A/N - I'm going to try and keep up with this story over the next week, but my twins are "graduating" from 5th grade/elementary school, and I've got an 8th grader graduating from middle school. All on the same day with a myriad of end-of-year celebrations thrown in here and there. So...it's going to be a crazy seven days coming up, but I'll keep writing as much and as quickly as I can! Thanks for all of the reviews!

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I wipe my eyes with one hand and press out the remains of the burning embers on the edge of my robe with my other. Strangely, the heat doesn't burn my hand. I look up and realize I'm no longer in my flat in London; it takes me a moment to place myself. I'm in the bullpen of the BAU. There is no one immediately around me, but in the distance, I see the rest of the team, except Derek. Reid is in a Halloween mask, for some reason. They glance at me as they talk, but none of them really acknowledge me; it's like they don't even know who I am. I'm about to call out to them when I'm distracted by the sound of hooves hitting the floor and a blazing, blinding light.

Derek hops out of the sun chariot and pulls Charlie into his arms. He smiles at the stunned look on my face.

"I told you we'd come back," he says.

I don't answer him. I'm looking at Charlie who is looking at me like he doesn't know me. The tears start up again and I turn my gaze to Derek.

"It's your hair," Derek says. "He doesn't recognize you without your hair."

"My new mommy has hair," Charlie says, without a hint of a British accent.

My hands reach up in horror and I realize I'm bald.

I gasp awake from my dream and look at my bedside clock. It's just after three o'clock in the morning. My hands fly to my hair and I find it all still there. Before I can even analyze my dream, my stomach lurches and rolls and cramps up and I'm running towards my bathroom.

The contents that empty from my stomach, the undigested remains of the chicken noodle soup Derek prepared for dinner the night before, let me know that I'm not missing days and haven't flashed into the future. It's the middle of the night after my first chemotherapy session. But between my heaving into the toilet, I reach my hands up and touch my hair, just to reassure myself.

I'm trying to remember if it's time for another Zofran, and I recall a vague memory of Claudia coming to my room with water and pills around eleven o'clock. I'm not due for another Zofran until morning. Yet here I am, throwing up.

And then, something shifts. This isn't like having a stomach virus or food poisoning; this is a beast of an entirely different caliber. There is no break here, no chance to stand and wash my face, no chance to hardly catch a breath at all. I am throwing up violently, and my stomach won't stop spasming. I'm sweating and I'm scared. I have no idea how long I heave over the toilet before I see from the fuzzy edges of my vision Charlie in my bathroom, closely followed by Claudia.

I can't stop throwing up to formulate enough words, but I hear Charlie crying out, "Is it the cancer cold?" which only causes me to start sobbing along with everything else. I glance to see Claudia pick him up. It's the first time I've ever seen her look truly frightened.

"I'll call Derek," she says as she tries to comfort Charlie in her arms.

"NO!" I manage to gasp. The last thing Derek needs is a middle-of-the-night call from us saying I need help. It's the last thing I want. I've already created enough of a divide in his life without interrupting his and Savannah's sleep.

"I'll call someone else then. Penelope? And the emergency number for your doctor," Claudia says frantically.

I nod as I achingly retch yet again over the toilet. My stomach is spasming so much that every time I involuntarily lurch forward and gag over the toilet, I'm also peeing my pants.

I'm a fucking sight.

I almost call Claudia back to tell her to skip calling Penelope, because I want no one I know to see me this way, but I can't find my breath or vocal cords long enough to call out her name.

From down the hall, I can hear her muffled voice. And I can hear Charlie crying.

I'm not sure how long I stay like that, over the toilet, but eventually I realize that even though my stomach is still spasming and even though I'm still gagging, there is simply not a thing left inside me to come up anymore. Claudia comes back in the room at one point, still holding Charlie who is half asleep on her shoulder. "Penelope's coming, and she's picking up some other medicine for you on her way."

I nod and wave my hand at her. I want her to keep Charlie away from all of this and she gets the message and leaves the room.

My hands are shaking and my arms feel weak, but I drag my wet pants and underwear off my body and pull my shirt over my head. I crawl and gag and drag my body into my shower, snagging a towel on the way in. I manage to reach up enough to turn the water on and am shocked by the icy cold, but it quickly warms up. I sit on the shower floor and slump back against the tiled wall. I let the water rinse away the urine on my legs and the vomit that splashed back at me when I was throwing up. Then I lay the towel over my body as best I can, and I wait, all the while with my stomach lurching and the continuous gagging.

