A/N

I struggled with the case chapter of Old Wounds the other day and felt I needed a distraction, but didn't want to stray from the fandom (if I do, it usually gets even harder to get back into it). Also, I felt like playing with the combination Blake and Morgan because, uh… I felt like it. I WAS just going to make it a one-shot, but if my muse has a say (and she does), it seems like it will end up becoming a two-shot, if anyone is interested in reading more.

Also, is there a shipname for these two? Because if not, I shall call them Derex. Hehe, that sounds like a dinosaur. Or a medication.

Okay, moving on!

"This is not a road," Alex Blake stated in a very indifferent voice. She had been quiet for at least half an hour, correctly assuming that backseat (or passenger seat) driving Derek Morgan was not a good idea.

"What do you mean it's not a road? It's even paved."

Last time it was paved was probably years before I was born, Blake thought and rolled her eyes. Which would be some time in the late fifties or early sixties. Since then, this strip of road had obviously fallen into neglect and was now cracked and crumbled. In some parts even big chunks of the pavement had been eaten away by weather and time.

"There was a tree growing in the middle of said pavement about a mile ago, did you notice?"

"It wasn't a tree, Blake, it was a twig."

"I know you're a city kid, but twigs are not attached to the ground with roots."

"Hey, don't lecture me on nature, you're not exactly a countryside girl yourself," Morgan replied and then added; "It was tiny."

"It was still a tree. A European white birch, also known as silver birch, to be exact. It's considered an invasive species here in Wisconsin."

Morgan groaned.

"You seriously need to spend less time with Reid."

Blake had no response to his comment, so she merely put her sunglasses back on and resumed staring out the window at the winding road and the endless fields. She had a slowly building headache and this was the main reason she was annoyed right now, much more so than she could blame on Morgan's apparent determination to get lost on the way to the crime scene.

"Hey. Talk to me Blake, what's troubling you?"

"Your navigation skills, or rather lack of them," Blake snapped.

"My navigation skills? I'm just driving. You're supposed to be the navigator."

"I'm serious," Blake replied. "Where are we?"

Morgan gave her a side-glance and was close to deliver a sarcastic reply, but realised that she asked an honest (and valid) question.

"Given that our GPS decided to break down two hours ago, I actually have no idea," he admitted. Blake's lips pursed in disapproval, but she decided not to comment on their added misfortune, and opened the glove compartment.

"What are you looking for?" Morgan asked.

"I'm looking for the maps. You know, the physical, foldable, actually existing maps."

"We don't have those anymore."

She turned disbelieving brown eyes in his direction.

"You're kidding me."

"Nope," he replied and shook his head to emphasise his point. "GPS and our tablets and cell phones are supposed to cut it. Old school stuff was removed about a year ago."

"Wow. So the Bureau doesn't believe wireless devices ever break down?"

"Apparently not."

She clenched her jaws for a moment.

"What was the last landmark we passed?"

"Um… a red barn?" He snorted laughter when he caught glimpse of her facial expression and said; "I'm actually glad there are no maps in there, otherwise you'd swat me in the back of the head with one right now."

"Look at that, you're a mind reader," Blake replied dryly. "The last village we passed was, uh…" she searched her memory, which wasn't as unfaltering as Spencer Reid's, but still rather impressive, and eventually came up with it; "Moneyborn."

"Moneyborn? Really? That sounds like a Conservative Congressman."

This time Blake did swat him at one swelling bicep with the back of her hand, but she was smiling a little.

"On behalf of the people in Moneyborn," she said. "All three of them."

"Hey, I never said there was anything wrong with being a Conservative Congressman."

"Not in so many words, but I know your view on Conservatives and Congress, so I made an educated guess. Back on the topic of Moneyborn, which was the last place I recall from the map," Blake said pointedly. "We passed that place almost an hour ago and we've been going in a pretty straight line heading North-East."

"I don't have the slightest clue," Morgan said, thinking that included her political views. Almost six months of working together was usually enough to find that out, but when it came to Blake, he was still none the wiser. "Check Google maps."

"Oh come on, you don't think I would have done that already if I could get online?"

"There's no connection?"

"Right you are," she said, barely holding back a sarcastic "Hot Stuff" á Garcia. Not that Morgan wasn't hot stuff - if he got any hotter she'd have to have a heat shield just to sit next to him - but she wasn't one to talk like that.

"Man, we are lost, aren't we?" Morgan said, sounding so utterly surprised she had to fake a cough to conceal the fact that she laughed.

"Finally we're on the same page," she replied. "Just, turn around and go back."

"How? There's barely enough room to go straight ahead on this road."

