penelope somehow, knowing that, wherever she was, she was seeing the same stars as he was. He ran his hands through Roxy’s fur and wondered if there was a little girl out there who shared her name, the name her mother had always wanted for her. A little girl with a bright smile and her mother’s golden curls. He wondered if, under different circumstances, he might have gotten to know that little girl. If she would have had his eyes along with those golden curls. But those were just dreams, fantasies of a different life. One that he took away from himself. He wondered if Penelope still went stargazing, if she took her family, that little girl, with her, if she had them. He looked up at the night sky and asked the stars if they’d pass along a message from him to her. If they would tell her that he was still longing for her, that he still loved her, that he always would, and that he was so, so sorry.

When Luke joined the Fugitive Taskforce, it was the closest he felt to fine. Maybe because it allowed him to keep running, keep chasing, without having to uproot his life and change jobs every time. The under-cover work let him put on a new skin, focus on something else, pretend he wasn’t himself for a while. He knew he wasn’t dealing with things in a healthy way, but how do you move on from the person who was your entire life? He never tried to find someone else. He knew anyone else would be second best compared to the meteor strike that was Penelope Garcia, and he wasn’t interested. He was okay with loving her from afar. 

As he got ready for work that morning, he rubbed a mark at the center of his chest. Small scratches from where the stones and prongs of the ring had bumped and scraped against him over the course of twenty-one years. Sometimes he couldn’t help but think he deserved every last one. 

He’d been semi-working with the BAU for about a month by that point. He’d been meeting them at crime scenes and helping them track down their 13 escaped serial killers. Once they’d realized it was taking them a lot longer than they’d like, and it was very inconvenient for Luke to keep meeting them on site, it was decided he was being temporarily “loaned” to the BAU. He’d be flying back to Quantico with them on their jet in an hour.

“Agent Alvez, you’ll finally get to meet Penelope Garcia, our Technical Analyst,” the Unit Chief, Agent Hotchner, told him. 

“Oh, yes, that’s right, I can’t wait,” Luke replied, absent-mindedly spinning the ring and dogtags on his necklace around his finger, a habit of his. The first time he had heard the technical analyst’s name, he had frozen in his spot. He quickly came back to his senses, however, thinking that there was no way his Penelope Garcia would have grown up to be in the FBI. There also was a low chance that her last name was still Garcia.

“You’ll love her,” JJ promised him. 

“The way I’ve heard you all talk about her, I believe it.”

Tara then noticed what Luke was doing. “Luke, is that an engagement ring on your necklace?”

Luke blushed, hiding it back behind his shirt. This wasn’t something he normally showed off or let other people see. “Oh. Um. Yeah.”

“Proposing to your girlfriend soon?” Rossi asked.

“No, actually, I don’t have one. Haven’t had one in… twenty-one years now.”

Tara’s eyes went wide. “Single for twenty-one years but an engagement ring on your necklace? Sounds like there’s a story there.”

“You have no idea.”

“Care to share? Only if you want, of course.”

He shrugged. “Sure. Might as well.” He told them the whole story of his High School girlfriend, the one he was sure he was going to marry, and how he messed everything up. “I was a stupid kid. That’s all there is to it. So I keep this ring, the one I was going to propose with, as a reminder of what I’ve lost and what I loved and as a reminder of what I was fighting for. Why I did what I did and I do what I do. So she can live in a better and safer world even if she rightfully hates my guts.”

Tara cocked her head. “And all these years later, you still haven’t been able to get over her?”

Luke shook his head and laughed slightly. “No. She’s not the kind of girl you get over. And I’ve never been with anyone else because I know that anyone else would just be second best. I don’t want that.”

Tara seemed incredibly intrigued by his story. “That’s a really interesting thing to think about.”

Luke shrugged. “I know it seems weird to some people, but it’s always seemed right to me.” Everything he was doing, everything he had ever done, he did because he loved her and would always love her.

There was no rest for them when they landed, it was straight back to work. The team filed into the Round Table Room, Luke bringing up the rear. He froze momentarily when he saw the figure in the room waiting for them. There was no way…

“Agent Alvez, meet Agent Garcia, our Technical Analyst,” Hotch said.

Oh dear god it was her. It was really her. Luke stuck his hand out slightly, as if to offer to shake, but he waited, waiting to see what she would do, following her lead.

Ignoring his outstretched hand, she nodded curtly at him. “It’s nice to meet you.” Then she turned away and began the briefing.

Luke sat down in his seat and tried to act as if his world hadn’t just been flipped. There she was again, five feet away from him after twenty-one years, and he couldn’t even touch her. Her “nice to meet you” was like a stab to the heart, because it meant he couldn’t avoid what he’d spent the last two decades ignoring: she hated him. At one point he had known everything about her, inside and out, and once they finally reunited, she was—rightfully— pretending like she did not know him.

After the briefing, Penelope all but ran to her office. She started pacing and shaking her hands, playing with her rings, all of her stressed and upset stims. This could not be happening. It could not.

But it was. The person Penelope hoped never to see again… her first love, her first kiss, her first everything. And he was right there. And she had to pretend she had no idea what it was like to hold him, kiss him, be with him, because there was no way she was letting anyone on the team know about their history.

God, how was she supposed to keep this secret from profilers?

After the briefing, Luke was shown to what would be his desk, not that he had anything to put on it. It was adjoining Tara's desk, and across the aisle from JJ's and Dr. Spencer Reid's, although the latter was currently on vacation with his mom.

"I wouldn't be worried about Garcia's slightly frosty greeting if I were you," JJ told him. "Our agent who just left was her best friend, so she's still upset about that. However, he always called her babygirl, that was his nickname for her, so if you want to get on her good side, don't call her that."

Luke hoped his smile was convincing. "Thanks, JJ. If you guys will excuse me, I'm going to find the washroom." 

Luckily the washroom was empty, because Luke didn't want any witnesses to his panic attack. He was hyperventilating and splashing cold water on his face, hoping they'd keep his eyes from getting puffy as warm tears mixed with the running water. He didn't know how he was supposed to pretend everything was fine when the first and only person he ever loved was within reach. He knew every curve, every beauty mark on her body. And now he had to pretend she was a stranger. He thought that might kill him. He could still feel her lips on his. After all, how do you forget someone who meant the world to you? How do you erase that? She was the woman he loved and never stopped loving, and he was now face to face with her and her hatred for him. His worst nightmare come true. He never thought he'd see her again. He couldn't decide which was worse. The idea of never having seen her again, or knowing that his last memory of her would no longer be her smiling at him and telling him she loved him.

Luke straightened and dried his face. He could do this. He could pretend. As much as he was hurting, he would never let on. She was clearly over and done with him. He had to pretend it was mutual.

Luke decided to head to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee on his way back to the desk that was temporarily his. Upon entering the kitchen, however, he realized it wasn't empty. Penelope was there, making herself a cup of tea. Luke wanted to back out, but it was too late, she had seen him.

He walked deeper into the kitchen and began making his coffee. After a few minutes, he was able to force himself to say something. A soft, gentle, tentative, "Hi." 

"Not in here," she hissed back at him. She looked around them and, seeing as they were completely alone and no one was paying them any attention, she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into her office. As soon as she was finished closing the doors, she whirled on him, ready to yell, scream, give him a piece of her mind twenty-one years overdue. He didn't let her get that far. 

"I'm sorry." 

The fight was instantly gone from her. "Huh?"

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. For everything. For leaving the way I did… you have every right to be angry with me, I am so, so sorry." 

“You just… left," she said, sounding defeated.

“I know," Luke replied plainly. "I’m sorry. I should have told you. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t beat myself up over that, over ruining things with you. I’m so sorry.”

“You promised me. You promised me you were going to marry me and then you just… vanished.” She hated how broken her voice sounded. She knew he knew all of that. She was just at a complete loss at what to say.

“I know," he said again. "But, look, for the record, I did fully intend on coming back, Penelope.” God, the way he said her name. There was nothing like it. She’d never get over it. “I was going to come back from Basic Training and I was going to marry you. I promise I had every intention of staying true to that and to you. I understand if you hate me, but please know how sorry I am." 

"Did you know it was me?" Penelope asked him. "Before you showed up here, did you know I would be here?"

"No, I had no idea it was you, I swear. When they told me your name, I thought you were just someone else by the same name. I didn't think you would ever be in the FBI, and, honestly, I didn't think your last name would be Garcia anymore." 

She didn't have anything to say to that. 

"Did you know it was me?" 

"No." Normally she would have looked up the new agent the team was working with, but when she heard his name… she couldn't. She reasoned that there were plenty of people in the world named Luke Alvez, and he had never said anything about wanting to join the FBI, but she still couldn't do it. Whether she was scared of what she would find or scared of what she wouldn't, not even she knew. 

"Do they know?" Luke asked then. "About us? That I'm… who I am?" 

"No. I told them about you, of course, I mean, I've been here for over twelve years, of course I have, but I never mentioned your name." 

"Same," he told her. "They know there was someone, but they don't know she's you. I never said her name." 

"Good," Penelope said decisively. "Let's keep it that way. No one will ever know. You. Me. This. Us. Our history. It'll stay between us, and then when you leave, we never have to see or talk to each other again, deal?" 

Swallowing a lump in his throat, Luke nodded. "Deal." 

"Good. Now get out."

It was months later, and they still hadn't apprehended every escaped serial killer. 

"How many do we have left?" Luke asked Rossi. 

"Well let's see." The older man pulled out a list. "Thirteen serial killers escaped in May, and with your help, we're down to five. So why aren't you on our team full-time?" 

"It's like I told Agent Hotchner, I'm a man-hunter," Luke explained. "I'm no good to you as a profiler." 

"You're with the FBI's Fugitive Task Force. From where I'm standing, you've done us a whole lot of good." 

He sighed. "Rossi, I appreciate the offer, I do, but I can't sit around brainstorming these guys, I need the chase." With every time those words left his mouth, they became less and less true. He was barely convincing himself anymore.

Fortunately, he still seemed to be convincing Rossi, who nodded. "Fair enough."

When he got to Quantico the next morning, he was still exhausted from the night before, so he was leaning with one arm against the frame of the elevator. 

When the doors opened revealing his ride partner, his heart tightened. Penelope. "Hey," he ventured, stepping into the elevator. 

"Good morning." Her tone was icy and tight, and she was pointedly not looking at him. 

"How was your weekend?" 

"I don't really talk about my personal life with my co-workers," she snipped. 

"Really?" 

"Yeah. I keep a real low-profile here." 

He decided not to point out her bright outfit. 

Penelope realized that that point in the conversation was her perfect chance to really make it clear how over them she was, that she had moved on, that she was happy. "If you must know, I hung out with my boyfriend, who is super hot, and awesome, and totally in love with me." She did not currently have a boyfriend at that very moment, but he didn't need to know that. 

Luke's heart squeezed then shattered. "That's great. Did you guys go out, or…?" 

"No. We stayed in, and he helped me with some fingering techniques." 

His head snapped her direction, and he hoped she didn't see how he looked her up and down. 

"For my Clarinet! Which I practice and he helps me and this conversation is making me uncomfortable, and I'm sorry, I must go, Agent Hotchner needs me." 

"I made lasagna!" Luke called after her, desperately trying to hold her attention for even a second longer. 

"I do not care," she spat back. And she didn't.

That case had been personal for Luke. Daniel Cullen, the unsub they thought they were chasing, had been a target of Luke’s in the past, one he’d managed to bring down at a steep personal cost. 

They had found him again, this time, but he had no memory of who he was or what he had done. 

“It might not be permanent, right?” Luke asked Hotch, who had called him into his office. “He might get his memories back.”

“He might.”

Luke sighed. “I’ve obsessed about this for so long.” It was the one thing that could keep his mind off her. “But now, with the way it went down, I just feel… you know.” He was talking about Hotch’s desire to have Scratch, the man who attacked and continued to evade him, taken down for good. 

Hotch’s hands were clasped in front of him. “I try not to think about the ones I’m going to catch. I prefer to think about the ones I’m going to save.”

Luke raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want to catch Peter Lewis?”

“Of course I do.”

He shook his head in thought. “Brian was just a test case. He’ll do this again.”

“We have the same list,” Hotch reminded him. “We’re contacting everyone on it. But you’re right. He will try to do this again. Do you want to help catch him?”

Luke nodded slowly. “Yeah. I would.”

“Given his resources and his depth of planning, we need you full-time. It’s a commitment. You’ll have to take a full profiling load too.”

“To five hundred hours?” He couldn’t believe he was actually considering it.

“Five-sixty,” Hotch corrected. 

He knew he shouldn’t. He knew he shouldn’t. “Let’s do it.” Luke had been fighting it for months, but he just couldn't do it anymore. His brain had been buzzing for twenty-one excruciating years, but then, the second he had seen her again, it went quiet. Even now, with two decades of anger and hurt in her eyes whenever she glared at him, Penelope Garcia was his peace. He had to stay there. He couldn’t leave her. Not again. Never again.

Hotch stood up to shake his hand. “Welcome to the team.”

“Thanks.”

He made his way out of Hotch’s office toward the elevator to head home, and who was there, calling the elevator, but Penelope Garcia herself. 

She turned at the sound of the glass doors opening to see who would be joining her in the elevator, and her face fell when she saw who it was. “I will take the stairs.”

“I mean, go ahead, but unfortunately you’re going to start to get used to seeing me around here. I am now SSA Luke Alvez with the Behavioral Analysis Unit.”

“No way.” Penelope felt a flash of anger at first. Who did he think he was, coming on to her team like it was nothing? But then, her voice of reason wondered why she thought she had anything to do with his decision. It had been twenty-one years since things between them had ended, and she was over it. He definitely was too. Why should his high school ex-girlfriend being present affect his decision? Why would her presence stop him advancing his career?

“Okay, SSA in training,” Luke conceded. “But, still. I’m going to be around.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Okay.”

He stood next to her as they waited for the elevator. “So, uh, what are you doing tonight? Hanging out with your boyfriend?”

“What does it matter what we’re doing?” Penelope snapped back at him. “What are you doing?”

“Just kicking it with Roxy.”

Her blood ran cold at the name. “Huh. Who’s that?”

Luke smiled at the thought of his dog. “That’s my girl.”

His girl? His wife, girlfriend, fiancée? His daughter?

“Yeah, you should meet her some time,” Luke continued, his mouth moving faster than his brain. “You’d love her.”

“Does she love you?”  

“Yeah, she adores me.” 

I used to adore you too. “Tell her to call me when she’s come to her senses.”

Luke realized not long after, that, when telling Penelope about Roxy, he’d neglected to mention that she was, in fact, a dog. All he had said was “my girl.” Penelope probably thought he was trying to introduce her to his girlfriend or something. If he wanted to make her hate him less, that was definitely not the way. When a case let him bring Roxy in, he had the perfect opportunity to fix things. 

Mop head in hand, he walked toward the elevator where she was waiting. “Hey, clock a lot of miles on the old odometer today, huh?” he called out. 

She turned to him, clearly displeased. “Make a joke about, I don’t know, engines, or lubrication, I’m not interested.” She pointed to what he was holding in his hands. “What’s that?”

“It’s a mop head, the janitor gave it to me.”

