IT WASN'T UNCOMMON FOR JJ TO BE PUT ON BABYSITTING DUTY.

Though she herself wouldn't call it that, the task she was given made her into a glorified babysitter, though she couldn't complain. She would watch the Morgans, make sure they didn't do anything bad, and report back to their boss if anything happened. That was what her team required of her and she would do it.

Under normal circumstances, JJ was an excellent babysitter and everything would have gone smoothly. The team would return back with their unsub, or in this case, unsubs, and everything would revert back to normal. However, given that the circumstances were not ordinary...

Well, let's just say that not everything always goes to plan.

"What do you mean she's gone?"

JJ winced at Hotch's tone of voice. He was angry, that much was certain, but he couldn't really blame her for Katharine going missing.

Could he?

After all, Katharine had been left in the interrogation room without any inhibitors. That meant that she was free to use her abilities and since Katharine technically didn't know JJ, the gifted woman would have been able to use her abilities on JJ without feeling any remorse or guilt.

"I mean she's left the station," JJ said, standing in Katharine's empty interrogation room. "I think she used her abilities to persuade one of the officers to let her out and they did."

"Do you know how long she's been gone?" Hotch asked. JJ could hear the sirens in the background of the call grow closer to the station.

"She was here five minutes ago when I came to check on her. I left to go check on Morgan and when I returned to check on her again, she was gone," JJ explained.

"Well, we have Walker so we'll put him in that interrogation room. Coming into the station now," Hotch said before hanging up, leaving JJ very flustered and a bit annoyed at their newest member.

She knew that it wasn't Katharine's fault that she had been targeted by their unsubs but she really couldn't have just stayed put until they could have gotten back to her. Additionally, Hotch and the rest of their team, her included, should have counted on the younger Morgan being a flight risk. Especially after Morgan had done the same thing after being arrested in Chicago all those years ago.

"Good news," Reid filled her in once they had settled back in. "We found Walker and he surrendered almost immediately."

"Bad news?" JJ asked, standing across from him in the conference room.

Hotch had gone to question Walker some more and Morgan had been relocated to their location. Thankfully, Walker had been able to undo the effects of his abilities on the older man. Morgan was currently knocked out in one of the bigger office chairs.

"Bad news is that Nina Hayes was not at the apartment and neither was Erika Manning," Reid said. "Rossi and Prentiss are still there looking around to see if they can find anything useful."

JJ sighed. Katharine was officially a missing person and their team was already stretched so far and in between that everything was starting to pile up.

Not to mention that Reid was also upset with her, that much was evident. JJ, the woman who considered herself to be the closest to the genius, hated that she was the one to upset him. He hadn't outwardly shown his disappointment with the blonde but he didn't need to because she was sure her own disappointment in herself was equal to his, if not greater.

JJ didn't know the extent of Katharine and Reid's relationship but she did know that distance made the heart grow fonder. If she could tell anything from her and Will's relationship, she knew that they had probably gotten impossibly closer upon the former SHIELD operative's return.

From an outsider's point of view, it looked like Katharine and Reid had been dating for a very long time but just didn't know it yet.

"Where are we on the search for Katharine?" Hotch asked, entering the room. He still looked angry but like the rest of the team, he wasn't quick to show the emotion.

"I think our best bet would be to wait for Morgan to wake up," JJ said, glancing at the grown man that was passed out in the middle of everything. "I tried getting ahold of someone at SHIELD but since the agency's collapse, no one was responsive."

"Have you tried the contacts in Katharine's phone?"

"No contact names except for ours and Nina's," JJ frowned. "The rest are unsaved numbers and she has no open text threads besides from what she's received in the past few hours."

"Get her phone to Garcia, see what she can find," Hotch said, reaching toward the conference phone that sat in the middle of the table.

"Your friendly neighborhood Oracle of all things knowable and unknowable at your service."

"Garcia, link us to Prentiss and Rossi."

"You got it, boss."

A few moments later, they were connected with the rest of their team.

"You've got Prentiss and Rossi."

"Prentiss, Rossi," Hotch said. "What do you see?"

Morgan began to stir in his seat, prompting JJ to abandon the call in favor of caring for their teammate. She grabbed one of the sealed water bottles and tended to the man, helping him sit up better in the chair and regain his bearings.

"What happened?" he asked groggily, looking around in confusion. "Are we at Triangle PD?"

