Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.
"Yes, I love him. I love him more than anything else in this world and there is nothing that I would like better than to hold on to him forever. But I know it's not for the best. So no matter how much my heart is going to break, I've got to let him go so he can know just how much I love him. Maybe if I'm lucky, he'll come back, but if not, I can make it through this." - Author Unknown
o o o o
8 February 2011
Sammie stiffened when Derek's lips pressed against the top of her head. She stepped away from him and wrapped her arms around herself protectively, leaning against the wall and shrinking back. "Don't do that."
"Sam," Derek reached a hand out and she moved away from it. She shouldn't have hugged him in the first place, but having him so close when one of her girls was in trouble... it sent her back to when she belonged in his arms, when he was supposed to be there to hold her and protect her and make everything right when everything was wrong. But she didn't belong there anymore and being there was too dangerous.
"You stay over there," Sammie held up her hand when he stepped closer. She hadn't touched him in almost nine years. Less than a month more and it would have been. Derek didn't listen. He grabbed her forearm and pushed the knit sweater up. Gently, he kissed the puckered scar across her wrist. She snatched her arm back as if his touch burned.
"Sammie," Derek trapped her against the wall, his hands on either side of her shoulders. "You can't run away from this forever, Angel. Please, Sam, listen to me. I know you still love me as much as I love you."
"Get off. Get away from me. Don't touch me, Derek."
Derek sighed and lowered his head, but moved away from her. "I love you, Samantha Morgan."
"You're a fool, Derek," Sammie walked past him and closed the door after herself.
Derek hit his palm against the wall and leaned his forehead there as well. Stupid. He'd pushed her. He should have backed off, but having her so close, being alone with her instead of seeing her across the room separated by hordes of family had thrown his common sense out of the window. He was along with his wife and having a proper conversation for the first time in nine years and and he'd given in to his desire to hold her instead of going slowly and moving piece by piece.
"Shit."
ooo ooo ooo ooo
Locking herself in the bathroom, Sammie sat down on the cold tile floor with her heart pounding. Tugging the sweater back down over her scar, shrinking into it the soft knit wool and curling her shoulders in, she tucked her head into her knees and cried. She'd felt cold over the years, lonely, but it had eased with time. Now, though, now she felt more lonely and cold than she had in years. Having been so close to him, being able to feel his heart beat through his shirt and feel his arms warm and strong around her...
The emptiness it left was so strong she couldn't even pull herself up off the ground.
But she'd been right. The knew she'd been right to do what she did. Look at him now - he was everything she'd known he could be. Derek was one of forty special agents working for the Behavioural Analysis Unit. He was one of the best in the world. He was exactly where he'd always talked about being.
He would not be where he was right now if she'd kept him tied to her. There was no way he would have gotten anywhere shackled to a wife who couldn't even feed herself, couldn't go to the bathroom by herself, couldn't get out of bed by herself. A wife who still had bad days where she couldn't remember what she was doing from one moment to the next, a wife who couldn't drive herself and needed regular supervision to make sure she didn't walk away from the stove while it was still on. She'd been right to force him out. If she'd let him stay, he'd be a career detective who ran in the same place day after day without getting anywhere. She'd been right.
If only it didn't hurt so much. She knew, she'd always known, that she would love him until the day she died. Which was why she'd let him go.
ooo ooo ooo
"Derek?"
"Nnngh?" Morgan shifted at Prentiss's voice.
"Derek!"
"What? What?" Morgan mumbled and cracked an eye open to see Prentiss looking down at him. Blinking, he pushed himself upward into a sitting position, scrubbing his face with his palm and stretching his back as a blanket fell off of him to the ground.
"Did you sleep here all night last night?" Prentiss looked around the sanctuary as Morgan tried to push the kink out of his spine.
"Yeah, bad idea. Very bad idea," Morgan winced. "I didn't mean to. Just fell asleep."
"Well, someone was watching out for you," Prentiss gestured at the blanket on the floor and the pillow in the pew.
"Mama," he sighed, bending over to pick up the blanket. "Or maybe one of my aunts."
"Why do you still call them your aunts? Your aunts, uncles, cousins, 'mama,' brother... You and your wife have been separated at least nine years - that's how long you've been with the BAU."
