~~~ Popped into my head. A little random, maybe ridiculous, but hopefully you bear with me and enjoy. Reference episode: "Tabula Rasa", season three. ~~~

"All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door..." ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

His name was Brain Matloff. His story went like this:

His mother had abandoned him. He started strangling women. The BAU caught on to him. He jumped from a building. He fell to the ground. He lost his memory. He awoke from a coma. He regained his memory. He pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to life.

It didn't read well. But it read better than a lot of the murderers the BAU had left in their wake. At the very least, it was a story with a solid conclusion.

When the BAU had left Matloff, it was 2008. He held a skeleton in his arms. His first, he said. His first kill. They didn't know her name. They returned to Quanitco before DNA came through.

But her name was Anastasia Vermont. She had a twin, Annabel. They were identical. It was Annabel who'd been called when the dental records were confirmed. She'd requested to see what was left of the body, looked down at it and thought – that's what I'd look like, if I were strangled and left in the ground to rot for four years.

The Blue Ridge Strangler. Annabel had heard a lot about him in the news, first in 2004 – not long after her sister had gone missing – and then again, in 2008, when he'd come out of his coma…not long before her sister had been found. But all the time's Annabel had encountered his name in the news, she'd never once contemplated the idea Anastasia had been his starting point.

She always thought Anastasia would come back alive.

Actually, she never thought Anastasia would come back at all. She thought Anastasia had run away, and would keep running, forever. That's what Annabel would have done, if she were Anastasia.

Anastasia and Annabel had grown up with, obviously, the same set of parents. They'd had the same group of friends and eaten the same breakfast cereal. But some way, somehow, during some unsure time, Anastasia and Annabel had become as different as different could be.

Annabel had become responsible. Mature. By the time their mother died when they were seventeen, Annabel had already taken up cooking and laundry and been rewarded a partial-scholarship to a local university.

Anastasia had had a baby.

She was born two years after their mother died, named Aurelia and not thought much of by her daydreaming mother – Mr. Vermont and Annabel took care of her more often than Anastasia. It was Annabel who'd awoken to her cries on the morning when Anastasia had left for her bi-weekly jog and never returned. By that time, Aurelia was five. Too old to be crying really, except for when she couldn't find her mommy.

Annabel remembered calling Anastasia's cellphone to find it ringing on the countertop. She didn't take her phone running. She'd waited three extra hours for her sister to return, then called the cops. Eventually she'd been reported missing. There'd been a mediocre search, but everyone suspected Anastasia had up and left. Annabel included. Mr. Vermont hadn't been very nice to his daughter since she'd brought home the news she was pregnant.

In 2008, Aurelia was nine. She lived with Annabel. Mr. Vermont lived with them too. He had a pension. Annabel had a job with the government that generated a decent salary. She got the call about Anastasia's dental records – filed in a missing person's database ages ago – matching a skeleton dug-up by a one-time amnesiac serial killer only twenty-seven minutes and three point two seconds after breaking up with her boyfriend.

And it was only three months after that, with Anastasia buried and the ring she always wore returned to them (after spending years in an old woman's jewelry box, apparently) that Annabel, at twenty-eight, was diagnosed with the same type of cancer that had killed her mother.

So she was deterred from her mission. Slightly. The mission she'd schemed up within seconds of seeing her sister's dead body, devoid of flesh and recognizable features. But two years and multiple, painful treatments of chemo later, she was in remission, Aurelia was in eighth grade, and her father was in a nursing home.

Annabel could start putting her life back on track. Or maybe it had never veered off track to begin with, because it hadn't been on any particular one.

Annabel could start her life.

With her mission.

[XYZ]

As far as mission's went, hers was simple. It required minimal effort, which was just her kind of thing. She rooted through a drawer. She found a card handed to her by the detective that had worked the Blue Ridge Strangler case. It was bent at the top left-hand corner and dirtied by pencil lead and other bottom-of-a-drawer grime. But the number was legible.

She called the detective. Explained who she was, and asked for a number.

Annabel had been reading the papers the week her sister's body was recovered.

Annabel knew her sister's murderer had been caught, tried, and sentenced.

And she knew why.

She attributed his arrest to the BAU. Both his first arrest, in 2004, and his second one, in 2008. She knew the local PD hadn't played a bit part, but she felt her gratitude flowing more in the general direction of the FBI.

It was their number which she asked for. And received.

[XYZ]

Derek Morgan's story was one very much different from Brian Matloff's. It couldn't be summed up as neatly, and didn't yet have any sort of solid conclusion. So far it went like this:

His father had been shot. He'd been molested. He'd become a cop, worked his way up to FBI. He had been unit chief at one point, and then stepped down so the rightful man could own it once more. Now he was standing in that man's office.

Of all bizarre things, he was looking for a pen. A very specific pen, one with geeky physics jokes down the side. It belonged to Spencer Reid (Morgan's baby-girl Garcia buying it for him as an early Christmas present) but Morgan had stolen it, purely to irk him, and hid it in Aaron Hotchner's office. The one place he knew Reid would never think to look.

Now he couldn't find it, even though he was sure he remembered where he'd put it.

Now the phone was ringing.

Morgan looked around. Hotch was out – gone where, he couldn't imagine – and who would it harm, if he picked up the call?

"This is SSA Derek Morgan."

The question on the other end surprised him: "With the BAU?"

The voice was high-pitched. Perhaps because of this, it came across to him as naïve, but Morgan didn't think so. He thought it came across as naïve because of the pent-up hope residing so obviously in it.

"Yes," he replied, carefully, "Can I help you?"

"I know you must be busy," said the voice, naïve and high and hopeful as before, "But I'm in Quantico. I was hoping I could meet with one of you, or all of you. I just wanted to say thank you, in person." A pause, "You helped find Brian Matloff. He killed my sister. I…she was the first victim."

The one they'd never known the name of.

Morgan remembered the case instantly. It had been memorable, after all; jumping across a building's rooftop, the guy losing his memory. He felt a pull on his heart.

"What was her name?" he asked.

"Anastasia," came the response, "And I'm Annabel."

[XYZ]

They met at a coffee shop after work. He should've told the other members of his team but he didn't. He intended to. He'd tell them tomorrow.

He walked into the coffee shop and found her instantly, sickening as he realized he did so by looking for Matloff's type – brunette, and early twenties (or rather, would have been early twenties, six years ago). He hadn't known Annabel would look like her sister. But there she was, and she held out her hand for him to shake.

"We were twins," she said immediately.

"I'm so sorry," was the best he could offer.

"Let me buy you a coffee." She insisted.

"Let me buy you one." He countered.

She considered him. Then nodded. "Alright," she agreed, "But I'm still buying you one."