A/N - It just occurred to me that it was around this time last year that I started writing Tangled Up in Blue, even though I ultimately scrapped that for the time being and ended up writing Labyrinthine, which I didn't get the guts to publish until August. It was the start of summer vacation for my boys last year, and I had one of my sons at the school behind our house practicing pitching when an errant, hard throw cracked into my ankle. It was at that point that I started re-watching Criminal Minds, while my ankle healed. It was then that I totally caught the Demily bug and started writing.

Thank you to all of you who read my stories and for all of the feedback. Writing and your reading/reviews have gotten me through some strange/difficult/amazing times in the past year - from going back to work after being home with our boys for eleven years to my parents' health issues to some pretty terrific milestones in my family's life.

The only other time I ever wrote fan fiction was back in 1998 (? I think), when I wrote a couple X-Files stories. I only ever published one short story and one multi-chapter story, back in the days when there was nothing quite like a site such as this.

Now the X-Files are filming again, and my little mind is contemplating a crossover story. We shall see if that actually happens.

Anyway...I know this story has been sad and angsty. Thanks for sticking with it and for continuing to read. I appreciate you all every day, even if I don't know you! I'm looking forward to what the next year of writing brings...I'm hoping that somewhere in there is a conclusion to Half the Sky! ;-)

I spent a good portion of my childhood going to confession at Catholic churches around the world. Those churches were predominant or relatively camouflaged, depending on where we lived. The tradition was always the same, though. I'd walk into a confessional, my face would be masked by a screen or a colorful scarf, and I'd confess my wrongdoings.

When I was eight, I confessed to stealing money from my mother's purse. We were in Afghanistan then, and it was right before we got the hell out of there, before things started going to complete crap. I stole the money to give to some of the friends I'd met there, because I knew we were leaving and I could no longer supply them with the sustenance that was always in abundance at our house.

I was given twenty Hail Marys for my sin.

I clutched my rosary beads and said my prayers and didn't totally understand what I had to be sorry about, or how some man, who never saw my face, and a prayer could make things right. I'd be absolved of my sin of stealing, my family would leave the country - this time to the safety of France - and my friends in Afghanistan would starve.

It was at that point in my life that I stopped feeling too much when I had to leave anyplace or anyone. That was my life. I'd swoop in, I'd make connections for awhile, and then I'd be gone and I learned to not give it a second thought. From the time I was born, the longest I ever stayed any one place was with the BAU.

Seven years after that confession in Afghanistan, with many trivial confessions in between, I confessed an entirely different kind of sin. I'd slept with a young man. I was lonely, my parents were gone a lot, teenagers were not like young children when it came to accepting new people, and I just wanted to feel like I belonged. Tutors and nannies didn't teach sex education, my mother didn't talk about it, and I relied on my friends for my information. In my naivety, I made a monumental mistake: I slept with a friend who convinced me that the timing was right and we'd be just fine.

I was given twenty Hail Marys for my sin.

I clutched my rosary beads and said my prayers, and then said twenty more for what I didn't confess, because the words stuck in my throat. My period was late, I'd been throwing up every morning, often several times, and I'd rather have cut off my breasts than have anyone so much as brush against them.

I never confessed my abortion. That confessional when I told the priest about sleeping with a friend, just a month after my Confirmation, was the last time I ever graced the entrance of a confessional. I had an abortion, my world fell to pieces, my family moved back to DC, and I became someone else. I constructed walls around my heart and my body.

As I aged, I no longer believed that there was anything that could absolve me of my sins except, perhaps, making the world a better place for other people. My Hail Marys became saving the world from injustices and horrors, which I did, for the most part in a strange combination of empathy and detachment. I started believing that I deserved nothing more in my life than righting the wrongs of others because my wrongs were so wide and deep that there was no hope for me.

That's how I lived my life, it's how I constructed the walls around myself - caring, but keeping people at arm's length. And then one man set one foot over those walls, and I took off for London, leaving like it was easy because it was part of my DNA at that point, when it was, in fact, the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. I stayed hidden away for a long time, committing my life's ultimate sin: I kept a son from a father who would love him completely.

And I've been absolved of that sin, completely, even though I never thought I'd receive or deserved that absolution.

