A/N - Sorry! It's been a horribly long, nearly unforgivable delay. Life (mostly work) got nuts and I just didn't have any creativity left in me on evenings and weekends. And then, in between there, I took my son to LA for Christmas and he got to meet Paget (very happy boy...pic in my profile). :) It's difficult to write about her as Emily after talking to her as herself, at least for awhile. But I'm back now! Hopefully I'll get another chapter up in a couple of days.

The first time with Emily, right after JJ and Will's wedding, was frantic, both of us moving at warp speed; me because I didn't want her to put a stop to anything, and her because she didn't want to give herself the time to think.

We only slowed down when it was over, when my heaving chest was pressed tightly to her sweat-slicked back. I marveled at the slope of her shoulder in the moonlight. I ran my fingers over the silkiness of her skin. I wanted to crawl inside her in that moment and keep her from going to London.

Her body was relaxed against mine, like she had no intention of kicking me out of her bed that night. I could have laid my head down on her pillow and held her to me for one beautiful night, but when our breathing had slowed and I was thinking again, I couldn't stop the thoughts in my mind from coming out.

I opened my mouth to tell that I loved her, that I think I had loved her for a long time. My desperate mouth had a mind of its own, though. "Don't go to London," I whispered into the velvety skin of her shoulder.

She stiffened in my arms and shifted her body so she was lying on her back and facing me. She opened her mouth to speak but I cut her off. I trailed my fingers down the plane of her torso and circled the tips over her hipbones. I kissed her breast. "Stay. You're willing to leave the BAU, but you could do that and stay in DC."

I met her eyes then and watched as a veil fell over them, as her walls went back up and the locks around her emotions and her heart were thrown. She shook her head slightly.

"I think you and me could work, Emily," I tried again, one last-ditch effort.

She pulled her body away from me, moving towards the edge of the bed. I watched myself lose her completely, right before my eyes. I couldn't believe the woman I was looking at, who was so rigid and closed off, had been the same one who only moments before had been so open and soft.

I used to wonder what our paths would have looked like, and whether or not they would have converged together earlier or never at all, if I had just shut my eyes and held her that night without saying anything at all.

It's December, and it's colder in Los Angeles right now than it is in DC. A strange anomaly. Emily texted me a picture yesterday of Leon and Rory in the backyard, running around in t-shirts, while I was bundled three layers deep in downtown LA.

I shouldn't be here. When I took the job at the Department of Justice, I knew that there would be occasional cases that required me to travel, but I didn't think it would be this soon. I couldn't believe it last week when I went into work and my supervisor came to me with a case that required immediate attention in Los Angeles, and said, "You're it."

That it was a sex trafficking case made it even more brutal. But this was why I had hired, and there were four female victims that had been found locked in a house as sex slaves for at least eleven years, since they were teenagers. The neighbors near the house had smelled gas and called 911 and the fire department had shown up. When no one answered the door, they busted in. They found a leaky stove and four women chained to bolts in the ground. They didn't find the unsubs.

My boss wanted me in LA because one of those women went missing from DC when she was fourteen years old, and they thought perhaps maybe I could get them all to open up and point us in the direction of the people who had taken and held them for so many years.

I almost told him I couldn't do it right then and there, but I drove home to talk to Emily about it in person instead. And the thing that sent me packing, aside from her logic that my job with my medical benefits were going to be necessary throughout her pregnancy, was that there was relief in her eyes.

Like she needed a break from me, from us, and the tension we tried to pretend wasn't swirling around us.

After four days here, I'd gotten enough information from the women to track down the family – two brothers and a sister – who had taken them. They were found in a hotel room right on the Mexico border yesterday afternoon.

I'll fly home later this afternoon. I hope those bastards plead guilty so that I don't have to prepare and come back out here for a trial. As soon as the plane that brought me here lifted off the ground in DC, I knew the last place I should be was anywhere besides home.