He was right. On both sides were deep ditches before vast and seemingly unkempt fields took over - but then again, what did Blake know about fields? Maybe they were perfectly well-kempt from a farmer's perspective. However, something about this entire place felt off, somehow. Even the sun had gone into hiding, and the day had taken on a depressing, surreal gloom. The daylight was an eerie, almost physically nauseating, yellowish grey. Maybe a thunderstorm was brewing among the clouds, that would explain her headache.

"Okay, fine. As soon as we get to somewhere we can turn around, let's do it," Blake said, raising both hands slightly as if saying she didn't want to argue. When she did, he noticed something that had escaped him until now.

"You're not wearing your wedding band."

Blake shook her head.

"No, I'm not."

"Is there a particular reason for that?"

"There is." She shrugged. "I'm not married anymore."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Yeah, well, I'm a difficult woman to love."

"I doubt it."

She looked up and gave him a brief smile that didn't reach all the way to her eyes.

"Sweet but untrue. You find me puzzling at best, insufferable at worst."

"Hey, don't put words in my mouth. It's not that I don't like you, Blake, I do. But you don't seem to like anyone. The only person you speak to about things that aren't case-related is Reid. I get it, that's your comfort zone. What I don't get is why you still, after almost six months on the team, is too scared to step out of it. Are we doing something wrong?"

"No," she replied. "No, you're not doing anything wrong. I'm just a linguist who cannot communicate properly, the responsibility lies with me. And the faults."

Morgan scoffed.

"Self-pity doesn't become you. I think you can communicate just fine, but that you're afraid of becoming personal. The question is, what are you afraid of?"

"Betrayal." The answer came so quickly she seemed surprised herself, but then she nodded as if agreeing. "If I trust someone, they betray me."

"I see why you feel that way, but you know that's not true, right?"

"Truth is subjective."

"Okay, this is where you start to get difficult to be around," he said, but his voice was gentle. "When you've decided on something, you just turn a blind eye to everything else. You have decided that everyone is out to get you - except possibly Reid - so you don't let anyone too close, which leaves you feeling empty and shut out."

He was right, and she resented that.

"Are you done?"

"No, not this time. This needs to be brought to the surface once and for all. I know why you have trust issues, believe me, I do. Strauss is…"

"…manipulative," Blake filled in with a bitter laugh.

"Not the word I was going for, but I guess it'll do."

"I used to love her, you know," Blake said. She had donned her sunglasses again, in spite of the gloomy day. He could tell why from the harsh thickness of her voice - she was trying not to cry. He hoped she would succeed, not for his sake, but for her own.

"Love her?"

"Oh, you have no idea how that woman could wind me up. She had me wrapped around her finger. Sometimes almost literally."

"Whoa, thank you, that's a bit more personal than I bargained for," Morgan said, in the hopes of coaxing a smile from her. He didn't.

"I guess part of her cutting my rope during Amerithrax was to make sure I couldn't tell anyone about our affair. If I did, it would seem like I was just trying to get back at her for ruining my career. Nobody would have believed me. I did try and bring it up with the boss one step higher in the hierarchy, but he warned me that if I so much as breathed a word about that, they'd have me fired from the Bureau. Defamation of character. Erin would deny everything I said."

Morgan gave a low whistle. It made sense now. It wasn't just a Straussian betrayal used as a stepping stone to power, it was on a much more personal level. No wonder Blake was closed-off.

"I shouldn't have told you this," Blake mumbled and turned away.

"Yes, you should have. And sooner. Have you told anyone about this before?"

Blake sighed.

"No."

"And your husband?"

"He knew I was smitten with Erin - you didn't have to be a profiler to notice that, I was over the moon - but as far as he knew, she was unaware of my feelings. And he didn't really take it seriously. I think he chalked it up to a case of hero worshipping. Erin was a big thing back then. On the shortlist of becoming a new Department Chief at Quantico."

"I didn't know that."

"Well…" she cleared her throat. "It took a toll on her career as well. She wasn't demoted, like I was, but it ensured that she wouldn't be promoted."

She fell silent and looked out the window, seemingly deep in thought.

"You've kept that bottled up for a long time," Morgan said and touched her shoulder. At first she went rigid at his touch, as if she thought he was going to hurt her or make fun of her, but then she relaxed. The comfort he offered was much welcome. She hadn't known just how much she had missed something as simple as a gentle touch. The fact that the man providing it looked like a Greek God wasn't a bad thing either.

"Yeah," she exhaled.

"Feeling any better letting it out?"

"Actually, I do."

"That's good." He caught her eye and smiled at her. And Blake realised something deeply unsettling.

She wanted him.

Badly.