There's no way I can make it back to my bed on my own - it feels like a mile away.

That's how Derek finds me a little while later, still in the shower with the warm water streaming down on my towel-covered body, and I realize my error in judgement. Calling Penelope was essentially the same thing as calling Derek. I shoot him a look of anger, but I can't hold it; I'm too exhausted, and, quite frankly, he's the only one I want right now, but he shouldn't be here.

It takes me a moment to remember where I am when my phone wakes me in the middle of the night. It's three-thirty in the morning, and I'm in the bed in the house in Manassas. I groan when I see it's Penelope. My initial thought is that there's a case, something local. I never did get to calling Hotch the night before about an official leave of absence.

My voice is hoarse when I answer the phone, both from sleep and the fact that I spoke with my mother for so long the night before. "What is it?" I answer.

"Claudia needs help. Emily needs help. Emily wouldn't let Claudia call you, but I am, because when it comes down to it, I can deal with her being crazy angry with me better than I can deal with you being that way."

I'm up in a flash. I'm still dressed from the day before and only need to pull on my shoes. "What's wrong?"

"She can't stop throwing up. The on-call oncologist called in a prescription for Compazine suppositories. They're at a twenty-four hour pharmacy near her house, the CVS on Georgia Avenue. If they don't work within an hour, she needs to go to the nearest hospital."

I'm already out the front door and heading towards my car, my feet not totally stuffed into my shoes, when she finishes her sentence.

"I'll keep you posted," I say as I open my car door. "And thank you."

I disconnect the phone and toss it on my passenger seat, and then I'm driving like a bat out of a hell. I figure if I get stopped I can flash my badge and explain. I'm a little over twenty minutes farther away from Emily now that I'm in Manassas, but I make the fifty minute drive to the pharmacy in thirty-five.

I use my badge to pick up the prescription, and I'm at Emily's house five minutes later. Claudia opens the door for me, Charlie asleep with his head on her shoulder. She cringes when she sees it me, but doesn't make a comment, just glances in the direction of the hallway, towards Emily's room.

I hear the water running before I reach the bathroom and see through the glass doors of her shower that she is slumped on the floor with the water pouring over her towel-covered body. I see her pants and see the toilet, and smell a combination of both urine and vomit and know exactly what happened here.

She looks at me when I walk into the small space, and there's a brief glimpse of fire in her eyes, like she's pissed I'm there, but she can't hold it for long. She's weak and embarrassed and doesn't have an ounce of fight in her, and I realize the monumental hurdle she must be trying to get over to have anyone there helping her. Her eyes look away, and I get down to business.

I grab a dry towel and open the shower door to turn off the water. I lay the dry towel over the wet one and hold it up near her chest while quickly reaching underneath and pulling the wet towel away from her body. I see her body weakly convulsing, and her making feeble gagging motions with her throat and mouth. I lift her torso towards me and tuck the dry towel around her body. There are no other towels in the bathroom and I don't know where she keeps them, so I snag a hand towel and dry her arms, legs and feet.

I have to get into a very awkward position in order to make it work, but I manage, with one leg in the shower, and one outside, to lift her body towards me and lift her up. I tuck the towel firmly around her before gathering her in my arms. I realize I should have kicked off my shoes, because I'm leaving a mess of dirty, wet footprints all over her white bathroom. I can't even believe I'm thinking about such trivial matters at the moment, and I'm brought back to what's important when I realize that the shaking body in my arms is now sobbing.

I get Emily into her bed, and cover her up, towel and all. Then I go for the bag from the pharmacy that I left on her bathroom counter, quickly ripping through the foil of one of the Compazine suppositories and taking the creamy, bullet-like pellet in my hand.

"Can you do it?" I ask her. It's an honest question, because she looks so completely wiped out, and there are tears streaming down her face. The fire is back in her eyes and her arm shoots out towards the suppository in my hand with more strength than I would have thought she had in her at the moment.

Her hand disappears under the covers, and I turn my body and head towards the bathroom to wet a washcloth. I come back to the bed and hand it to her and she wipes her hands.

Her head slumps on the pillow and I pull a chair over from the corner of the room and sit beside her. Her eyes are only half opened, and staring at my face. I don't say anything, but I keep my eyes on hers, trying to convey the message that this wasn't a choice, this wasn't something she needs to be embarrassed about, and that this doesn't matter to me at all in the way she fears, that it makes her weak; it only matters in the way that I can help her.

We wait.

I watch as the spasming in her body tapers off until, twenty minutes later, it completely stops. She sighs in relief. I smile at her. "At least now we know Zofran doesn't work. You're a Compazine kind of gal."

