Part six:
Having her children hovering was like having a couple of overprotective bodyguards, Penelope thought. They wouldn't let her out of their sight and she was already beginning to wish that she hadn't told them about the personal hell she was living. Someone was bound to ask questions, and they couldn't easily answer any of them.
Maybe she should thank Derek for provoking her into drama yesterday? They could blame her fragile state on that if nothing else.
But she'd woken up with stabbing pains running up and down her arm which had led to an ER visit to make sure she wasn't having a heart attack – no, it was just the tumors cutting off signals to her brain intermittently. Which explained the numbness, tingling, pain, and her inability to hold a pen most of the time now.
So Luca and Christina refused to leave her side. And they said nothing to JJ, Emily, or Reid about why they had missed breakfast, aside from a dismissive, "We kind of slept through the alarms."
She spoke briefly to the funeral director and said that she wouldn't be able to speak to the congregation like Dave had wanted her to and he'd agreed that, if she didn't feel up to it, she shouldn't be held to his request. She had settled into the front pew knowing that Christina and Luca would represent their family as well, if not better, than she could have. They were both more eloquent and far less blunt and to the point than she was.
The pins and needles in her arm were hard to get past. She sat like a stone, motionless, breathing deeply, holding back full-fledged tears only by singing '99 Bottles of Beer' in her head on repeat, just like she and Dave had done when the pain was too much in the earlier incarnations of the cancer – but it had never, never, been like this. Luca was tucked under her left arm like he'd always been when he was younger – and it didn't matter that he was taller and heavier than her, he would always be that little boy who couldn't read easily and just wanted his mother's assurance that the words did make sense and were real. And Christina sat as close as she could without making things worse. Penelope kept catching her daughter looking at her with worry, but a hint of a smile was all it took to banish the worry for a few minutes.
When the time came, Christina got up and went to the altar to speak. Penelope couldn't take her eyes off her – all red hair, one brown eye and one blue, pale white skin with freckles and Derek's lean, muscular frame. She knew that she had splotches of darker skin down her back and on her thighs like a permanent tan, but nowhere near as dark as Derek's skin. Thank god for recessive genes – Dave had been able to boast red-haired Italians in his family tree in the form of his great-grandmother, so no one had questioned why Christina looked the way she did. And even if she had looked like her biological father, Penelope would have taken anyone on toe-to-toe to tell them that it didn't matter what her biology was – David Rossi was her father.
He had raised her as if she had been his own flesh and blood – and she never knew anything different. Telling her would only have caused her to want things that she shouldn't have. To tell her that Derek Morgan, who hated her parents so thoroughly, was her real father would only have shattered the peace and would only have led to disappointment and hurt for everyone.
Christina never questioned why Luca was tall and heavy while she was tall and thin. Or why she didn't look much like her father – Penelope would just pull out the pictures of her mother and explain that she took more after her side of the family in looks, which was true. Except when she looked so much like Fran Morgan that it was uncanny – mainly when she was upset.
Her only wish was that Christina had been able to know Fran.
Luca got up to speak next and Christina took his place, snuggling into her mother's side and it was all Penelope could do to breathe and keep counting backward. The painkillers were wearing off – not that they did much to help in the first place – and when her index finger twitched from inactivity, it sent a wave of pain shooting through her arm.
She was vaguely aware of pushing Christina away and flying down the aisle, but it wasn't till she was in the bathroom being sick that it fully registered that she'd left the room at all. Her chest was heaving with the effort of keeping her pain repressed, the urge to gag and vomit again overwhelming her senses, making her flush and tingle from head to foot, adding to the pain.
They would all think she was a drama queen.
That she was so invested in her own grief that she was putting on airs.
That she was to be laughed at and derided.
She fumbled with the cap of her pain pills, sending another wave of agony through her system, and gave up. She threw the bottle at the mirror and slid to the floor, curling up in a ball as she let everything loose.
She didn't want to die, but she didn't think she could survive another fight like the last one. She didn't want to hurt anyone – not even Derek – but she couldn't seem to help herself. But most of all, she didn't want to be in that room, listening to how much Dave had loved her and everyone else in his grumpily curmudgeonish way. She didn't want to hear about it from anyone else because she knew how it felt to be loved by him and she wanted it back so badly she could taste it like the bile in her throat.
The door opened and she heard heavy, masculine footsteps. She couldn't bring herself to look at the intruder, just stayed tucked up and hid her breakdown.
Hotch said, in a tone surprisingly devoid of anything but compassion, "I'm sorry, Penelope – I wish I could say that it gets easier, but…"
She looked up at him, finally, blinking through her tears just enough to see that the blurry outline really was Aaron Hotchner and not just her imagination. "It never gets easier, does it?" she choked out. "It just gets harder and harder till you wish you could get off the roller coaster, right?"