“Gonna do some late-night cleaning?” 

“No, it’s for my dog,” he explained. “I’ve gone and bought the thirty dollar designer, sustainable, made in Tibet whatever things, and, uh, nothing. Zero. But this? This is going to be fun all night.” He turned around and let out a sharp whistle. “Roxy, come on! Come here!”

The dog came running, skipping right past her owner and into the arms of this new human who crouched down to pet her. 

“Oh my god!” Penelope exclaimed. “Roxy’s your dog? This whole time this is the Roxy, like the Roxy you said adores you, like, how could any woman not be intoxicated by your masculine wiles”

Luke’s face got warm. “I didn’t say it quite like that…”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, you kind of did.” She returned to petting the dog, a smile on her face that he hadn’t seen in over two decades. “Oh my gosh she’s adorable! Oh my gosh! See, I thought you were talking about your girlfriend, or worse, your daughter.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said as Penelope stopped petting Roxy and stood up, all three of them heading into the elevator. “I also realized that would probably make you hate me more than you already did, and I didn’t want that, so I thought this might help.”

Penelope scoffed. “So you profiled me?”

Luke shrugged, smiling. “Luke Alvez, Behavioral Analyst, that’s what I do.” That and I knew you for twelve years and dated you for four of them, I know how to make you smile.

“So… Roxy. That’s the name I—”

“Yeah. I know.” The name she had wanted to give their daughter, should they ever have one. She fell in love with the name after hearing the song “Roxanne” by The Police. That’s what they would have named their daughter, Roxanne, but they’d call her Roxy as a nickname, since no one names their child Roxy. No one names their dog Roxanne, however, so Roxy it was.

“Why?” Penelope asked. 

“Because I missed you.”

She almost said and whose fault is that? She almost said I missed you too. She couldn’t bring herself to say either. 

She tried not to think about the fact that there was no way he could have had that dog the entire time they'd been broken up. Which meant he had missed her recently. Within the last decade, at least. 

She didn't know why she felt compelled to bestow his dog with the best gifts she could find. Well, maybe she did. Maybe she felt a connection to the dog, somehow, since she had tangentially named her. 

And maybe she ignored that.

She showed up the first time with a large pink bag and a smaller box with a pink bow.

“It’s just a little something…” Penelope said in response to Luke’s what is happening look that he shot her as she approached his desk.

“For me?” He hoped he had sufficiently squashed the hope in his voice.

“No, not for you. It’s for Roxy, but you have opposable thumbs, so you can open it for her.”

He started by opening the box. “Wow, biscuits!” He tried to sound excited, but he knew his pup likely wouldn’t eat them. He likely wouldn’t let her. But Penelope was excited, and this was the first time in over twenty years she’d seemed excited to talk to him, and he wasn’t going to stomp on that.

“Yeah! They’re all organic, human-grade, quite delicious if I do say so myself. Oh! Plus…” she pointed excitedly at the pink bag, which he opened.

“It’s a sweater!” Luke was incredibly glad Penelope was showing him this moment of kindness, he was, but this sweater was bright pink. When Roxy let him put clothes on her—which was incredibly rarely since they constricted her movement—they were never bright colours. Roxy would hate the things that poor Penelope had gotten her.

Penelope hadn’t seemed to detect his apprehension yet, and was smiling widely. “Oh! Isn’t it amazing!”

He nodded as convincingly as he could. “It is… amazing.”

She caught on then. “What was that?”

Shit. “Huh? What was what?”

“You paused.”

“No, I didn’t,” he hurried to say, desperate to not make her think he was ungrateful. 

Her wide smile fell into a dejected frown. “You don’t like it.”

“No, I didn’t say that.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you might be a profiler in training, but I’m a profiler by association, and I can tell a lie when I hear one, and, liar.” In her head, she added, and I’ve been able to read you like a book since you were six.

He ducked his head before peeking his eyes back up at her. “Okay. I’m sorry. It’s…” no, he couldn’t do it. She was so excited about the sweater. “It’s the biscuits. Y’know, Roxy, she’s on a raw food diet.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. She was on an all-food diet, that was just only half of the truth.

Penelope almost seemed relieved. “Oh. They’re mostly peanut butter, but okay, my bad.” Smiling again, she pointed at the sweater. “But this is great, huh?”

Near-miss avoided, Luke nodded. “Yeah, this is… this is amazing.”

“It is.”

“And very, very thoughtful.”

She smiled wider still. “It was, wasn’t it?”

“It was. Thank you..”

“You’re welcome. Roxy’s welcome. I can’t wait to see her in it.” Her phone chimed, and her smile fell. “We got a case.”

When she came back the second time, at the end of the case, she was carrying a much smaller, much more demure brown bag. She shot Luke an almost guilty smile as she approached his desk.

He laughed softly when he saw her. “What’s this?”

“It’s a present for Roxy…”

“Are you going to do this every day?” His smile indicated he was not at all opposed.

“Although I am generous to a fault, every day would be beyond the pale, and I am nothing if not moderate.” She placed the bag on his desk with a sort of finality to it. “I was just thinking about how you and Roxy probably saw some pretty intense stuff while you were with the rangers, and maybe a pink sweater isn’t her thing. Not that pink isn’t super badass, just, sweaters are restrictive, and this may be more her jam.”

He opened the bag to find an army-green collar. His face lit up. “Hey, this, this is dope.”

She found herself smiling too. “You like it?”

“Yes. Thank you. Roxy thanks you.”

Penelope let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, good! I knew I’d eventually get it right. It feels good to have gotten it right. I may not be able to prevent myself from random acts of dog kindness. Not every day, mind you, because that would be excessive.”

Luke, caught up in the joy of having one of the longest conversation they’d had in roughly two decades, found himself teasing her lightly the way he used to. “Oh, yeah, and you’re the queen of moderation.”

She lifted her chin up slightly, as if indignant. “I am. The queen. Of it.”

Rossi approached them then. “We’re heading to O’Keefe’s for a drink. You in?”

Penelope threw her head back and groaned. “Oh hell yes! I’m ready to call ahead for my margarita.”

Rossi then turned to the younger man. “Luke, you joining us tonight?”

“No,” Penelope cut in. “This one doesn’t do the whole bonding-over-drinks thing.”

As if purely to anger her, Luke smirked. “I’m in.”

Her expression dropped. “What? Oh, you’re not fooling me, Alvez.” She turned to fall into step with Rossi. “He just wants us to think he’s a smoldering basket of mystique and contradiction. I don’t buy it.” She was glad Luke was walking behind her so he couldn’t see her mortification at what she had said. Well, the contradiction part was true. Nothing about him made sense anymore.

“Hey, I just want a beer,” Luke protested as they all stepped into the elevator.

“There may be a glimmer of hope for you yet, Newbie.” Wait, that sounded too nice. She’d been too nice lately. She needed to distance herself again, or she was only going to get hurt again. “But, just so you know, the new guy pays.”

That night, when reflecting on what had gone over the past few days, Penelope had to fight to ignore the warm and fuzzy feeling that spread throughout her when Luke smiled at her after she gave him the gifts. Especially when she gave him the collar. 

Yes. The gifts, the fuzzies, what she had said about him, all of that would be ignored.

They kept ending up in the elevator together. Luke was a little bit worried she would start to think he was doing it on purpose, which he wasn’t. Well. Most of the time. 

It made sense that, eventually, with the frequency that they rode the elevator together, if the elevator ever happened to break down, they would be together when it happened. It was just that neither of them had even considered that it would happen.

Until the day it did. 

There was a shudder, a jolt, a flicker of light, and the elevator stopped dead. 

“Are you kidding me?” Penelope groaned. She pressed the emergency call button and was told that the engineers were on it, but they had no idea how long the problem would take to resolve. 

After a few minutes of awkward silence, Luke finally made himself say something. “Didn’t this happen to us in the mall once when we were younger?”

Despite herself, Penelope laughed. “Yeah. It did. How old were we?”

He thought back. “We were… fourteen.”

She did the math. Oh. “Was that… before or after, do you remember?”

“Before,” he answered quickly. “It was definitely before. Um. It was how I realized I liked you. Because I was sad when it started working again. I didn't want it to be over.”

Penelope found herself blushing for some reason. “Oh. I don't think you ever told me that.”

They ended up stuck in that elevator for well over an hour. They talked the entire time, just reminiscing about “the good old days.” It felt nice just to be able to talk to each other again. 

When they got released from this elevator, Penelope asked him, “So, are you sad this is over?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. 

Luke didn’t even hesitate. “Yes.” 

Penelope was more than slightly stunned. “What?”

He shrugged as he stepped out of the elevator. “I always like spending time with you, Penelope. And I've never really hidden that.”

Strangely enough, she felt a little sad it was over too.

She couldn’t get the encounter off her mind for the rest of the night

When she finally fell asleep, she dreamed about him. Them. Their story.

Penelope and Luke were seven years old. Their class had just done an art project where they all drew some of their favorite things, and the teacher had put up all the drawings around the classroom. Luke and Penelope were standing in the classroom staring at the pictures. 

“I don’t really like my drawing,” Penelope said out of nowhere. “I think it’s kind of bad.”

“What? No it’s not!” Luke protested. “It’s the best drawing ever. It’s my favorite.”

“But look at Suzy H’s drawing! Hers is much better.”

“Well you’re the only one who can draw cats like that. And I really like cats!”

Penelope giggled. “Luke, you're allergic to cats! That’s why when we have playdates, Mr. Whiskers has to stay in my parents’ room!”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean I can’t think cats are cool! Besides, why wouldn’t your picture be my favorite, you’re my best friend!”

Penelope thought about that for a moment. “Do you think it’s weird that we’re best friends?”

Luke looked at her, confused. “No. Why would I think that?”

“Some people tell me it’s weird that my best friend is a boy.”

“I don’t think it’s weird that I’m a boy and you’re a girl and we’re best friends. You think I’m fun and nice, I think you’re fun and nice, so we’re best friends!”

“Some people tease me about you being my boyfriend.”

Luke’s eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. “But I’m not old enough to be your boyfriend! You’re not old enough to have a boyfriend! Why would they think I’m your boyfriend? We’re only seven, and my mom says I’m not allowed to get a girlfriend until I’m at least fourteen. That’s two whole times our age right now! That’s forever away.”

Penelope nodded. “You’re right. Boyfriends and girlfriends are for when we’re older. But now I just like being your best friend!”

“Me too.”

“You’ll be my best friend forever, right, Luke?”

He smiled. “Obviously!” He playfully threw one of his arms around her shoulder. “Why wouldn’t I want to be your best friend forever?”

Penelope looped her arm around his back too. “Even when we’re grown ups?”

Luke nodded. “Yes. Definitely.”

Penelope was fourteen when she knew she liked Luke. And he wasn’t the only one. She had other little crushes on some of the boys in her classes. Some of the girls too, which wasn’t ever something that struck her as odd. If Luke, her best friend, could have crushes on girls, so could she. But those were really just people she thought were cute. She liked Luke. She knew Luke. Luke knew her. 

“Hey, so you know how there’s a football game on Friday?” Luke asked her one random Tuesday morning. 

“Yeah, we’re still going together, right?” They went to every football game together. 

“Yeah, definitely, I was just wondering if you would like to grab milkshakes with me after? At the diner that’s close to our street?”

Penelope lit up. “Yeah! That sounds like fun!” She loved spending time with Luke. Even if he didn’t like her back, she was glad he wanted to spend his time with her.

And so they did. And it was nice. They’d done it before, but that time he suggested they get one big milkshake with two straws and split it. He told her to pick the flavor, and they got strawberry. It was bright pink with chunks of strawberries throughout it. It was delicious.

On their walk back home, Luke suddenly grabbed her hand and intertwined their fingers. Penelope’s heartbeat went haywire and she was slightly worried her hands were getting sweaty. He’d never done that before. 

Before they got to their street, he tugged on her hand lightly, urging her to stop. “Hey, wait for a second? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Yeah, what’s up?” 

He took a deep breath. “So, the thing is, I have a crush on you. I have for a bit now. And when I asked you if you wanted to come with me tonight I meant it as a date, so I was super excited when you said yes. But then I realized that this isn’t the first time we’ve done this, so I wanted to make sure you knew. I totally understand if you don’t like me back, just, you’re my best friend, you should probably know.”

Penelope’s eyes went wide and her jaw hit the floor. She didn’t dare let go of his hand. “You have a crush on me?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve actually had a crush on you for a while now.”

His eyes lit up. “Wait, really?”

She smiled and nodded. “Mhmm!”

“So… would you like to be my girlfriend?”

She nodded some more, bouncing slightly. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d really like that.”

His body jerked slightly, as if he was trying to lean forward but decided against it, until he gave in and leaned over to kiss her cheek.

Penelope giggled, biting her bottom lip in an effort to contain the massive grin spreading across her face.

They made the rest of their way home, joined hands swinging between them. He walked her to her door like a proper gentleman, and kissed her on the cheek one more time before saying goodnight and heading back to his house. 

“Someone has a big smile,” her mother remarked when she came in the door. 

She couldn’t even hold it in if she tried. “Luke just asked me to be his girlfriend!”

“Oh, how exciting! I was wondering when that was going to happen.”

“Wait, what?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” her mother said, kissing her on the head. “It was so obvious.”

That night, when she went to bed, she called Luke. They stayed on the phone for hours, talking about how much they liked each other, when they realized, and just how much they really, really liked each other.

They were at their first Homecoming dance, swaying together in that slightly awkward way that teenagers who are figuring out what it means to be in their first relationship do. 

“Penelope?” Luke asked, his voice quavering with nerves.

“Mhm?”

“Can I… kiss you?”

Penelope’s eyes lit up as she grinned, nodding her consent. 

He slowly leaned down and placed his lips on hers. It was just a small kiss, their lips quivering slightly, their heartbeats racing, but it was a kiss nonetheless. Soft and sweet. Just like them. 

When they pulled back they were smiling, so they leaned back in to kiss again, much more sure of themselves this time. 

They kissed goodnight as he dropped her off at the end of the night, too.

Their next kiss was the opposite of awkward, and they were the opposite of nervous. 

Penelope dragged him off to a secluded corner of the library at their lunch break and kissed him. 

His hands went right to her waist and back holding her close. He breathed through his nose so he didn’t have to break away from her. He couldn’t believe that he got to be the one to kiss her. That she wanted him to kiss her. 

They spent their lunch hour making out like the teenagers they were.

They had been dating for six months. Walking home together from school was something they had done practically the entire time they had known each other, but it felt different once they were in a relationship. It felt like more. Maybe it was the way they held hands, or maybe it was just because of the label of the relationship. Regardless, they loved it. 

It was on one of these walks that Luke suddenly said, “I think I love you.”

Penelope’s heart started hammering. “You do?”

"Yeah. Everything they tell you love feels like in books and movies, the way I have always imagined love would feel, I feel that for you. I love you."

A warm feeling started in Penelope’s chest and spread all the way through her body, to the tips of her fingers and toes. “I love you too.”

Luke’s entire face lit up. “You do?”

“Mhmm.”

He leaned over and kissed her, unable to contain his joy. She kissed him back.

