-MAD WOMAN-
four!

there are no secrets that time
does not reveal
- jean racine

now!

"Since when have you had a doctorate in communications?"

The question came out of nowhere in Wren Spader's mind. Sure, Hotch and Spencer knew but the rest of the team didn't. She was never quite sure why she kept her larger accomplishments a secret from the people in her life. Perhaps it was because she wanted to have something to herself. Or maybe she didn't tell the team because she didn't want them to look at her any differently than they already did. But it wasn't just the team who didn't know this about her. Wren's best friend and sister had no idea she had even pursued a doctorate degree.

Spinning around in her chair to face the technical analyst, who was holding a tablet close to her chest, Wren's mouth was parted in shock. Emily had turned to face the pair and Wren took a guess to say that Spencer was also watching the interaction from his desk.

"Penny, what happened to not looking through the team's personal files without reason?" Wren scolded jokingly. She wasn't upset that Penelope had found out, it was only a matter of time.

"Since I had to go and be the communications liaison when you have all the capabilities to be part of the equation!" She exclaimed, which got a soft chuckle out of Emily.

"You volunteered for the position!" The brunette argued with her. A small smile was threatening to form on her face, but she pushed it back for the time being. She couldn't believe that her first 'argument' with Penelope was going to be about this. She gave the redhead a small smile before continuing. "I've had the doctorate for a little over six years now. If you want me to take part in the communications liaison role, I will. 

"You're a doctor," Penelope pulled over a chair from one of the empty desks and sat in front of Wren. She never looked away from the brunette. It was as if she was marveled by the woman. "We should be calling you Dr. Spader. Why have you never brought this up? Or corrected us?"

"Well, for one, I introduced myself as Agent Spader, not Dr. Spader, so that might be why I never corrected you. And two, I'm not a doctor. I have a doctorate. I don't like calling myself a doctor. It feels weird."

"We have two doctors on the team," the redhead continued, ignoring Wren's attempts at belittling her accomplishment or the signs that she was getting uncomfortable with the conversation. "It's amazing. Why didn't you tell us?"

"She probably didn't tell us because she joined the team in a unique way and some of the team didn't like her all that much. Bringing up the fact that she also has a doctorate could have made the team think she was trying to tell them she was better than them," Emily pointed out as she stood up and walked over to the break area with her coffee cup. Wren glared at the woman as she walked.

"I hate being profiled," Wren stated loud enough for Emily to hear across the room. The raven-haired woman only grinned at her as she poured herself some coffee. Wren refocused on Penelope, whose eyes were indicating that she was expecting to know if Emily was correct. "That's mostly why I didn't tell you guys."

"What's the rest of it?" She continued to push. "Why didn't you tell us once everything settled down?"

"Because by the time everything settled down with my transfer, we had other things to worry about and I didn't want to bring it up," the brunette sighed as she spun in her chair to face her desk again. Lifting up her pen to continue filling out the preliminary profile she had been assigned, Wren hoped that the technical analyst would drop the topic, but she knew the woman better than that. It usually took someone snapping for Penelope to snap and Wren really didn't want to snap at her.

As Garcia continued to push, Wren glanced over at Spencer to see him fiddling with the pen in his hand. He was attempting to make it balance on one of his fingers and the concentration on his face was almost enough to get her to smile. But the way the conversation with Penelope was making her feel was prohibiting Wren from feeling anything other than stress. She hated talking about herself more than almost anything. She was more than happy to tell people the necessary information, but anything more wasn't very likely.

Her glance towards the resident genius must have lasted longer than she intended it to because he saw her looking at him. He immediately noticed Wren's anxious habits and stopped what he was doing to listen in on Penelope's rambling.

"I mean, don't you trust us, Wren? Something as incredible and meaningful as that should be something you can feel like you could share with us," the technical analyst finished with a frustrated sigh. She meant well and the rest of the room knew it, but she couldn't see the signs that the brunette agent was putting up more and more walls with each word she said. 

"To be fair, I don't bring up each and every class I've taken or degree I have. And I usually don't correct people if they call me 'agent,'" Spencer spoke up from his desk, gaining both Penelope and Wren's attention.

The redhead's expression softened and she gave the man a small smile. "Well, that's because each day you show us how smart you are. We have no reason to look into your education."

"But you feel like you need to look into mine?" Wren spun around in her chair again to face Garcia. "What part of graduating at the top of my class with a double major makes you doubt my education?"

Penelope's eyes widened as she realized how her words had been misinterpreted and the agitation in Wren's eyes was clear as day to her now. "No, I didn't mean-"

"You want the honest answer? I didn't bring up the doctorate because I don't want it to define me. I want to be known as more than what degrees I have. There, are you happy?" She snapped, standing up and walking out of the bullpen and towards the bathroom.

Anger was probably the easiest emotion to come to Wren and she wasn't proud of how easily it could overtake her. Usually, when she felt herself getting irrationally angry at work, she could go to JJ's office and rant to the blonde, all while helping sift through the stacks of case files she had on her desk. But know that JJ was gone, Wren was left pacing in the bathroom, hoping her anger would go away on its own.