She manages to lift one side of her mouth slightly at that, and then murmurs, "You should go home now."

I don't say anything back; we'll talk later in the morning once she's gotten some rest. I watch her eyes close completely, and she is out.

I walk out of the room to check on the rest of the house and find Claudia asleep next to Charlie in his little bed. I go back to Emily's room and quietly collect her soiled clothing and the towels from her bathroom and carry them to the laundry room. Then I kick off my shoes, find the cleaning supplies I need and completely clean up the bathroom and toilet until it looks like this night was just a bad dream.

Finally, I grab a pillow from the other side of Emily's bed, and the throw blanket that's folded at the foot of it and lay down on her carpeted floor. I know I'm not going to be able to sleep, but I'm also not willing to leave the room.

It's in that moment that I realize it's now July twenty-sixth, and it's been three years and one day since the last time I helped clean Emily up in a bathroom after she threw up. Three years and one day since we conceived Charlie.

Just when I think I'm catching up with all the changes that have been flung at me in the past week, something shifts and I realize my heart is way ahead of my brain, and I'm not getting a lot of time to catch up at all. I stare at the ceiling and listen to the even cadence of Emily's breathing.

There's evidence of Derek all over my house and I'm not sure how to feel about it. I'm not sure about anything anymore. He's living at a house he owns in Manassas, and Savannah is living alone, and it's all my fault, though the one time I expressed that sentiment to him, he assured me it wasn't.

The morning after that horrendous couple of hours in the bathroom when he arrived like a knight in shining armor bearing Compazine, he came into my room with oatmeal on a breakfast tray. I had to eat to take my medicine, and I had to take my medicine, and if I could keep neither down, I would have to go to the hospital. I managed, swapping out the Zofran for Compazine in pill form, something else Derek had picked up from the pharmacy in the middle of the night.

He sat beside me in a chair while I slowly ate the oatmeal and explained that he'd moved out and was taking a leave of absence, that he had every intention of being right there beside me through my treatment.

When I argued, he cut me off with a, "Then pretend I'm here for Charlie so Claudia can be here for you."

When I told him that the side-effects of my chemotherapy would likely only be acute for forty-eight hours, if they got to that point at all again, and wondered what he'd do the rest of the week, he responded with, "If that proves to be true, I'll go on a reduced contract and just do the BAU paperwork for them. Or I'll work on the house in Manassas."

When I told him, once again, that he should go home and work things out with Savannah, he said, "There's not a compromise there that works for me."

I didn't know what that meant, and didn't get a chance to ask because he abruptly stood up at that point and left my room.

Every time I've tried to bring it up since then, I've been met with stony resistance. And when I get a moment alone with Penelope or JJ, when they visit and Derek is out of the house with Charlie, I try to ask them, but they don't have the answers either or they aren't willing to give them up. So I've stopped asking, and have started swallowing my guilt like one of the pills I have to swallow every morning.

He has a pair of running shoes in my entry way closet, I've found one of his shirts and one of his sweatshirts mixed in with our laundry, his headphones are sitting on the breakfast counter in the kitchen, where he left them yesterday, and there are couple of books he's reading on my coffee table.

He never stays the night, but he shows up early every morning and lets himself in. He sits quietly on the couch until Charlie wakes up, and then spends the day with him, and leaves again in the evening after Charlie is asleep. During that time he's with us, he helps out around the house, or takes Charlie to the park or other places, and Claudia stays with me. They both seem a little uneasy at the idea of leaving me unattended since that first night, even though it's now six days later and I'm absolutely fine. Not great, but not all that much different than I felt before chemotherapy.

The Thursday after my first chemotherapy session, he showed up in the morning with a bag of groceries and a juicer. He's apparently been reading some of the same websites I've read, about good diets for people with cancer. I have more green things in my refrigerator than I've ever had before, and I've caught him and Claudia conspiring together over recipes they find online.

The team is around regularly, visiting in ones and twos, and I am just waiting for them to have a case so I can get a break for a few days. Because all of this attention thrown my way is systematically driving me insane.

There have been times when I've felt rage and guilt churning and competing inside me so keenly that the only thing that saved whomever was in front of me from a verbal wrath I'm sure I would have regretted was the fact that Charlie was around. I don't want to scare Charlie again; he'd spent the day after my little middle-of-the-night escapade in the bathroom glued to my side while I reassured him I was okay.