There were some people at their school who didn’t like that Luke and Penelope were dating. Girls who had crushes on Luke and were jealous, people who seemed to simply dislike Penelope for no evident reason, and just generally mean people.

The bullying got especially bad when they were fifteen, and a group of girls seemed to make it their sole purpose to make Penelope’s life miserable, picking on her body shape specifically. 

It was on a random Tuesday afternoon when Luke and Penelope were walking the halls hand-in-hand and one of those particularly nasty girls decided to make a comment. 

“Ugh,” she stage-whispered to her friends, knowing Penelope could hear her. “He could do so much better than that whale.”

Luke saw red. Penelope tugged his hand to try to keep walking and get away, but he would not let these people talk about her that way. “Hey!” he snapped at them. “How dare you talk about her that way? She is the most beautiful person I have ever met, and I happen to love her! She’s more beautiful on the inside than you could ever be, so you can go right ahead an fuck off!”

“Language, Mr. Alvez!” A passing teacher reprimanded with a smile. 

“Sorry, Sir,” Luke called out.

That teacher would later confess to the pair that he knew the bullying had been going on and had been trying to get administration to take action, but nothing was happening, which was why he didn’t report that particuler interaction to anyone, but if there were ever any physical altercations, he would need to.

That weekend, Luke came over to hang out as he always did, and he found Penelope in her room—he was allowed to be there provided the door remained open—in a very pretty floral dress and full face of makeup, staring at herself in the mirror. 

“Did I forget something? Did we make plans to go out?”

“No, I just… I wanted to make myself look pretty.”

“What do you mean?”

She turned to him at last, tears in her eyes. “I don't look good, Luke.”

“What are you talking about?” He came up to her and rested his hands on her sides. “You look so amazing. When I look at you, nothing else exists, you're the only girl in the world.”

She started crying in earnest, and Luke wrapped his arms tight around her. 

He kept kissing her face and telling her how beautiful she was, telling her how much he loved her. He would do it a million times a day for as long as she needed for the message to get through to her. 

Luke came over the following day, and this time he had a box with him. 

“What are these?” Penelope asked as she rifled through the colorful items in the box. 

“Paper hearts,” he answered. “I stayed up all night making them and cutting them out of any colored paper I could find. Liliana helped me.” 

“What are they for?” 

Luke knelt down in front of where Penelope was sitting and took her hands on his, looking right into her eyes. “You are going to point out every part of yourself that you are feeling insecure about or don't like, and I am going to stick a heart there to remind you that I love every piece and part of you, okay?”

She nodded, if a bit apprehensively. “Okay.” She pointed to her underarms first, and when she felt the light caress of his fingers on the soft skin as he stuck a heart there, she began to cry. 

Luke looked at her, love-filled eyes meeting hers full of tears. He leaned in and placed a soft kiss to her lips before continuing on with his mission.

By the end, he had managed to lift her spirits some, and she smiled when she looked in the mirror and the visual display of Luke’s love for her. 

Luke stood behind her and smiled at their reflections, his arms wrapped around her waist. “You are the single most beautiful person I have ever met,” he whispered to her.

“You're just saying that because you love me. That's biased thinking.”

Luke considered that. “Is it? Don't you want the person who loves you to think you're beautiful? I love every part of you, Penelope, because you are beautiful inside and out. Especially out. And especially in. You are especially beautiful.”

She laughed dryly and rested her head against his. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Yes, you do,” Luke protested. “You deserve someone who loves you and thinks you’re beautiful and makes sure to tell you both things whenever they can. I’m so lucky that I get to be that person. That you chose me to be that person. You are so beautiful. I’m sorry if you don’t always believe that about yourself, but I do. I know it. And I will fight for you to get there, because you deserve to know it too.”

They went on dates all the time. They would go on long walks, they’d go out for meals, stargaze, go to the park.

That last one was a favorite of theirs. They’d walk around, sit on benches, have a picnic in the shade of the trees, or he’d push her on the swings. 

“Luke!” Penelope would squeal. “It’s too high! I feel like I’m going to fall!”

“You won’t, I can see you, you’re fine. Do you trust me?”

“Yes, I trust you!”

“Then you won’t fall. I promise.”

Penelope believed him. She meant what she said. She trusted Luke with her life. He would never let her down.

They were seventeen years old and sitting under a tree after school. Penelope was reading the book her English teacher had assigned, and Luke was resting his head on her lap and tossing a football up in the air and catching it. He’d joined the team a year before, and was decently good at it. 

Toss. Catch. “I love you, Penelope.” Toss. Catch.

Penelope closed her book, set it to the side, and ran her fingers through his hair. “I love you too, Luke.” She leaned down and pressed a kiss to his head.

He faked a scowl at her. “You missed my lips.”

“Oh, my apologies,” she giggled before kissing him properly.

Luke smiled softly at her as she pulled away. “I’m gonna marry you when we get out of here. You know that?”

Penelope giggled again, continuing to run her fingers through his thick curls. “Yeah, right, honey. How are you going to afford a ring?”

“I’ll make you one. Then I’ll marry you with it.”

“I'm not worth all that effort.”

“Yes you are. I'm gonna love you forever, Penelope. I promise. And I don't break promises.”

There was an intensity, a sincerity in the way he looked at her. She truly believed he would love her forever. That he would marry her one day.

It was their last summer together when she realized how much taller than her he really was. They had been a similar height when they started dating, but she reached her tallest height not long after. Luke kept growing, and ended up towering over her. She loved it. She loved how easy it was for him to cuddle her or lean down to kiss her on the head. She loved him. He loved it too. And he loved her too. They just… loved each other.

Their love had grown and changed with them over the four years of their relationship. They weren’t the same people they had been when they got together, but they had loved each other with all they were. They couldn’t wait for their future together.

When Penelope woke up the next morning, she rolled into per pillow and groaned. Luke, in the few months he’d been with the team, had been nothing but kind to her. She’d clung to the memory of the way he had hurt her to justify the anger she still held for him, and was dedicated to riding the “I Miss Morgan” wave as far as she could in terms of justification for the rest of the team. That dream would not help her mission. Luke had been incredibly sweet and loving to her the entire time they were together, and even before. 

She thought about the time when he had covered her in those paper hearts. One person’s opinion could not “fix” any of her internalized issues, she knew that, and he knew that. But he did help. Knowing the person she had loved thought she was beautiful was a step on the way to believing it. And then he still left her. He made her feel special and then he dropped her like she was nothing. It had really wounded her self-esteem, thinking, “If the best one left me, what does that say about me?” It was probably one of the reasons she settled for Shayne. Eventually she healed, caring more about what she thought of herself than what others thought of her. Which was probably why she hadn't seriously dated anyone since Kevin. Her standards were much higher, much more in line with what she deserved.

But still. She needed a reason to remind herself that she hated Luke. He had hurt her. He was not the kind of person she needed to be dreaming about.

Her reason came relatively quickly that morning. The team began to filter into the Round Table room where photos of Tara's brother Gabriel were up on the screen. They all recognized him, even Luke. 

“It was a social experiment,” Reid explained. “She wanted to see how long you could keep a confidential conversation private, and you made it… twelve hours.” 

“Damn,” Luke laughed. “I had you down for six.”

Penelope saw red. “You know, guys? I thought you were my friends, but you suck. You all suck.” She marched out of the room, but not before spitting one last remark at Luke. “Especially you, New Guy, but then you always suck.”

Luke felt sick. What had he been thinking, betting on that? Especially when he knew she could keep a secret, she was keeping one at that very moment. One that likely protected him and his reputation from hatred from the team, should they ever find out. He needed to work harder on his mission to make her not hate him as much as she did. So far all he was doing was make her hate him more. He needed to make up for things, or maybe she'd reconsider keeping their past a secret.

Luke had been nominated by the team to go to Penelope's office and ask her for something. “Thanks, Penny.” The words slipped out of his mouth before her could stop them. 

Penelope whirled on him, fires of fury in her eyes. “Don't call me that.” It was her nickname when she was a child. When she became a teenager, she told people to stop calling her that, saying she'd grown out of it. The only person who could continue to call her that had been Luke. “I outgrew that nickname decades ago, and even if I didn't, you have definitely outgrown your right to use it.” 

“I know, it slipped out, I'm so sorry, it won't happen again. I promise.” 

Oh yeah because your promises mean so much. “You have what you need. Get out.”

She did not have to tell him twice. He hightailed it out of there, heart pounding. He was slipping. If he kept that up, she was probably going to find out things neither of them wanted her to know. Strangely, he'd thought that, in some weird way, seeing her would help him get over her. He'd realize she wasn't the same person he had fallen in love with in High School. After all, who was the same person as they were in High School? He had only been with the BAU for a few months, but it hadn't taken him long to realize that she was, in fact, the same. Sure, she was a little different, she was stronger. Harder. More adult. She'd lived life. But everything she had ever done had always revolved around the same principles, and he could tell that nothing had truly changed. She was exactly the same kind of person one could expect her to grow into, and he found himself loving her even more for it. If that was even possible.

If there was one thing twenty years could make a person forget, it was how good someone could be with words. And Luke Alvez had a way with words. Something about his honey and gravel voice had even the most innocent of phrases setting Penelope's entire body, mind, heart, and soul on fire. She told herself it was hatred. She told herself it was hatred.

She had been brought along on a case where the unsub was hacking cars, figuring that her expertise might be more useful on the ground than from Quantico. Prentiss was staying behind to try to help out Reid and his lawyer, since his hearing was set to be soon, so Rossi was acting as Unit Chief in her absence. He’d assigned Luke, Penelope, and JJ to the crime scene to see if they could figure anything out.

Luke and JJ were walking on the street, while Penelope was slightly further behind them, still on the curb of the sidewalk. As soon as Luke noticed her, he walked over to the curb and offered her his hand with a dramatic flourish. She didn’t want to take his hand, but getting off the curb onto the road could be difficult enough in heels, nevermind the gorgeous—although rather tight—dress she was wearing that day, so she did. Holding his hand felt so familiar to her, and it somehow made her heart swell and tighten at the same time. The second both her feet were back on the pavement, she ripped her hand from his.

“I don’t see any skid marks…” JJ was saying to the man with them who was walking them through the crime scene.

“There weren’t any,” he told her. “Not for either accident.”

“Well if the unsub likes to watch,” Luke said, “the question is, where is he watching from?”

Penelope nodded, wondering the same thing. “Yeah, because this is too open for our guy to be able to comfortably watch from outside.” She noticed out of the corner of her eye how Luke gave her his full attention while she was speaking. She ignored both it and him, staring straight forward.

As the other three contiued talking, Penelope took a moment to look around the area. That was when she saw it.

“Right there,” she said, pointing behind her. “Traffic camera.”

“Those cameras are closed-circuit,” the man with them told her. “Florida D.O.T. has hundreds of them. They only provide real-time visuals of current traffic.”

“Exactly. They’re everywhere. And they can be hacked.”

Luke had always been able to practically read her mind. To know exactly what she was thinking. “So he can hack into any one of them and watch in real time.”

“Yes he can, Newbie.” She was pleased that she was understood, but she wasn’t about to show it.

It wasn’t until a few days later, after another victim had been claimed, that the two of them were working directly together again. That time, they were both at the police station doing research into the latest victim.

“There has to be some kind of connection between the unsub and Veronica Perotta,” he said, thinking out loud. Poor Veronica had been one of the most recent victims. “I mean, he targetted her outside her home. He had to have had some knowledge of her daily routine. This… this was personal.” He didn’t exactly mean to be, but he was leaning down into Penelope’s space in order to see her computer screen. There were no additional chairs, so he had one hand on the back of her chair and the other on the desk to support his weight as he leaned forward.

Once again, she made a point of avoiding eye contact with him. She’d pretty much run out of excuses to be rude to him—at least that others were aware of—so she had elected to be civil to the bare minimum with him. She may have to work with him, but she didn’t have to be his friend. Despite how hard that was becoming. “I’m looking through Veronica’s social media now. She was single… she had recently joined something called Amorous Intrigue.”

“The dating website.” His voice had a slight tinge of recognition to it.

“Oh. Is that what that is? Is it good? Maybe I should join.” She caught her mistake instantly. “Not that I’d want to join something you know about, or that I need a dating website, because I don’t.”

Luke was glad she was facing away from him so she couldn’t see the way he was looking at her mournfully. He knew full well she didn’t need a dating website. Some of his friends had convinced him to make an account years before, but it had been pointless. He was looking for her in every woman he met on there. “If the unsub needed a dating website, it was because he had trouble meeting women,” he explained.

“Well, let’s see if she was dating anyone on Amorous Intrigue.”

She dramatically enunciated the words Amorous Intrigue, and Luke had to press his lips together to keep from laughing. Even after over twenty years, she was still every bit as endearing as ever, and he was hopelessly, amorously, intrigued.

“She was pinged a few times,” Penelope discovered after a few clicks. “But those conversations didn’t go anywhere.” A few more clicks. “Wait, here’s somebody. Jonathan Rhodes… he pinged her three, no, four times. She ignored him. She must have rejected him just off his profile.

“What’s weird about his profile? Can you pull it up?”

“Yeah. Jonathan enjoys games of the video variety, mostly single-shooter and…” despite herself, she caught Luke’s eye. “Driving games. Uh, he’s into computers, and he was a sound tech engineer at a local radio station.”

“Let me guess: W-U-K-O?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. After she blew him off, he cyber-stalked Veronica for months.”

“Who else rejected Jonathan’s pings on Amorous Intrigue?”

“I don’t know, he didn’t really put himself out there that much.” She was sure he could pick up on the slight note of panic in her voice.

“That would only intensify the rejections.”

“Here’s somebody! Alyssa Miles, totally his type.”

“That’s his next target, can you pull up an address?”

“Yep. Just sent it to your phone.”

“All right. Grab your laptop, Hotshot, let’s go!”

Both of them temporarily froze when he called her “hotshot,” but didn’t address it. Instead, Penelope gathered her things and followed him, despite calling out, “What? I’m not going with— I don’t go with! I am precious cargo!”

Once more, Luke had to press his lips together. He already knew just how precious she was. 

When the two of them arrived at Alyssa Miles’ house, it was already too late. He’d beat them there, and now they were both in the wind. They called the rest of the team to fill them in on what they found. 

“Hey, Luke,” JJ said, answering.

“We’re at Alyssa’s house. Car’s here, no signs of a struggle, I think he abducted her.”

As they spoke, Penelope set up her laptop on the hood of Alyssa’s car. 

“The local P.D. says that he’s not in his apartment and his car’s gone,” JJ informed them.

Penelope was confused. “So then why the change in the modus operandi?” Yes, she was aware she could say method of operation. She didn’t care. Modus operandi had more spunk to it.

“It’s part of his escalation,” JJ explained. “It’s not enough for him to watch anymore, he what he craves is physical contact.”

“His confidence is up,” Rossi remarked. “He was ready to step out of the shadows.

“He needs to be a part of it,” Stephen stated. “And he wants to experience the moment of impact, even if it means he doesn’t walk away from it.”

“We need an APB and to figure out where he’s taking her.” Rossi said that generally, but the comment was undoubtedly directed at Penelope.

