Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle." - Amy Bloom

o o o o

28 January, 2011

Long after the rest of the team had gone home for the night, Spencer unlocked Derek's office door and went inside, closing the door behind him. When he turned on the lights, the first thing his eyes fell on was one of the photographs on the bookshelf behind Derek's desk. Derek and Samantha were at some sporting thing. There were Native Americans on the front of their red jerseys. On the other side of the bookshelf, Derek has his arms around Samantha and James. There was a soccer ball in James' hands and they were all covered in mud.

Picking up the frame, Spencer stared at the faces, studying them. He'd known Derek for seven years, he'd seen him almost every day for the past seven years and he'd never seen his expression that happy, that at peace. Seven years and he never really knew the man.

He put the photograph down and turned around to the desk. Spencer sat at the computer to get the view Derek looked at every day. Next to the computer, there was a small double frame that folded closed held pictures of Fran Morgan and a woman Spencer could only assume was Andria Murdoch, both holding a premature infant, Elaine Morgan. Spencer stared at the photograph.

"Look at his little widdy, biddy nose."

"Aww..."

"Don't you want one of these?"

"Mmm... I'll stick to practicing."

He'd lied. Derek had lied when García asked if he wanted children. He already had and lost one. He didn't want to have a child, he wanted the one he lost. Why? Why had he hidden Samantha and Elaine? It didn't make any sense. Why hadn't Derek just told them, told him? Why didn't his best friend trust him? What else didn't he know about Derek?

Sighing, Spencer studied the wedding photo. No wonder Derek had become an expert in obsessional crimes - he'd lost his family to one.

Spencer closed and locked the office when he left, returning to the bullpen and opening his computer. He logged into the FBI databases and typed Samantha Morgan's full name into the search engine. For two hours he sat and read every file he could find. She'd been to the hospital 26 times in 12 years. How had social services not stepped in and taken her from her home? Several reports had been filed for both her and James, but nothing further.

Spencer clicked out of them in disgust and into more recent files. He read through the transcript of the trial, he read newspaper articles, police reports, anything he could find. Samantha's file was up on the screen when his phone rang in his pocket and he jumped, exiting out of the file on instinct, like someone could see over his shoulder.

"Reid," Spencer answered without looking at the screen.

"Spencer?"

The tone of Calliope's voice bordered on hysteria and Spencer sat up straighter in the chair. "Sweetheart? What's wrong?"

"The SUV got hit! He didn't even stop! He didn't even hit his breaks!"

Her voice was hard to hear over the raucous background noise and Spencer pressed hiss left hand against his ear in an attempt to hear her better. "Are you okay? Calliope? Are you okay?"

He couldn't hear her answer. Spencer gathered his things and headed out of the building as he tried to understand what she was saying. He heard enough to know the accident happened on Pennsylvania and Seventh in Washington and, as soon as he knew that, he was out of the parking lot and onto I-95. Halfway to Washington, the call was lost and Calliope's phone went straight to voice mail when he tried to call back.

"This is Supervisory Special Agent Dr. Spencer Reid with the FBI," Spencer used his most authoritative voice when he spoke to the 911 dispatcher. "There was an accident on Seventh and Pennsylvania involving a Porsche Cayenne S, license plate number XAU-9943. Who was involved in the crash? Was an ambulance sent?"

The tech on the other end of the line seemed flustered at having the FBI on the line and gave him information she shouldn't have. Three ambulances had been to the scene and gone directly to George Washington University Hospital. That was all she knew. Spencer thanked her and mentally altered his course.

Calliope was okay enough to be able to call him. He had to focus on that.

Emeline.

Had Emeline been in the car?

"Jill?" Spencer practically barked at her in his panic, grasping at the hope that Emeline hasn't in the car. Though, if Emeline was hurt or worse, wouldn't that have been the first thing Calliope said? "Is Emeline with you?"

"What? No. As far as I know, she's with Callie. They came over for lunch this afternoon, though. Why?"

"Calliope's phone is going straight to voice mail and I don't know where she is," Spencer didn't want to panic her before he even knew for sure what was going on. "Thanks, Jill."

"No prob. Keep me updated, okay?"

When he got to the hospital, the woman at the front desk gave him a room number and Spencer was running down the hallway before she even finished her sentence. In his haste, he took a wrong turn and had to backtrack to find the room. A few seconds away from asking for help, he heard her voice and turned.

"Calliope," Spencer wrapped his arms around her as soon as he saw her. "Thank God."

