Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Thank you very much for the reviews and follows! I appreciate you giving it a shot :) If you wanna let me know what you think happened to Penelope, leave a review…I love hearing from you guys!
Quick reminder: The timeline works differently in this story, so Kevin and Penelope have NOT dated in the past.
16 Years Ago…
Kevin shouldered his messenger bag and made his way down the hallway after a long day of working with the BAU. The team of serial killer hunters had finally found a permanent technical analyst to replace Penelope, so his stint with them was over. After nothing but twelve straight months of looking into psychos, he was ready to get back to data collection and surveillance. He was also more than a little ready to quit dealing with Derek Morgan.
Since the disappearance of his wife and the announcement that the case was completely cold, Morgan lashed out at everyone. Kevin had become the latest target of his rage, having taken Penelope's old job.
Suffice to say, Kevin was ready to be done and not on the menu for getting chewed out.
As he was walking down the hall in the direction of the elevator, he heard a loud bang from a room up ahead. Halting abruptly, Kevin looked around to see if anyone else had heard it. Unsurprisingly, no one appeared; it was almost midnight and most of the team had been gone since nine when they'd arrived home from their latest case. When he heard it again, he rushed up ahead and skidded to a stop in front of the room where the noise was centered in.
Agent Derek Morgan's office.
At first, Kevin was hesitant to enter, but when he heard a much louder one, he forced himself to gain the balls and go in. How scary could the man be? Kevin wasn't working in Penelope's position anymore, so he should be safe.
Knocking twice, he opened the door without waiting for an answer. He couldn't believe what he saw when he entered. Across the room from the door was Morgan. He was facing it, and he was pulling his fist back from the wall.
In the plaster was a large, gaping whole.
The much larger man spun around when Kevin opened the door. His eyes were blood-shot, and he was sporting a five o'clock shadow that had to be a week old. The smell of whiskey was thick in the air. The sight left Kevin speechless.
"What do you want, Lynch?" Morgan grunted, his voice slurring. He stumbled away from the wall and towards his desk. Picking up the glass on the tabletop, he threw back the rest of the whiskey.
"Agent Morgan, what the hell is going on here?" Kevin blurted. "Why aren't you home? The team's been gone for a week. Don't you want to see Elia?"
Morgan gave a dark laugh. Slamming the glass back onto the desk, he grumbled, "My sister is in town with Elia. I needed a drink." He spun around, trying to find the bottle of whiskey he'd been drinking from; he was so buzzed he couldn't see that it was right in front of him, just a bit further up on the desk.
Sighing, Kevin set his bag down and shut the door. "Agent Morgan, come on," he said, going forward toward Derek. He took his arm firmly and motioned for him to sit on the office sofa. Morgan was too inebriated to care and allowed Kevin to push him down. Kevin sat next to him while he pulled out his phone.
"Can you tell me your sister's number? Or a number of someone to come to pick you up?" he asked. But he received no answer from Morgan. The other man had put his head in his hands, and his shoulders were shaking.
He was crying.
Kevin went silent. He set his phone down and folded his hands, staring at the floor in the process. He had no idea how to comfort someone who was sad, much less about how to console a grieving man whose wife was gone, likely for good. Coughing, he put one hand on Morgan's back and patted it awkwardly.
"Um…." he stuttered.
"I don't know what to do, man," Morgan rambled. "I don't know. Elia's just started walking, and I want to be thrilled, but it's like I'm only half thrilled. Her mother is…missing! I don't have any idea how I can do this by myself." He took a deep breath. "I just need to know how to find her."
Kevin glanced sideways at Morgan's face that was stained with tears. Clearing his throat, he said, "Morgan, what if she's, uh, gone?"
Derek's face was fierce and full of rage as he whirled his face to look at Kevin, but he made no movement. "She's not dead!" he roared. "I would know if she's dead….I would feel….something."
Words weren't Kevin's strong suit. He preferred the cyber-world of his computers where he didn't have to worry about body language or tone of voice or reading someone's behavior. It was simpler there. But seeing the man next to him, who never showed weakness, letting his emotions unravel sparked sympathy in him. Penelope, despite never reciprocating his romantic interest, had always been very kind to him. He'd considered her a friend. Seeing Derek so broken over her loss made Kevin feel…sad.
