Hi everyone! Hands down, this was the most difficult POV to write so far. I hope it was worth that wait though. I only have Emily's chapter left and it will definitely be posted before the end of the summer.

Happy reading! :)


"And when she died in your arms late that night in the dark, did you pray for your God to come home? Cause it ain't fair to say that these tracks are the same. So, God, if you can hear me, crash this train." -Joshua James, "Crash This Train."


These days, he wakes before the sun's rays twinkle dew drops off of blooming surroundings and he forgets that there ever was a barrier between night's pressing blackness and morning's weak promise of warmth. He sits in the kitchen in rumpled pajamas or sweat-stained workout clothes, feighning interest as the beams extend and refract a misguided, unwanted light off the white walls and smooth tiles. The gurgling coffee pot and Clooney's thumping tail create a syncopated, lulling rhythm. Sometimes, he remembers how his father stood with a hip propped against the kitchen counter, holding a ceramic, faded mug snaked between his fingers. Out of his neatly pressed uniform, he looked like any other father, any other man, and Morgan smiles at the memory of disheveled hair, the comics page, and how the air became permeated with the smell of rich, chocolate-colored coffee beans. But he's no longer a child. He no longer smiles at inked cartoons and he can no loner precisely recall the sound of his father's voice. He's lived years beyond that moment, that time, yet, these days, he feels the familiar, old, monumental stillness of grief. When the coffee is finally brewed, he stands at the glass slider door, watching the world wake from a long slumber, arriving in the form of a lone brilliant band of smudged colors. There are days he loves this waiting, this intense moment of reflection, but it never lasts. By the time his cup is done, he feels an emptiness that has nothing to do with temporary caffeine remedies. These mornings, he cannot live alone any longer, and he rushes through his routine in order to slam the door on a world he does not recognize.

These days, these mornings, usually come after shadowed nights. The bar he and Rossi frequent is a main-stay in the area. There are regulars with hunched backs, toothless mouths, and cloudy eyes. There are stools filled with blue-collar workers who drink harder than they live. There are quiet college kids who buy the cheapest pitchers and spread papers over a tables that wobble when weight is applied to one side. Sometimes, he studies the students more intently than most, and, sometimes, he envies their movements. A flick of a pencil, a sigh, and turn of a page- all these things seem so commonplace. These days, he stares at the amber liquid in his glass and wonders when, exactly, he arrived at this particular crossroad. These days, choosing a direction seems near impossible.

"I miss her too." Rossi always says, stirring his whiskey with a tiny straw. His anger seethes, boils, but does not explode. During these days of misplaced furry, he nods, gulps more alcohol, and does not say a word. These days, he's not sure if he'll ever know how to fix anyone, anything, or himself again and this thought doesn't bother nearly as much as he thinks it should.

There are days, nights, and times that Rossi pretends not to notice his lost voice and there are times when Rossi chooses to speak, filling the musicless environment with stories of Emily. Derek laughs so he won't cry, drinks bitter hops so he will forget, and sometimes, when this works, he wakes with stiff joints and a pounding headache in his own home. When it doesn't, he loses himself in a wash of agonizingly loud booming beats, hoards of bleary-faced strangers, sweaty swaying bodies, and potent drinks. The next morning he wakes in a home he does not recognize and he leaves whatever bed he's found himself in, shimmying into clothes with surprising speed and agility. Sometimes, he thinks there must be more to life and that Emily would want more for him, for them both, but he's at a loss to see why he can't drink himself, memories, and nightmares into oblivion. During these delusionally lucid moments, he think that he'll see her among all this confusion. These days, not much else makes him smile.

Most days, he tries to forget by using whatever is convenient. At work, there are mounds of paperwork, and he hunches over the stack with a pencil gripped in his right hand. He focuses on the scratch of lead against manufactured pulp, the ticking of the overhead clocks, the sudden erruptions of white sheets and square blocks from printers, and the faint taping of fingers against plastic keyboards. He keeps tempo with this odd rhythm, pausing occasionally to stretch his aching muscles and creaking joints. There are times when the pile lessens, and he shifts his numb tailbone and tired eyes in another direction. But these distractions are dangerous, almost deadly, because his eyes always wander to her desk. Before it was cleared one night, Emily's things waited for her to return. The pen with its chewed cap, framed picture of two boys with a Rome backdrop, and even a faded birthday card from the team, do not know that Emily, the desk's occupant, his coworker, partner, and friend, is gone. He tries to keep the suffocating, chocking memories at bay, but she dances around him, folding onto his own desk from the jaundiced light bulbs overhead. In a moment, he knows he is losing, he always has been, and he bolts. The chair scrapes against the linoleum floor, his boots pound a path to a deserted conference room or bathroom stall, and he comes dangerously close to allowing others to see the hot, breathtaking tears as they burn his cheeks. These days, he'd give anything to trade places with her because nothing, not even death, can make him feel as powerless as the saline liquid that is released without thought, care, or warning.