Penelope poised her fingers at the ready in front of her keyboard. “Well, in order to have an All Points Bulletin, I need to have points. And he hacked into the DMV and deleted his entire account, so I can’t find a car he’s registered to, let alone a license.”

“Well he’s gotta drive a 2013 Meridian,” Stephen mused. “Those were his first crashes.”

There was a pause of reflection before JJ answered him. “Right. And he chose those because he already figured out how to hack his own.”

“That makes sense,” Penelope told them. “That narrows it down.”

The team continued to give Penelope instructions and specifications to narrow down her search, and the words seemed to skip right past her ears and go straight to her fingers at the speed at which she was inputting them. Luke stared at her, rapt, as she worked. He had never seen that side of her before. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her.

Unfortunately, Penelope noticed, and she was not pleased. “Stop staring at me when I’m search engining! It’s weird!”

Luke, feeling a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, quickly turned away. “I’m not… staring…” He was. He totally was staring. He couldn’t help it. She was talented, she was intelligent, she was beautiful… she was incredible. He had been in awe of her his entire life. He didn’t think that was likely to stop.

Fortunately, no one had time to dwell on Luke’s embarrassment, as Penelope found the license of the unsub and released the APB. Luke, in an effort to put some distance between him and the woman who always held his attention, he walked to the driver’s side door of Alyssa’s car, where he found her purse and began rifling through it.

“He’s disabled the GPS, so we can’t find him that way, I’m going to need another way in,” she told him.

He began to throw Alyssa’s belongings on the hood of the car. “Well, can you hack directly into the car?”

That was the wrong question to ask. “Well, of course I’ve already tried that, because that’s, you know, what I do, but he’s put a firewall around the vehicle’s controller area network.”

Reaching the bottom of the purse, Luke found it devoid of one thing. “It looks like Alyssa managed to keep her phone. So if she has it on her, then maybe you could…”

She didn’t need him to finish the thought. She had always been able to read his mind. “Yeah! Yeah, that’s helpful. You’re helpful, sometimes.”

That was the closest thing to a compliment he’d received from her in over twenty years.

Penelope returned to her computer. “Uh… she’s disabled the location services, but I can easily override that… they’re two miles west of here, heading north on the Fremont parkway.”

He knew they didn’t have enough time to wait for anyone else to get there. They had to be the ones to chase him. “All right, we got this, let’s hit it.”

Penelope hesitated for a second at the thought of being alone in a car with him again, but knew she didn’t have a choice, so she grabbed her laptop and ran as fast as he could in her lovely but completely impractical heels. “I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming!”

In a matter of minutes, they were behind the unsub. “I’ve got eyes on him,” Luke told her. “Right up there, do you see?” He swerved around another car to get closer.

Penelope’s laptop almost slid from her lap. “Do you have to be so lurchy? I get carsick!” You know this.

Luke watched, confused, as the unsub continued to swerve around cars up ahead. “What’s his endgame here? Y’know, previously he hijacked a car to target a woman. Now he’s got the target in the car with him.” He didn’t expect her to answer his question, he was mainly talking it through out loud for his own benefit. And he liked the excuse to talk to her. His stomach fell as he watched the unsub’s car make a sharp turn off the road. “P– Garcia, I think he’s going to crash. Where does that road go?”

“A crash site. Literally. It T-bones into a loading dock about a mile and a half up.”

He reached across and grabbed her arm to brace her. “All right, hang on,” he said, copying the sharp turn.

“Oh my god,” she stammered repeatedly, both at the speed at which the car was turning, and at the unexpected contact.

“Notify local P.D.,” he instructed, letting go of her. 

“I already let Bradenton P.D. know!”

Regretfully, he said, “Garcia, I need you to hack it.”

“I’m in the middle of hacking it!” Penelope snapped back. “Don’t tell me I need to hack it while I’m hacking it, okay? He’s just, he’s very good.”

“He’s not as good as you, okay? Now you just focus. And hurry.” He reached across once more to rest his hand on her arm, comforting, this time. As if she wanted or needed his comfort. 

“Okay,” she gasped. No. She did not get butterflies at the way he said that so sincerely. No. She did not. She did. Not. So what if that made her think of the way he praised her endlessly in a very similar manner when they were together. That didn’t mean anything. He didn’t mean anything to her anymore. The end of road was getting closer and closer. “Oh god, oh god, I cannot die in this car with you! I swear to god, Alvez, if I die here I will kill you!”

In another lifetime, he would have made some snarky remark about how she wouldn’t be able to, because she would be dead. In that lifetime, however, he went for comfort instead, keeping his hand on her arm. “Nobody’s going to die today, all right?”

She wasn’t quite sure she believed him.

One final turn, and they could see the building they were set to crash into.

“Garcia, we’re running out of road here.”

“I’m throwing a second ECU into boomtron mode, I think I got in.”

He had no idea what any of those words meant, but whatever she had done must have worked, because the car in front of them began to slow down.

Luke was out of the car the second it stopped, gun raised and screaming at the unsub to put his hands up. Penelope raced to the other side of the car, cutting the poor girl free, and taking her into a comforting hug.

After everything and everyone was processed, Luke approached Penelope, trying to check in on her. “Are you o–”

She cut him off sharply. “Don’t.” She didn’t want to be comforted. Not by him, at least.

He took a step back. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

She laughed dryly. “Sorry. Yeah, I’m sure you are.”

He knew she wasn’t just referring to the day’s events, but to everything that had transpired between them, so he kept quiet. Yes, he was sorry. But that didn’t mean she was willing to be his friend.

They didn’t even have time to change after getting home from the case before they had to go to Reid’s hearing. By pure coincidence, Penelope found herself sitting beside Luke. Emily was on the other side of her, but still. Luke. Reid had her full focus, though. After all, he was practically her baby brother. She tried to focus on the fact that she’d soon be able to hold him in her arms for real, since Rossi had said he was willing to post bail, no matter how high it was set.

But bail wasn’t set. The judge denied it, claiming Reid was a flight risk. Reid had to stay in custody until his trial, something that was potentially months away. 

Penelope looked around her to see if the others were as shocked as she was, temporarily locking eyes with Luke, but pointedly ignoring the concern for her she saw there. She stood up then, desperate to keep Reid in her sights as long as possible as he was led out of the courtroom.

Luke saw how devastated Penelope was, and couldn’t help himself as he stood up and held her, one hand around her shoulders and the other hand on her arm. He was expecting her to brush him off, but she didn’t.

Distantly, Penelope was aware that the angle of the person holding her meant that it must have been Luke and not Emily, who was to her left, but it didn’t register with her. She was too distraught to care. His arms stayed around her and gently guided her out of the courtroom as they all left. The second they were out of the room, she snapped back to reality and ripped herself away from him.

“Do you need a ride home?” JJ whispered to her, noting how upset her best friend was, and how she likely wasn’t in much of a position to drive.

Penelope was choking back tears. “Please.”

Luke’s chest, throat, and eyes felt like they were burning with unshed tears of his own. He knew he had no right to wish that things were different between them, but that didn’t change the fact that he did. If things were different, he would hold her close and she would cry into his chest the way she always had when things got tough. His arms ached, they literally ached, to hold her. To pull her in. He wanted to know if she still got calmed down when someone played with her hair the way she used to when they were together. He wondered if she still fell asleep in a second when someone cradled and held her. He sighed. He had no right to wonder that. What they had was a lifetime ago. It didn’t matter that he’d love her until the day he died, she wasn’t his. And she never would be again.

After that day, Penelope told herself she needed to really limit the amount of time she allowed Luke to be around her. The way he spoke to her and acted around her wasn’t good for her soul.

A few weeks later, Luke was walking down one of the halls of offices and heard soft crying coming from Penelope’s lair. He knew he probably shouldn’t, that she wouldn’t want him to be there, but he couldn’t help himself. She was crying, and he needed to know what was wrong so he could fix it. He couldn’t fix what had hurt her all those years ago, but maybe he could help her now. 

He tentatively entered her office, closing the outer door behind him. “Hey, are you okay?”

She clearly hadn’t heard him come in, if the stunned expression she was wearing when she turned around in her chair to face him was any indication. “Oh my god. Oh my god.” She hurriedly turned away again, grabbing at tissues and wiping her eyes. “Yes.” She sniffled. “I’m… I’m fine.”

He took a few steps deeper into her office. “You don’t seem fine.” I’ve seen you fine. I know when you’re fine. You’re not fine, I know it. Please, talk to me. 

She stood up then, coming to talk to him. “Look. Really really really, I’m okay. So go away. Please?”

Luke walked over to the inner door of her office, but glanced back at her. The please in and of itself was enough to make it abundantly clear to Luke that something was very wrong. This Penelope, the one who hated him for the way he had hurt her, would never plead with him for anything. So, instead of walking out the door as he was sure she expected him to do, he closed it, shaking his head. “I know I may not be the someone you want to talk to, actually I’m probably dead last, but I cannot walk away with you like this. You know I can’t.” He wanted to hold her, to comfort her, to tell her it was all going to be okay, but he couldn’t.

Penelope pouted and turned away from him again, wishing she had the strength to push him away, but she didn’t fight him on it.

“I know you went to visit Reid,” he pushed. “Is that what this is about?”

His words made her shoulders slump, and she nodded at him. “He’s hurt.”

“How bad?”

“Like, really bad. Like, he should be in protective custody bad.” Her voice began to get thick with tears again. “I told him I was gonna march into the warden’s office and give him a piece of my mind, but…”

“But Reid said not to,” Luke guessed.

Penelope gasped, trying not to let the tears overwhelm her. “He said it would just make things worse.”

“Prisons are run on cultural alliances,” he told her. “Does he have any friends that he’s made in there?”

She nodded. “Yeah. He said he had a guy named Delgado, and there’s another guy named Shaw. Shaw was able to get him off a cot and into a cell.”

Luke’s ears perked up. “Shaw. Did he say Calvin Shaw?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. All Reid said was Shaw.”

He considered everything for a minute. “All right, look. When I was with the fugitive task force, a lot of my work involved talking to the Bureau of Prisons. I’m gonna see if I can get another set of eyes on Reid. And maybe… maybe Prentiss can talk to Fiona, see what she can do on the legal side.”

Penelope was nodding along as he spoke, but her attention was drawn by a ding from her computer. “Well, that’s going to have to wait, because we just got a case.”

“Well, look, I’m gonna talk to Prentiss now, and… hey. Listen to me.” He reached his hand out and gently placed it on her elbow. She didn’t pull away. “We’ll get this done. We will get Reid through this.” He looked her right in the eyes as he said it, trying to inject every ounce of sincerity into it that he could.

“That’s what I told Reid. But the way he looked at me… it was like we both knew it was a lie.”

He gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “It won’t be.”

Case closed and paperwork done, Penelope was locking up her office for the night when she heard a voice behind her.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” she answered, distracted. She turned to leave and found herself face to face with Luke. “Oh. Hello. It’s you.” She floudnered for something to say to him. “How was Vermont?” 

“Vermont was, uh, was great.”

She stared at him and raised her eyebrows as if to say what the hell are we having this conversation for?

He cleared his throat and reached for something in his pocket. “I, uh, found this. For your desk.” He pulled out a small cat figurine and squeezed it once for effect. It was a cat stress toy. “And for those future stressful days…” he squeezed the cat a few more times, delighting in her obsession with the small squeaks it let out.

She chuckled a bit, taking it from his hand. “Oh.” She squeezed the cat herself. “I don’t… I don’t have this one.” From the smile on his face, she knew he already knew it. He had done that on purpose. He wanted to find something that was so perfectly her, but not something she already had. She met his eyes and said, as genuinely as she could muster, “Thank you.”

If asked, she would swear up and down that she only fell into step beside him because they were both heading to the elevator. Not because she wanted to talk to him or because she felt like she owed him any conversation just because he had done something nice for her.

Luke smiled at her. “You’re welcome. How’re you doing?”

She hesitated. “Uh, good.”

He took a deep breath. “I just wanted to say… if I ever again become the someone you want to go to when you're crying, I'm here. Always.” 

She stammered, unsure of what to say in response to that.

He was quick to continue. “I just figured, you know, after we got stuck in the elevator, and after the time we chased down the UbSub, and now with you opening up to me with your concerns regarding Reid, that, uh, maybe you hated me a little bit less than you did when I started?”

Penelope rolled her eyes. “That was luck. It was timing! I’m a sensitive person, you know that. I cry all the time.”

He laughed a bit, but infuriatingly, she knew it wasn’t maliciously. He wasn’t making fun of her, he just found her funny.

“I am glad you’re on the team,” she said carefully. “Everyone else seems to like you and think you’re good at the job, so… but that does not mean I am ever going to stop giving you a hard time, Luke.”

His stunned face could just be seen in her peripheral vision, and he froze a bit behind her as she entered the elevator. “Penelope,” he said, voice low.

“Hm?”

“That’s the first time in twenty years that you’ve called me by my—”

“Shut it,” she rushed to say. “Let’s be in the moment.” For the first time in over two decades, I am not entirely infuriated by your presence next to me.

In the end, Luke was right. It wasn’t a lie. They proved Reid’s innocence and got him out of prison. He came with her and JJ to bring him home, and she was far too happy to be mad about his presence. He was making it harder and harder to keep hating him the way she did. Good thing for her, she was stubborn.

But her stubbornness was waning. Because he was nice. To the team, to victims and their families, to her. To everyone. It was getting harder and harder by the day to reconcile the Luke she had in her head, the one who abandoned her and broke her heart, with the Luke who she saw almost every day. The one who had been deeply apologetic for every way he had wronged her. Well, almost ever way, she corrected herself. The letters. He still hasn’t apologized for never writing letters.

But there were other things to focus on, because Reid was out of prison, and his mother was missing, and they needed to save her and stop Cat Adams and Lindsay Vaughn. And, like always, they did. 

And then Morgan was there.

She hadn’t been expecting to see anyone when she opened her office door at three in the morning after successfully recovering Diana, but there was Emily… and her best friend of over twelve years.

“Hey, Baby Girl.”

“Oh my god!” She ran to him and threw her arms around him, desperately missing his hugs. “Oh my god, it’s you! It’s really you! Oh you smell like… you smell like hope and happiness, it is really you.”

“Yes, it’s me, it’s me,” he assured her as he he pulled back from the hug, gently cradling her face. “But listen. You gotta focus, okay?”

“Yeah! Anything. Anything. Focus. Focus on what?”

Emily handed her Morgan’s phone. “This text.”

Penelope read it, and was astounded to see a text from herself that she had never written. “Oh crap.”

They met the others in the Round Table Room. “I know we’re all tired, but we may have a new lead on Mr. Scratch,” Emily announced.

“Somebody did a bang-up job of cloning my cell phone to send Morgan a fake text luring him to a non-existent safe house. And whoever that somebody is has mad skills.”

“Like the kind of skills Scratch has?” Stephen guessed.

“Were you able to trace where the hack came from?” Luke asked her.

Penelope turned to look at Morgan. “Do you see what I have to put up with?” She asked, pointing at Luke.

Morgan, being completely unaware of the pair’s history, smiled kindly at the other man. “Alvez, you’ll always get a location with this one.” He put one of his hands on her shoulder as he said it.

Luke just chuckled in response.

“You guys are all good to go,” Morgan informed them.