"Nine years on March first. But that doesn't matter," Morgan shook his head, stood and folded the blanket into a neat bundle. "They're still my family. We went through hell together, Emily. I love them. I ran away after the divorce. Went undercover in Detroit for a year and a half. I tried to escape my pain by being someone else for a while. With the exception of a few people, like James, they were all waiting for me when I came home.
"When I knocked on the door, after James closed it in my face, Mama threw it open and flung her arms around me. She was crying and clinging to me, thanking God that I'd finally come home. She was as relieved to see me at the doorstep as she would have been to see James. Emily, she doesn't look like much and she didn't give birth to me, but she's as much my mother as my mom is. She's one of the three most important women in my life, I talk to her at least once a week, and I have no idea where I'd be right now without her."
Prentiss smiled quietly and nodded. "I wish I was that close with my mother."
"I'm lucky," he nodded and Prentiss wasn't sure she would have used the word 'lucky' to describe herself if she'd been through whatever it was exactly that Morgan had been through.
"C'mon, team's worried about you. Except for Hotch. Hotch is just pissed."
Twenty minutes later, they were walking into the station off of North La Salle Street, the same station Derek had once worked out of. He shook a few hands and then went into the room where the team had set up shop.
"Nice of you to join us," Hotch said with an edge to his voice.
"Sorry, I fell asleep at the church," Morgan said without elaborating as he grabbed a cup of really terrible coffee from a coffee pot that had been purchased when he worked there. "I got a lot from Carmen's friends last night. I've been thinking. I mean, obviously something must have happened to this unsub. You don't just decide to torture and crucify high school seniors one morning in the shower. And he has to be pretty damn strong - it takes a long to strength to do what he's doing and I doubt a teenage boy is doing it. It's planned, completely methodical.
"Somehow, he manages to dump a girl on church steps sometime before Sunday morning Mass without being seen while everyone's looking for him and then abduct another girl, one who knows a killer is out there to kidnap on that specific day, without anyone seeing. He keeps these girls for two weeks, someplace he can torture and crucify them without anybody hearing while stalking the girls from the next church on his list so he can pick his next victim. This is way too sophisticated for the unsub to be the same age as the victims. He's older. Somewhere between thirty and forty.
"These victims have to represent a specific someone. They're all high school seniors, that doesn't happen by accident. None of them look alike and none of them have the same hobbies, so something probably reminds the unsub of the one he really wants to kill. I think something happened when this unsub was a senior in high school. That's why he's going after seniors in high school."
"What could he be seeing in the victims?" Seaver asked.
"Jonathan Harper killed women he said reminded him of his mother because she was a prostitute who kept Harper in the room while she had sex with her customers and then allowed her customers to have violent sexual relations with her son after they finished for an extra fifteen dollars from the time he was five until he ran away when he was sixteen years old," Reid added, looking to Rossi, who had interviewed Harper twenty years ago, "but his mother was a fair skinned brunette and his victims were all over the map. One woman was Asian, one was Hispanic, there were a seven blondes and a redhead, two African Americans."
"When Harper was talking about Sara Collins, he said 'she flipped her hair the way my mother did,' Rossi nodded. "Willow Paz wore the same style shoes. Jennifer Krottner was reading his mother's favourite book. No one else saw it, but, in Harper's mind, these woman were directly connected to his mother, they represented her to him."
"My cousin said something that got me. 'What could make someone pervert Jesus' sacrifice to us?' I don't care who you are, this has to be religious - you don't pick crucifixion because it sounds fun," Morgan shook his head. "It's too difficult. It takes forever for someone to die that way."
"The longest recorded death via crucifixion took eight days," Reid interjected.
"These girls are already weak," Morgan continued as if Reid had never spoken. "He starves them, beats them, rapes them - they have no strength left when he nails them up onto the cross. He knows it not going to take eight days for them to die. The coroner said the state of the infection in surrounding the holes in the victims hands and feet indicate that the nails had been in the victims for three days. Three days isn't eight, but it's still a long-ass time to hold onto a dying teenager. He knows exactly how weak these girls have to be for it to take three days for them to die. These girls aren't his first."
"There are more victims," Hotch said, looking at the boards with the girls pictures. "We'd have heard if there were other crucifixions. The other bodies can't have been found. They were test runs."
