Sorry for the delay – I've been a bit busy recently and then didn't know where to take this next

Here's the next chapter …

…

It'd been six months since Isabella and Lily were welcomed into the world. That meant six months of crying, screaming, sleepless nights and an endless supply of coffee. Despite this, Spencer couldn't be happier. It was hard work but when he was away all he could think about was going home to them, holding them in his arms and reading to them. Unfortunately, a case had come in and so he was staying in some hotel in Philadelphia. The UnSub had killed three women and had just abducted a forth. They had nothing on him; no leads, no physical evidence and only a partial profile. Of course, Reid being Reid was working on a geographical profile but the case was grating on him. He wished he was at home, shielded from the horrors he had to face daily, his girlfriend laughing at a film, glancing over at him and smiling every so often, wrapped up in his arms. He longed to hear her laugh, feel her lips against his, feel her head on his chest in bed. He longed for her. Even though he was away and even though he had two crying babies at home he was truly happy, he had exactly what he wanted. Almost. There was one thing he wanted, one thing he couldn't get and it was killing him.

…

"Hey, what are you doing here?" Hotch asked, confused, as Kathryn walked, unannounced, into his office. His face must have betrayed him because she laughed. Sitting down and making herself comfortable; her legs up on his desk making his name plate move forward at least two inches, she looked around the room. "Kathryn is everything ok?" She cocked her head sideways, eyebrow raised and wearing a fairly amused expression. She'd lost her pregnancy weight through 'vigorous workouts' as Spencer so put it.

"Yeah, fine." It was his turn to raise an eyebrow. He'd become a surrogate father for her recently and due to this he knew her very well. Too well.

"Kathryn." He glared at her expectantly and she couldn't help but roll her eyes even though he hated it. Luckily he didn't say anything.

"I'm resigning." She stated simply. It took a moment for her words to register in his mind, she could tell because of the surprise and question appearing in his eyes. She almost relented, she almost took it back. Almost.

"Why?" He asked. If this wasn't so serious she would have laughed at his clueless-ness, but the trouble was that it was serious. She was about to become everything she didn't want to be and she hated herself for it. She hated Spencer for it. She hated everyone for it.

"Isabella and Lily." Kathryn adored them but the names felt strange to her, foreign. It was as if they weren't actually hers. What she wanted she could no longer have and it was their fault, Spencer's fault.

"What about them?" His endless questions were irritating her, did she really have to spell everything out for him? She had yet to tell Spencer of her resignation but she didn't care about what he'd say. She didn't care about anything. Nothing. She felt nothing.

"I have to take care of them. Do you expect me and Reid to work here and leave them for days at a time with some random person? When will that stop? When they start calling the babysitter mum or dad? When they barely recognise us? They need stability so that's what I'm doing." Her voice was raised a little more and her right hand was gripping the side of the chair so hard her knuckles were white.

"Reid? Kathryn, what's going on with you?" Aaron asked cautiously. He knew she was distancing herself from him the minute she said 'Reid' but he'd known there was something wrong with her before that – Spencer had told them. The problem was that she acted naturally whilst they were there but there were moments when he could see it. He could see something in her face, in her eyes like she wanted to run, like she didn't want it or regretted it. Every part of him wished he'd imagined it but the more he saw her the clearer it'd been. Eventually, she stopped inviting them round and so whenever they visited she went out or stayed in her bedroom. Spencer, had no idea what to do, none of them did. So they asked her if she was ok, how she was handling things and then let her know that they were there whenever she needed it. Her answers were always the same, she was ok, she was handling things fine and she knew they were there. The way she said it was void of any emotion, it was almost robotic. Whenever he was there, whenever the team were there, she avoided touching Lily and Isabella for as long as she could, doing anything possible to escape from it.

"Nothing, I'm fine. Stop asking me, everyone needs to stop asking!" She shouted as she stood up and started pacing, running her fingers through her thick brown hair. A second look at her showed she'd lost a lot of weight, too much. She looked pale and beyond tired – she looked frail, fragile, she looked lost and angry. Very, very angry. By now though he knew that was just a defense mechanism. "Why can't you just accept that. I'm resigning, I quit, I'm fine, good, I'm friggin' ecstatic!"