During his stronger and more composed moments, he is reminded of what everything was like before his world, her world, and their world became a complicated web of death, love, and depression. He smiles at her memory; he smiles at her smile, and he lets his eyes land on his other coworkers. He knows it's natural to find the lone female profiler on the team, but he cannot help or stop the rage that is so easily ignited. Seaver is alternating between studying files, old cases, scribbled notes, and textbooks, and he watches her lips form inaudible words. It's not that he doesn't like her because she hasn't given him a chance not to, but he can't stand how she tiptoes around everyone, especially him. She does not ask when she should, and does not pry because it doesn't feel right. Sometimes, he wants to lash at her, to scream that she'll never be everything Emily is or was, but he bites his tongue and slams a fist against the gym's punching bag, which leave his knuckles decorated with a perpetual half-healed scabs. He cannot blame her, although he wants to, he longs to, but, one hungover morning when he recognizes her face grinning from a photograph in, yet another, stranger's apartment, he understands that the beautiful woman with the alluring smile from the bar the night before is her roommate. That day, he slinks into work late, meeting Ashley's eyes with a burning gaze. She stays quiet, so does he, and he wishes that the bitter laste lining his mouth would disappear. He wishes Seaver would disappear. He wishes he would disappear.

Yet, Hotch is the one who's disappearing, shrinking into a man, a leader, he scarcely recognizes. Aaron's orders are clipped, controlled, and he is reminded of mornings so long ago, standing at attention in a taunt line as the early-morning flog rolled at his combat-boot covered feet. Hotch is their commander, their general, but the man is becoming a shell. On dark, starless nights after trying cases, he blares music, any beat really, into his ears via oversized headphones. He sits in his usual seat because they do not play cards or chess anymore. Even the memory of these lighter distractions feels both void and overwhelming, so now they sit apart, and away, from one another in fear of losing even the smallest portion of their collective world. While the team is all pulling away and breaking apart, it's Hotch's self-implosion that is most glaringly obvious and maddeningly secretive. The man buries his black eyes against an opaque window, searching the sky for an infinite set of reasons to explain what is happening, what already has whirled past, and how he should have, could have, stopped it all. But the thing is, these long nights and fragmented days, Morgan does not understand why Hotch's mourning explodes a ball of sadness in his chest. More than once, he's had to catch his breath and bite his lip to stop the onslaught of emotions. Sometimes, he meets the unit chief's look across a quiet aisle or a cluttered bullpen, and he cannot stand it anymore. When he sees the pain, the guilt and shame, he always breaks the connection first. Hotch is the strongest person he knows. Hotch cannot break, even though he knows the man already is. But he pretends to not see Hotch's faltering because, if the leader dissolves, there is no hope at all.

There are days, moments, and times where he feels himself losing touch with them, with Emily, and with everything and everyone he thought he loved. He tears through forms and files, studying each case too intently. During times of burning longing, he releases his frustrations on the job, the very same one that took Emily away. He couldn't save her and he cannot save his rapidly diminishing self, but he sure as hell can try to save others. Cases and victims hold him together, break him apart, and, sometimes, he can barely stand the act anymore. He is drowning, suffocating under the immense weight of it all, and he goes to the one person he knows can hold him together by allowing him to fall apart.

On those nights, his feet find their way to Garcia's home and its colorful, mocking representation of the person she, he, and they used to be. She always lets him in; he always feigns interest in conversation, and it's never long before he breaks. When the tears come, he does not hide in a bathroom stall with one hand shoved in his mouth to prevent noise while the other props his sagging body against Lysol-scented tiles. These times are raw displays of mourning, and he allows Garcia to comfort him. When her arms cocoon around him and he smells her familiar vanilla scent, he lets the deluge control, lead, and overpower him. She always tells him it's okay by pulling him closer, so close he can feel how her body shakes with her own repressed emotions. She does not try to make him smile with too far in between pet names and sexual innuendos, and he almost feels bad for his inability to help her. But, these nights, he does not apologize. He does not acknowledge these long-lost lighter times, but, instead, he pretends that he is broken enough to be helped, to be fixed, to be haphazardly placed back together, even if he knows that's no longer an option because it's been many years since he's been whole.