JJ nodded, passing him an Advil and the water bottle. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Morgan took the painkillers, opening the water and chugging the medicine down. He winced at the bright lights of the station. "Katharine and I... we were being tailed by... someone? A man?"

"Take it easy," JJ soothed, gently forcing him back into his seat when he tried to get up. "One of our unsubs aged you and Katharine back mentally. You're going to be a little disoriented for a while."

"One of our unsubs? There's two?" Morgan questioned, looking around. "Where's Kat?"

JJ bit her lip. She looked behind her to make eye contact with Hotch, who's expression read something along the lines of, handle it.

"Katharine, uh," JJ pursed her lips slightly. "Well, she fled the station. We caught the guy who did this to you guys though."

Morgan shot up from his seat and there was nothing JJ could do to stop him that time. It'd be like trying to force back a brick wall and JJ wasn't in the mood for dealing with a broken hand or two.

"What do you mean she fled?"

"She used her abilities on an officer and left the station," JJ explained.

Hotch and Reid's eyes were on them now, the former having stopped talking to their other teammates that were still on the line.

"Prentiss, follow your lead and see where it goes," Hotch said before ending the call. He turned his attention to the situation at hand. "Morgan, is there anywhere you think Katharine might have gone in the Triangle area?"

Morgan furrowed his brow. He seemed to have to think hard about this, which was probably true. His mind was still trying to properly adjust back to this time and he had just been delivered the news that his cousin was missing.

"Depends," he finally revealed. "What year is it for her?"

"Two-thousand and seven," Reid spoke up. "She was supposed to have a final at three, sociology, but since we're nowhere near Evanston, we don't know where she could have gone."

"Was she investigating the Hayworth family murders?" Morgan asked. JJ thought that was a super-specific question but it seemed to make sense to Reid.

"Yeah, actually. She mentioned Detective Lund as well," Reid said, furrowing his brow. "But what does that have to do with this?"

Morgan shook his head. "If she'd in 2007, then she doesn't think she's in Evanston. She never took Sociology in her sophomore year. The Washington Post offered her a brief internship through Northwestern."

"So where is she now?" Hotch asked, already dialing Garcia back up.

Morgan sighed, running a hand over his head. "If I'm right about this, she's probably returned to the scene of the Hayworth murders."

"Garcia, you got that?"

"Loud and clear, sir. Addresses are already en route to your phones. Bring our baby milk chocolate back home safely."

KATHARINE STOOD IN FRONT OF THE GATE, looking up at the house of horrors that she had heard so much about. The past two times, she had been caught snooping around. Once by Detective Lund and the second time apparently by the FBI. This third time, she was going to make sure she wouldn't be caught.

She thought it was ridiculous. The amount of security they had on the crime scene, the fact that she had been detained twice for doing her job... all of it was ridiculous.

Okay, well it wasn't her job but it would be soon enough. Interning with The Washington Post at only nineteen? Name an easier feat, she'd wait.

The house looked more rundown and abandoned than she last visited, which was only about four hours ago. There was no way Alexandria PD managed to clean up the site within the hour she had been in holding even with the additional thirty-minute cab ride she had taken there.

Something was wrong and she could feel it, it was like the world had shifted around her and was now moving in hyperspeed.

Katharine felt for the weapons she had managed to retrieve from the police station before leaving. When they had put her in the interrogation room, they had checked her over for any weaponry she might have been carrying. She, and the others, were surprised to find that she had three guns, one taser, and two knives on her person.

She knew how to use the knives, courtesy of her mother who had signed her up for archery and knife throwing lessons as a kid. Of course, those lessons were given to her by her Uncle Todd, who was not related to her in any shape or form. He and her mom had known each other for ages, which was true for Grace Morgan who had quite literally watched as her Uncle Todd grew up.

Immortality had its perks, she guessed.

Even still, age was a tricky thing and Katharine knew this best. A sharp pain shot through her head as the hold Walker had over her wanned.

When she was younger, her mother had explained to her that her ability came with certain perks. The fact that it was a mental ability meant that her mind was wired to fight off anything foreign that attempted to meddle with her brain.

Which also meant it was only a matter of time before Katharine's mental age progressed on its own, though she didn't necessarily know that.

Katharine blinked and suddenly she was twenty-one and about to enter the Academy for the first time. This would be where she would meet Grant Ward and Nina Hayes, two invaluable friendships that she would maintain for years to come.