"Kathryn. You're not fine. You say you're 'fine' whenever you are in fact not fine at all. You're talking to a profiler here and trust me, we all notice the difference in you. Lindsey and Lucas notice the difference in you. Hell, when was the last time you saw them? When was the last time you went out? When was the last conversation you had with Spencer? When was the last time you smiled or laughed? What have you done to yourself?" Her surrogate father was exasperated and quickly running out of patience. She'd pulled away from everyone after the first week of being back at home. Reid described her as just 'going through the motions'. He made it apparent that she stayed up late or didn't go to bed at all. When she did sleep, it wasn't with him. She hardly ate but drank a lot of coffee, she practically lived off it. She froze whenever she heard the twins cry and left it to Spencer to deal with. He told his team that never in the entire time he'd known her had she been like this. Frankly, it terrified all of them. How do you get through to someone who didn't seem to register anything properly? They'd all tried. None of them had succeeded. Instead she just shut down even further and now, to Hotch, she seemed like nothing but a shell. For a minute, when she walked into his office, she was her old self and that did happen sometimes. Sometimes they were lucky enough to get glimpses of her, she let them know that she was still in there, but most of the time they got this faceless person.

She paused for a moment, eerily still, looking at the door. Her eyes were cold and distant, there was nothing there, even the dark brown they once were seemed to have faded. Faded along with her. "The last time I saw them was eight days after I got out of hospital. The last time I went out was today, I'm here aren't I? I went to the shop yesterday, walked through the park the day before that. The last conversation I had with Spencer. Two days after I returned to the house from the hospital. The last time I laughed was the day Isabella and Lily were born. The last time I smiled was three days after I got out of hospital and what have I done to myself? Nothing. I've done nothing." Resuming her previous pacing she took a deep breath. "I must take care of them. I have to leave. I don't know what everyone expects me to do. I can't do this. I don't want this." He stood and watched as she babbled, tears running down her face. She seemed oblivious to the fact. "How do people do this? I'm a terrible person. Terrible. I don't want this, I can't have this. Everything was fine." She turned to look at him, a look of desperation slicing through him. He was wary and slightly scared. Scared of her, what she would do – she had lost it, completely. He had no idea what to do so he just stood there, frozen and unable to break her penetrating gaze. She began to step towards him, slowly but in what could be deemed as a somewhat threatening way. "It was all fine until I joined this team. We were fine as friends, sure we wanted more but we were content." She stopped in front of him but he still couldn't find anything to say, couldn't move and he still couldn't break eye contact. "It's you people. You were his family, I didn't know any of you. I didn't care to know any of you and that was fine. I don't want a family, I can't have a family. It's not right and shouldn't be. It can't be." Every word was frantic and rushed and he couldn't tell who he felt the most sorry for: Kathryn because she was so evidently broken or Spencer for having to put up with it, work and take care of his two daughters. Which was worse? What would he have done if it had been Hayley that was so messed up?

"Kathryn, I-" What was he going to say? What could he say? He doubted anything he said or did would fix her. He wasn't sure there was anything that could help her. She just seemed too far gone and it was his fault. The team's fault. They should've done something instead of watching it happen.

"I quit." Taking another deep breath, she took a step back, smiled, in what seemed more like a snarl, and left.

That was three months ago. It took her another two weeks before she held her daughters properly. That same day she smiled, really looked at them and realised how much they looked like Spencer. That day she spoke to her boyfriend properly, told him that she loved him, kissed him and slept with him. Also, she called the house 'home' for the first time since she'd left the hospital. A week later, Reid invited the team over and she laughed, apologised to everybody and even joined in the conversation. She cuddled up with Spencer, kissed her daughter's, held them, fed them. A day later, she went back to Hotch's office and chatted to him about everything and he listened. That very same day he took Isabella and Lily over to his place for the night so that Kathryn and Spencer could spend some time together to really talk.

Right now she was happy. Right now they were happy. Right now they are a family.

…

There's that chapter – it seems a little bit weird to me , not my best maybe or maybe it was the italics part , I'm not sure

Anyway , thanks for reading , I appreciate it as I will if you want to review :-)

At the moment I'm debating whether to end it here or not , I'm really not sure yet

Anyway , thanks again for reading :-)