"Derek," His name is mumbled into the phone, and he sits a bit straighter at the tense tone, muscles burning from his odd sleeping position. The couch cushions sag with his weight. Beer bottle necks cast lengthy, shadowed reminders onto walls lit by the artificial neon glares glowing from the muted television. He murmurs a response while rubbing his sleep-filled eyes with balled fists.

"I'm worried about Reid." JJ's voice is suddenly wavering, crackling through the phone's receiver. Instinctively, his fingers tighten and he can imagine the white outline on each of his knuckles. He wants to scream that she should be fucking worried about the kid, about all of them, but he swallows the fiery rebuttal deep into his stomach where it has room to morph into an uneasy, burning guilt.

"Do you think he's..." What he wants to say these times, means to say, is 'relapsed' but the word will not materialize. On the television, a man waves a mop over a dirty-streaked floor. The woman at his side rounds her cherry red lips into an oval. He stares at his one free hand and sees Emily's blood caked within the dry lines surrounding his palms.

"No." JJ's voice is stern now, and he audibly sighs. He wants to ask why she is so worried, and why she always calls him at 2 A.M. after long cases, but he doesn't ask anymore- not like he used to or like he should. Instead, he promises to help, to protect Reid from himself, and, when he hangs up the phone, he rolls his head back, easing tight, overstretched muscles against couch cushions. What he needs, what they all really need, is time, but there isn't any time to grieve. Not for them, and certainly not now. Not when things are so complicatedly crushing.

These times, he stretches, grabs his keys, and hits the streets- the very same ones he jogs on at JJ's side during quiet morning runs where he feels a thin layer of trust and understanding stretch between him and the old media liaison. He knows she called because she's panicking and feels helplessly removed, and, yet, he also understands that both he and JJ run from themselves, but not from others.

If the night is chilled or it's cold and raining, he drives, but, usually he walks. This easy pattern helps straighten his muddled, alcohol-inflicted thoughts. With each step against pavement that echoes the sounds of his sneakers against quiet, unlit homes, he feels a calmness return. Emily's here, or maybe she never left, and he stands a bit taller, walks a bit brisker, and ignores that burning in his gut. He is the team's protector and the only one who loyally and silently vows to help, fix, or save them all, and he cannot fail her, himself, or Reid. Not when it's this late, dark, and there's this much to lose. He retraces familiar steps to bars he know Reid won't visit, to meeting places he fears he might, and, finally, to the pristine stone marker bearing the FBI inscription. These nights of searching, he almost sighs in relief, but it's late; he's too late, and there's not a damn thing he can do about any of it anymore.

He does not speak, but moves under star-strewn skies. The dew blades seep through the mesh in his sneakers, but the wet, lingering, cold feels refreshingly normal, as if he's alive and has not really noticed until this warped moment when the horizon begins to lighten into a muddle gray and an upcoming, yet still far-off, morning. Somewhere in the trees above, an animal scatters, claws and body scampering over uneven bark. He pries his eyes away from the blurred stone markers, observing how the thin silhouette stands solemnly, head pointing downward, eyes transfixed onto the three words that do not even come close to describing everything Emily is and was.

"I miss her so much, Morgan." Reid speaks in a voice that sounds foreign and wispy as it saunters over the stone graves and fluttering leaves. He frowns at the sentence, the scratchiness in Reid's tone, the innate knowledge Reid has of his presence, and he fights the urge to pull Reid into a long-overdue hug because it's been so long since he's really heard the younger agent speak openly. For a brief moment, he remembers how confidently that very same cracking voice once spewed statistics into factual whirlwinds.

"I do too, kid." His voice is surprisingly soft and composed, and Reid nods, tears glistening over jagged, angular cheekbones.

"We're losing, Morgan." These times, he thinks this is the most beautiful and truthful thing that Reid, or anyone, has ever said, but he cannot agree. He cannot as much as nod his head against the slight breeze tickling his stubbled cheeks.

"She wouldn't want this, Reid." He echoes Rossi's words, and the young man nods, pausing to turn towards him. The expression is soft and creates wrinkles around his squinted eyes.

