Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and I don't own Criminal Minds.
The ride back felt even longer. The ride back was silent, and still. No one was hungover, but all of them instinctually wanted a drink. Everyone was crying, or crying inside. Too shocked to let it out just yet. JJ, Hotch and Rossi wept openly. Prentiss wanted to cry, but couldn't. Not until she was safe at home with Sergio. Not until she was in the shower, washing off every single memory, of every single body, of every single little girl, raped and broken and dead, or raped and broken and somehow alive and having to relive it, again and again and again, off of her.
Reid was in shock. He wanted to sink back into the drugs, the drugs he had been fighting for so long to keep at bay, and had so far managed to beat time and time again. Case after case after case. He wanted to forget. But he knew that that wasn't what he should do. Remembering was painful. But there were lots of little girls out there who could never forget, and for them he too would remember. If he sunk back into oblivion he wouldn't be able to help as effectively, and that wasn't what he wanted.
Derek Morgan felt empty, and bitter, and sad. And so, so tired. How many more Carl Bufords were in the world? How many more times would he have to confront his abuser, how many more times would he have to look young children in the eyes and see what he saw in himself in there? He was sad, and tired. He was too sad and tired to even feel angry, though he was. He was always angry. He thought about the Hulk, and had to smile a twisted smile. Yes, he was always angry. But tonight, after the crap they had just been through, after the crap so many little ones were still going through, he needed something more.
He needed love.
And he realised, perhaps too late—he was always too late when it came to love—that that was what he had needed all along. That was what he had been trying to find all along. Something to fill that emptiness, to combat the bitterness, the anger, the sadness, the overwhelming exhaustion that never left his side, and never let him sleep. Love. And he knew just where to look for it, had known all along really.
Penelope Garcia and Derek Morgan were inevitable. And now he just had to prove it to her.