Chapter Five
Once again I must apologize for the lateness of this! I hope you have realized that all chapters will be short. But then that means there will be a lot of them, right? So there's a silver lining. Anyway. Hopefully the hiatus wasn't too long for y'all to forget the whole thing. Without further ado…oh yeah this starts out a couple hours after Chapter Four.
That Night
The darkness. It seemed to robe Penelope in fear. Impenetrable, smothering, a deep abyss of hopelessness and despair, the night sky thrust her whole world into a sheer black pit. Such was the degree of emotion she felt. Such was the pain of what Kevin was doing to her.
In order to try to make it through, she remembered. She remembered, vividly, a moment from her childhood.
The storm. Oh, how it had scared her. The rain slapping her window. The wind howling and wailing, as if mourning the one it cherished most. The thunder, so unpredictable and feral, punching her eardrums, causing her to cry in fear. The lightning streaking across the angered sky.
But her mother had come into her room. She had picked her daughter up and held her. Held her so tightly that even the strongest man in the world couldn't rip Penelope from her grasp. She had cooed softly, rubbing her hand along her back.
"It's all right, Penelope, it's all right. Nothing can hurt you. I've got you."
Now, even in her thirties, Penelope felt as helpless and scared as she did at six. If it weren't for Kevin and his omnipresent eyes and ears on her, she would've cried. She would've sobbed for her mother, for the comfort that resting her head on her mother's chest brought. She would've wept for the days when "It's all right" was enough to soothe her, was enough to sustain her. And she would've grieved for the time when "Nothing can hurt you" was something that she could believe in.
BAU, the next day
"Dammit!" Morgan whispered, chucking his now-inkless pen into the trash. "That's the fourth pen today!" Reaching for a new one, his eye swiped a glance of the photo resting on his desk. He and Garcia were wrapped in each other's arms, posing for a Valentine's day shot. The glow on both of their faces at being so close to each other was unmistakable. Derek wished that he could go back in time, right to that very moment—and never leave. Never leave her arms, never let her go. Never let someone swoop in and carry her off.
As though on cue, Penelope walked past his desk. Right away, Morgan could tell something was amiss. Today, unlike yesterday, or the scores of days before that, he caught no whiff of her signature perfume. Not that she needed it or anything, but still….Penelope had said herself that she didn't like change. It was something to note, anyway.
"Hey, Baby Girl," Derek smiled playfully at her. She turned, and he immediately caught sight of her puffy eyes and red face. She'd been crying. "Hey, what's wrong?"
"Nothing, Morgan," she said in a tone that clearly stated she didn't want to talk about it. Derek's heart plummeted into his stomach. Was he the cause of her pain?
"Did I say or do something wrong?" he asked, just before she turned away from him. Her body relaxed slightly.
"No, no, nothing like that," was the weary reply, but then Penelope walked away, looking as though the whole world had let her down.
What the hell had happened to her?
Sorry. Gotta go. Like now. Review!