"For the first time in my life, I'm starting to understand why Gideon left." The statement takes all his air, his collective hope, and bursts all the insinuated times into the night, richochetting everything off of granite half-crescents. He wants to drop to his knees to feel how the dewdrops saturate his pants and stain the cloth. He wants to tear at the earth, to finally wash her blood off his once-capable hands, but, these days, these times, he knows he cannot bend. He cannot break. Instead, he bits the inside of his cheek, does not wince at the pain, and clasps a gentle hand against Reid's bony shoulder.

Underneath his hand that once was stained with Emily's blood, Reid's muscles involuntarily tense. The young, yet too old, expression morphs, breaks, and the sobs rush forward in ways he cannot help but understand. He hesitates, ignores old formalities, and pulls Reid towards him, cupping a dark hand against light, boyish curls as he wonders when Reid became so comfortable with physical contact. He cannot recall a time or place, yet he holds the younger agent together. He is doing for Reid what Garcia has wordlessly done for him, and he knows he cannot waver. These oncoming days among stone mementos of the dead, of her, he begins to remember as the light peeks its warmth around tall Oak trees and gnarled roots. As the sky becomes a congealed wash of hued pinks, he releases Reid and they do not speak of the younger agent's breaking as the two men begin the slow ascent back to the warming pavement.

If morning is still too far away and night too crushingly strong, he plops Reid onto his couch while ignoring the man's inquisitive look as his gaze falls onto the empty bottle carnage. They eye one another like apprehensive strangers, and he watches Reid from the doorway until the young man falls into a restless sleep. Sometimes, he stands in the darkness, studying the elongated blue veins lining the milky-white length of Reid's arms. He does not see marks and his stomach hardens. He texts JJ to say that he's fine; Reid's fine, and that he'd like to put a bullet between Doyle's eyes.

He chooses to really recollect and visit her when the days become warmer and the last remnants of winter fades into spring's soft backdrop of chattering birds, greening grass, and humming bees that buzz around blooming flower beds. He's not sure what to say, but he always has words on these days. He tells her, tells Emily, about the team. He details how Hotch and Rossi coach Jack's youth soccer team and how they attends the boy's games when they're not on cases. He laughs as he explains how odd and misplaced Rossi and Hotch look among excitable five year olds, but he never fails to notice the genuine smile etched onto Hotch's face as he watches his son run after and for the black and white ball. He explains how Garcia's wardrobe is slowly becoming more colorful, and how they're starting to interact more. He mentions Seaver's graduation celebration, Reid's new dedication to the gym, and how he's finally stopped having nightmares and ghostly images of her blood lining his hands, staining both his past and present.

When he's done with updates, he murmurs low, desperate pleas. He tells her that he's trying to move on without letting go because she wouldn't want all this lying and despair. He explains how, on some lonely nights, just the memory of her laughter brings him to the bar. He talks about his father,who is a man he is beginning to forget as time spirals and trips over itself on the way to the present, and he swears he won't do that to her. Sometimes, he remembers what it was like to be vulnerable, and how this softness is so vastly different than the one Buffard used for his own warped advantage. When he bends to her grave to trace the cool front with light finger tips, his voice cracks, his body shakes, yet he feels the pull of emptiness. Perhaps, he tells the granite marker, he will let go, like she begged him to do in the concrete warehouse. As the sun extends into graying night, he squints at the rapidly-diminishing epithet and decides that, when the time comes, he will finish what she started all those years ago by finding Doyle and pulling the trigger. These moments are his promises, his regrets, and he vows for himself, Emily, and the team, that he will never let another moment, another life, slip from his grasp again.

When he follows the familiar tracks back to the living world, he studies the concave shoe prints with a relieved expression. They've all walked this way and have come before and after has has, and the knowledge of this shared journey eases the burning feeling that droops and weighs onto every one of his limbs. He turns his head upwards towards the oncoming path, feels the diminishing warmth of the late-afternoon's rays on his skin, and tells himself that things will always be dark, if not wrong. He will walk forward because, this time, he knows that he's come too far to return to anything other than the shaky ground he finds himself standing on now. But he keeps Emily with him always because a memory, even if it's a slight feeling of her hand in is, is better than the crash of forgetting. Sometimes, he thinks that her death and his descent into grief is beyond him or maybe even above him in the sky dotted with ink-colored clouds. When the rain begins to patter shattering off the grass, paved roads, and trees, he acknowledges that he no longer believes in a God, a higher power, or fragmented bands of hope that are disappearing to make way for even darker portions of night. Yet, he holds himself steady, a part from it all, and braces himself against the dissolved absolution that will eventually come.

These days, he pretends that vowing to protect does not feel like such a burden.