Each night away from Emily has been a knife in my gut. I'm that sorry, desperate fool again, the one lying beside her in bed wondering what the hell to say. She's both there and gone, beside me in bed every night. She smiles softly when I run my hands over her very slightly protruding stomach, but most nights when I'm two breaths away from sleep, I feel her tense up in my arms. I've been opting not to say anything at all and just hold her until she finally falls asleep.

It feels like she's slipping right through my fingers.

The streets of LA are a marvel as I pound the pavement on my run. There are people who clearly can't believe this weather, like if they just keep coming outside in their tank tops and shorts, it will magically be in the 70s again. And then there are the people who dress like they're in the middle of Minnesota in winter, whose west coast bodies can't handle forty degrees and they need down and wool and hats and earmuffs.

My breath visible puffs out in front of me and my feet hit the sidewalk and I finally give myself time to think about home. Emily and I are a lot a like in so many ways. When something injures us, jars our emotions or wounds our hearts, we tuck it away and find extrinsic means to deal with it.

The problem is, Emily doesn't have the same extrinsic means at her disposal anymore. She doesn't have a job where she can throw every ounce of her energy into working a case, and she can't slug out whatever she's feeling in a gym; she's been regimented to walking and light yoga only as a form of exercise for the duration of her pregnancy. She's got a house and two kids and my mother and her father that she's sitting around waiting to protect from anything or anyone that might harm them. That's a lot of angst and energy stewing inside her day after day, with no real outlet.

OK, Derek. If you're a lot alike, what would cause you to behave like she's behaving?

That's the million dollar question. I mentally go through her statement from the night she rescued my mom again as I turn a corner and head back towards my hotel. It hits me like a ton of bricks as I near my destination, colliding in my mind with such force that it causes me to stop running abruptly and latch my hand on a lamppost to keep myself upright.

I never saw it before, because I didn't believe she'd ever lie to me again.

There's only one thing I can think of that would make Emily act like she's acting right now. Because we are a lot alike, and if either one of us ever had a hand in failing an innocent victim it was nearly impossible for us to face.

I close my eyes and imagine the scene in that house in England, imagine it like the story Emily told Hotch and me.

She grabbed the toddler and was running towards the door of that house. Marietta grabbed her leg and tripped her, and then the bombs went off and the floor disappeared. The baby would have been under Emily; he wouldn't have fallen when the floor gave way under Marietta, who was closer to the basement.

Emily reached for the piano leg with one hand before the floor beneath her gave way. And I'm pretty sure she had a sleeping little boy in her other arm at some point. She made it out of that house; he didn't.

I thought I wanted Derek to go for a few days, that I'd be able to breathe a little more freely, but it's been absolutely agonizing to be separated from him. I've spent four restless nights in bed, waking and pushing back towards Derek's side like his body will be there, before I remember that he's gone.

It was strange in the house without him, with the Christmas decorations up and the unseasonably warm weather outside. It was strange because we have a gun in our home again.

That was what I did the first day Derek was gone. I left Rory with Fran, dropped Leon at school, and went to a gun shop. I still have a valid permit in Virginia, so the purchase was easy. I bought a top-of-the-line lock box and secured the gun away on the top shelf of our bedroom closet, underneath a few of my sweaters.

When Derek had left the BAU, we agreed we didn't want guns in our home. A gun locked away would have done nothing to prevent what occurred in this house in October, but I still thought I'd feel better having that hardware within reach. I was wrong. I woke to several nightmares that first night without Derek – nightmares about the kids getting their hands on the gun and accidentally shooting each other.

I gave up on sleep at about five o'clock in the morning. I got the gun out of its box and held that cool metal in my hand. I moved to our bedroom window and alternated between gazing out at the Potomac in the murky light and staring at the gun in my hand, its heavy presence feeling foreign in my fingers, like a gun and I no longer went together.

What the fuck are you doing Emily? I asked myself in that moment. I really didn't know.

