AN: Sorry to leave y'all on a cliffy like this, but this is the end of the first act of this fic. Look for the second act sometime in the new year!
Much as Derek liked to sleep in, he rarely got the chance – between Clooney demanding to go for a walk as soon as the sun came up and his weekly brunch with his mother and Jayde, he'd more or less given up on the possibility of a lazy morning.
On that particular morning, he was just returning from walking Clooney (and making a pit stop at Starbucks, of course, because he'd forgotten to buy coffee on his last grocery run), when he rounded the corner and found Emily standing on his front steps, knocking like she were intent on breaking down the door.
Brows knit in concern and confusion, he called out, "Em? What are you doing here?"
She whipped around at the sound of his voice, eyes wide and frantic.
"How long have you been knocking?" he asked, coming up the steps and unlocking the door.
She shrugged, apparently not entirely sure of the answer. He opened his mouth to ask further questions, but before he could speak, she'd wrapped him in an embrace like she were drowning and he were a life preserver.
Her odd actions were obviously disconcerting to him, but he didn't voice his concerns, merely held her tight, hand rubbing up and down her back soothingly. He could feel her breaths coming in shaky gulps in the way her back heaved and trembled beneath his palm.
She nuzzled into his neck, inhaling deeply the comforting scent of him, allowing herself to believe – even for a moment – that everything would be okay.
He gently guided her to sit on the nearby couch, never letting go of her. Pressing his lips to the top of her head, he whispered into her hair, "Em, what's going on? You're scaring me..."
She pulled back then, studying him with wide eyes. "You don't know?" she asked, clearly surprised.
"Know what?" he asked.
Instead of answering directly, she snatched the nearby remote, turning on the TV and flicking through the channels until she found a news station.
Derek watched with increasing alarm as the news anchor described the scene outside La Giolleria in grim detail. Behind her, uniformed police officers stood behind yellow crime scene tape cordoning off the club – what was usually a titillating, albeit seedy, exterior just seemed rather sad and pathetic in the grim light of day.
"Please tell me you're not all caught up in this..." Derek begged, rather hopelessly, given the fact that she was there and clearly distraught.
She just stared at her hands where she'd torn her cuticles to shreds, saying nothing.
"Emily," he said, more insistently, "Emily, are you involved in this?"
"Does it matter?" she asked with a humourless laugh. "Whether I'm involved or not, CPS is going to just assume that I am and I'll never see Jayde again. They're already looking for a reason not to give her back to me, this is just the final nail in the coffin."
He wrapped her hands in his to stop her from further damaging her cuticles, squeezing them almost too tightly. "Don't say that, Em." he demanded. "You're going to get her back."
"No, I'm not!" she said vehemently. "I was there, Derek! I was fucking there! I watched six people bleed out from their eyeballs and I'm the last one who spoke to the guy who gave everyone the drugs! You can't tell me that doesn't look really fucking guilty!"
He shook his head insistently. "That doesn't prove anything," he replied.
She scoffed. "Maybe not, but it's my word against Aaron fucking Hotchner's. Who's going to listen to a dumb fucking stripper over the word of a renowned lawyer?"
Derek hesitated just a moment too long in responding, which she took to be the seeds of doubt sprouting in his mind.
"See?" she exclaimed. "See? Even you're starting to think I'm lying!" She started hyperventilating, her face going deathly pale.
"Em? Em!" he said, squeezing her hands until the bones shifted in his grip. "Emily, you need to calm down or you're going to pass out." He waited until her breathing had slowed before continuing, "Emily, if you say you weren't involved, I believe you. But you're right: people are going to judge you based on your job. It's not fair, but it's true. But that doesn't mean you just have to lay down and take it."
She gave a high panicky laugh. "What other choice do I have?" she asked.
"We fight it," he said firmly. "With every last breath, we refuse to let them take your daughter without one hell of a battle. No matter what the cost, we show them that we're not just going to let them tear apart a family."
She clearly didn't believe him that they stood any chance at all of winning this fight. "What's the point?" she mumbled.
"Emily Prentiss, you look at me," he demanded, "You do not get to just give up. You don't get to decide to throw in the towel. Is that what you want to teach Jayde? That when things are hard, you just quit? Because that's not the Emily Prentiss I know."
"But..."
He shook his head. "No, Em. You don't get to do that to that little girl. She needs her mother and you're the only one she's got. And believe me when I say, you're the only mother she wants."
She opened her mouth to argue.
"She does want you as her mother," he said as if reading her mind. "You're all she ever talks about. Every time I see her, she asks about you. Every time I leave, she tells me to tell you how much she loves and misses you. She asks to look at pictures of you on my phone. Every picture she draws has you in it. You're that girl's whole world and you better get your shit together and be the mother that she knows you are."
She nodded slowly, cheeks flaming red. "I'm sorry," she mumbled.
"For what?"
She shrugged.
For his part, he understood her lack of words perfectly. He simply pulled her into his chest, wrapping her tightly in his arms and dropping a kiss to her temple.