"I don't think the first victims weren't test runs," Morgan shook his head. "The rage he has against these girls. No way. This rage has been here all along. The first victims were just as important to the unsub as the ones we know about. Something happened recently. Something that triggered an episode. He wants people to know about him. He's putting on a show for someone, the woman who ruined his life in high school, and he's convinced she knows it's for her. You don't methodically pick churches and girls and plan all this out for no reason. The Alpha and the Omega. The Beginning and the End. It began at St. Clements Roman Catholic Church ten or twenty years ago and it's going to end there."
ooo ooo ooo
"Historically speaking, crucifixion was the death penalty reserved for the worst criminals of the land," Reid explained to the police officers grouped in front of them. "Agent Morgan's right, the unsub did not decide to crucify his victims for no reason. We don't know the exact reason why he choose crucifixion as his way to murder his victims, but we do know that it's incredibly significant. He sees the woman these girls represent as the destroyer of his world. She took everything from him."
"We know whatever happened happened while the unsub was in his senior year of high school and that he's between the ages of thirty and forty," Rossi continued. "We have our technical analyst going over the senior classes from 1987 to 2007. We added five years on either side for safety."
"Something happened to the unsub in that time period and it happened in a church. It happened at St. Clements," Prentiss spread her hands as she spoke. "He picked this church for a reason and he will end with it."
"There was a rape in 1996. The girl was a senior in high school and she went to St Clements," a police officer in the front row pipped up, looking up from the notebook where he was writing the information down.
"We'll look into that," Morgan told him, "but this trauma happened to the unsub, so it probably doesn't have any connection."
"This unsub is a strong man. He probably has a job in construction or some other form of hard labour. We think it's construction. It's construction's off-season. Gives him plenty of time to spend with his victims and to pick his next ones. He will look completely normal. He won't stand out. You won't be able to pick him out of a crowd. That's all we have for now. Thank you."
ooo ooo ooo
"Tatina," Andria stroked Sammie's hair and kissed her forehead. "It was good of you to give Derek the blanket and pillow."
"He was cold and the pews are hard. He shouldn't have been sleeping there."
"Sometimes our hearts lead us funny places," Andria brushed trash off one of the tables and into the trash can she carried around. "His led him to the sanctuary last night. Yours led you to give him a blanket and a pillow."
"He was cold and the pews are hard," Sammie repeated the words as she followed after Andria with a sponge.
"It's interesting how your hearts keep leading you two to each other," Andria commented innocently.
"Mom, don't," Sammie warned her.
"I'm just saying," Andria picked up a plastic cup and dumped the contents into the sink before tossing it into the trash. "I don't think God is done with your story."
"Mom, stop," Sammie slammed the sponge down on the table. "Stop it! Derek and I are divorced. That's it. It's final. There's no going back, no 'what if's.' Ellie is dead, Keira is dead, and Derek and I aren't anything."
"That isn't true," Andria shook her head. "I've seen the way he looks at you. He loves you. And I know you love him."
"Stop it! I don't want to have this conversation."
"Samantha, you can't run from this away forever."
"I'm not running! I am not running, Mom. I am not running."
Andria watched Sammie leave, the sponge still sitting on the table. "Oh, Tatina, just because you refuse to admit it doesn't mean you aren't."
ooo ooo ooo
"How does he do it, Hotch?" Morgan looked around the front steps of San Giovanni. "He dumped Sandra's body right here, man, and no one saw. There are streetlights all down this street and these steps aren't exactly concealed. How does he get the bodies from his vehicle to the steps without a single person seeing? I've been up and down these steps hundreds of times, Hotch. You just can't do it. There's no possible way."
"Pretend for a minute this isn't your church, Morgan," Hotch ducked under the crime scene tape and walked away from the steps. "You have to be objective."
"Hotch, c'mon, I've been over these steps -"
"Okay, you're right. You know these steps. If you were going to get a body up here, how would you do it?" Hotch looked around. "From here, I have a clear view of the steps, all of them, all the way from the sidewalk to the doors. No blind spots from this angle."
"It's the same view from the other side," Morgan crossed his arms up over his chest. "Hotch, it's just not possible."
"It is possible, Morgan. The unsub did it. We can do. He wouldn't stick out. Even when a killer's on the loose, he's non-threatening."
"I dunno, Hotch, I mean..."
"Derek, I know this is your home and your family, but if you can't be objective, you need to take yourself off this case," Hotch set his lips in a straight line, his face stern.
