Part five:
She was so beautiful – why did she always have to be so damn gorgeous? All dressed in poofy white flounces and lace with a tye-dyed veil and that stupid smile on her face. She shouldn't be so happy to marry him – why was she marrying him at all?
What could Penelope possibly see in that old ladies' man anyway? How could David fucking Rossi possibly rate higher on Penelope Garcia's Richter scale than Derek Morgan? They were explosive together! Fireworks and supernovas had nothing on their chemistry – they were explosive.
Why was he even here? How could he just sit by and watch her marry that… bastard. That was the only word that Derek could settle on that had as much rage as he felt right now.
She had a fucking baby with Rossi, for god's sake – what a way to move on. And now this… travesty, this sham of a wedding.
"If anyone present has any legal or moral objections to these two marrying, may they speak now or forever hold their peace," the priest was saying.
It was like a shake to Derek's soul. He was going to lose her forever if he didn't at least say something – anything. He stood up and his feet seemed like they were moving of their own accord, faster and faster till he was at the altar, taking her hands, looking at the shock and dismay in her eyes.
Dismay? Why? She should be glad he wanted to save her from the mistake she was about to make!
"Derek, what are you doing?" Penelope whispered.
"Damn it, Penelope, I'm still in love with you," he said, knowing if the words never left him, she would never know. And he needed her to know – he needed her to realize how much he needed her back, needed her in his life. He was falling apart without her. "Baby Girl, please… I was an idiot, a stupid damn fool, and I know it, okay? I threw us away and it was the biggest mistake I've ever made in my fucking life. Please don't do this – don't marry him." He knew his voice was spitting venom, but he wanted to hurt Rossi, to make him suffer for taking her away from him. "Give me another chance – we can make this work. I don't care that you had a baby with him – I just… I need you, Baby Girl. Please." He was holding her hands, begging her shamelessly, and all she could do was stare at him with that dismay and shock in her eyes…
And she pulled her hands from his and turned to Rossi. "I'm sorry," she said very quietly, taking his hand again and squeezing it. "Father, will you please continue with the ceremony?"
If she'd ripped his still-beating heart from his chest and stomped on it, he couldn't possibly feel worse. He'd given everything to – and she just –
He backed away, feeling shame and anger building up in his belly. She turned and spared him a glance that spoke so many more volumes than she could ever have spoken, then her attention was back on her fiancé and the priest.
Derek stumbled out of the church, pausing outside the door to retch in the flowers. He'd begged her and pleaded with her, and for what? All for nothing.
He woke up in an icy sweat with an anguished cry on his lips.
"Daddy, what's wrong?" Wanda mumbled from the other hotel bed. "You okay?" she asked sleepily.
"Fine," he mumbled. "Go back to sleep – I just had a nightmare."
The worst kind – the kind rooted in truth.
"So, if we don't have a case, I'm going to come visit next weekend," Penelope said excitedly. It had been almost two months since she'd seen Derek, and she was chomping at the bit to get to Chicago and have herself a nice tall glass of hot chocolate. "You can take me to that little Indian place you were telling me about – the one with the really good…" She stopped and said, "Sugar pop, what's wrong? You haven't said a word to me since you picked up the phone."
She heard his sigh crackling down the line. "Baby Girl… this isn't working."
"What isn't working?" she asked. "I can put in for a transfer – you know that. I mean, you specifically told me not to do just that because the BAU needs me and –"
"No, you're right," he said. "The BAU needs you. Very much."
She swallowed hard, reading between the lines. "Oh. I see," she whispered. "The BAU needs me, but you don't anymore. That's… that's how it is, then, is it?"
He sighed again. "Penelope, I met someone. And I don't feel right going out with her, knowing that I'm going to hurt you –"
She barked a hard, harsh laugh. "Oh, so you think you aren't hurting me right now? You think you're making me feel better by making me feel miserable because I didn't fucking transfer into your office to be your fuck buddy? Well, you know what, Derek Morgan? You're a lousy boyfriend. So take that bottle of '74 pinot noir you've been saving for our anniversary and shove it up your ass."
She hung up and threw her headset across the office.
Of all the times for him to be a bastard, the day she found out she was pregnant – for sure – was certainly highest on her list. If she didn't love him so damn much, she'd erase him from the face of cyberspace.
He'd come crawling back in a few days, and she'd be ready.
Penelope woke up wrapped around a pillow like she had so many times when Derek had first broken things off with her. She held the pillow tighter, a miserable noise leaving her lips as she cried, and cried and cried. She really had nothing left now.
She should be ashamed of having hit him, but he'd accused her of being heartless – and god, she had felt everything. Everything. She had been shattered by his callous attitude toward their relationship, broken by Dave's insistence that they should invite him to the wedding, and decimated by Derek's final desperate attempt to win her back just because he couldn't fucking stand the fact that he couldn't have all the toys in the sandbox that he wanted.
And the day that Dave had come home and told her he was retiring because he'd torn the cartilage in his knee and was too old to be chasing after unsubs and saving babies, she'd blamed Derek and his wife for all of it. The wife whose crash had caused the whole mess in the first place – the wife who had been running drugs the entire time she'd known Derek. But she couldn't fault the children – Wanda was only three, and Mick wasn't even a year old when the crash had happened. They were innocent of everything, and she was so glad that Dave had protected them, no matter the cost.
But Derek had never said thank you – just called Hotch and Dave names for accusing his wife of doing such things… and he never took the words back, even when Terri had been proven guilty.
She wondered, sometimes, what life would've been like if she'd ignored him wanting her to stay in Virginia and had hopped a plane to Chicago instead. What would've happened if she'd transferred and been with him all the time. Would it have been the same outcome, but worse because they were together? Or would they have survived?
She took a deep breath and tried to calm down. He would have been a wonderful father to Christina, had he known – she had no doubt about that. But the harsh reality was that David Rossi had picked up the pieces of her broken heart and mended them with duct tape, bubblegum, and adoring smiles. They had bonded over coffee and stories about bad breakups and pregnancy books. And he'd been with her every step of the way.
Which is why, when he asked her to marry him, to let him provide for her and the baby… she hadn't felt guilty for saying yes. Because she loved him fiercely in a way that Derek Morgan could never touch. They might have started out on bad, shaky ground, but they had found a deep well of love and passion.
She didn't know if she was mourning Dave or herself.
Because the best part of her life was over, and she didn't have the strength to face the downhill slide she was taking head first.