For the first time ever, I feel like I've walked away from a confessional on the right path and emotionally intact. This wasn't a confessional with a priest, and there was nothing masking my face. This was a confessional in the safety Derek's arms, looking him in the eye, on a beautiful expanse of property in Manassas, where, for the first time ever, I felt truly free from my secrets and lies and the choices I'd made in life.

The sky rumbled and the rain washed my sins and sorrow and disgrace and anger away, and Derek sealed the deal with soft kisses that chased those raindrops as they made their way down my face.

While the rain was dripping over our bodies and Derek held me in his strong arms, I told him about Helios, Clymene and Phaethon. I told him about Sun Chariot. I told him how at first I dreamed about him taking Charlie and the sun and leaving me behind, and then I told him about how those dreams shifted, and there was room for me in the chariot, but I couldn't make myself get in.

We stayed far longer in Manassas that day than we originally planned. The thunderstorm blew away and the clouds parted. We ran into Derek's little house and he found me a sweatshirt and sweatpants to change into, pants Derek helped me keep up with duct tape, which made us both laugh. We were riding a wave of giddiness; him because I'd fully let him in, and me because I felt better than I had in months. Actually, I felt better than I had since I found out I was pregnant in a lot of ways. Possibly better than I'd ever felt in my life.

We called Claudia, I napped there for a couple of hours while Derek laid next to me in bed with his arms around me and his lips against the back of my neck. We stayed until well past dark. I listened to the frogs from the safety of Derek's arms while we sat on the back porch, and I saw the tree line light up with what was probably the season's last fireflies. Then, as the sky turned darker and the stars twinkled above us, I pointed out the constellation of Eridanus, which is said to be part of the path Phaethon cut across the sky on his dangerous, solo ride in the chariot.

And Derek kissed my cheek and then my lips. "No dangerous rides for our son," he whispered.

It was the first time he referred to Charlie as our son to me.

The day after our trek to Manassas, at my seventh chemotherapy session, I felt like I turned a corner. Part of it was because of what transpired the day before, part of it was because as the drugs entered my system I thought to myself I only had to do this five more times, which seemed manageable after everything I'd already been through. And part of it was because Dr. McKenzie came in the room towards the end of my session to let me know my platelet level was out of the danger zone, that I needed to have a blood test to re-check on Thursday, but if things held firm, I was done with platelet transfusions.

I started eating voraciously after that, even if the food didn't taste the way it should or I wasn't feeling particularly hungry. I shoveled healthy food into my mouth multiple times a day, and relished the taste of one of Derek's chocolates as a reward when I was done. I gained two pounds between my seventh and eight week of chemotherapy.

The day before I initially met Derek for coffee and told him about Charlie, when I was at Johns Hopkins meeting with my team of doctors and getting things squared away for the start of my treatment, I was encouraged to attend a meditation class for people with cancer. There was a meeting that afternoon, so I went, but being in a room with people in various stages of cancer treatment trying to visualize my body fighting my cancer was not a place I could really wrap my mind around. My internal optimist was encouraging me to go for it and my internal pessimist was bitter and laughing her ass off at the absurdity of it all. It was the only time I tried to go.

I've got my own meditative talisman now, though. His name is Derek Morgan. I've accepted that despite my shortcomings and wrongdoings, he is going to stick by me. I've got searing kisses that leave me breathless and the strength of an unbelievable man who whispers in my ear every night before I fall asleep, "Dream about getting in that chariot with me and Charlie, Emily."

And I do.

I'm not naive enough to believe fully that the next five weeks are going to go perfectly, but sometime between the moment Derek kissed me in that field and Dr. McKenzie released me from imminent platelet transfusions, I kicked my internal pessimist out of my head and sent her packing.

In Derek's love and forgiveness, I am finding my strength again. I feel washed clean.

I went with Emily to her eighth and ninth chemotherapy sessions. We left Charlie with Claudia and I sat in the room with her, a backlog of BAU paperwork in my bag that I told Hotch I'd try to take care of.

At a certain point at that first appointment I was with her, she nudged my arm and reached for the folder in my lap. I handed it to her and she looked it over.

"Do you miss it?" I asked.

She looked at the paperwork I considered dry and boring and nodded her head. She gestured for the pen in my hand and started writing. I stood up and kissed her lips for a long time. I whispered, "It's nice to see you again, Agent Prentiss."