“Obviously Morgan can’t come with us,” Emily said. “He’s a civilian now.”

“We’ll miss you out there,” JJ told him.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss it out there in the field with you guys,” he admitted. “I think about it every day.” He looked around at the old team. “But between my old friends, and my new friends,” he nodded at Stephen and Luke, “you guys are gonna go out there, you’re gonna handle your business, make people feel safe, and then you’re gonna come home. That’s all that matters.”

“Let’s saddle up,” Emily instructed.

The rest of the team left, but Penelope and Morgan stayed behind. 

“Hey.” She slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Walk me back to my lair.”

He nodded.

“So what’s the other reason you’re not going with the team?” They both knew damn well that it would be easy to brush past protocol to let Morgan out into the field again, agent or not. Units all over the bureau brought back retired agents for small stints all the time, and no one could doubt Morgan’s skill.

“Baby Girl, I made a promise to my son. Now, obviously, he’s not old enough to understand it, but that’s not what matters. My promise was that I would come home to him every night, and so far I haven’t broken it.”

Penelope smiled widely at the mention of her beloved godson. “How is Hank?”

Morgan was so proud of his son, it was evident just from the look on his face. “He just started walking. Well, it’s more like this little waddle,” he demonstrated as he spoke. “But the kid is walking. You know, I had no idea I could love this much.”

“Okay, I just have to say something. Of all the heroes I have met, and I have met a lot of heroes, you, Derek ‘Chocolate Thunder’ Morgan, are the most heroic.” She pulled him in for a tight hug with a groan. “That’s for you.” She pulled back a bit but then hugged him again. “This is for Hank. And Savannah. And this one is for you again.” When she pulled back for real, the two friends were just beaming at each other. “Ooh! Speaking of Hank, if you leave right now, you’ll get home before he wakes up.”

“Actually, I told Savannah I was gonna catch a later flight. I reached out to Reid for real. I want to see him, I gotta see him, so I’m gonna bring him some breakfast and make sure he and his mom are okay.”

She smiled at him and nodded, understanding that, after her, Reid was his closest and most important friend.

He reached out and put his hand on one of her cheeks, admiring her. “I am so proud of you. I love you, always. But do you think you can try to be a little friendlier to Alvez?”

She threw her head back and groaned. “Oh my god…”

“Hey, hey, hey. Look at me. He seems like a pretty all right kid.”

Penelope stammered. “He, I, we, it’s complicated. I’ll try. I make no promises.”

“Complicated? Since when is it complicated for you to be nice to anyone?”

She took a deep breath. “I never told you what my High School almost-fiancé’s name, did I?”

“No, why? Wait, no. Him?”

“Yes. Him.”

“Your ex, the one you swore you were gonna marry, the one who left you behind without another word, works here?”

“Yes, but I haven’t told anyone that it’s him.”

Morgan let out a low whistle. “Wow. Yeah. I can see why that would be complicated. Are you okay?”

“Me? Yeah, I’m fine. But he’s different than I expected him to be. But not different than he was?”

He furrowed his brows. “What do you mean?”

“Like, he’s the same person. Ish. Obviously he’s changed from when he was eighteen, but he still does things the same way. He’s loyal, and determined, and has a strong sense of justice. The reasons he does things, the way he lives his life… he’s the same person I fell in love with. And I… oh god.” She had been keeping it all in for a year and it was finally bubbling to the surface. “I fell back into patterns I promised myself I wouldn’t fall back into, but I did. I mean, I call him Newbie! That’s what I called him from when we were six to when he asked me to be his girlfriend!”

Morgan realized what she was saying. “You’re falling for him again, aren’t you?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. Everything’s just so messy and complicated right now and there are so many things I thought I could count on but I can’t. I don’t have a clue what’s happening but despite it all… I know him. And he knows me. And I don’t know what to do with that.”

Morgan reached out, took her chin in his hands, and kissed her forehead. “You put it to the side. You focus on the case. Then, they next time you have some down time, you call me. And we talk about it. See what we can do. Okay?” 

“Okay.”

“Go save some lives, Baby Girl.”

Crash. That was the last thing she heard from them. “Guys?” Penelope called out into the silence. “Guys?” She willed anyone to answer her. Even Luke. 

No response came. She immediately called Matt Simmons, then spent the next hour pacing outside the elevator and calling her team, desperate for a response. None came.

“Hey, I came as soon as I could,” Matt said upon arrival. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re gone,” Penelope told him in a quiet voice. She showed him the blinking lost signal beaker on her phone. “They’re all gone.”

Matt’s face fell. “I’ll drive.”

Penelope was so frantic over the phone trying to get the team some backup that she didn’t even notice the spikes in the road or the two wrecked SUVs until Matt had slammed on the breaks, barely missing them.

“And Medical,” Penelope told the people on the other line. “Send lots of Medical.”

Rossi was the first person she and Matt found. He was stumbling, one of his legs clearly injured, and Matt caught him. 

“The jag-off ambushed us. Didn’t even see him coming.” 

Matt nodded. “We’ve gotta get you off that leg, okay?”

“No, no, I’m fine, I’m fine,” Rossi insisted. “I’ll flag down the cavalry. You go check on the team.”

“Yes. The team,” Penelope repeated, running on auto-pilot. “The team the team.” Was it wrong of her to hope they’d find Luke too incapacitated by his injuries to continue doing his job? Definitely. Would it get him out of her hair and take with him the conflicting feelings she was having about him? Also definitely.

Unfortunately for her feelings but fortunately for Luke, he was completely fine, and leading an injured JJ away from the crash. 

“What can I do?” Penelope called out. “What can I do? How can I help?”

“I can’t see,” JJ replied, sounding reasonably distressed.

Luke positioned her in front of a car so the headlights would illuminate her better. “Wait, all right? I see it, okay, I see it. You’ve got some broken glass in your scalp, JJ.” He pulled a tissue from his pocket. “Hold this until the ambulance comes.”

Penelope glanced to the side, towards one of the cars, and that’s when she saw him. “Stephen? Stephen?” He wasn’t moving. That could be expected, if he was pinned or injured. But he wasn’t making any noise either. When she got to the car, she saw why. His head was snapped back at an awkward angle… he was gone. She knew it. 

She barely registered Luke running to her and putting his arms around her to comfort her. “He’s gone,” he told her as he rubbed her upper arm, confirming what she already knew.

“I can’t leave him alone like this,” she gasped out through her tears. 

The two stood there in silence for a moment before Matt’s voice cut through the night, calling Luke’s name, as Tara needed help. He hesitated for a moment, but then ran off.

Penelope found herself missing his warmth.

Penelope’s life seemed determined to change. And change. And change. Stephen was gone and mourned, which was awful, but Emily was safe and alive and unharmed. And six weeks had gone by. And Matt Simmons was suddenly on the team. And all of those things were wonderful! Penelope thought she might finally get a brief reprieve from the intense changed she’d experienced over the last year. 

She was dead wrong. 

And it all started with something being the same. Luke having a way with words. And getting under her skin.

“Cool Hand Luke, whatcha need?” What the fuck was that? Penelope cursed herself. Flirty fun greetings may have been her hallmark, but they were strictly forbidden when it came to lying, leaving ex-boyfriends. Especially if they had deceptively soft, brown eyes and big arms.

He laughed. The bastard laughed. “I like the way that sounds, Garcia, you feeling okay?”

Oh he was flirting back? No sir, he was not allowed to feel special. “I am naturally magnanimous in word and deed and when it comes your way, bask in it. What do you want?”

“JJ and I, we need to run background checks on all the male members of the Desmond family. We were told that they’re deceased, but we need verification.”

“So cyber-gravedigging, look for zombies. Gotcha.”

“You can start by double-checking a death certificate for a Conrad Desmond some time back in ‘99,” JJ told her. 

Penelope responded without hesitating. “I’m a genie in genealogy, just rub my lamp!” Her face fell with horror as she realized the implications. “That came out wrong, goodbye!” 

She had never hung up faster in her life.

“I’m a genie in genealogy, just rub my lamp! That came out wrong, goodbye!”

Luke knew he shouldn’t, but he smirked. “Wow.”

JJ looked thoroughly confused. “What did you do to her?”

Luke should his head and smiled, pretending it was nothing. But it wasn’t nothing. I broke her damn heart, I’m afraid. Her heart, her trust, and her spirit.

Penelope all but burst into Emily’s office. “Hey I need to talk to you as a friend, please. Not as co-workers, it’s important, I can’t have work coloring your response.”

“I’m all ears. Are you okay?”

“I have no idea. So, you know Luke, right?”

Emily almost laughed. “As in, Alvez? The guy right out there?” She pointed out her office window to where Luke could be seen sitting at his desk, getting a head start on the case paperwork. 

“Yes. Him.”

“Yes, I know him, of course.”

“Right. And. Um. You know how I told you about my ex-boyfriend in High School? The one who I was sure I was going to marry me until he ran off and I never heard from him again?”

Emily’s amused smile fell instantly. “Yes… why?”

Penelope took a deep breath. “Well. You see. They’re. Kind of. Maybe. Sort of. The same person.”

Emily slumped forward in her chair, resting her head in her hands. “Oh god.” Then her head snapped up. “Wait. He’s worked here for a year, why are you only just saying something now?”

“Because I wanted to ignore it! I wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening! But now I’m really confused.”

“What are you confused about?” 

“Something just doesn’t add up! Because he loved me. He loved me. I can’t even begin to explain what being loved by him was like, because I haven’t had that kind of love since! He managed to love me the way I deserved, the way no one else has ever loved me when we were teenagers. And that’s why something doesn’t add up! Because he always treated me so amazing… up until the end. The Luke we’re seeing now, this is the Luke I fell head over heels in love with. The one who covered me with paper hearts when I was insecure about the way I looked. The one I could see myself marrying. So sweet and kind and caring… he’s not the one who leaves without a word and then promises to write letters and then doesn’t. And the thing is, he’s apologized a million times for everything but not writing! I don’t understand how someone can love me so much, then hurt me like that, then come back and be sincerely apologetic but not for the thing that hurt me the most. It just doesn’t make any sense.” She took a deep breath, still not done her rant. “And I think I’m falling for him again because he was my biggest what-if and he’s still the same person, so that’s why I came to you, since you didn’t know any of this and you have an objective standpoint, I need you to tell me if I’m actually falling for him again, or if I’m just caught up in the nostalgia of it all.”

Emily sighed and rubbed her temples, taking it all in. “Fucking hell,” she replied, dragging out the f noise. “Honestly? I do think you’re truly falling for him again. It’s so obvious… but holy shit. I can’t believe you’re the girl.”

"What do you mean I’m the girl?"

“I noticed, once, that Luke was playing with his dog tags necklace, and that there was an engagement ring on it. Tara noticed me watching, and she explained to me that Luke had this one ex-girlfriend who he always regretted ruining things with. He was planning on marrying her, so he kept the ring on his necklace to remind him of her and the mistakes he made, to make him a better person.”

Penelope was stunned. “Fucking excuse me? There was a ring?”

“Did you not know he had bought you a ring?”

“No! I—” she glanced out the window to see Luke still working at his desk. “Excuse me. There’s someone I need to have several words with.” She marched down the stairs over to Luke’s desk, and grabbed him by the wrist. “My office. Let’s go. We need to talk.”

Confused, he followed her. 

The second the door was closed behind them, she whirled on him. “You bought a ring? You bought a ring and you still have it?”

Luke reflexively clutched at where the necklace and ring were hiding under his shirt, effectively giving it all away.

“Why?” Penelope demanded. “If you were going to go ahead and do the shit you did, why did you buy a ring in the first place? And why did you keep it?”

“As a reminder,” he answered simply. “I have never forgiven myself for hurting you. So the ring reminds me of the wrong I’ve done as I try to right it. It reminds me why I do what I do. Everything I have ever done, every job I have ever done, is so that, at the end of the day, I can rest knowing I played a part in making this world just that much safer. For you.”

His words were like ice water over Penelope’s fire of anger. She was faced with one conclusion. Once conclusion that might upend her whole world if it was correct. “Luke… Luke are you still in love with me?”

He didn’t deny it for a second. "Of course I am. How could I not be? I promised you I would love you forever, and I meant it. I told you so in every letter I ever wrote you."

Penelope’s eyes widened in shock and confusion, and then, in a horribly cliché moment, "What letters?"

Luke’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean what letters? I promised I’d write you, and I did! Every day!”

“No you didn’t!” Penelope protested. “I never got a single letter from you! That’s why I was so hurt, that is why I broke up with you! I forgave you for leaving, but you never wrote me letters like you promised me you would and that’s what killed me!”

“Penelope…” he said, voice cracking. “I don’t know what happened so that you never received the letters, but I promise you I wrote. My wrist still clicks from the strain I put it under.” He stretched and flexed his wrist to prove his point. “I’ll call Liliana and you can ask her. I told her as soon as I was home that I wrote but you never responded until you broke up with me.”

She scoffed. “And was this before or after she accused you of not writing to me?”

Luke raised an eyebrow. “She knew you never got any letters from me? She never told me that.”

Penelope had a vague memory of Liliana trying to call her after Luke would have gotten home. She realized that Liliana likely realized Luke was telling the truth about having written and was trying to get Penelope to come back so they could work through it. She had ignored each call and then blocked the number. Liliana had probably never told Luke what she was doing so she didn’t get his hopes up. Penelope had always trusted Liliana, so if Liliana believed Luke, so did she. “Okay. I believe you. I don’t know how every fucking letter you wrote me managed to get lost somehow, but clearly it did.”

“I’m so sorry, Penelope. I can’t imagine the hurt… this whole time you thought that I just… left? And never wrote you another word?”

“Yes,” she responded, eyes downcast.

“Did you really believe I would do that to you?"

“I didn't want to! But what choice did I have, Luke? What proof did I have other than a lack of letters in my hand?"

Luke opened his arms and reached out. “Can I…?”

Penelope nodded, and, for the first time in over twenty years, collapsed into Luke’s arms, letting him hold her. She cried and cried and cried because she realized that all this time, those last two decades where she felt abandoned and undesirable, she had been loved. Adored. Luke had kept his promise. He had never stopped loving her. 

“I promised you,” he whispered to her, like he could read her thoughts. “I don’t break promises, Penelope.”

“And I know that. At least I thought I did. But I just… I couldn't do it. You know as well as I do that our whole relationship I was told I wasn't good enough for you. I thought maybe the distance, the separation, had made you come to the same conclusion.”

“You were my dream, Penelope. I already had my life with you, it was all I ever wanted. You can’t find that again. At least I couldn’t. I have always and will always love you. I know you don’t feel the same and I never expect you too. I won’t try anything I swear. Just… please know I never wanted you to hurt the way you did. I’m so sorry for everything.”

Penelope considered for a brief moment telling him how she felt, but she couldn’t. She was spiraling, she couldn’t process what she had just discovered. She wasn’t ready. But maybe one day.

