Derek Morgan had been walking around for close to an hour. The only reason he had gone back to his mother's house was because it was nearing midnight.
As quietly as he could, the mocha skinned man opened the door to his childhood home. He hoped that his mother would be asleep but once the FBI agent had eased the door shut, he turned around to see a soft light illuminating his mother's face.
"Momma," he whispered, "what are you doing up?"
"I was waiting for you to get home," Fran Morgan responded, patting the couch next to where she sat. Derek took the seat. "I'm hardly likely to go to bed when my baby boy is under arrest."
"Well," her baby boy muttered, "I'm not under arrest anymore."
"I know," the red headed woman replied. "It was on the news. They said that Carl Buford had framed respected FBI agent Derek Morgan for the murders of three young boys, two of which remain nameless."
"Uh, yeah," Derek mumbled, unsure of what to say or how much detail the report had given.
"They also said," Fran continued, "that he was being charged with sexually abusing two boys, one of whom was his latest murder victim, Damien Walters, but that they expected many more to come forward. They said he was caught for this charge, and the other, because hidden police officers and FBI agents heard him admit to and discuss the sexual abuse he had inflicted upon the FBI agent he had framed, Derek Morgan."
Fran went silent, waiting for her son to explain.
"Momma…" he began but trailed off. Words failed him. He had tried for so long to hide this secret. For years it had existed only in the deepest, darkest recesses of his mind, haunting him whenever there was a case involving molested or raped children and in his most terrifying nightmares.
"Is it true?" his mother's voice shook with barely suppressed horror and sadness.
Derek clenched his jaw in nervousness, saying nothing, but that was all that his mother needed to know the truth.
"Oh," she gasped slightly, hand slowly lifting to her mouth. Her face drained of all color and her eyes widened. Tears welled up in her eyes and she let out a small sob.
"Don't cry, Momma," Derek whispered, unable to keep a bit of the sadness permeating his being from slipping out with his words.
"What happened?" the heartbroken mother demanded gently, ignoring her son's request for her to stop crying.
"Momma, I-" he said but couldn't go on. For twenty years, twenty long years, he had kept the atrocious sins committed against him secret from everyone who he cared about. And it only took one night, one horrible, painful night, for them all to find out. The team, his mother, his sisters… Well, they might actually not know yet. He didn't know if they had seen the news but if they hadn't, they would certainly find out in the morning.
"Tell me, Derek," Fran restated. "I need to know."
"What they said was true," Derek whispered with his head down, unable to look his mother in the face and admit what had happened to him. "Exactly right, for once."
"That's not all," she quaveringly whispered. "What exactly did he do to you?"
"You don't need to know that, Momma," the son, who seemed so much younger than his 33 years, insisted softly.
"Don't tell me what I need to know, Derek Andrew Morgan," Fran said firmly, setting her face firmly to show her only son that she wasn't going to back down.
"I…" Derek started, trying to gather his thoughts and the courage needed to tell his mother of the atrocities from his teenage years.
"Go on, baby," Fran whispered, running a soothing hand up and down her son's muscular arm. "Nothing you can tell me will be as bad as knowing that it happened and I didn't know."
Derek wanted to tell her that it wasn't her fault, that he had tried and succeeded to hide it from her but he knew she would see through his badly disguised attempt at a topic change.
"Do you remember the cabin Carl used to take me to?" he finally spoke up. He couldn't just come right out and say what had happened; he needed to tell the whole story, once and for all, and this was the easiest way for him to start.
After his mother had nodded in answer, he continued, "That's where it started. The first time he took me there. At first, all he did was brush up against me a bit but I thought it was accidental. Then, he was sitting a little too close to me when we were eating lunch during a hike and he put his hand on my leg, like you do when you try to comfort someone, only it was just a little too close to my…
"That night, he let me drink some beer. Then he asked me if I wanted to go swimming. I told him that I didn't have my trunks but he said we could just go nak- skinny dipping because we were both boys."
Fran's hand flew back to her mouth and she looked like she was about to be ill. Another small sob escaped her lips but now that Derek had started, he couldn't stop.
"It kinda seemed a little weird to me," he admitted, "but I used to shower with Dad sometimes, when I was younger and we were in those community showers at the Y, and I was a little drunk from the beer so I agreed."
Another sob sounded, this one a little harder than the last one.