He hesitated, then nodded, stooping down to get her pill bottle off the floor. "Yeah, but mostly, you get numb," he said very quietly. "It takes a lot of energy to feel like you do right now. You'll cope by being happy." He read the bottle, then tapped it. "Dave told me near the end about the cancer being back. And, I think… maybe I'm more pissed because you don't want to fight it than I'm pissed about what you said and did to Jack." He filled a paper cup with water and knelt beside her, opening the pill bottle and tapping out two pills. He helped her get them down, then aided her to her feet. "But… I can see why you've made this choice. Better it be quick and painful than lingering and devastating, right?"
"The treatments aren't a guarantee that I won't die anyway," she whispered. "If I can't have a reasonable certainty that I'll live through them, what's the point?"
"The point is that you have those two kids of yours to look out for, still," Hotch said firmly.
She smiled at him sadly. "Right now, I can't think past a minute from now and you're asking me to think about what could happen a month or even a year from now – just… forgive me, okay? I don't want to not be friends anymore, BossMan." She squeezed his hand and leaned on him for support.
"I forgive you on one condition," he said softly.
"Oh no, there are conditions?" she laughed harshly.
"Just one – that you tell your kids why you don't want to fight anymore."
She hesitated a moment, then whispered, "Before Christina goes back to Chicago." It was a tiny statement, a promise not made idly.
Her promises were not made idly. They were for keeps.
They sat around the living room with food and drinks as Hotch read the will. Penelope had disappeared upstairs not long after they'd arrived back from the cemetery, but no one wanted to talk about the elephant in the room.
"To my daughter, Christina, I leave the deed to the house she's been living in through college, and a one-time check for $7 million, to cover repairs to the house and student loans," Hotch read. "In time, she will be splitting Penelope's part of the estate with Luca, but this is just a little perk."
Christina burst into tears and left the room. Luca followed her and JJ looked like she might follow them, but Hotch held her back with a shake of the head.
"To my son, Luca, I leave the cabin," Hotch continued, "and all of the land I own around the cabin and the lake. We spent so much time there, I think he'd like that. Silly boy has a free ride playing football, but he deserves the same $7 million as his sister does, so there's a check to keep him comfortable till he figures out that football will only get him so far."
Derek sighed and took a swig of beer. Yeah, Rossi was still a bastard, even in death.
"To the Reids, I leave my coin and stamp collections. To Jennifer Jareau, I leave the guesthouse and the keys to the stables. You can sell the horses or keep them, but you are always welcome to stay. To Derek Morgan, I leave the manila envelope bearing his name, and its contents – as my apology." Hotch looked over at Morgan and held out an envelope.
Derek took it and stared at it silently, not wanting to open it in front of anyone else. His apology, hmm? Better be damn good.
Hotch read through all of the various and sundry things, charitable donations, etc., and came to the end. "Everything else, I leave to the love of my life – Penelope Garcia. She already knows how much I love her, but surrounding herself with reminders of us will keep that love alive. I never really told her that I fell in love with her the moment she taught me so patiently how to use that stupid tablet, or that I'd had a little high school crush on her since I rejoined the BAU. That I didn't rip her out of David Lynch's arms and sweep her off her feet is my only regret in this life. Cara mia, Kitten, Mama Bear, my love – never doubt my love for you, and always remember how happy we've been."
Derek looked up and saw that everyone – even Hotch, was crying.
Penelope stood in the doorway in a long, colorful silk robe and her hair in messy pigtails, her hand over her heart and her heart in her throat as she looked at them. Christina and Luca were in the kitchen, crying just as much.
And she felt numb.
All those names, all those pet names, the imploring way he wanted her to know how much he'd loved her, his confession of having a crush – it was all building to a regret in her belly, a pain that rivaled the stabbing in her arm that just refused to go away.
It was only the beginning.
"I'm sorry to interrupt," she said softly, jarring everyone back to reality, "but I need some help upstairs."
JJ immediately rose to her feet and came to guide her back up. "What do you need?" she asked.
"Pain pills and a bath," Penelope sighed. "I… can't open the pills and I can't turn on the water."
JJ nodded and put her arm around Penelope's waist. "You don't have to do this – any of it – alone," she promised very quietly. "I'm going to sell the house and come live in your guesthouse –"
"No," Penelope whispered. "No, I'm not going to uproot your life just because I'm sick."
"It's not because you're sick," JJ said, "it's because you're my sister and you need help."
Penelope didn't have the strength to talk her out of it right then, but she would eventually.