"You can't take me off this case, Hotch," Morgan straightened his back. "You can't take me off a case in front of them."
"Then show me you can do your job objectively. And this case isn't about impressing your family, Morgan. It's about the victims and catching the unsub before he kills the fifth girl. Is that why you pushed for this case?"
"Of course not! That son-of-a-bitch is torturing a girl from my church, Hotch. My home! Enough has happened to this church, Hotch! Keira, Tom, Andria, James, Sam, Ellie, me... I cannot let Carmen be added to last list. I can't let that bastard defile my home any more than he already has. He left the body of an eighteen-year-old girl on the front steps of my church, Hotch. And everything he did to Sandra, he's doing to my baby cousin's friend right now. And if you think I was just going to sit back in Virginia and wait for him to dump her body on some other church steps, you are out of your goddamned mind."
"Then don't let him kill Carmen. Figure it out. How did he get the body from the street to the door?"
Morgan was silent. He walked all around the steps, looking to the door from every angle imaginable. He'd been right - there were absolutely no blind spots. Sighing, he sat down on the lowest step and put his head in his hands, racking his brain for some answer. He and Sammie had stopped on this spot after their wedding. It'd been a perfect wedding. Sammie had been so beautiful and the pews were filled with their family and...
And the pews. The hard, old, wooden, pews.
"Hotch," Morgan lifted his head. "The pews in this church are really old. All the formal furniture is. It was all handmade in Italy and brought over here when the church was built. Almost a hundred years old. When Sam and I were dating, a bunch of pews needed to be fixed. A carpenter came and took the pews in his truck, brought them back a week later. The night before Sunday Mass. I mean, he took them around back to the parking lot entrance, but a truck like that could've parked up here instead."
"Who would think anything of a carpenter parked in front of a church hauling pews up the steps?" Hotch finished as Morgan fished out his cell phone.
"It was something cutsie and religious on the truck. You know, like, ah, I can't think of an example," Morgan scrolled through his contacts.
"A Breadcrumb and Fish Sandwich Shop," Hotch cracked a grin and Morgan held the phone up to his head. "Who thinks anything of loud noises coming from a carpenter's workshop? Need to build a cross, no problem, I know exactly how to do that. Easy access to a church? Sure, I'm a carpenter delivering pews before Mass. My truck even has a religious theme. I completely belong here."
"He's not answering his phone. He's either taking Confession, with Carmen's family or praying himself. Father always answers his phone," Morgan put the phone in his pocket. "I'm gonna go see if I can find one of the Deacons."
"I'll call the rest of the team," Hotch nodded as Morgan closed the heavy wooden door behind him. "Hey. Prentiss, Morgan's stumbled onto a theory about what the unsub does and how he dumps his victims."
"Well, hold on. We've got a theory of our own about how he picks his victims and who he is. Come in and bring Morgan. Reid's still talking to GarcĂa. I'll explain when you get here."
A/N:
A teenage boy is getting ready to take his girlfriend to the prom. First he goes to rent a tux, but there's a long tux line at the shop and it takes forever. Next, he has to get some flowers, so he heads over to the florist and there's a huge flower line there. He waits forever but eventually gets the flowers. Then he heads out to rent a limo. Unfortunately, there's a large limo line at the rental office, but he's patient and gets the job done. Finally, the day of the prom comes. The two are dancing happily and his girlfriend is having a great time. When the song is over, she asks him to get her some punch, so he heads over to the punch table and there's no punchline.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Okay, I'm sorry. That's totally not my joke, but I thought it was hilarious.
YESTERDAY, I got the most amazing books ever. They're picture books called "Hockey Numbers" and "Z is for Zamboni." I legitimately freaked out. I was so excited. I love them. They're freaking adorable. WHERE WERE THESE WHEN I WAS GROWING UP?! NOT FAIR. They're for teaching numbers and the ABC's. One's like "Stanley Cup rings - there are 4. I bet they want to win some more." And the other's like "And G can stand for Gretzky, perhaps the 'greatest' one of all." KILL ME I CAN'T HANDLE THIS.
Omg, I miss hockey so much. Wah.
Okay, I have to go do a little homework and then go to sleep because I'm tired.
Thanks so much for reading, I hope you liked it and, please, tell me what you think!
Love, Thalia