Luke was a wreck by the time he got home. The implications of her never receiving the letters… all the things he thought she knew… things she never got told. He couldn’t imagine what had happened to keep her from seeing the letters. He hated that she believed that she wasn’t good enough for him. That she thought he believed that. He could only imagine the pain she was living with for all those years, believing that the one person who promised to love her forever didn’t find her lovable anymore, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. She believed her first everything simply didn’t want her. That pain had to be incredible. His pain was nothing compared to hers. The thing that had hurt her the most wasn’t even something he had done. It was simply cruel fate. It broke his heart that he had spent the past two decades loving her from afar while she had assumed the entire time that he had just… stopped. He’d heard rumors and whispers, mainly from JJ and Reid, that Penelope’s exes had been… less than ideal. He had hoped she went on to live her best life with someone who truly loved her and didn’t hurt her, but instead, he had crushed her spirit and made her think she deserved awful men. He was the reason she suffered, and he would never forgive himself for that.

It killed Luke that she had moved on. He understood, he certainly didn’t blame her, she had every right, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t crushed by it. It killed him that he gave her the opportunity to move on in the first place by ruining things the way he had. He knew that it killed Penelope thinking that he loved her so much and still abandoned her, but it killed him that no one ever loved her the way she deserved after him. She deserved nothing but the best, and no one gave her even the bare minimum. It killed him because it was all because of him. He blamed himself for every bad thing that ever happened to her. Like him. And like getting shot.

“Garcia was shot?” Luke repeated, looking at Emily, willing her to have misspoken.

“Ten years ago,” JJ explained. “It happened right outside her apartment.” 

“Just a random act of violence?” Matt asked. 

JJ shook her head. “No. He was a dirty cop named Jason Clark Battle, and she was getting close to exposing him, so he lured her into dating him–” 

“So he shot her,” Luke inferred. “Where is he now?”

“He's dead,” JJ told him. 

“Good.” Luke blamed himself. Most people might have told him it wasn’t his fault, but it was. He was responsible, because if things had been different, if he had never hurt and left her, she never would have been in the position to be going on a date in the first place. Jason Clark Battle wouldn’t have been able to get to her if it weren’t for Luke.

Matt approached Luke a bit later. “So, you're finally getting over that girl from your past, huh?” Matt had found out about “the girl from Luke's past” pretty soon after joining the team because he and Luke were bonding about being in the military. Luke had showed Matt his dog tags, and obviously the ring was right next to it, so the story got told.

Luke looked at him, beyond confused. “Huh?”

Matt smirked. “Don't pretend I haven't seen those heart eyes you've been giving Garcia. Plust the way you reacted when you found out she had been shot… You know, she has a similar story to you… got her heart broken by someone in High School she swore she was going to marry.”

Luke’s heart fell to his stomach. “You know about that?”

“I've known her much longer than I've known you,” Matt reminded him.”

“Right, I forgot about that.” Luke regularly forgot that, even though Matt was technically the newest team member, he was an old friend to most of them. Luke was still the newest person to join the group. He still was, for all intents and purposes, the newbie. As Penelope loved to remind him.

“So…” Matt continued. “Maybe you two could be good together. Mend each other's broken hearts…?”

Luke sighed. “Can you keep a secret? Only Emily and Penelope know about this, and I'd like to keep it that way.”

Matt’s eyes lit up. “ Are you two already dating?”  

“No!” Luke rushed to say. “No, we are not. Look, you're right about me having feelings for Penelope. But not because I'm getting over my ex. It’s because she is my ex.”

Matt floundered for a few moments, clearly very unsure of what to say. “I… I might need several sick days to recover from that revelation.”

Matt wasn’t the only one who noticed something that day.

“There’s something going on between Garcia and Alvez, right?” JJ asked Tara. “Like, I don’t think they’re together or anything, but there’s something there. Maybe they could be a thing.”

Tara shook her head. “Nah, no way. I agree that they could be something, but he is still way too hung up on that girl from his past to realize that there’s something there. I doubt anything would ever happen between them as long as he’s still got that ring around his neck.”

Penelope called Morgan about her conversation with Emily and the subsequent revelation from Luke about the letters. She needed an outsider perspective, and who better than her best friend?

Morgan let out a low whistle. “Well, shit. What are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know!” Penelope lamented. “Because, yeah, I have feelings for him, and he’s confessed to having feelings for me, but I just don’t now if I’m ready to open myself up to all that again!”

“Well, yeah. That makes sense. For four years, you knew exactly how your future was going to go, and then it was ripped away from you. Twice. And you just found out that your reality for the past twenty-plus years has been one big misunderstanding. Of course, you need time to process this before doing anything else. If you were jumping right back into things, I’d be concerned. You need time to build trust again. To decide if this is really what you want again. That’s okay. That’s normal.”

Penelope sighed, relieved. “And that’s exactly what I needed to hear. This is why I called you. Thank you.”

“Any time, baby girl.”

Carlos, Penelope’s brother, had called her and asked her to come home. The man who was responsible for the death of their parents was up for parole, and one of them was asked to give a victim impact statement to influence the decision. Carlos was too nervous and upset, and her other three brothers were too angry to even be in the same room as him, so the responsibility fell to Penelope, and she had gladly accepted. 

“I think I’m going to go up to the attic to look for photo albums,” Penelope told Carlos. “Maybe some pictures of them or us as a family might help our case.”

“Great idea, Sis. Call me if you need a hand, yeah?”

“Will do.” 

She hadn’t been in the attic in ages. She saw a trunk overflowing with some of her mother’s old dresses. Her things from when she was a kid. The nostalgia of it all made her very emotional. She made her way to a corner full of boxes that read Pictures in her mother’s familiar handwriting. 

Penelope slowly went through them all, picking out a few of her favorites to keep and to present to the parole board, and stashing them in her purse. Then she came across a photo album that had her name on it. It contained pictures of her as a newborn, a baby, a toddler. And then.

Penny and our new neighbor Luke, playing outside. Best friends! (6 years old.)

Penny and Luke learning how to ride their bikes together without training wheels. (7 years old.)

Family beach day! Penny building sandcastles with her best friend Luke. (8 years old.)

Waterpark, what fun! Luke convinced Penny to come on the bigger slides with him. (9 years old.)

Penelope (she’s a big girl now, I’m not allowed to call her Penny) turning 10! And hugging Luke as a thank-you for her sweet birthday gift. Love their friendship so much. (10 years old.)

Penelope remembered that picture. She was just starting to realize that her feelings for certain boys and girls were changing. She didn’t fully understand it, but all she knew was that Luke was her favorite person, and that was why she was hugging him so tight.

She kept looking.

Luke dropping Penelope off from their first official date as Boyfriend and Girlfriend. Can’t believe my girl is old enough to have a boyfriend. (14 years old.)

Luke and Penelope, ready for their first Homecoming dance. (14 years old.) [...] Luke and Penelope, ready for their second Homecoming dance! She made her dress herself. (15 years old.) [...] Luke and Penelope, ready for their third Homecoming dance! He drove her this year! (16 years old.) [...] Luke and Penelope, ready for their fourth (and final) Homecoming Dance, going three years strong, heading into their fourth year together. Love their love. (17 years old.) 

Prom and graduation for Luke and Penelope! Can’t believe they’re adults! (18 years old). 

Penelope found herself going misty-eyed at the pictures of her and Luke. They had always looked at each other with so much love, even when they didn’t know what love was, they were still looking at each other like they were the coolest person in the world. No matter where they were in life, they were always each other’s favorite person. “It has really always been us, hasn’t it?” Penelope whispered to herself.

Penelope put down the photo album and reached next for a box she hadn’t seen before. She didn’t know what was in it. She opened the box to find dozens upon dozens of envelopes. Letters. Closed letters. Closed letters addressed to her. She found only one letter that had been opened, and it was dated the day after Luke left for training.

My darling Penelope,
I understand you're probably still mad at me. I don't blame you. Honestly, I'm kind of mad at myself. I realized as I was leaving what a mistake I was making, because I didn't get to kiss you goodbye. I didn't get to hold you or see you one last time. I know you think I'm an idiot, and you are absolutely right. As always. But I'll be back in three months and you can yell at me as much as you want. Just as long as you hug me after because I miss you already. So much it hurts. I love you more than anything, baby. Sorry this is a short one.
Love always, Luke

Penelope tore into the letters at random, desperate to read more.

My darling Penelope,
I didn't realize how many things reminded me of you until I stopped seeing you every day. I'm up before the sun each day, so I get to see the sunrise. It reminds me of you in all its colors. And it's bright and warm, just like you, my love. You're my sunshine. 
I think I'm starting to annoy my bunk mates with how much I talk about you, but I can't help it. Some of them think we're crazy for talking about getting married so young, but I don't care. You're the love of my life. The only person I'll ever want. I can't wait to get home and propose to you. To marry you. I'll give you the best life, baby, I promise. 
Love always, Luke

My darling Penelope, 
I really AM an idiot. It's now September, which means it's our four year anniversary, and I'm not with you. 
I know you know it, but it bears repeating just how much I love you. These four years have been incredible. I'm so in love with you sometimes I think I might just explode. I can't wait to spend all the rest of my years with you. I'm including a wildflower that I found growing on base since I'm not home to buy you flowers. I'm sorry, baby. Forgive me. Two and a half months left. 
Love always, Luke 

Penelope sniffled and wiped her tears. The flower in the letter had long since decomposed. She kept reading. 

My darling Penelope,
I'm worried you're more angry than I thought. It's been a month of me writing these letters, and you haven't responded. I know I hurt you, baby, I'm sorry. It wasn't on purpose. I love you, Penelope. I hate myself for hurting you. Please, just write me back so I know that, even though you're angry, we're okay. I need us to be okay. You're my life, baby. My past, present and future. 
I don't know if I mentioned, but I have this picture of you that I keep with me. I kiss it each night before going to bed, since I can't kiss you, even though that's my own fault. My bunk mates razz me for it, but it's worth it all for the love of you. 
Love always, Luke

She read letter after letter like they were her life source.

My darling Penelope. My darling Penelope. My darling Penelope. My darling Penelope. My darling Penelope. 

Love always, Luke. Love always, Luke. Love always, Luke. Love always, Luke. Love. Always. Luke.

With shaking hands, she opened the last letter. It was dated just over a week after she sent hers, ending their relationship.

My darling Penelope,
Well. I don't know if I can call you that anymore. You're not mine anymore. But I'm still yours. My heart is still yours. I understand why you broke up with me, really, I do. I hurt you more than I can fathom and I will never forgive myself for that. I'll be home in about a month and a half, if any part of you is willing to talk to me, I'd appreciate that. If not, I understand. If you ever change your mind, I'm here. I'll always be here. I promised forever and I meant it. I don't break promises. So, perhaps for the last time, goodbye, Penelope. 
Love always, Luke

Penelope was sobbing, gasping for breath. He hadn’t forgotten her. This was the Luke she knew. It was like she told Emily, Luke not writing had never sat well with her, which was why she believed him when he told her he had. And now she had the proof. This was her Luke. The one who she had fallen in love with all those years ago. The one she had fallen for again. The one who loved her back, and truly always had. 

She sat there and just let the love she felt flood over her. Her whole adult life, the past twenty years she’d been hurting… he’d been loving her the whole time. Trying to make the world a better place for her. Because he loved her. He had never broken a single promise to her, fate had just been cruel and tore them apart. She started to imagine the what ifs. If she had only gotten those letters… she would have waited for him. She would have forgiven him. She would have married him, had a family with him. Not hearing anything had destroyed her, that was the only reason… but if the letters were in her attic, how did she not know about them?

Penelope put all the letters back into the box and brought it downstairs. “Carlos?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I just found this box upstairs… it’s full of letters from Luke to me during the time he was at Basic Training. Did you know about these?”

He kind of laughed. “Damn, I forgot about those. Yeah, I knew about them.”

“How did I never see these? Did Mom and Dad hide them from me?” She doubted it, but she struggled to come to another conclusion.

“No, I did,” Carlos replied. “I don’t think Mom and Dad ever knew about them. I always got home before you, so I hid them from you.”

Penelope was taken aback by his callous attitude to what he had just confessed to. “You what? Why?”

Carlos just looked at her, confused. “Uh, why not? He had just abandoned you and left you broken-hearted, and he thought he just got to go and write you letters?” He scoffed. “Fat chance.”

“That wasn’t your call to make!” Penelope nearly screamed at him.

“I was protecting you!”

“You didn’t have all the information! I wasn’t heartbroken because he left, I had forgiven him for that! I was heartbroken because he promised me he would write me letters, and then I never got them! You’re the reason I broke up with him! You’re the reason everything I ever wanted for myself went up in flames you stole my future from me!” 

The look of shock and maybe fear on Carlos’ face made Penelope pause.

“I’m sorry. That was harsh. I just. I can’t believe… you didn’t give me the chance to make a choice for myself. I’ve been hurting the past twenty years because I believed the only person to ever love me just tossed me to the side without a second thought. But he hadn’t. And I didn’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” Carlos said, seeming sincere. “But what does it matter now?”

“He works with me,” Penelope informed him. “I see him every damn day. I knew he had written me letters, he told me as much recently. And I didn’t know how they could all get lost… but they weren’t lost. They were stolen.”

“I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“You were a kid,” Penelope said. “You didn’t know what was happening. I just. I need some air.”

Penelope took her phone and purse with her, and went to a nearby park. She pulled out the pictures she had stashed in her purse to look at to soothe herself, spending extra time looking at the ones of her and Luke. As she cooled off, she recognized that Carlos being a kid when everything went down meant she couldn’t truly hold it against him. His heart had been in the right place, he had just been trying to look out for his big sister. She knew she had to forgive him. She had been doing a lot of forgiving as of late. First Luke, then Carlos. She pulled out her phone. Maybe she could find it in herself to forgive one more person.

“You only did this to get back at me for hiding the letters!” Carlos accused her after the trial.

“No, that’s not true!” Penelope protested. “I forgive you for that! Mom and Dad would have wanted us to forgive him too, they wouldn’t have wanted us to live with anger!”

“How would you know?” Carlos spat. “They’re dead. Because of you. I can’t even look at you. Get your things and get out of my house. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

So, she did. She packed all her bags into her car. She also packed the box of letters. She stopped for a bried picnic at her parents’ graves, then headed home. She had someone very important to talk to.

“Oh, good, you’re still here!”

Penelope’s voice in the bullpen made Luke’s head snapped up. He looked around, but found no one else around. “Who, me?”

She nodded at him, smiling over the box she was holding. “Yes, you. Come to my lair with me? There’s something we need to talk about.”

“Uh, sure. What are you doing here? I thought you’d go straight home after getting back.”

“I thought about it, but I wanted to bring this box in for my ‘things to smile at’ drawer, plus I wanted to talk to you as soon as possible, so I figured I might cross two things off my list at once.”

Luke couldn’t remember the last time she had been so eager to talk to him, even though they’d been building something akin to a friendship after the revelation about the letters. “Is everything okay?”

“It has the potential to be.”

“How was the trial?”

“Painful,” she admitted. “But I forgave him. And I urged the board to grant him parole.”

Luke’s eyes went wide. “Wow, that’s really amazing of you. I'm sure your parents would have been proud of you. For what it's worth, I am.”

Penelope sighed. “Yeah, Carlos doesn’t think it’s that great.”

“Oh, how is Carlos, anyway?” Luke asked. He missed the guy. He’d been like a little brother to him.

