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Lost and Found

Once back home Emily sat in her car for a while, trying to figure out the pieces of a puzzle she was almost certain she was a part of. She minutely tried to disentangle what was just the result of her intuition or imagination and what was real proof. Paranoid was the feeling of being observed continuously and having a hobgoblin misplacing objects in her apartment. But the dizziness, the obsessions and the nightmares, the extreme emotional states and the hallucinations -if she considered under this category the rose appeared on her piano the previous night and vanished few hours later- those were objective facts. Objective was also that someone tried to frame her for murder, and she wouldn't believe for a second that Beth Vernon had reason or skills to put this kind of plan together without any help. And of course there was Reid's theory of her being drugged; if this was true it would have explained the abrupt change in her behaviour over the last month and if the drug ministration was taking place at home it would have accounted for the fact that the symptoms were lighter while she was out of town, working on a case. Finally if someone had access to her apartment they could have got a copy of her ID, taken her phone and left the red rose inside the house. Looking back at her reflections the 'hobgoblin hypothesis' didn't seem the result of a delusion anymore.

She didn't know exactly how long she was absorbed in her conjectures, but when she regained conscience of the outside world it was dark and her stomach was grumbling, she hadn't eaten since the previous day when they had some crappy lunch at the police station, then she skipped the dinner with Derek and the breakfast to do the blood test empty stomach, then during the day she had been locked in the interrogation room and all her efforts were spent in deceiving her anxiety, but now her body was seriously claiming attention on the fact that she needed some fuel.

Across the street there was a nice take away and she was way too tired to take the time and the effort of cooking something; she entered the shop and lined up in the queue checking out the menu, while she was waiting she noticed a young couple that had just paid and was about to leave. They had grabbed a couple of bags of take away food, not exactly the best treat in the world, and were probably heading home for a quiet movie night, but still they looked at each other with that glow in their eyes, as if that was the perfect date and they didn't need anything else but their reciprocal love. She remembered of Derek's expression when weeks before he asked her on a date, on how much he cared about the dinner, on how much he cared about making her happy and she couldn't help thinking that all they had was gone because of her, that all those rules, all those boundaries were just a lame way to disguise her fears, that he had amenably accepted all of them just not to force her into something she wasn't ready for, that it had been all about Derek making Emily feel comfortable, Derek supporting Emily, Derek being there when Emily needed him, and she had never asked herself how did he feel about their relationship. On the contrary she had been quick in cutting him out when things started becoming serious and scary and even though her intentions had always been to protect him she didn't have any right to set his own boundaries and she owed him at least an explanation.

After all he had been through over the years, after what he had seen at the BAU and when he was a cop, there was one thing Derek Morgan had learnt how to handle: stress. But over the last couple of days his ability had been deeply challenged by the sudden scene Emily made, the accusation of murder she had to face, the lies she told him the night she went over to Reid's skipping their dinner and the revelation of the conversation she had with him. How deeply troubled she had to be in order to think that she was becoming mental? And how blind and distract was he not to notice the nightmare she was going through? Now he was feeling an idiot for believing that spending some nights at her place had entitled him with any rights over her life and her privacy, that he'd gained her trust and learnt to understand her. He thought he was ready to commit with her but the truth was that he didn't know anything about being in a relationship, and knowing her at work didn't mean he knew how to live with her or make her happy. Right now he was feeling like a jerk, a helpless fool who didn't know how to take care of the woman he loved. On top of that, were she less proud, stubborn and cryptic maybe things wouldn't have been so messed up between them. After the charges against Emily were dropped, he had spent the rest of the day trying to figure the situation out and after flustering hours of nothing he just decided to get rid of his frustration in a productive way, doing some heavy work in one of his properties.
Before leaving he wished Garcia a good night and thanked her for being such a brilliant genius, without her magic the police would have taken days to go through the videos of the hotel and to match the false Emily with Beth Vernon.

"Hey hot stud, you know I love you right?" she told him, turning around on her chair.

"I love you too Penelope, but don't tell Kevin" he kept up the bantering with a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

She carried on with a smirk "I love you, but…"

"But?" He raised his eyebrows in interrogation

"..But you two seriously have to work on your communications skills, because what you say to each other is not even half of what you keep inside, thinking about respecting boundaries, protecting each other from hurting, from the boogeyman, from an alien invasion, from the Armageddon" she gushed with impetus "and in this warped, twisted attempt of caring about each other instead of getting closer, you grow more and more distant, and stubborn, and lonely. I don't want to see two of my favorite profilers and friends suffering this way.."

"Penelope, what do you want me to do? It looks like the more I try to help her the more damage I do. She told Reid she's afraid she's becoming crazy and in the meanwhile I was planning a romantic dinner and to give her the keys of my apartment"

"How romantic is that, Derek Morgan!" she chanted amused at his gesture.