"Poppy!" Emeline's voice was a shriek and Spencer let go of Calliope to scoop his little girl up off the bed. She clung to his neck and Spencer held her as tight as he could. Across the room, Aaron was holding Jack and sitting next to Haley's sister Jessica. "Ow, Poppy!"

"Sorry, Princess. Are you okay? Does anything hurt?" Emeline started listing places that were sore and Spencer kissed the top of her head.

"The doctor said she and Jack are going to be fine," Calliope put a hand on his arm. "Just to watch them for the next few days. Derek was awesome."

"Derek?" Spencer asked. "Who was driving? What happened?"

"We were going to Matchbox. The kids wanted to drive with Derek, so he took the SUV and I drove his Camaro. Der was in the middle of the intersection when a bright red Mercedes ran the red light. Derek... he, like, he turned the car at the last minute to make it a head-on crash instead of letting the Mercedes hit the side of the SUV," her voice was quiet and got even more so before she spoke again. "Spencer, he saved Eme's life. She was sitting right there, Spencer. Oh, my god, I was so scared."

Spencer nodded, processing everything she'd just said and wrapped his free arm around her shoulders so he was holding both his girls. He couldn't loose them. "Why didn't you pick up your phone?"

"I dropped it. It's not working anymore," Calliope produced a shattered iPhone from her pocket. "I tried to call you from Aaron's phone, but you didn't pick up."

"I didn't realize he was with you. Where's Derek? Is he alright?"

"He hit his head pretty bad," Calliope told him. "He was unconscious behind the wheel. The first ambulance rushed him here. I don't know how he is. No one's told us -"

"Agent Morgan's just woken up," a doctor poked his head into the room and Aaron stood immediately, putting Jack down and assuring him he'd be right back, and followed the doctor out of the room. The team syphoned through Derek's room; Spencer waited until last. He didn't know what to say. He just didn't know.

Standing outside the hospital room, he listened to the tail end of the conversation Calliope and Derek were having. Then he knocked on the door.

"Room for one more?"

"Actually, I was about to take Eme over to Jill's and put her to bed," Calliope took Emeline from where she'd fallen asleep on Derek's chest. "Rest, Der. You're tired."

"García's still out in the waiting room," Spencer gave both of them kisses as they left. "She sent everyone else home. I'll be at Jill's later."

When Calliope was gone, Spencer crossed the room and sat in the visitors chair, staring at his feet because it was the only thing he could think of. He felt awkward sitting in the room with Derek. He wasn't sure if Derek was still angry with him and Derek didn't know that he'd spent the last two hours digging into his personal life. "Hotch said you were okay."

"Doc says I'm gonna be sore, but I'm fine."

"Thank you for protecting Emeline."

"Always."

After twenty minutes of awkward silence, Derek worked his way through the fuzzy channels on the hospital's television a few times and gave up when they got back to Tom and Jerry a fourth time.

"Do you remember the time you asked me if I'd ever crossed the professional boundaries with a victim during a case? It was right after we got back from L.A. with Lila Archer and the stalker case."

"I remember," Spencer nodded, but didn't look up from his shoes. He hated talking about Lila. "But, if you don't mind, I'd rather we not bring up Lila. Especially not around Calliope. It's a sore subject."

Derek gave a half smile and one silent laugh.

"I said no, I had never crossed those lines. I lied to you, Reid. I did. Once. It was back when I was a cop. I was about six months or so out of the Police Academy. Twenty-three years old and greener than grass.

"Her name was Samantha Murdoch,. I was off that day, but CSI was short a tech and I volunteered to do it if they told me what to do, both because I needed the money and because I wanted to make a good impression on my bosses, ya know… going the extra mile and all the stuff.

"October twenty-first, nineteen ninety-nine. I will never forget that day. I went out on a call. A suicide. It was the first suicide I'd seen in any capacity. Tom Murdoch. Sam's father. He committed suicide in their garage – shot himself in the head with a Colt Detective Special. A thirty-eight caliber. Titanium. Sammie was nineteen years old and a freshman at the University of Illinois. Her brother James was sixteen and a sophomore in high school."

"She was nineteen?" Spencer looked up for the first time. He knew that. He'd read that, but hearing Derek say it gave the fact more weight.