“Really mad at me,” she replied. “And I'm not very pleased with him at the moment.”

“What did he do?”

Penelope dropped the box she was holding on her desk between them and opened the lid to reveal letters. “He hid these from me.”

Luke sucked in a breath. “Are those…?”

“Yep. He thought me seeing these, letters from ‘the guy who broke my heart,’ would only make me sadder. What he didn't realize, was that I had forgiven you for leaving the way you did. What was breaking my heart was not getting these letters. But I read them.” She started crying. “I read every last one of them. I am so sorry, Luke.”

“Sorry?” Luke repeated, baffled. “Sorry for what?”

“You're sorry that I spent all this time thinking you promised me you'd write and then never did,” she responded. “I'm sorry you spent all this time thinking I read these beautiful, sweet, heartfelt love letters and I broke up with you anyway.”

“Again, I have never blamed you for that,” he said. “You were well within your right.”

“But I blame me!” Penelope insisted. “Because if I had only asked, if I had written you a letter, if I had known, I never would have ended things! I would have waited! I would have slapped you silly when you came back but I would have married you the next second! If I had kept my faith in you, we would have had a life together!”

Acting on impulse, Luke took her into his arms, holding her tight. “Penelope, you are not at fault here. The only one who did anything wrong in our relationship was me, leaving the way I did. I can never put into words how sorry I am.”

“I forgive you,” she whispered, voice muffled by his chest. Then she pulled back from the hug slightly and smiled up at him, a smile that he hadn’t seen in two decades. “Would you want to go out for dinner with me?”

Luke felt his face heat up and his heart rate rise. There was no way she meant… “Like… as a date?”

She was still smiling. “Yes, Luke. Like a date. I've never really gotten over you. Ever. I knew something didn't add up, that you not writing didn't make any sense, but it makes sense now. And I really care about you, I really like you… so can we try this again? No running off to join wars, no miscommunication, just two people dating?”

Luke’s smile was so bright that it could have rivaled the sun. “Yeah. We can do that. I want to do that. I've always wanted that. When were you thinking?”

“Do you have any plans tonight?”

He could not believe what he was hearing. It felt like a dream he didn’t want to wake up from. “I do not. And even if I did, I would cancel them for you. Actually… I've seen this place recently that I've always thought I would love to take you now if I got the chance. Want to go there?”

Penelope extended her arm to him, letting him loop his own through it. “Lead the way.”

So, they went. And it was wonderful. They spent the whole time laughing and smiling and talking. They were making up for lost time, but it also felt as though no time at all had passed. It warmed Penelope to the soul to realize that Luke was looking at her the same way he had his entire life: with stars in his eyes. Nothing had felt more perfect than that date in a very, very long time. 

After a lovely dinner, Luke brought Penelope home, just as he always had when they were younger. And, just like he always had, he asked her a question. “Can I kiss you goodnight?”

Penelope felt twenty years younger. “Yes. Of course.”

That kiss felt more right than anything in the world possibly could. It felt like home. Penelope memorized that moment so she could always look back and remember how it felt the moment her heart healed from two decades of pain.

Eventually, Penelope had to pull back from the kiss for air. The words “I love you” crossed her lips with her breath. And then she said it again. Louder. Clearer. “I love you.”

Luke let out a sigh of relief. “I love you too, Penelope.”

They each had a sense that something had healed in them, because they hadn’t heard those words from the other in twenty years. But hearing them, and saying them, was very right.

“Come up and stay the night?” Penelope offered. “Not for… anything, just… so you can hold me through the night? The way you used to do?”

“I want to,” Luke told her. “God, I want to, but I can’t. Not tonight. Roxy’s waiting for me, she needs her dinner still, and I don’t have anything to stay over with.”

“Oh.” She tried not to seem too disappointed.

“But…” Luke continued, eyes lighting up with an idea. “Since we’re here… what if you did whatever you need to do to take care of Sergio for the night, packed a bag, and… came home with me?”

Her smile was back. “Yes. Sergio’s food bowl is on a timer, so all is quiet on the kitten front, but let me pack some things, and we shall depart.”

Luke smiled at her openly, warmly. “Take your time.”

After grabbing a few overnight essentials and shoving them into a birghtly colored bag, the two were off. They fell asleep tangled in each other’s arms that night, sleeping so peacefully.

When Penelope woke up the next morning, Luke was already awake, stroking her hair and gazing down at her oh-so-lovingly. She felt like she could cry. She was just so happy. So in love. So loved. 

“That was the best sleep I’ve had in twenty years,” Penelope confessed. “Since the last time we did this.”

“Same for me,” he told her. “I could wake up to you in my arms forever.”

“Same for me. Holding you heals my soul.”

“Same for me.”

They went into Emily’s office very early the following Monday. She was the only other person in the entire building.

“We have something to tell you,” Penelope started cautiously.

Emily narrowed her eyes and glanced between the two. “Is this about your… history?”

“It’s more about our future,” Penelope replied. “We’re together. Again. Back together.” 

Emiy’s brows hit her hairline. “Oh. Wow. Okay. Um. Congratulations. That’s great. I am very happy for you. Just… fuck this is going to be a lot of paperwork. But don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it. Does anyone else know?”

“No,” Luke answered, rather quickly.

“We still have a lot to work out between the two of us,” Penelope explained. “So we’re not ready to tell everyone. But, you know, you’re our boss, so…”

“Right. Of course. Well, if there’s anything you two need, let me know. And just… try to keep things professional?”

Penelope scoffed. “Please, I could be professional around him when I hated him, I can be professional now that we’re dating.”

Luke’s face lit up at those words, which made Emily smile. That particular coupling may be a headache for her, but Penelope had been hurting for so long. If she had love back in her life, it could only be a good thing. Things didn’t work for a reason, but that reason had finally been cleared up. Because it was supposed to be them all along. And the reason was a misunderstanding. Now that things had been cleared up, there was nothing in their way. If they loved each other and always had, and there was no hurt anymore, why shouldn't they be together? They deserved to have each other.

Penelope called Morgan to update him. “... so when I got back, I showed him the letters, and I asked him out. And now we’re together.”

“Yes!” Morgan exclaimed. “I am so happy for you.

Those words elevated her confidence. “So… you don’t think I’m making a mistake?”

“No! I trust you. You know what’s best for you, and if this is it, then I’m thrilled for you.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course, sweetness. Love you.”

“Love you more.”

Despite their best efforts to keep everything on the down-low, some things slipped through the cracks. The team could tell that something was up, but obviously they didn’t know exactly what it was.

JJ was especially convinced that there was something more-than-platonic going on. “Tara, look at them,” she insisted. “They're obviously into each other.”

“JJ, no. I am telling you, he is still in love with that girl from his past.”

Luke and Penelope were publicly dunking on each other to avoid detection. But privately? Privately, they could just return home to their own little bubble, and they didn’t need to make a big deal about things, or include others in their relationship. They were just being them. Their own little safe zone where they could let their guards down and love each other as their most open selves. They knew they would tell the team someday, but for the moment, they just wanted to enjoy being them again.

Whenever Luke was out of the city or state on a case, they would fall asleep on the phone with each other. Whenever they were in the same city, they didn’t ever sleep in separate beds. They’d been without each other for far too long, they’d be damned if they kept themselves out of the others’ arms for a second longer. It didn’t take them long to move in together. In fact, it was almost instantaneous. By normal standards, maybe they were moving a bit fast, but they didn’t care. They knew that they were it for each other, so they saw no reason for them to deny themselves of each other any longer than they already had.

It wasn’t all that rare for one of them to catch themselves nearly in tears because of how much they loved each other, or how happy they were that they were back together.

Luke often found himself just watching her move about in their space and then blinking, as if to take a mental picture. He thought back to all those years he spent laying alone. Wondering what she became. What she looked like. The image he had back then was exactly the same as the woman he saw before him. Except the real thing was so much better. 

Penelope woke up one morning, being held tight in Luke’s arms. She had spent the past few decades thinking that people who loved her would ultimately walk away from her, but it wasn’t true. He had loved her endlessly, even when they were miles apart and hadn’t spoken in forever. Even with an enormous miscommunication keeping them apart, he had loved her. Hearing his soft breath against her ear, she trailed her hand down to meet his and interlaced their fingers. It made her think back to the very first time he ever held her hand. She thought back to the time when they were so young they didn’t really know what was going on, they didn’t know their own feelings, but they knew that they had each other, and that was all mattered. That had always been all that mattered. It made her think of all the times he had squeezed her hand when she needed him, even if she hadn’t voiced the need. It had always felt so good. As she was reminiscing, she felt him unconsciously squeeze her hand. Her heart swelled. She really loved that man.

She fell back asleep for a few hours, and then it was Luke’s turn to “wake up first.” He didn’t dare move or get up, lest he ruin the moment he thought he’d never get again, as hopeful as he might have been in his youth. He couldn’t believe his luck that he got to love her twice, so he laid in bed just looking at her. He knew that he had to get up, but he was trying to milk out five more minutes. And then maybe an extra five minutes after that. He knew, deep in his soul, that that, falling asleep and waking up with her, was how he was going to spend the rest of his life. He wasn’t going to let her slip away. Not that time. Not again. Never again.

As he finally went to sit up, he leaned over and kissed her cheek lightly, which roused her, causing her to roll over and grab his arm, holding him hostage. “Mmm, what time is it?”

“After I’m supposed to have gotten up,” he replied, a smile in his voice.

“So you’re just going to leave me?” Penelope teased. “Again?”

Luke half sighed and half laughed, leaning down to kiss her properly. “Penelope Grace Garcia, I am never ever leaving you again. That is a promise.”

She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “I know.”

He smiled down at her softly, marveling at how pretty her eyes looked in the sunlight, how her pupils dilated when she was looking at him. How pretty she always looked, even first thing in the morning. She was so beautiful. He loved her with his entire soul. 

He stroked her hair out of her face before kissing her lovingly, then paused. “Do you want to take a shower with me?”

Penelope threw back the sheets that were covering her body. “If you ever hear me say no to that question…”

It was nothing sexual, but it was still something deeply intimate. It was something new in their relationship, which, honestly, was hard to come by for them. Besides, it meant they got to spend as many of their waking moments together as possible in an attempt to make up for the twenty missed years. He would wash her hair and give her a scalp massage. Since she was too short to reach his hair, especially without shoes on, she washed his chest instead, meaning she got to see him smile down at her with so much love. 

Once they were done washing each other up, they stood under the water holding each other, just enjoying being pressed against each other. They adored the full body skin-to-skin contact, it felt so warmly intimate.

Luke smiled and rubbed his hands up and down Penelope’s arms as he held her. “I missed you,” he breathed out, gazing down at her. The water hit the top of his head and trickled down his face, dripping right off the end of his nose onto her cheek.

“You don’t have to,” she whispered back. “I’m right here.”

His heart was so full. He loved her inside and out, and he needed her to know that always, so he bent down and kissed her. It was kind of messy because of the running water, but neither of them cared. It was also kind of hard to breathe while kissing under running water, but they managed. They’d overcome more difficult things than a shower. Their hands wandered and met and interlaced as they smiled and laughed into the other’s mouth. They were just so in love. Their love was so much stronger than the love they had as kids. It was more adult. It had survived so much. They had lived a little, seen some things. Their love had grown and changed with them. 

But some things remained somewhat the same. There were some days—they were rare, but they still happened—where she would be having a hard time or feeling insecure. And Luke, in response, would cover each insecurity with love. However, instead of paper hearts, like he’d used when he was fifteen, he covered her in kisses. When she finally revealed her bullet scar to him, he drew a star around it in kisses. He made sure she knew she loved every inch of, every mark on her body. Because it was her. There was not a part of her he would ever give up.

They also continued their tradition of stargazing together. They didn’t have any children to bring with them, so they brought Roxy.

“I love that you named her Roxy,” Penelope told him as they were laid out on a blanket one night, the dog snuggled between them. “We may never have gotten Roxanne, but at least we have her.”

“Yeah,” Luke replied, scratching the dog’s head. “But can I ask… what on earth possessed you to name our hypothetical future daughter after a fictional prostitute?”

Penelope gasped and slapped his shoulder. “Oh my god, Luke, we wouldn't not be naming her after a prostitute! We'd be naming her after a really great song!”

“A song about a fictional prostitute!!”

She waved him off. “Details, Luke.”

“Important ones!” Luke argues, laughing. “What kind of example or expectation would we be setting for our daughter?”

“What example and expectation are you setting for your dog?” Penelope countered.

“Our dog would never understand,” he pointed out. “Our daughter would have.”

She laughed. “You’re being ridiculous. Need I remind you that you agreed to the name?”

“I can hardly be held accountable! I was 17 and crazy in love!”

“Are you saying you’re not currently crazy in love?”

“Well, hey now.” He rolled over, hovering above her and kissing her. “I’m very crazy in love with you, and you know that. In fact, there’s no universe in which I don’t love you. If there is one thing I am one hundred percent sure of, it is that I love you. In every reality, in every universe, it’s you. It’s me. It’s us.”

Penelope pursed her lips in thought. “But what if… I was a bad person?”

“Then we’d be two bad people in love,” he responded without hesitation. “Bonnie and Clyde style.”

“Well, what if I was a bad person, but you were not?”

“Can I first point out that this line of questioning is pointless because you would never be a bad person?”

“Humor your girlfriend.”

He sighed. “Then I would still love you. Even if it hurt.”

She thought some more. “What if there was an alternate universe where I didn’t love you? Not that I think that would happen.”

“Then I would still love you.”

“Even if it hurt?”

“Always.”

“Well, what if there was a universe where your family never moved from New York? That we didn’t have this history?”

“Then I would meet you at the BAU,” he replied. “And I would fall in love with you then.”

“Well what if I was too scared to love you back and didn’t want a relationship with you? Because we didn’t have all this history?”

“Well then I would respect that, but love you from a distance anyway.”

“Okay but what if I started seeing somebody new and I told you about it?”

“Then I’d love and support you even when it hurt.”

“But what if—”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

Penelope laughed. “Obviously not. I’m just testing how far this devotion goes.”

Luke kissed her. “I will love you in any universe, Penelope, because a universe where I don’t love you is, frankly, not one I want to think about. I’ve loved you for a quarter of a century. I’ll never stop.”

“Well what if…”

He started punctuating each word of his response with a kiss. “Yes. Yes. Yes. Always. Goddammit, woman, yes. I love you. Always have always will. No matter what. In every universe.”

She grinned up at him. “Would you still love me if I was a worm?”

“Obviously yes!” 

She cuddled into him, and they just laid there for a few hours. She occasionally heard him mumble something to her, slipping between english and spanish. She was pretty sure she picked up the words beautiful and love. “What are you saying?”

He smiled at her, stroked her hair, and kissed her ehad. “Nothing you don’t already know.” 

She just smiled and let herself be held by him. She was exactly where she needed to be.

One morning, Luke woke up to find Penelope playing with the ring that hung on his necklace, left sitting exposed on his bare chest. 

“It’s perfect,” she remarked softly. “Exactly what I would have picked.”

“I know.”

Wordlessly, she slid the ring onto her finger, just to test it out. “Hmm. It fits.”

“It does. Do you… do you want it?”