"We got in and it was just normal for the most part, except he still brushed into me more than most people would. God, I should have seen it!" He was furious with himself.
"Oh, Derek!" Fran sobbed. "You were just a little boy. You had no way of knowing!"
Ignoring his mother's comment, he went on, "We went inside when it got dark and Carl gave me some more beer while we watched a game on TV. I was almost asleep when he asked if I…if I wanted to do something really fun."
The red haired mother let out another sob but was then quiet, letting silent tears make tracks down her pale skin. Derek grabbed her hand and squeezed, as if to let her know that he was there and that he was alright.
"He told me to close my eyes," the vulnerable man shared, a few of his own tears falling from his eyes.
His voice was shaking and cracking by this point. The abused man was barely keeping his composure as he related this real-life hell to his mother.
"He said it would be rea-lly fun b-but it was a surprise so I needed to close my eyes," he whispered brokenly. "I was drunk and I wanted to see what the surprise was. I trusted that bastard! I thought…I don't know what I thought but it wasn't what the surprise was.
"He st-stuck his hand right over my…boy parts, "Fran moaned into her hand, muffling the sound somewhat. "I screamed and he told me not to worry, 'cause it would feel really g-good soon but I knew what he meant by then. I screamed again and tried to run away but he p-pushed me down and said that if I didn't…let him touch me, that he would stop coaching me and that he would get Gordinski to give me hell.
"I was still going to try to run away but then he said how sad you would be when I got shot and died from hanging with those bangers, because that's all I would have without him and he told me-" Derek let a few more tears fall before he finished. "He told me that Dad would be ashamed of me for hanging with those bangers and for going back to them after Carl stopped helping me with sports.
"And I knew that it was true. If I stopped getting help with sports, I probably would have fallen back into the gangs and I couldn't do that to you, Momma. I hated when I made you sad; I had done it so much before I met Carl and I could start doing it again.
"And Dad…" he whispered, a tremble in his voice, "What happened to him was still like this huge, open wound. I knew he would have been ashamed of me for hanging with those bangers but I hoped he might have been proud of me again for doing so well in sports and school and I- I couldn't just give that up to go back to being a low-life that Dad would have been ashamed of."
Fran Morgan was…words couldn't describe what she was feeling inside. Hurt, despair, horror… Those words didn't even begin to describe the torture she was feeling within herself. But Fran Morgan was a strong woman. She needed to know everything that that evil man had done to her little boy.
"That was how it started," she whispered, "but what else did he do? Did he just touch you or…" She trailed off, trying to spare her son the pain of hearing the actual words.
"He, um," Derek mumbled, keeping to together by a thin, thin thread only. "He did anything and everything you can think of. Um, you know, uh, touching and um, sex, in both ways guys can do it together. And he, uh, made me do the same stuff to him, too."
No matter how strong Fran was, she couldn't handle that and any mother who could hear that about her child and not burst into heart-wrenching sobs should be damned for all eternity.
"Oh, Derek!" she sobbed into her hands. "Oh, my baby!"
"Shhhhhh, Momma," Derek tried to comfort her, sliding an arm around her shoulders and squeezing, like she often did if he seemed upset. "Don't cry. It's all over now."
That didn't stop the tears but they only lasted a few more moments.
"Oh, look at me," Fran sniffled. "I should be comforting you, not the other way around, honey."
"I'm fine, Momma," he said but his eyes told another story. They were full of pain and anguish and they glistened slightly, like he was holding back tears.
"Baby," the mother of three whispered.
That was all it took. Derek Morgan's face crumpled as he let out twenty years of pent up fear, anger, shame, and pain spill from his dark eyes and streak down his chocolate skin.
Fran Morgan grabbed her only son into a tight hug. One hand rubbed soothing circles on his back while the other cupped the back of his smooth head. The distraught man buried his face in the crook of his mother's neck and cried.
He cried for all the years he had suffered alone, to afraid and disgusted with himself to reveal what was being done to him, for the nights he was unable to sleep because of the nightmares, for his deepest secret being revealed in such a public, humiliating way, for the looks of pity he was getting from Hotch, Gideon, and JJ, for the way Prentiss just looked at him like she was uncertain of how to treat him anymore, for the way Reid had looked at him with concern and sadness (which didn't bother him as much as the other looks he was getting) but was avoiding him, despite the fact that he and Reid were best friends, and he cried because finally, finally the didn't have to hide the pain any longer.