"I…" What he was about to suggest went against about twenty different bureau regulations. He wasn't technically supposed to follow cases that had nothing to do with cases he was charged with researching. "I can help you," he finally said. "I can search for her while you're away or with Elia or….I can help find Penelope."
Derek stopped for a moment and turned to look at Kevin. He looked utterly confused. "You would do that?"
"I won't stop until I find something to give you closure," Kevin promised, wondering if he would be able to deliver on any part of his promise.
XXXXX
Present Day
"What did you come up with, Lynch?" Derek asked as he leaned against the table opposite Kevin's desk. "Anything solid?"
Kevin sat down in his chair and slid back to his computer, clicking a few buttons before turning back around. "Alright, as you know, every sweep I do I put in the same search parameters and do a sweep of the country."
Derek nodded. "Yeah, you've told me before," he said. "Usually we don't get anything with them." He crossed his arms over his chest and arched a brow to Lynch. "What did they bring up?"
A dark look of sympathy clouded Kevin's face. "Listen, Derek," he began cautiously. "This…"
Derek's jaw hardened. "Tell me."
Sighing, Kevin nodded and motioned for Derek to come forward and see his computer screen. He pointed. "My search pinged when this happened. Around four this morning, a Jane Doe was checked into St. Thomas Hospital in Vermont. Her description fits Penelope's pretty closely, aside from the fact she's extremely malnourished."
Blood running cold, Derek looked at the screen. His eyes scanned the information, but there was no photo. "No pictures?" he asked, frustrated.
"Unfortunately no," Kevin explained. "But Derek, there's something else. This woman…" He was silent for a long moment.
"Spit it out, Lynch," Derek growled.
Looking up at his face, Kevin grimaced. "Morgan, this woman…she died an hour after they brought her in." When Derek didn't say anything, he went on. "I'm going to call soon to get a confirmation on a few things. They'll have her blood type and other things that might be able to give us answers."
With hard eyes, Derek gritted his teeth and ordered, "The second you find out anything about this woman, you call me. Don't fuck around, Lynch. I gotta know." At first, Kevin did not respond. He looked down at his hands, his lip caught between his teeth. Uncomfortably, he adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. Derek rolled his eyes. "What? You're obviously nervous to tell me something else, so just spit it out."
"Derek," Kevin began, "I know you probably don't want to hear this, but…it's been seventeen years. That's almost two decades."
"Where are you going with this, Lynch?" Derek asked hardly, glaring at him.
Looking at him square in the eye, Kevin sighed. "I consider you a friend, and I think you consider me a friend, so I'm just going to say this," he said, treading carefully with his next words. "We may need to look at…stopping this."
Derek merely blinked at him.
When he received no response from Derek, Kevin went on. "What I'm trying to say is, it's been almost twenty years, and we still haven't found her," he said. "We run through search after search, and nothing comes up. Because you're my friend, I don't want to see you be miserable for another twenty years. I mean, Elia's graduating this year, dude." He sighed. "I'm not going to tell you to move on by dating someone — I know you won't. Just don't live the rest of your life with only half your heart in it."
"You promised me you wouldn't stop looking until we found something for closure," Derek said. "We're going to keep looking."
Kevin rubbed his face. "Derek, I —"
"I can't and won't move on!" Derek snapped. "Penelope is out there somewhere, and while everyone else has given up on her, I won't! The only way I'm giving up is if we find something that confirms she's gone, or if I stop breathing." After speaking with more passion than he had in years, Derek felt out of breath, as if he'd just run a marathon the entire way uphill.
Rubbing his face, he shook his head. He knew he shouldn't be hollering at the one person who was helping him. He could hardly believe he had made such an outburst after so many years of staying silent. "I'm sorry, Lynch," he apologized. "I know you've put a lot on the line for me by helping me with this. I…I just can't give up."