“Yes,” she replied without hesitation. “But… not yet. Not right now. I know we’ve said that this is our forever thing, but since we have all that time, I don’t see a need to rush. Besides, I wanted to tell the team we’re together before we tell them we’re engaged.” 

“Hey, I’ve waited for over twenty years, I can wait a little bit longer. I’d wait forever, Penelope. Although you’ve got to admit it would be a kind of funny way of announcing our relationship. Hey, team, you’re all invited to our wedding.”

Penelope laughed. “Yes, that’s true.” She took the ring off, then, and kissed him. 

He wrapped her in his arms and rolled them so that he was half on top of her. After kissing her back thoroughly, he pulled back so that he could admire her, body hovering above hers, his dog tags and the ring dangling in the space between them, lightly brushing against the bare skin of her chest. He ran his hand through her hair as he took her in, watched her, drank in her presence. 

Luke couldn’t stop smiling. He was smiling because he was so in love and he was smiling as he stroked his thumb over her cheek, and he was just smiling so softly because they were finally back where they were supposed to be and she had kind of just agreed to marry him.

“God, I love you so much,” he told her. “Have I mentioned that?”

She was grinning just as hard. “Once or twice?”

She started giggling, and he stroked her cheek again. “What are you giggling at?”

“You. Me. This. Us. I’m just so happy.”

He knew he was looking at her with all the love he felt. His heart was thumping the way it had when he was fourteen as he said, “I love you too.” Like it was the first time.

As if she was unable to spend a second without kissing some part of him, she moved her blush-ridden face to the side so she could kiss the palm that was cupping her cheek.

Penelope was happy. So super duper, cosmically, blissfully, beautifully, happy. She had the love of her life back. The love she thought she’d never see again. All the missing pieces had fallen back into place, and her heart was finally at peace. She had finally gotten the life she had always wanted, always craved. She didn’t have to settle for second best. She had someone who she loved entirely, someone who loved her back every bit as much and maybe even then some. 

Second best had never been an option for Luke. He had remained single and faithful to Penelope for twenty-five years, even if they weren’t together. Because if not her, then who? He had no interest in even trying to love someone half as much as he had loved her. Of course, he didn’t fault her for not doing the same. He didn’t fault her for moving on. When they reunited, he had been astounded that she was still single, and he never let himself fathom the fact that she might still have some sort of feelings for him. But she did. He loved her, and she loved him. And he was the luckiest person alive.

Some days it felt like they were the only two people in the world. On days like that, weekends, often, they would spend the whole day in bed, basking in the sun, laying in each other’s arms. They would kiss, and the sparks would fly, and they would smile into the kiss and mumble to each other about how happy they are. And they would just kiss and they would kiss and they would kiss. And then they would kiss some more. Because that was all they needed. Slow, leisurely, gentle kisses. Full body contact hugs and kisses that were just bursting at the seams with love.

All was going well for them for a time. And then Penelope was kidnapped by Benjamin Murva’s cult. Luke was a mess the entire time, but tried desperately to keep his cool. If he acted too far outside of what was acceptable for a concerned colleague, questions would be asked. He didn’t want to answer those questions without his love by his side.

Fortunately, she escaped mostly unscathed. His relief at seeing her was indescribable. And when the whole ordeal was over and they were safe at home, she changed his world. 

“Luke?” Penelope called in a soft voice. 

“Yes, baby?”

“I don’t want to wait anymore.”

He touched where his shirt was hiding the engagement ring he always carried. “Like…?”

“Yes.”

Without another word, Luke took the ring off his necklace and got down on one knee. “Penelope Grace Garcia, I love you with all that I am. I am forever yours. Will you allow me the honor of becoming your husband? Will you marry me? Please?”

Penelope nodded, eyes full of tears, smile stretched wide across her face. “Gladly.”

That night, while Penelope was leaning against Luke as they lay in bed, she held her hand out in front of her to admire the ring. It was a gorgeous ring, pink and white diamonds set on a white gold band. “How did you afford this at 18?”

“Well, I did a bunch of odd jobs, mowing lawns, fixing bikes, walking dogs, carrying groceries, coaching kiddie sports, all to save up. Once my family found out what I was saving up for, they chipped in too. After all, it was the only engagement ring I was ever going to buy, I had to make sure it was a good one. 

She turned her head to kiss him. “It’s perfect. I love it. I love you.”

He kept her close, kissing her again. “I love you too.”

They were planning on telling the team of their relationship and engagement almost immediately, but then they caught a case. They didn’t want to distract from the case, so they decided to wait just a bit to announce it. 

“Do I have to?” Penelope complained as she took the ring off and tucked in a pocket on her purse. 

“Only when we’re around the team,” Luke told her as he tucked his necklace, now missing its central piece, back behind his shirt.

On the jet home, once the case was over, Luke texted Penelope.

Luke: You can put that ring on now my darling, and it’s never coming off your finger again.

Penelope: [image of her left hand, the ring sparkling on her finger] it found its forever home.

Luke put his phone away with a smile, then pulled his necklace out from behind his shirt and began flicking the dog tags around the chain. That was a fidgety habit of his, one that he knew was bound to garner attention due to the noise. He was specifically aiming to gain Tara’s attention. She always looked over when he began fidgeting with the necklace, and she had admitted to him that she had always found the story associated with the necklace to be intriguing and romantic. He also knew she would not be quiet when she saw that the necklace’s focal point was suddenly missing. He was correct.

“Luke!” The shock was evident in Tara’s voice. “The ring! Did you lose it?”

He tried to bite back a smile, remaining as calm as possible. “Nope.” 

“Did you leave it at home?”

He shook his head. “Nope. It is right where it is supposed to be.”

Tara was silent for a moment as she let Luke’s meaning sink in. “Did you… give it to someone?”

“I did.”

“Did you give it to her?” 

Luke’s smile broke free, stretching wide across his face. “I did.”

“Oh my god! You found her? You reconnected? That’s so amazing!”

Emily and Matt, the only people present on the jet who knew the identity of his lost love, were staring at him. Emily, with elation for her friends, and Matt with sheer shock because he was unaware the couple was even back together, let alone engaged.

Luke was the first one out of the elevator when the team returned to the BAU offices, and Penelope practically ran at him to hug him in front of everyone, throwing her arms around him and clutching at his shoulderblades so her hands were on full display.

Tara was, of course, the first to call it out. “Penelope, is that a— wait a minute. That’s the ring. That is the ring. You two are engaged?”

The only response she got from the couple were wide smiles as they turned to face everyone.

“Fuck that,” JJ cut in. "You two dated seriously in High School and are now engaged?”

“Yes,” Luke and Penelope replied simultaneously. His arm was around her waist, and she was fanning out her fingers in front of her to show off her ring. There were tears in both their eyes.

JJ whirled on Luke. “Penelope is your one that got away? You’re each other’s one that got away? I don’t know who I’m more surprised about right now.”

Rossi insisted on buying everyone several celebratory drinks, and no one had any urge to denying him that. While out, the team remembered what Luke and Penelope had taken to calling “the letters discrepancy.” Penelope had always said that Luke had never written her any letters. Luke, however, when telling his story, had said that he had written his love every day with no response. They explained about the stolen and hidden letters, and how that had been the catalyst to them finally being together again. 

Penelope and Luke did not let go of each others’ hand the entire night, and she rarely ever lifted her head from its pillow on his shoulder.

“So, how soon would you two like to get married?” Rossi asked them.

“Well, pretty soon, I think,” Luke responded.

“Yeah,” Penelope agreed. “I’d say we’ve waited long enough.”

“Please define pretty soon, because I could make it happen tomorrow.” Rossi looked down and checked his watch. “Eh, might be a little tight. I can make it happen the day after tomorrow.”

Luke and Penelope’s eyes shot wide open. “Not that soon!”

So right there, at O’Keefe’s, they planned their wedding. They wrote out a guest list, things they wanted and didn’t want, and had a date set for two months in the future so they could get their outfits and anything else that was needed, as well as give Luke’s family plenty of time to plan to fly down to be there. It was finally all coming together. 20 years to late, but hey, it was happening.

The following day, JJ, Emily, and Tara dragged Penelope dress shopping. JJ had Morgan on facetime so he could chime in too. It didn’t take long to find the dress. The top was covered in floral lace, clinging to her in all the right places, accentuating her curves. The short, slightly puffed sleeves fell just off her shoulders in a way that she just loved, and the long, satin skirt was wide and flowy, and she just looked regal. She looked beautiful. She felt beautiful.

“Oh, Pen,” Tara sighed. “Luke is going to fall to his knees when he sees you in that.”

Penelope stood there, staring at the mirror, sobbing. She never thought this would happen. She never thought she’d love again, not the way she loved Luke. And she was about to marry Luke. Her one true love.

“Penelope, what’s wrong?” JJ asked, concerned.

“No, nothing,” Penelope replies, wiping her tears. “It’s just. I’m marrying him. I didn’t even think I’d ever see him again. I didn’t think I’d want to. And now I’m marrying him.”

“So these are good tears?” Emily clarified. 

“I am standing in what is going to be my wedding dress, surrounded by my bridesmaids, planning my wedding to the love of my life. Of course these are good tears.”

Her friends had tears in their eyes as they asked, “We’re going to be your bridesmaids?”

“Of course I want you to be my bridesmaids! I thought that was a given! However Morgan is going to be my Best Man.”

“Woo!” Morgan’s voice sounded somewhat tinny from the other end of the phone. “I know that’s right!”

JJ laughed. “Yeah, I am not even surprised.” 

Penelope and Luke had decided on their wedding parties rather quickly. Penelope, of course, had chosed Morgan, JJ, Emily, and Tara. Luke had called his sister Liliana to be his Maid of Honor. That had been a rather funny phone call due to how astounded she was when Luke told her he was marrying Penelope. That made him realize that he had forgotten to tell her that he had even met Penelope again, nevermind re-entered a relationship with her. Once the initial shock wore off, she gladly accepted, after screaming about how happy she was for them. He had then decided to ask his good friend Phil to be one of his groomsmen, along with Matt and Reid. Rossi was out of bounds for both of them as he was, obviously, giving Penelope away.

On the day of the wedding, there was a knock at the door of the room in Rossi’s house that they’d commandeered as the bridal suite. “I heard there’s a blushing bride in here?” A voice unfamiliar to all but Penelope called out.

Penelope looked at Morgan, who, as Best Man, was on Door Duty, and gave him an enthusiastic nod. “Open it.”

A gorgeous, tall, latina woman with thick, black curls and a blinding white smile entered the room. “Hey, you.”

Penelope flung herself across the room. “Liliana!”

The two women held each other tight, both crying a bit at the joy of finally reuniting with their old friend and sister-to-be.

“You look so beautiful, Penelope. So so beautiful. I’m so happy I knew you two would make it. I had faith.”

“I missed you,” Penelope sobbed. 

“Well, we’re family now. Be prepared to be sick of me. And your niece.”

Penelope gasped. “Oh my goodness I almost forgot you have a little girl! I’m getting a niece!”

“Mhm and she is very excited to meet you. She is sitting downstairs with her dad barely holding it together.”

“Oh my goodness we still have so much time, go, get her,” Penelope insisted. “I want to meet her!”

Five minutes later, a nine-year-old girl who looked like a clone of her mother walked in shyly. “Hi, Tia,” she said.

Penelope’s heart melted at the little darling. “Hello, lovely! It’s so good to meet you! I have something for you!” She presented her with a flower she had plucked from her own bouquet, and tucked it in the young girl’s hair. “There. Now we match.”

Isabel, the little girl, flung herself into Penelope’s arms. “I love you already, Tia.”

Penelope squeezed the little girl for all she was worth. “I love you too, sweetheart.”

Soon enough, it was time for Rossi to come and collect Penelope to walk her down the aisle. 

“How’s Luke?” Penelope asked him. “Does he look nervous?”

“Are you kidding?” Rossi responded. “He’s waited his whole damn life for this. He can’t stop smiling.”

That only changed for a second, once Luke saw her. His mouth fell open at the sight of his radiant bride. And then he couldn’t see her very well because his vision became blurry with tears. 

When she finally got to him, she lifted her hands to his cheeks, gently wiping his tears. “You ready?” She whispered.

“Born ready,” he whispered back.

They had both hand-written their vows so they would be as meaningful as possible. Penelope’s were sweet and funny and so very her. Luke felt so blessed to be marrying such an incredible woman. And then it was his turn.

“My darling Penelope,” he started, clearing his throat, hands shaking. “Since you never got any of the love letters I wrote you in the past, I figured I’d write you one now. To say I love you would be a disservice to you, as the word doesn’t even come close to accurately describing how I feel about you. You have owned my heart for almost my entire life. Our walk to the altar has been anything but easy, and that is my fault. I vow to spend every breath of my life from this moment out to prove myself worthy of the love and forgiveness you have shown me. It is not something I have taken or ever will take lightly. Being with you is a privilege, one I was lucky enough to receive twice. I will love you forever, darling, to the moon and back. I am so honored to get to be your husband. Love always, your Luke.”

There was not a dry eye during the rest of the ceremony as the couple said “I do,” exchanged rings, and, finally, kissed.

They were never apart from each other the whole night, always clinging to the other’s hand or arm. 

All of their friends gave speeches, but Emily’s was far and away the best one. “Luke and Penelope teach us what unconditional love is,” she began, lifting her glass to her friends. “Overcoming two decades of separation, missed messages, misunderstandings, only to find themselves right where they always promised they would end up. They are a testament to what you can survive when you're with the right person.” 

Penelope smiled up at her husband. Luke smiled down at his wife. And they kissed. 

At some point during the reception, Penelope noticed Luke looking around for something, and he looked disappointed. Whatever he was looking for, he wasn’t finding it.

“What are you looking for?” Penelope asked her husband.

“Hm? Nothing. It’s fine.” 

She tugged at his arm. “It’s not nothing, please don’t lie to me. Especially not on our wedding day. What are you looking for?”

Luke sighed and looked down. “Carlos,” he admitted.

Penelope’s brows bunched together in confusion. “What are you talking about? I didn’t invite Carlos.”

“No. I did. And he didn’t come. I’m sorry, baby.”

She shook her head and leaned in to her husband. “Don’t be. I have you. That’s all I need.”

Luke would often apologize for how badly he messed up in the past, even well into their married life. He apologized for how much time he lost them, the life they could have had that he felt he robbed them of. The children they had always talked about that would never be born. Penelope, in return, would tell him not to worry. They happened exactly how they were supposed to happen, and she wouldn’t change a thing because it had only made their love stronger.

Penelope would, at one point, confess that, after him, she hadn’t thought she would ever get married, which was why she ended things with Kevin.

“I’m sorry,” he told her genuinely. “If you had known that I had never stopped loving you or wanting to marry you, would you have accepted his proposal?”

She almost shuddered in his arms. “No! Because I wold have waited for you to come home, slapped you for leaving me, and then married you.”

“Okay, but what if you knew, and you still broke up with me, would you have married him?”

Penelope took his face between her hands. “Luke. There is no universe in which I know that you always wanted to marry me and then I didn’t end up with you. You have always been my forever.”

Luke kissed his wife. “And you have always been mine.”