She looked around, more confused than she had been in a while. There were two guns at either side of her hips and another strapped around her ankle. None of the three were the SHIELD-issued handguns that she had become so accustomed to. There was a taser concealed by her right breast, under her shirt, and a knife strapped to her thigh. Another knife was concealed under her left shirt-sleeve, meaning Katharine was armed and dangerous.

She looked up at the rundown house.

The Hayworth murders, she remembered. A family of five had been brutally killed with a major amount of overkill. They had been skinned and eviscerated before being tied up like hogs. It was terrible what had happened to them, Katharine empathized.

Katharine felt for the phone she had taken from the police station. She had no clue who it belonged to, having snatched it off of a random desk on her way out.

She turned it on, pleased to see there was no passcode preventing her entry. She dialed the first number that came to mind and waited for them to pick up.

At this point, Katharine had taken shelter within the Hayworth home. It was empty, as far as she could tell, and had been for a good while.

"Coulson."

"Songbird calling," she replied, looking out the window and doing a bit of her own surveillance. The streets looked empty as far as she could tell. "Requesting extraction from the Hayworth home."

"Katharine?" Coulson asked. She could hear shuffling in the background and what sounded like Agent May in the background. "Aren't you with the FBI now?"

Katharine blinked. "The FBI? No. Requesting extraction from the Hayworth home, sir."

There was more chattering between Agent May and another unidentifiable agent before Coulson responded to her. "Hold tight. Sending Widow."

Katharine breathed out a sigh of relief. She shut down the phone before shoving it back into her pocket. She pulled a gun off her hip and checked to see if it was loaded.

If Katharine learned anything from the Academy it was that you couldn't trust anyone, especially if their words lit up bright red in her mind. 

THE BAU COUNTED THEMSELVES LUCKY WHEN THEY MANAGED TO GET AHOLD OF FORMER SHIELD AGENT NATALIE RUSHMAN.

Hotch was reluctant to trust the woman. Garcia ran a quick background check on her and found an extensive background in modeling but seemed to have the same training that Katharine had come to them with. It made her a suspicious figure in Katharine's life but seeing as she was the only one they could get ahold of, he figured she'd be their best bet in getting through to Katharine.

After an enlightening phone call with Katharine through Detective Santiago's stolen personal cell, they had figured out that she was starting to progress back to her twenty-seven-year-old self on her own. To her, it was two-thousand and nine, the same year she was forced to take a mandatory leave

That would have been good news had Natalie not informed them of the next major event in Katharine's life directly after her year-long stint as a preschool teacher.

Their team had been granted limited access to Katharine's file and the entirety of the Battle of New York section was given to them. Natalie explained that Katharine had been under Loki's influence shortly following the attack on the Helicarrier.

The Avengers had regained Hawkeye at the price of their prize interrogator. A brutal exchange.

"She wasn't even supposed to be on the Helicarrier when Loki escaped," Natalie told them, something that looked a lot like guilt crossed over her features. "She was supposed to question Loki and then leave directly after by means of Jump Jet."

"And why didn't she?" Morgan asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

He had not long since regained his memories and properly readjusted to the timeline. Hotch has allowed him to join them in the field so long as he stayed out of the action.

Natalie shook her head. "That's not important right now. What is important is that she's steadily approaching one of the darkest points of her life. The Katharine in there won't be the Katharine you know. She'll shoot you without a second thought and based on what you've told me, I'm surprised she hasn't already shot someone."

"Is that what happened to you?" Morgan asked, glaring at the blonde woman that stood in front of his team.

"She tried to... grazed my side," Natalie revealed, "but I got her back."

Hotch narrowed his eyes at the woman. "You got her back how?"

Natalie glanced nervously between the Hayworth house and the entire Behavioral Analysis Unit in front of her, or rather, five-eighths of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Prentiss and Rossi were still following the trail to Nina Hayes and, well, they were dealing with the situation that was Katharine Morgan right now.

"Uh," Natalie frowned, "I hit her over the head."

"Cognitive recalibration," Reid realized, nodding slowly. "But we can't rely on that here, can we?"

"That'd probably do us more harm than good right now but by the way her progression has, well, progressed... there's no telling if she'll even still be in 2012," Natalie pulled out a weapon that looked a lot like a large pistol with a dark blue that was woven into its design.

"What's that for?" JJ asked, looking at the piece of weaponry in Natalie's hands. It didn't look like a regular gun, as much as it tried to pass for one.

"This is an ICER," Natalie said. "Stands for Incapacitating Cartridge Emitting Railgun. It's to knock her out rather than kill her."