Derek is weeding his way into my home and my life and, if I'm honest, my heart, and I don't like it one bit, but I feel powerless to stop it. I don't feel like I have a right to. I've blown up this man's life and no matter how many walls I try to keep up while he's slowly creeping over them, I'm going to let him put himself back together in a way that works for him.

Being my faithful attendant seems to be what's working for him, for now. I'm not going to give up on pushing him back towards Savannah, where he belongs, though. I'm just giving it a rest for now.

It's the Sunday before my second chemotherapy session, and I'm actually frightened, though doing a good job of hiding it. I'd be okay if I was getting the same drugs as last week, because I'd at least know what to expect, but this time it's new drugs and I actually tremble when I think about it, and when I think about the fact that it's only been one week, I have eleven more to go, and I feel like the past six days have been a lifetime already.

To distract myself, I go with Claudia and Charlie to the park across the street. I play with my sweet son for a little while, but tire long before he does. So, I leave him with Claudia and go back to the house. I bristle when I open the front door and see Derek in the living room folding our laundry; more specifically, folding my underwear, like it's something he does every day.

He looks up and smiles at me and I grit my teeth at him and his smile falls. "Just leave the whites," I hiss.

Then I turn towards the kitchen to get a glass of water. My hands are shaking at the preposterous intimacy I just felt seeing Derek handle a flimsy piece of cotton, something he probably didn't think was more than anything but helping out. The glass slips from my fingers and shatters and Derek comes running in with a look on his face like he's expecting me to be the one who's broken into a thousand pieces. He reaches for the small dustpan and brush under the kitchen sink, and the fact that he knows so well where things are in this house now is my tipping point.

I grab the dustpan and brush from his hands and screech, "I can do it!"

I kneel down and start angrily sweeping the glass up, "I don't want you cleaning my house, I don't want you doing my laundry, I don't want you kissing my forehead when I've fallen asleep before you leave for the night and I don't want you fucking folding my underwear!" I shout.

I'm gasping and the tears are hot and heavy on my cheeks. I keep my head down.

"What do you want?" I hear him ask.

I look up, my voice still raised. "I want you to go home and fix things with Savannah so I don't have to live every damned day feeling like I ruined your life!"

"You haven't ruined my life. What do you want, Emily?"

I'm on a tear, not thinking before speaking, spewing jumbled words I've held in reserve for weeks now, a combination of emotion and bucket list items that have flitted through my head since my diagnosis.

"I want to see Charlie grow up! I want to see him off on his first day of Kindergarten and see him going to his prom, and graduating high school and going to college. I want to be around to teach him to swim and ride a bike and drive a car! I want to go on a roller coaster because I've never been on one. I want to dance in the rain and jump in puddles because I was never allowed to as a kid. I want to eat ice cream for breakfast sometimes instead of a pound of vegetables that have been reduced to an eight ounce glass of juice because every sip only reminds me that I'm sick. I want someone to be in love with me just once in my life. I want to have mind blowing sex. I want to eat chocolate with wild abandon and I want to try rock climbing. I want you to be mad at me. I want the team to be mad at me. I want you all to scream at me like I deserve to be screamed at, and I want to go somewhere where I can scream and no one can hear me. I want to scream every fucking day at the unfairness of this all, and at myself for what I did to you!"

I'm breathing heavily and I realize Derek is no longer standing, but kneeling down in front of me, facing me. "Is that all?" he asks as he reaches out and brushes the tears off my cheeks.

My cheeks are burning in embarrassment at some of the things I just said out loud, but I manage to huff out a small laugh at his question. "You should go home, Derek. Please."

"Savannah doesn't want to be a step mother, and the only way I truly believe she can see herself helping raise Charlie is without you in the picture. I want for you everything you just told me you wanted more than I want to be with a woman who can only love Charlie with conditions. But I'll stop folding your underwear."

He delivers the last sentence with a soft smile, but it's all too much for me, what he just said and what I just said out loud. I nod slightly at him, not knowing what else to do. I excuse myself to my bathroom and take a shower, trying to wash away the tears and everything I'm feeling right now, until I can get some sort of mask in place to get through the rest of the day.

We manage a quiet dinner where I don't really look at Derek, and I fall asleep on the couch before he leaves for the night. I awake to the click of the front door and realize, sadly, that he didn't kiss my forehead before he left.

But the next morning, before I'm supposed to leave for chemotherapy, he shows up not with spinach and kale and carrots and beets, but with chocolate ice cream, milk and bananas. He makes me a milkshake for breakfast. And I smile at him around my straw as I drink it.