Derek sat in his wheelchair with reluctant cooperation as Reid wheeled him towards physiotherapy. He wanted to ask why Emily couldn't take him, but he thought that might be considered rude, so he didn't voice his objections.

"Do people usually remember being in a coma?" he asked the young genius.

He thought about it for a brief moment. "Some do," he said. "Why?"

"I had very vivid-," he paused, searching for the word that wouldn't make him seem crazy, "-hallucinations that I was out of my body."

Reid again paused, deep in thought. "Were these hallucinations visual or auditory?"

"Both."

"In a coma, a person basically loses contact with their body's sensory input, so they feel sensations as though they're external to their body, but they keep the illusion that they have a body. It's very similar to the early stages of sleep," Reid explained, his voice getting high and excited.

"So, I was dreaming?" Derek asked when he paused to take a breath, interrupting before he could continue his explanation.

"Yes. And because you didn't wake up, your dreams became a reality. It's really quite common." He seemed to sense then that Derek wasn't saying everything. "Do you believe what you experienced was real?" he asked.

"No, of course not," he rushed to supply before Reid could jump to conclusions.

"You're perfectly normal," Reid assured him.

He would have loved to believe that.

Then, Reid seemed to work up the courage to say the thing he'd clearly been wanting to say, but couldn't get the words out. "I'm so sorry about...everything that happened. You seem to be taking it really well..."

Assuming he meant the accident, the coma, Derek waved away his concern. "It was nobody's fault. All that matters is that I'm here now."

"No, I meant..." he started to say.

But they had arrived at the physiotherapy wing and Derek had already stopped listening.

"You were like a newborn giraffe," Emily said, laughing nearly uncontrollably as she described his attempt at walking again.

"I was not that bad," he said, pouting dramatically.

"Worse, actually," she insisted, giving him that smile he'd first fallen in love with.

It was hard not to agree with her with that smile lighting up her face. "It was my first time walking again after months in a coma, cut me some slack," he argued.

She held her hands up in surrender. "You're right. You were the picture of grace. You were practically a ballerina."

He glared at her, trying his best to look unamused and failing. "Fuck you," he said, teasing. She was reduced to laughter again, clutching a stitch in her side.

"Hey," JJ said brightly, walking up to the table.

Her approach had gone unnoticed as he'd been too busy staring at Emily's glowing face; he'd almost forgotten what it was like to see her happy. "Hey, JJ," he greeted, but not without a note of disappointment at their moment having been interrupted.

"Hey, Jayje," Emily echoed his greeting.

"It's good to see you out and about." JJ slid into the seat opposite him. "Who were you talking to?"

He gave her a look that clearly said he thought she'd lost it. "Emily, obviously." He nodded in her direction, not understanding the look JJ was giving him.

"Derek…" she whispered, looking at him sadly and with a little confusion. "Didn't they tell you?"

"Tell me what?" He was confused and more than a little annoyed.

JJ sunk her teeth into her bottom lip, appearing to debate saying something. "I don't know how to say this…" she said slowly, "Emily's dead."

"That's not funny, JJ!" he snapped, "She's right…" He turned to where she'd been sitting beside him, carrying on a conversation, only to find her chair empty.

"I'm sorry, I thought you knew." She reached over to rest her hand on top of his.

He slapped her hand away. "You're lying!"

"They were going to tell you when you woke up," she said calmly. "They found her passed out in her hotel room; apparently she drank herself to death. The cirrhosis of her liver suggests it was probably a long time coming."

"Stop it!" he shouted, flinging an arm out and knocking her coffee off the table before wheeling off in anger.

Derek pulled himself up out of his wheelchair using the autopsy table as leverage. "Why?" he demanded.

Emily stood on the opposite side of the stainless-steel table, staring down at the cold pale body that had once been her, seemingly mesmerized. "I look so calm," she said quietly, as if she hadn't heard him. She cocked her head to the side. "Did I always look like that?"

"Why?" he repeated angrily. "You told me you were dealing with it! You told me you were getting help! You swore it!"

"I was," she said with a shrug, "It didn't work."

"Didn't work?" he repeated incredulously. "Did you even try? Or did you just like being a drunk?" He didn't mean it, didn't mean any of it, but he was so angry he couldn't see straight and the words just came barrelling out. "Instead of dealing with your grief like an adult, you just let it consume you and drag you to your death. And then, instead of letting me find peace, you had to go and ruin my life too!"

"I started drinking long before I ever had a dead baby inside me," she said solemnly, almost apropos of nothing.

"Emily!" he shouted, slamming his fists down on the autopsy table. "You're dead! Don't you care at all!?"

"Seems like it's a little late to care," she said blithely.

"How long?" he bit out, voice quaking with the effort it took to keep it level.

"I don't know," she shrugged, combing her fingers through the corpse's hair tenderly, like one would a sleeping child. "I was twelve, I think, when I started drinking."

"No," he said through gritted teeth, "How long have you been dead? How long have you been pretending, just so I'd wake up!?"

"I can go…" she offered, voice so small as to barely be there at all.