Disclaimer: I own nothing.

I know I'm in the middle of "Obsession" right now, but I couldn't get this out of my head, so I started it :) It's pretty sad to start with, but me being me, it will end happily! Reviews are welcomed as always.

At first she thought he was just late coming home from the airport. Hotch was letting it be his last one, at least until their daughter was born. They'd been picking out names and she was looking through the tabbed pages they'd both marked together. Finally at midnight she'd grown concerned and called Hotch, wondering what the holdup might be. Hotch said the last they'd seen of him was getting in his car, leaving to return home to her.

She'd gone to bed, worry filling her heart.

The next morning she'd hoped he would be at work, but he wasn't. A phone call came in for her later from the police, saying his car had been found on the side of the road in a ditch. There was no sign of a driver anywhere and the brake lines had been cut. It was considered kidnaping because no body could be found.

The BAU launched a full-fledged investigation into his disappearance. There wasn't much to go off of until a week after he'd been missing, the unsub had contacted them using a disposable cell phone.

"Where have you taken him?" Penelope cried into the phone under the team's strict supervision. "Please, I'll do anything! Just let him go!"

"There's nothing you can do. Your precious Derek Morgan is dead," the auto-toned voice said into the phone.

"No!" she screamed in an inhuman voice laced with despair.

"I killed him." A booming laugh filled the round table room next to Penelope's sobbing. "I cut him open from every surface of his body and only when his screams of pain dissipated did I end his torture. You see, it's not much fun to cut someone when they don't scream." A haunting giggle filled the room before he continued. "Do you want to know his last words before I stabbed him through the heart? He said ' Penelope…' Just that one little word!" He was clearly enjoying hearing Penelope sob. He paused a moment. "A photograph should be arriving for you all via text message in three…two…one!" Sure enough everyone's phones signaled incoming text messages. No one moved at first. Hotch was the first to look at the gruesome picture of Derek's battered face.

The reactions of Penelope's team were varied when they saw the picture: Rossi bent his head before pulling the still sobbing Penelope into his arms; Reid had sat down in a chair, his eyes wide and jaw slack; JJ was crying into her hands while Emily, who was trying not to let her tears fall, held her hand; Hotch was staring stony-faced at the ground.

"Good-bye Penelope," the voice said. "Kiss your unborn, fatherless child for me!"

Only a few days after the phone call that ended her life Penelope gave birth to a completely healthy baby girl.

"What's her name, Kitten?" Rossi asked. He and JJ had helped her through her sixteen hour labor and were standing by her side as she held her daughter for the very first time.

Stroking the little cheek of her baby girl, Penelope sniffled. "Georgiana," she murmured, thinking of the name Derek had become particularly attached to. She looked at them for a moment. "Gigi for short." She returned her gaze to her baby. When Gigi opened her eyes, Penelope bent her head to cry more; Gigi had her father's eyes.

XXXXX

Three years passed by and Penelope raised Gigi by herself. After the initial grief of the phone call, she began to question the whole situation.

"They never found a body, Hotch!" she said hopefully as she was holding her daughter and her boss had stopped by. "We only got pictures of his head! He could still be alive and we just have to find him."

Hotch looked at her sadly. "Penelope, just because we never found a body doesn't mean he's not dead. The likelihood that he's alive in captivity a year after he was taken…the odds are a million to one."

The team watched with every passing month as their once bubbly Penelope slipped away from them. She devoted every moment of her life to her daughter when she wasn't at the BAU. Gigi was her last connection to Derek; she would never let her go if she could help it. They didn't feel the need to worry over her every second of the day.

But what they didn't know was that every night after Penelope put Gigi to bed, she would pull out two large binders she'd collected over the past three years since Derek had gone missing without a trace. Each one was filled with both memories and newspaper clippings. Pictures of the two of them, missing person papers, articles about crimes that had similar MOs to what they knew of their unsub. Most nights she stared through them until well after midnight. Sleep almost never came to her; she couldn't keep her eyes closed for very long. So she filled the nights with endless searching.

There seemed to be nothing though…there was nothing.

Every evening before she put her binders away, she would look at a picture of her and Derek that JJ had taken. It was no particular day. It was just the two of them on the beach. Derek had his arms wrapped around her from behind and his chin rested on her neck. Penelope's head was leaning back against him so she could kiss his cheek while still attempting to smile at the camera. It was perfect.

She traced the outline of his face with her index finger nail and she whispered four single words.

Come back to me.

So mostly backstory for the prologue. And it will be happier. Let me know what you think! I'd love to hear :)