She wasn't actually angry at Penelope, and she knew that. She was angry that it constantly felt like she had to prove herself when no one else did. She was angry that nothing she did seemed like enough for the team. The way they treated her nowadays was unintentional and she knew it. But if Wren's past work was any proof of what she was capable of, the team should've stopped doubting her the day she got shot for one of them.

However, knowing that she wasn't upset with Penelope wouldn't change the fact that the redhead was likely blaming herself and the situation would be eating at her until it was cleared up. But if they spoke right this second, Wren knew it was likely she would say something she didn't mean and make matters worse.

The woman continued to pace around the bathroom for a few more minutes before she left. She was far from feeling okay about the whole situation but she would have to wait until the workday was over before she could actually let out some steam. Luckily, her mind wasn't racing and her breathing was back to normal, so she felt more comfortable returning to the bullpen.

When she walked out of the women's room, she was met by the sight of Spencer Reid leaning against the wall opposite the entrance. As the door opened, he looked up from his shoes and gave her a small smile.

"You okay?" He asked her even though he already knew the answer and also knew her well enough to know she was going to lie to him.

"Peachy," Wren replied as she rolled her shoulders back. "Just got in my head about what the team thinks about me for a second."

"When you get angry, you go to JJ," Spencer pointed out, pushing himself off the wall to stand in front of her. She chuckled lightly, amused that he had picked up on another one of her habits.

"Well, it's kind of difficult to do that when JJ isn't here," she said, looking between him and the people walking through the hallway. "I need to try to not get as angry as easily."

"That'll probably be a long process," he acknowledged and she nodded.

"Yeah, tell me about it."

"Well, if you need someone to go to when you're angry, you can always come to me," he offered as he nudged his head towards the bullpen.

The pair started walking and Wren felt a warmth in her stomach because of his words. "I might just take you up on that sometime."

She wouldn't though. Not for a very long time.

When they arrived back in the bullpen, Penelope was nowhere in sight and Wren sighed. The rest of the room was back to its office buzz and no one seemed to be paying her much attention.

"Hey, Spader?" Spencer spoke and she looked over at him again. "I hope you know that I think you belong here. You're as much a part of this team as the rest of us."

For a moment, she was speechless. It was exactly what she needed to hear and there were times she wondered how it was that he always knew what to say. "Thanks, smartie."

After giving her his signature grin, Spencer walked back to his desk and Wren made her way up the steps and knocked twice on Hotch's door. Her boss looked up from his paperwork and relaxed a bit when he saw her. She knew he was used to seeing Strauss of someone else there with bad news but the worst thing Wren could tell him was that she felt sick and needed to go home.

"Spader, can I help you?" He asked. The question was enough for Wren to step into the office fully and approach his desk.

"What parts of JJ's job are you having Garcia do?"

"Right now, she does all the pre-field work such as contacting the police departments we travel to. She explains to them our needs and gets any information from the precincts that we might now already have. Why?"

"I was thinking I could take the other part," Wren offered. "I know how to talk to the press and I've handled more devastated families than I can count on both hands."

"Don't you feel that you have your hands full with being a profiler and our interrogations specialist?" Hotch furrowed his brows at her proposition. He wasn't opposed, more so concerned that she was overworking herself. A habit that they both shared.

"The whole team knows my interrogations handbook inside-out. And I'll still be available to the team. Adding this to my workload won't do much," she replied. "I'm hardly in the field outside of being a fresh pair of eyes. Most of my work keeps me in the precincts anyway, this will just give me a bit more to do."

The unit chief's features softened as she spoke. He could tell that something was wrong with the brunette but the way she held herself never gave her thoughts away. "If this is something you want to do, that's fine. But the moment it becomes too much, let me know."

"I will," she lied, giving a grateful half-smile to her boss before leaving his office.

"Spader?" Hotch called her back in before she could get too far and she reappeared in his line of sight."

"Sir?"

"Are you still good to watch Jack on Saturday evening?"

The question let Wren release all the tension that had built up in her body in the past hour. "Of course," she told him. "As long as we don't have a case, I'm free."

After the unit chief nodded, Wren left his office and returned to her desk where she saw a sticky note with Penelope's signature heart and a small apology. Sucking in her lips, the brunette debated whether or not she was ready to clear the air between her and the technical analyst. She still had a few more files to finish before she would be done for the day. She could finish her workload now and then spend the rest of the day with Penelope, or she could talk to Garcia now, and then come back to her work.

Wren sat down at her desk and opened the case files again, taking her time to fill out each form and detail everything needed. As she wrote, she thought about the best ways to express her feelings to Penelope and get their relationship back to what it was an hour ago.

✦✧✦

Paperwork days were always long and boring to Wren. Granted, today was anything but boring, it was still long and she couldn't wait to get home and relax.

She was lucky that the team hadn't had a case that took them away from home in a bit and that the streak of nights she slept in her own bed had hit a new record. It also meant that she was home on a Thursday evening, the one night a week she has dinner with the two of the people who mean the most to her.