"How stupid and insensitive!" he commented back dryly.

Penelope sighed "Have you considered that maybe she talked to Reid because she didn't want you to worry about her? Have you thought that after the nightmare she's been through all she wants for you two is some serenity and fun and happiness and so she keeps all the bad thoughts for herself in order not to spoil those moments? Just the same way you do, Derek. The reason why you and Emily work so well together but also have issues is that you're more similar than you think. Believe me"

"So what now? Do I accept her rules and watch her crumbling, pretending to play the perfect lovers when we are together? Today she was charged with murder, I wanted to help her but I didn't have a clue on what's going on in her life" he voiced his despair.

"My beautiful friend, once you told me that the real strength sometimes comes from vulnerability, because only if you get hurt then you know how to get up and go on dealing with it. Only if you get hurt you learn to stand the pain. Now you got hurt. And you realized it's damn painful. Next step you don't run away, you get up ready for the next punch."

Derek paused a minute, staring at her "Woman, I say you are becoming way too smart" he finally closed the distance kissing her forehead before heading out.

"Don't run away. Stand up!" she yelled from the office while he was leaving.

For some reason, maybe Garcia's speech or some gut feeling he couldn't quite explain, Derek decided to give up the work in the house and go back home, maybe some good sleep would have helped him to get the right perspective of things. After a shower he grabbed a beer and headed to the fridge looking for something to eat; he had completely forgotten of the untouched dinner he prepared the night before and looking at the stuffed fridge gave him a despairing feeling of loss. He was about to take out some of it when he heard the knocks at his door.

Emily was feeling like an old lady caught by sudden dementia; all the way to the apartment she was clueless about what to say and where to begin, but she had the firm instinct that once he had opened the door -if he had opened the door- she would have known what to say. Instead when she finally found herself face to face with him and she saw his expression immediately becoming tense, the words she'd been expecting didn't come, instead a desolated wasteland of nothingness, an utter tabula rasa filled her brain. Another thing romantic movies where totally wrong about: meaningful speeches coming along when necessary.

She stared at him for a second and then she decided just to give voice to all the things she hadn't said before "Hi… I know I've been impossible and moody and bossy and I kept things from you and I lied to you, and when all you wanted to do was to help me I sent you away. Badly. So if you ran out of patience in standing my bad temper I understand it completely, all I am asking now is to explain to you. No more secrets no more lies, I think I owe you at least that. And then I will disappear if you want me to" she ridiculously felt like a high school teenager.

Derek, his expression impenetrable and motionless, moved aside to let her in and lead her to the sofa in the living room. "Go on" he simply said sitting down and staring at her with his brown intense eyes, which caused her to freak out even more.

Emily bowed her head a little and bit her lip, nervously rubbing her hands against each other "I have nightmares, all the time so I wake up in the middle of the night and start wandering around the house until the exhaustion kicks in and the next nightmare comes. But when you spend the night with me it doesn't happen. You probably have some strange effect on my brain, because I sleep like a baby. I never told you because if I had, then you would have stayed with me all the time, probably watching over my sleep over the night. Not that I wouldn't appreciate that, but I am scared as hell to depend on someone else. I haven't done it in a long time and every time I tried it, it ended badly for both sides, and this is my battle, I want to face my demons and being able to sleep at night again because I got over my fears, not because you're babysitting me. Anyway lately the nightmares got worse, as you saw few nights ago; I have got these vivid flashbacks and it's like being again there on that table, when he was slicing me and I didn't know if I would ever survive, in one piece at least."
She looked at him, he was silently listening to every word and didn't look like he was going to intervene until she was finished, so she went on "The night that we were celebrating at the restaurant and Eddie asked me if I wanted to play, that's when the dizziness started becoming serious. Over the last month they got worse and worse; it's like if all of a sudden my head begins spinning, my heart becomes unstoppable and I can't control my body anymore. That night, when the light went off and the birthday cake came in, you squeezed my hand and that was the only thing that helped me to put myself together again. Then I started noticing small changes in the house, objects misplaced or missing and then found in places where I would never leave them; the conviction of being observed mixed with the lack of sleep and the dizziness fast turned into a paranoia, like if I lost control over everything, my body, my emotions, my environment. Then when we worked on the case of the missing kid and we were out of that chalet under the pouring rain in that grotesque situation, I started feeling that maybe it was really a sort of downward spiral that I created myself and that I just had to get back the right perspective of things. I went back home, I showered and got ready for our dinner, and when I was about to leave there you go, it was on my piano, a rose. A red rose. It wasn't there when I entered the house, but it was there when I left."
At that point she saw his jaw contracting, his fist clenched so tight that his knuckles almost turned white, but she carried on because she wanted to let it all out "So I panicked and went to see Reid, because either that bitch is back, either I am becoming crazy. So he suggested the idea that I have been drugged all the time with some kind of pharmaceutical compound with psychotropic side-effects, but still I had a lot of doubts and questions and shadows zones in my theories and I just run to the only place where I could let my fears flow without affecting anyone else with my misery. This morning I wanted to talk to you about this, but then the police came and at that point I knew someone was behind all this, it can't be coincidental. Parker can say whatever he wants but I will never believe that Beth Vernon committed suicide."
She paused for a second and stared at him with a look that was all vulnerability, an unshielded mirror to her soul "So all this to come to the conclusion that I need you." Her voice started cracking a little "I need you to feel safe when I go to sleep, I need you when I lose myself after a case and you pick me up from my dark mood, I need you in the morning when I wake up and you are there, I need you when I don't even have the guts to admit it to myself, I need you because when I do something stupid that makes you giggle I feel a better person with a place and a meaning in the world, but I understand if you are so tired to try and run after me and if you don't need me at all" She bit her lip to fight back the tears, the last thing she wanted was to end up crying like a little girl after that speech that she didn't want to be cheesy, but had turned into a pathetic spill. She waited for a reaction, a word, something but nothing came from him, so she got up and walked toward the door.