"Yes. She was nineteen at the time," Derek kept staring at his hands as he answered Spencer's question and then looked up and straight ahead, like he was seeing into the past. "Something in Sam's eyes. She was so devastated, she was completely destroyed, but she acted all tough. She refused to admit that she was in pain. I couldn't just walk away from her and do nothing. So I gave her my phone number and I told her to call if she needed to talk. Two days later, she called. She was in the garage and couldn't get the blood off the floor."

"They waited two days to clean the blood?"

"I didn't ask. I went over and I cleaned it. Scrubbed the cement. Later, I painted the garage floor so they didn't have to see the stain. Sammie and I… we became friends. Good friends. I... I understood her. She didn't know it, but she understood me too. I never told her about Carl Buford. I didn't want her to think I was - I was weak.

"Tom was a mean son-of-a-bitch. All Sammie and James ever wanted from him was his approval and his love and attention. He manipulated them and he beat them. He told them they were stupid and worthless until they believed it. I wanted to help her, them," Derek fell silent again and Spencer waited.

"I was falling in love with her and I knew it. I also knew something wasn't right. She had a boyfriend. Nick Farese and he was worse than Tom."

"She couldn't get her father's approval, so she tried to get the approval of a man like him," Spencer interjected because he felt the need to say something. The emotion in Derek's voice, hearing his remembrance, changed what Spencer already knew. They were the same facts, but they had life now. They were more personal, they meant more. Spencer didn't know how to respond. "It's very common for women with abusive fathers to fall into a pattern of abusive relationships."

"I tried to get her away from him, but she wouldn't. I finally confronted her when she had his handprint bruised to the back of her neck. We didn't talk for a long time after that, not until she showed up at my apartment at two in the morning. She was bleeding, her face was swollen and she was crying. I knew he was beating her. I didn't know he was raping her.

"I took her to the hospital. They took care of her, did a rape kit. I stayed with her through the entire thing. I held her hand and I promised I'd take care of her, that he'd never hurt her again. I loved her so much and I couldn't even admit it to myself, much less to her. Seeing her in so much pain killed me. I wanted to kill him, I wanted to rip his heart out with my bare hands. But I didn't. I believed in the system," Derek huffed as if the thought were humerous and shook his head. "I didn't kill him. I should have. I got her to press charges instead, we took him to court. I testified. She did as well, but she was terrified. He was sentenced to fourteen years, parole available after seven."

"Her grandfather, George, had cancer and he died a few days before we went to trial. It was almost a blessing in disguise. George was in so much pain. The funeral was the day before Sammie and I were giving our testimonies. After the funeral, Sammie and I went for a walk. She needed to get away from the sadness, even if it were just for a few minutes.

"She kissed me. Hey. Don't look at me like that. She kissed me. But I didn't stop her. I should have, I knew it then and I know it now. But I didn't. I kissed her back. We got into a huge fight, because I said we couldn't do that again. I told her we could not get involved like that. Four months later, we were dating. She went back to school, we kept dating. A year later, she got pregnant. She was 21, I was 25."

"Jeeze…" Spencer exhaled a breath he didn't know he was holding.

"Yeah. I got her pregnant. I asked her to marry me. At first she said no. She didn't want to get married if the only reason I asked because of the baby. She said she'd rather disgrace her family by being a single mom than be unhappily married. They're Italian. They're big on the disgracing the family thing. I said like hell I was going to let her take my baby away from me. I asked her again a week later, big romantic proposal. The whole nine yards. She was four months pregnant when we got married. And Nick was released from prison.

"I… I was out on patrol one night. October fifteenth. Oh-one. We got dispatched to a car accident. Two cars. When we got there, Keira'd been shot twice, but she was still alive. She said Farese had taken Sammie. I had my hands over the wound, trying to stop the some of bleeding, but she died before the medics got there. Farese had my girls," Derek's voice broke and Spencer had to look away from the anguish on his face.

"It was thirty minutes before we found them. I didn't get to see her. They took her straight to the hospital and she went into surgery. She had an emergency C-section, got the baby out and onto life support. The baby was a girl. Elaine Madison Morgan. She was 34 weeks. She wasn't going to live, we all knew it. I took her off of life support.

"My mom and sisters kept trying to get me to hold her, but I was too scared. I was afraid I'd hurt her. She was so tiny and fragile. My mom held her while she died, not me.

"I wasn't holding her when she died, Reid," Derek's expression was pained. His eyes were twisted shut and his lips were pressed together in a thin line. "The one time she needed me and I wasn't there. I stared at her for three hours after she died. I couldn't hold her, I wasn't strong enough. I couldn't hold her, but couldn't let her go. Ellie would be nine years old right now."