"Are-are you gonna shoot her with that?" Reid asked. He fiddled with the straps of his kevlar vest as Natalie Rushman smirked at him.

"I'm not going to," she turned the weapon, offering him the handgrip. "You are."

IT WAS A SOUND PLAN. Send in the least threatening agent they had to try and talk a mind-controlled SHIELD agent that would shoot him without a second thought. Brilliant, amazing, synonyms.

Spencer was told to try and talk Katharine down first. Natalie Rushman, if that was even her real name, was against the idea but he took his orders from Hotch and not from a woman he barely knew. But the woman he barely knew had a point. If it came down to a firefight, even a moment of hesitation would earn him a bullet between his eyes quicker than he could say, ICER.

And if that wasn't reassuring enough, Natalie had reminded him that Katharine was a fully trained SHIELD agent before anything else and wouldn't hesitate to put him in a sleeper hold if that meant she could escape the Hayworth home.

So, as Spencer approached the front door of the abandoned house, he couldn't help but look back over his shoulder at his team. None of them looked too optimistic in his return, which was fair, considering the circumstances.

He looked forward, readjusting his grip on the gun that looked a little too real to be anything but lethal. It scared him, the idea of putting a weapon to the head of the woman he was sure he was falling in love with. Spencer was never good with feelings, but if he could have aired out his concerns he was sure he'd have been told that he had the worst timing in the history of romantic relationships.

But the ICER was nonlethal, Natalie Rushman assured him. Designed by SHIELD engineer Leo Fitz, it was created to prevent more death than necessary.

Spencer hoped Natalie was telling the truth.

He knocked on the front door twice, waiting for a beat and knocking again. It was a standard precaution for compromised agents, the former SHIELD agent had explained. Coded knocks that conveyed a message even in a tricky situation.

"It's open," Katharine responded. It sounded like she was talking from somewhere in the back of the house.

Spencer opened the door cautiously, poking his head in first before following with the rest of his body. The front hall was empty, as far as he could see.

On his left was the living room, where multiple pieces of covered furniture sat, collecting dust due to the years of disuse. And on his right was the dining room, a long table covered by a sheet of canvas along with the six chairs that would have once seated the entire Hayworth family. Any personal belongings had been packed away and shipping off to Mr. Hayworth's sister, he remembered reading that in the report.

In front of him was a hallway that continued into the kitchen as well as a set of stairs that led to the house's second floor.

He was tempted to go upstairs, to see where the murders had taken place, but he had more important matters to attend to.

"Close the door behind you," Katharine ordered, her voice filtering in from the kitchen.

Spencer did as she asked despite his teammates' protests.

"Katharine?"

He walked further down the hall, his hand on the ICER in precaution.

"You know," he said, hands shaking. He stepped closer to the kitchen. "The Katharine I know would be going off on a tangent about how absolutely dramatic she was being. I mean, orchestrating a jailbreak only to return to the home where six brutal murders took place... that's really not your style."

Katharine rounded the corner, coming out of the kitchen with her gun trained between Spencer's eyes.

There was something off about her, besides the whole memory regression ordeal. From her stance, which was much more rigid than normal, to her eyes... something was wrong. He could just tell.

"What do you know about my style?" she asked, biting her lip.

Something was definitely wrong. Katharine was back to biting her lip, which she didn't get into the habit of doing until after the Battle of New York and after she was assigned to Agent Davis's team. Something must have triggered another shift in her memory.

"A lot," Spencer said, trying to think of a way to ask her if everything was alright. He took a step forward and watched as her hand twitched slightly. "I know that your style used to incorporate umbrellas and now..."

"Now, I only use umbrellas when it's pouring," she said, looking off to the side where Spencer couldn't see.

Whatever, whoever, triggered the shift in her memory was behind that wall. Spencer was sure of it.

But it's pouring, Spencer thought. Those were the same words in Nina's last text to Katharine, they must have had some sort of meaning.

The comms in his ear crackled to life.

"Reid," Morgan said, panic evident in his voice. "It's pouring means imminent danger, you need to get out of there."

Spencer didn't respond because he couldn't. Katharine had ordered him to stop talking as she stepped out into the hallway.

It turns out being right has a price because not only had he found their unsub and their hostage, but he had discovered the event that had most likely triggered Katharine's memory to fix itself sooner rather than later.

But like he said, being right had a price and this one was beginning to look a little too high.