A/N: You people and your prompts! LOL. I really need to get back to Half the Sky. But I love character exploration, and tomorrow I have my first full-day software training, so this new story was an easier respite from my nerves than plagues and end-of-the-world scenarios. You're just gonna have to trust me with this story and roll with it. I adore all of my readers! Seriously! Just hold onto your panties with this one. xoxoxo
They buried her on a Saturday. The sun was shining and it was surprisingly warm and sunny in the graveyard on the outer edges of London in the middle of April. Derek stood there with Penelope clutching his hand, a steady stream of tears running down her face. JJ stood on his other side, also with tears; Will was holding her hand. Hotch and Rossi stood behind him, stoic and tearless, but their faces a mask of sadness. And then there was Reid, who was inconsolable. None of them ever thought Emily would stay away as long as she had, none of them thought her move to London would ever be permanent, none of them could believe that she'd been murdered before she could come home.
They hadn't carried the casket; they hadn't been asked to. The casket was carried by men they didn't know, except Clyde Easter. Emily had been in London for almost three years at that point and her connections had changed.
The insignificant associate of Doyle's who'd been released from a prison in France a few weeks before didn't even cause a blip on their radar, according to Clyde Easter. Emily was not the reason he was in prison, her profile delivered after they'd extricated her from Doyle over a decade before barely included him. Marcus Simonton was in prison because of his own carelessness. Still, prison can do strange things to people, skew their perspective. It wasn't until it was too late that anyone realized that while he was in prison, Simonton had developed an all-encompassing hate for Emily Prentiss.
One bullet from a rifle while Emily was walking between her car and the front door of her building the week before was all it took for everyone to realize they had all been too relaxed when Simonton had been released from prison. They had him on surveillance, fleeing the scene after the shot was taken, and he was still at large.
And Emily was dead. It was an odd sense of deja vu for the team; they'd buried her before. Only this time, it was JJ's gasps of despair, absent at Emily's funeral in 2011, that let them all feel the reality and permanence of this. It was 2015, and Emily wasn't going to walk in their door seven months from now with an apologetic look on her face.
Derek stood there with his jaw clenched, masking his emotions, trying not to think, not shedding a tear. There was one brief flash of thought, that even after all her time away from them, the one person he would call on such an afternoon to share his grief was the person currently in a casket in the ground.
He completely shut down after that thought flitted through his mind, and mechanically bent to take a handful of dirt in his hand, tossing it gently on her casket, and saying a silent goodbye. But he didn't let himself feel, not really. He just couldn't let in the full reality without it taking him down. So he didn't. He shut down and locked his true self away. He put a comforting arm around Penelope when they walked back towards their vehicles. Though he felt there was a hole in his heart the size of the Grand Canyon, he decided to pretend it didn't hurt as much as it did.
Savannah moved efficiently through the house, a stack of empty boxes available in which to pack her belongings. They'd already divided the larger furniture, and Derek watched her from a distance while she moved quietly through the house with a stiff back and a blank expression. This was her decision and he didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry," wasn't right because he wasn't really sorry. He'd tried, but his job and hers were too pressure-laden for either of them to handle well.
They were both stubborn, both unwilling to change that part of their lives for the other, and a couple of weeks before she'd told him it was over and she was moving out. It wasn't difficult for him to accept her decision. They didn't hate each other, but the current emotional climate was one of hurt and apprehension.
He watched her move to the bookcase in the living room and instantly tensed as her hand closed over the spine of a book. He moved quickly away from his vantage point on the couch and towards her. "That's mine," he said firmly, taking the book in his hand and pulling it away from her.
He could see in her eyes that it hadn't been purposeful. "Sorry," she said quietly. Derek nodded at her and clutched the book in his hands. He didn't release it from his grip for the rest of the afternoon while he watched her pack. She could take anything else she wanted in that house, but she couldn't take that book.
Several hours later, when the boxes were packed and loaded into the truck, and Savannah was pulling away from the curb and from his life permanently, he finally opened the book in his hands and found the note inside.
Two months after his encounter with Carl Buford, when all of his secrets had come stumbling out in front of the team, and he was trying valiantly to put his life back together and not act embarrassed or ashamed in front of his colleagues, she confided in him. He didn't expect her to because she seemed to hold it pretty close to the vest. But joking with her about being Vonnegut fans and book nerds had been refreshing. She was the only one on the team who didn't look at him with concern and sadness. Maybe it was because she had only known him for a couple of weeks before that ill-fated trip and case erupted in Chicago.
Maybe that was it, but he didn't really believe it. There was some sense of understanding there, something in her eyes that told him she knew about scars and secrets. She opened up to him to let him know that he was still a regular guy to her, a work friend, a potential real friend, and he found it refreshing.
When their current case finished and they all went home and their separate ways, he found himself with an inexplicable desire to see her and talk.
He normally wasn't so bold, but he showed up at her door with a six-pack of beer that night. And she let him in, not seeming put out at all that he'd found out where she lived and had come over without calling.
They drank beer and ate chips and laughed and talked about books. At one point late into the evening, the words, "I escaped into books because I didn't have anywhere else to go," tumbled from his lips.
He felt the warmth of her hand on his shoulder, the hand of a friend he didn't know well at all, but he looked in her eyes and saw no judgement there. For the first time he felt he could express emotions about what had happened in Chicago, what had happened to him as a teenager, without it coming back to bite him at work the next day.
For the first time since he was ten years old and he'd cried in his mother's arms after his dad died, he sobbed. And Emily had pulled him against her and wrapped her arms around him and just let him. She didn't say anything much, but he didn't need words, he just needed to let it all out.
That night he slept on her couch and got up early the next morning to go home and dress for work. When she arrived at the BAU a few minutes after him, he was nervous at first. But she acted like the night before hadn't happened. She became his friend who knew his deepest secrets before she'd already been his friend, which was different than the rest of the team. He didn't feel like he had to walk on eggshells around her.
A week later, he'd arrived at work and found a thick envelope on his desk. He looked around and saw the bullpen was almost deserted. He opened the envelope and found a first edition of Slaughterhouse Five, signed by Kurt Vonnegut. Tucked inside the front cover the book was a small piece of paper with only a few words written on it. "We all can rise from the ashes of the fires thrown at us. I'm here for you, anytime."
Derek stood in the open doorway of his house after Savannah's moving truck pulled away and gently fingered that piece of paper with Emily's handwriting on it.
The tears came of their own accord, he sank to the floor in the entryway of the house, and he moved the book away so his tears wouldn't drip on the pages. Penelope was a good friend, probably the best friend he had right now, but her comfort didn't come with quiet understanding and emotional reserve.
He and Emily had kept most of how close they were outside of work, but the person who he could just cry to without feeling the insecurity about it the next day, the person he could laugh with and talk to without judgement and overt, explicit concern being worn on her sleeve a day later was gone. All he wanted right now, when he felt like the biggest failure in the world, was to be able to pick up the phone and call Emily. And he couldn't.
One year, two months and six days after they'd buried Emily in London, he finally let himself cry about it.