She smiled at me and tapped the tip of the pen against my lips. "I've missed you, Agent Morgan," she whispered back.

I kissed her again, carefully keeping my hands against her cheek or neck. I was always careful. My hands were always placed in ways that wouldn't cause her to freeze up. Ribs were off limits, her back was questionable. My hands always hovered around her face, for the most part. If I touched a bony part of her, tension would course through so keenly that she felt like she would snap in my hands.

That was getting better, though. She started eating a lot more after our day-trip to Manassas, almost shoving the food mindlessly into her mouth, at least six times a day.

"Do you even taste that?" I asked her.

She shrugged. "Some of it. That's not why I'm eating it. I've decided to attack the end of this treatment like a profile. I need to eat. I need to get stronger, so I'm going to do it, whether it tastes good or not."

"What still tastes good to you?" I inquired.

She smiled and said, "Chocolate." Then she looked down and whispered, "You."

That caused my stomach to roll over with butterflies and my groin to stir, but I pushed those feelings aside. I laughed in a friendly way so she wouldn't be embarrassed. I brought her a chocolate and kissed her soundly before I let her eat it.

Emily was gaining weight, color was returning to her cheeks, and though her energy was much less than it was when I once knew her, it was much better than it was since she'd come back. She wanted to walk everyday, out in the sunshine. She was up and helping with making meals or doing the dishes again. Charlie was finding his Mummy again, though his British accent was waning in these weeks he'd been stateside, and Emily was more often than not just Mommy now.

I was a mixture of contentment, worry and desire that all ran so deep, I couldn't totally make sense of myself most days. We were both waiting for that magical word...remission. But some days it was hard to remember what we were waiting for, and I knew she felt the same. Sometimes when I kissed her, her eyes were so heavy with desire that I knew one little push and she'd give in and stop caring what her body looked like. But I didn't want to be the one who pushed her. I wanted anything more than kisses to be a celebration of the end of all of this and the start of a new, better, beginning. And I wanted her to throw down a welcome mat with none of my urging.

At that ninth chemotherapy appointment, Dr. McKenzie started laying out the plan to wean her off Prednisone. A Dr. Ligh accompanied him and explained that next week they'd do some tests, but it was looking like neither traditional radiation nor surgery on Emily's liver might be necessary. He said he was hopeful that the much-less-invasive radiofrequency ablation would work.

That's why, at her tenth chemotherapy session, I let Claudia go with her. With an open heart and a hopeful mind, I called Dr. McKenzie to inquire about the feasibility of the plan in my head. I got online and booked five plane tickets for the upcoming weekend. One for Claudia, so she could fly back to London for a few days and spend her twenty-fourth birthday with the family I knew she missed. Three for me, Charlie and Emily, so we could go to Boston and see the public gardens and sculpted ducklings and Charlie could live out his favorite book. And one for my mother, so she could meet us there.

When that was done, I took Charlie to meet with a contractor I've known throughout the years. It was approaching the end of September and I wanted things to get started before the winter weather set in, and this contractor was up for starting immediately. I'd made a good profit off the sale of the house I shared with Savannah, along with another house I'd renovated and sold the spring before, and I was looking for an immediate start, too.

Charlie and I flipped through the plans the contractor had in a binder, plans he'd used in the building of other homes, plans that would be much faster to use with modification rather than starting from scratch. I was looking for specific characteristics - not too big, not too small, a guest room for my mother, comfortable, and just the right staircase. I flipped through the pages with Charlie in my arms, and then I found it. With a few modifications, it would be perfect.

"That one," I said to the contractor.

Charlie touched my cheek and turned my head to look his way. "That one, Daddy?"

What I was doing there was completely outside Charlie's level of understanding, but I hugged him to me and kissed his cheek and smiled. I dreamed of a house with a huge backyard for him to play in, and a creek and frogs and fireflies and me and Emily by his side. A home with a little house for Claudia next door, if she wanted it. "Definitely that one," I whispered in our son's ear.

I don't want to get overly optimistic. For the past ten weeks, I have been pushing Emily towards optimism and the belief in her own survival, but I've not been without my own fear and doubts.

But with Charlie in my arms, and Emily seemingly getting better, with the taste of her lips so prominent and frequent on my own, I'm ready to start pushing our reality beyond her cancer. I want her and I both to start finding what's next and striving for it in our hearts.