Kevin nodded. "Just don't kill yourself in the process," he said. "You've got a daughter who really loves you, and if anything happened you it would destroy her." He smiled sympathetically.
Derek's mind went to Elia. For once since he'd walked into Lynch's office, he felt better. Nodding, he put his hands in his pockets and started for the door. "I've got to get to the airport," he mumbled. "Let me know if you hear anything…please."
"Sure thing," Kevin said as Derek opened the door and left, hope filling his chest.
XXXXX
Elia Morgan had one of the more solid relationships with her father that any daughter could have. He was and always would be her best friend. There very little she did not tell him about. Lying to him felt like the worst crime in the world, like she was worse than any unsub he and the BAU had ever hunted down. Those feelings of guilt tended to flare up when her friends wanted to do something any parent, not just one as protective as Derek Morgan, would find questionable.
Naturally, the moment her friend, Sarah mentioned a weekend of playing hooky in the future, Elia became tense.
"El, you will not believe what just happened!" she cried excitedly, hurrying up to Elia as she was standing at her locker.
Snorting, Elia glanced at Sarah and arched a brow. "Oh, really?" she mused. "What the hell could have happened at this lovely establishment that I wouldn't be able to believe?" She grinned cheekily at her friend.
"Kyle invited us to go with him and a bunch of other people on a road trip to New York with him!" Sarah exclaimed, clapping her hands gleefully. "It's the weekend after this one, and we're all gonna share a hotel room so we don't have to pay a ton of money for it!"
The amused spirit left Elia as if it were speeding off down a highway. Her lips pursed, and she scratched the back of her neck. There was no way Derek would say yes to this.
Sarah sensed her silence and grasped her arm tightly. "Oh, no, no, no!" she said, wagging her finger at Elia. "No, you are so not letting your overprotective, uptight, gun-toting dad get in the way of this! I won't let him ruin your fun!"
"He's not uptight," Elia muttered as Sarah led her arm-in-arm down the hall.
"Oh, yes he is!" Sarah replied in a sing-song voice. "Do you remember my fifteenth birthday? You know, when I wanted all of us to go into DC sans parental units?"
Elia was silent. She did indeed remember that birthday party two years before. Sarah had invited their entire group of friends to go into the city, but because it was in the evening, Derek had not wanted her to go. It was one of the only true fights she and her father had ever gotten into.
"Your silence tells it all," Sarah laughed before continuing. "Anyway, we're going to have this work. You just tell your daddy dearest you're coming over to my house for a weekend of studying and lounging in our PJs eating ice cream."
"I can't do that," Elia protested. "I can't lie to my dad."
Rolling her eyes, Sarah nudged Elia in the ribs gently. "El, you can't live like this," she groaned. "You can't let him control your life. What's next, sending you to a college close to home solely so he can keep an eye on you?"
"He wouldn't do that," Elia mumbled, averting her eyes. "He's just…" Her voice trailed off. How was she supposed to put this in words Sarah might understand? How could she tell her friend that the reason lay solely in the fact Derek missed her mother? She didn't talk about her mother much with any of her friends because she didn't know anything to even start a conversation. But there was no other reason her dad was the way he was.
No matter how close she and Sarah were, there was no way she could talk about her mother with her.
"He just needs a girlfriend, maybe?" Sarah interjected.
He'll never be with someone else, Elia thought to herself.
"Sarah," she finally said, "I really don't think anyone could understand why my dad is the way he is, but I can for sure tell you it isn't because he needs a girlfriend. Hell, he doesn't want one." She didn't feel the need to go into the facts behind it.
Sighing, Sarah tossed her head back with a dramatic arch. "Oh, fine!" she teased. "But if he decides he wants a girlfriend, Sasha's mom is looking for someone after that divorce…" She wiggled her brows and smirked.
Elia shrugged, but internally she was bothered. Sarah didn't mean to be insensitive. She was too impulsive to be intentionally cruel. But that didn't mean Elia wanted to dwell on the subject.
"I'll ask him," she finished, smiling tightly as Sarah prattled on with more excitement about the prospect of possibly going to New York City.