Derek fell into silence, like he was preparing himself to tell what came next, and Spencer waited patiently. He knew what came next.

"He beat her with a tire iron. The right side of her head was destroyed. Sammie… My Sammie was gone. She was alive, but gone. They had her on life support, but the damage to her brain was too severe. She was brain dead. The doctors said she might have lived a few days on life support, but not longer than that. And, even if her body were able to survive by some miracle, she would just be a body. She would nev – She would never come back. She'd be a vegetable. So… I-I-I… I pulled the plug. I had them take her off of life support and I held her hand waited for her to die.

Spencer closed his eyes and tried to imagine sitting and watching Emeline and Calliope both die and his stomach knotted and he felt nauseous. He would not be able to do it. And he didn't know how Derek had, but Spencer was sure he hadn't done it well.

"But she didn't. She held on. Don't ask me how or why, I have no idea and neither did the doctors. She held on for a month, I stayed with her, slept on a cot in the room. She opened her eyes October fifteenth. She came home in January. She was so different, the trauma to her brain changed her. She was angry at everything, especially me. She hated me. She left me and filed for divorce and got it through a crooked judge. I never signed any papers. I didn't want to sign any papers. I don't want to be divorced.

"I went undercover, James says I was running. Maybe I was. I went to Detroit, helped take down the Black Mafia Family. Then I went home. Eighteen months. I missed her, them, all of them, I missed them so much. I went back home, I went to the Murdoch's house and James opened the door. Hand me my wallet, Reid."

Derek opened his wallet after Spencer located it in the brown paper bag with his clothing and other personal belongings. From the billfold, Derek removed three red strips of plastic.

"James handed these to me. He handed these to me and said 'We needed you.' and closed the door."

"Hospital bracelets." This, he knew as well. It was in Samantha - Sammie's - file. But seeing the hospital bracelets took it off the screen of his computer. Seeing the hospital bracelets made it real. "Suicide risk? She attempted suicide?"

"Three times. The first one was the day I left for Detroit. I wasn't there when she needed me most. I promised her that I'd always take care of her and I didn't. I didn't take care of her. I failed her. I miss her so much, Reid. I miss her so much."

"I'm sorry, Morgan. I can't imagine that kind of hell."

"I hope you never experience it, Reid. Never take them for granted, kid. It can be taken away."

ooo ooo ooo ooo

Emeline was asleep on an air mattress in Ben's nursery at Jill and Steve's house when Spencer got there. Calliope was in the guest room wearing a pair of borrowed pajamas when Spencer finally got there, three hours after he'd left the hospital, leaving Derek with Penelope. He'd need the three hours to think and had ended up sitting in Starbucks until he realized how much time had past and speed to the house.

"I was just about to do that," Calliope admitted when Spencer came into the guest room with Emeline in his arms. He laid her down on the bed next to Calliope and changed into a pair of Steve's sweatpants and white undershirts. Calliope didn't even ask where he'd been when he got into the other side of the bed and settled Emeline between them.

Calliope leaned over Emeline and gave him a kiss. "I love you, Spencer."

"I love you too, Sweetheart."

Long after Calliope had turned out the lights and her breathing evened out as she drifted to sleep, Spencer stayed awake. He loved his girls so much, couldn't imagine anything ever being more important than them or not doing whatever it took to keep them and keep them safe. Derek obviously loved his ex-wife as much as Spencer loved Calliope, so Spencer didn't understand why he had spent the last seven years in Virginia with the BAU instead of Chicago trying to get Sammie back. If Calliope left him... he didn't know what he'd do, but he sure as hell wouldn't be living 700 miles away.

Spencer tried to stop his thoughts as he closed his eyes. He didn't want to think about this anymore. Calliope and Emeline were safe. Emeline's adoption papers were going through and he was marrying Calliope in 212 days and he'd never have to live without them.

A/N:

BAH. One thing that sucks about parallel stories is you sometimes have to have the same scenes in each story and you're like "BUT I ALREADY WROTE THAT" and you obviously can't change the dialogue because, hi that's supposed to be set, so you're scrounging around trying to re-write the actions that you already liked in the first draft and it's annoying. But this should be the last major duplicate scene for a while and no other one will be this long. But I had to have it in. So, sorry if you read NH and WW.

I'm tired. I have to work tomorrow morning. I'm going to bed. LOVE YOU. Night friends~

Thanks for reading, I hope you liked it!

Love, Thalia