My thoughts were distracted when I noticed movement at my father's cabin.

Fran. Fran kissing my father softly in his doorway, and then moving quietly away, down the pathway toward her apartment over the garage.

Derek had told me that he thought my father and Fran were getting closer, but neither of us had considered it to this extent. The sight of her kissing my father shocked me motionless for several minutes. Then I smiled softly and crawled back into bed. I clutched Derek's pillow in one arm and the gun in my other hand and cried until Rory's babbling roused me from bed a little later.

My breast milk completely dried up the last week in November. Rory made the transition easily, far more easily than I did, drinking a cup of regular milk in the mornings while I snuggled her, and just letting me rock her and sing to her at bedtime.

Life was moving on, despite what happened in October. Fran and my father were moving forward and our kids were growing. There was a baby inside me reminding me every day that life and love continue their trajectory even when I felt like everything just needed to stop and be dialed back a few months; wishing that I could go back in time and change just one thing so Fran was never taken.

I felt stuck on the outskirts of all these very evident signs of life in my own family; stuck, and I knew it was my own doing. Every night since Thanksgiving, I'd try to find my resolve before Derek fell asleep and tell him the truth about what had happened, but I could never make the words come out. Now I had the added worry that whatever reaction Derek had to the fact that I let that baby go to save myself would be masked by his concern for my pregnancy.

Yesterday, I took the sailboat out with my father. It was warm enough for a t-shirt and jeans out on the water. He gave me a watery smile when I pulled off my sweatshirt and he looked at the little bump there that was apparent. He reached his hand out and placed it on my stomach. "It's not good for the baby, for you to hold so much inside, Emily."

I turned and busied myself with the sails. "I don't know what you're talking about. This baby is absolutely fine, as unbelievable as it is, and I'm getting better. It just took a little time."

"Better at faking it, Lune, is not really better at all," he said softly.

I turned to face him, anger flaring inside me. I decided to change the topic. "I saw Fran leaving your cabin the other morning. How long has that been going on?"

He looked down and then back up at me, smiling shyly. "Since August. I have no idea what she sees in an old goat like me, but it's been good. For both of us."

My anger disappeared at the innocent, happy look on his face and I reached my hand out to touch his shoulder. "I'm glad. You don't have to sneak around, you know."

The boat slowed to a near stop and my father went to release the anchor. I pulled out our fishing supplies. "You don't have to hide from any of us either, Emily. There's nothing you can do or say to make any one of us love you any less. Derek would go to the ends of the world for you. Talk to him."

I blinked rapidly, willing my tears away. My eyes burned, but stayed dry. I felt my father's arms move around me and the brush of his lips on my cheek. He moved away from me and winked. "The sneaking around is fun. Makes me feel like a teenager again."

He chuckled and I laughed. He grabbed his fishing rod and let the matter drop. It was right on the tip of my tongue to tell him the truth, but I owed that truth to Derek first.

My father's words weighed heavily on my mind. I was nearly levitating in happiness throughout my entire pregnancy with Rory, and she was practically born with a smile on her face, content and relaxed. I can only imagine how our son will be if I continue throughout this pregnancy with this level of stress and fear that I'm trying to pretend isn't there. And there's no way I can let it go without talking to Derek.

Just tell him. It's the only thought that's been on my mind today as I got the kids ready in the morning, walked Leon to school, and played with Rory. Just tell him, I said to myself as I drove back to the gun shop to return the gun. Just tell him, I said to myself as I kissed our children goodnight tonight.

It's a little before ten o'clock when I hear the sound of Derek's keys in the front door. Tears prick my eyes and a shiver runs down my spine when I see him in our foyer. He's dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, and he drops his garment bag carrying his suits and his carry-on right there on the floor. He stares at me and looks like he's on the verge of tears himself.

Just tell him, Emily.

But I don't have to.