"You have a proclivity for drama, you know that. Don't you?" his voice caressed her like a balm.

She turned looking him with a questioning look.

"But I still like very much the idea of falling asleep and waking up with you and picking your mind out of the gutter when you have your bad days" he got up form the couch and moved toward her, closing the distance "What I want you to understand is that I don't want to fight your battles or to put you under a bell jar to isolate you from the dangers of the world. You are a strong independent woman and I'm not going to question or to change that, not with the job we do, not considering the fact that we are both so stubborn and driven, but I don't want you either to do that for me; the length I decide to go to in order to stay with you or to care about you is something that it's up to me to decide. Do you really think that given what we see on a daily basis I get scared so easily? We got through the aftermath of Spicer's death and Ellie's troubles, then we dealt with Rose Lawson and now we will take care of whoever is messing up with your mind and I don't care how much trouble I have to go through, because that bitch is not going to keep me away from you, no matter what she thinks about men." He delicately cupped her cheek with his hand and brushed away a tear "Now could we please have our date?" he almost begged with puppy eyes.

Emily chuckled at the sudden transition of topic, glad for the lighter tone of atmosphere and grateful to have a much needed meal.

"Come on, sit down, I made us dinner last night" he lightly patted on her shoulder.

"You made what?" she almost shouted.

"Comments are forbidden until you've tried it!"

"Easy, so either I'll compliment you either I'll fall on the floor poisoned with your food!" she kept the bantering going.

"Ok, let's make it more interesting. If it tastes bad you have the right to say whatever you want, but if it's good then I will get a prize" he raised his eyebrows suggestively while he took her hand in hand to the kitchen.

"A prize? How caveman is that?" she laughed at him actually immensely grateful for having again this magic in her life, this awesome, patient man standing at her side.

After tasting all the dishes prepared, Emily had to swallow her pride and concede Morgan the credit for the lovely dinner, "So you get to decide your reward or is it up to me?" she asked while he was clearing the table.

"Well" he answered while moving the empty plates to the kitchen counter and storing the leftovers into the fridge "If I choose then you will blame me forever for being a caveman, but if I behave as a gentleman than I don't know when I will have another chance like this"

"What do you mean by like this?" she asked getting closer.

"Another occasion in which I have you at my mercy" he grinned at her.

"But if you give me some credit and you let me choose, then you might be positively surprised. Unless you think you couldn't handle it…"

Morgan stored the last dish into the dishwasher and turned to Emily drying his hands with a towel and ready to give her an opinionated reply, when he found her just a few inches away eying him mischievously. She closed the distance without saying a word and winding her hands around his neck gave him a searing kiss, which was just the prelude of a more than generous reward. Hours later exhausted and breathless after she milked him for every last drop of energy he could give, he took a long time to stare at Emily, deeply asleep in his arms, wondering in astonishment how possibly the ultimate professional he had been partnering up with for the last four years, able to stare at the horror without even flinching, was the same woman now lying with him, who so passionately had just almost driven him to the verge of insanity. He kissed her forehead and pulled her snug, finally allowing himself to drift into oblivion.

Ok, not much happening here, sorry. But I felt those two needed some space to sort things out without anything else getting in the way of their storyline.

Hope you enjoyed it despite the cheesiness - fluffiness of the moment