Raven Spader arrived at Wren's apartment twenty minutes earlier than the scheduled time for dinner, which was absolutely no surprise to Wren. The sisters saw each other almost weekly but they still tried to spend as much time together as possible. Raven was probably the most considerate person Wren had ever met. She spent so much of her life doing things for others, it was almost a miracle for the older Spader to spend a moment doing something for herself. Raven knew that she wanted to be near her sister as she raised her daughter, so she waited to settle down until Wren had found a permanent place of residence in the D.C. area. After Wren found herself an apartment, Raven found a small townhome nearby for herself and Oakley. Thursday nights when Wren was home were one of the few nights that Raven hired a babysitter to watch Oakley. She and her sister got to spend unfiltered time together along with their best friend.

Daria Whitney came into Wren's life by spilling her to-go cup of coffee down the front of Wren's shirt accidentally one morning. The interaction was simple, filled with apologies and reassurance and it should've ended when they walked away from one another. However, they crossed paths once again in Wren's apartment complex. It turned out that she and Daria were neighbors. Daria was everything that Wren wasn't. She was vibrant, enthusiastic, and talked faster than Wren could comprehend at times. And despite that they literally lived right next to one another, Daria was almost always fifteen minutes late to dinner. Her mind seemed to move faster than a bullet train, but Wren attributed that to Daria's undiagnosed ADHD.

The three women were inseparable in many ways and almost all of Wren's free time was either spent with them or Oakley. The women had even joined Wren at team dinners in the past and got along well with her co-workers. She knew she had a family in Raven, they were blood and grew up in a home that caused them to band together from a young age. And Daria became like a sister almost immediately, it was quite impressive how easily Wren felt comfortable around her. 

As dinner progressed, the women talked about their work lives, the most recent cases Wren had worked on, how Oakley was doing in pre-school, and their love lives. It was an entirely different environment than the one at the BAU and Wren enjoyed the nights she got to spend with them.

"The amount of men at the office who have asked me out is astounding," Daria whined as she poured more of the wine into her glass. "Like, what part of the lesbian flag sitting in my pencil jar and my rainbow tattoo says 'hey, fellas, I'm definitely interested in you.'"

"Ignorance is bliss to them," Raven told her with a small chuckle. "How many times has the flag been stolen now?"

"Still four times. Once I caught Melanie stealing it on camera and leaving the homophobic sticky notes on my desk, I got her fired," she stated proudly before looking over at Wren. "Thanks again for getting that information on her that showed she engaged in anti-LGBTQ discourse online."

"Don't thank me, thank Penelope," Wren said. "Once I told her about what you were going through, she was all over it."

"Well, Melanie, the homophobe got what she deserved," Raven concluded as a small 'amen' came from Daria. "So, Wren, any people in your life?"

Wren immediately rolled her eyes. "Every dinner you ask the same question and every dinner, the answer is still the same. No, I am not seeing anyone, and no, I don't plan on getting back out there any time soon."

"But you haven't been on a date in almost six months," her sister reminded her. "You need to have a life outside of your job."

"I have a life outside of my job," she argued. "I see you two and I spend time with Oakley. I think that suffices enough as a life."

"That's barely social interaction," Daria retorted, sipping her wine. "Let us hook you up."

"Yeah, let me just make sure I have a case during whatever date you plan on setting up," Wren joked, causing Raven to throw a crumpled-up napkin at her. "But, seriously, I like my life. In my opinion, it's a good one and I'm really not looking to find someone."

"I'm still going to ask around at work or maybe set up a dating profile for you," Daria said.

"Don't you dare!"

"Come on," she protested. "You're hot! And you're the smartest girl I know, any guy would be lucky to have you, but they don't know you exist because you don't go out. And when you do, you always say you're not available."

"That's because she's not available," Raven told Daria. "She's married to her job."

"And proudly so," Wren agreed before taking a sip of her drink. She looked over to Daria to see her eyes light up with an idea.

"Ooh! What about that doctor you work with? What was his name again? Sawyer? Simon?"

"Spencer, and no," the agent spoke. "He and I are friends and I'm not looking to change that."

"Yet," Daria said.

"Okay, you're definitely drunk," Wren stood up from her seat and began clearing the table.

"Don't change the subject!" Raven shouted playfully. "I think you two would be cute! A couple of brainiacs."

"In your dreams," the Spader sister called back from the kitchen.

"Ooh, gladly," Daria said in a sing-song tone as she entered the kitchen and leaned against the counter. She spoke with her hands, something she only does when drunk. "'Spencer and Wren Reid' has a nice ring to it."

"Since when are we talking about marriage?" Wren asked with a laugh. "I need to date a guy before you start changing my last name for me."

"Nope, it's decided and I'm planning the wedding. I call maid of honor," she announced.

"Hey!" Raven called from the dining table.

"If I ever get married, you two will somehow be sharing the maid of honor position," Wren told the pair.

"Hey, Rae, do you have Spencer's phone number? I want to call him and ask him what kind of wedding he would want," Daria left the kitchen.

"Raven, don't you even think about giving her his number!"