He takes three long strides towards me, where I stand next to our Christmas tree, and sinks to his knees before me. His arms wrap around my waist and he presses his lips to my stomach. "You let him go. The baby. You let him go so you could save yourself and come home to us."

I feel him pulling on my shaking legs, and the tears fall down my cheeks as I sink to the ground and onto his lap. He chases my tears with his lips. He kisses my neck and my face. He's sloppy and frantic in his attempt to get to my skin, his hands tugging at the buttons of my pajama top. I feel one pop off, but when the shirt is open, he quickly drags his shirt off himself. He's saying something, but I don't hear it for a long time, the pounding of my pulse, the rush of blood in my ears, and pure relief making me dizzy and deaf.

"Thank you." It finally registers. He's saying thank you between the kisses on my shoulders and neck, his arms tight around me. "Thank you for making that choice. I'm sorry you had to – so sorry – but you came home to us, Emily. I wouldn't want to live this life without you."

"JJ told you?" I ask against his neck.

He shakes his head and takes my face in his hands, so that I'm looking at him. "I figured it out."

"You would have saved him," I whimper.

He shakes his head. "I would have come home to you, no matter what. Tell me what happened."

I close my eyes and let him move my body, and I tell him. I tell him about how the wool on Adrian's sweater felt in my fingers as I started letting go of it. I tell him about the heat and the smoke and the thought that if I didn't let him go, we were both going to fall. I tell him about seeing the red of that baby's hair in the burning rubble beneath me for one fraction of a second before I looked away and climbed up on a miraculous scrap of flooring that was still standing.

My voice is barely above a whisper, but he hears me. When I'm done, I'm laying on the carpet to the right of the Christmas tree, completely naked. When I open my eyes, there are twinkling white lights on the tree reflecting above Derek's head, his eyes looking into mine, his body just as naked as mine.

"I'm sorry I lied to you," I breathe out.

He shakes his head and smiles softly at me. "I'm sorry it took me two months to figure it out."

I run my fingers over his face, needing to feel the sincerity I see in his eyes. I can't quite believe it's real. "You would have let him go to get home to me?" I ask, and the tears fill my eyes again.

And Derek nods. He tips his head to kiss my chest between my breasts and keeps his lips over my heart. "Anything, Em. I'd do anything I had to do to get home to you. It wasn't your fault, Baby. It just was. You didn't set off those bombs, and you tried to save him, but you couldn't. You couldn't save him and save yourself. And if you'd fallen, both you and this baby inside you would have died, Emily."

I want to pull him fully on top of me, to feel his skin pressed against mine, because that's what we do to heal each other, but his weight on my stomach would be uncomfortable. And I can't imagine not touching him and not being able to look in his eyes.

His thoughts are keeping pace with mine, because he pulls me up and settles me on his lap again, my legs around his waist. I crush him to me, my fingers pressing into the skin of his back, his head buried against my neck and my lips on his head.

Technically, intercourse hasn't been forbidden by my doctor. She says both my cervix and uterus look great, and just to take it easy. Still, I've used the fragility of this pregnancy to hold Derek at arm's length since the night I told him I was pregnant. I want nothing more than to be as close as possible to him now, though. We both need this.

I place my hand on his cheek and raise his head off my shoulder. I kiss him like I haven't kissed him since my birthday. I feel his grip on me loosen and feel his fingers run lightly over my shoulders and to my neck, holding my lips against his, our tongues meeting and our sighs mingling with each other.

I unwrap my legs from around him adjust my body slightly.

"Em," he murmurs against my lips. "Is this okay?"

"Perfect," I sigh as I lift and then sink down on him in one slow, fluid motion.

We stay still like that for several seconds, our chests pressed together and our hearts fluttering against each other. I crush him in another hug and he sobs and buries his face in my neck again. "There you are, Emily," he breathes out when he calms down. "I thought I was going to lose you."

I kiss his cheek. "Thank you. Thank you for knowing how to find me," I whisper in his ear.