A/N - Sorry for the delay. Took our boys on a mini, YAY-It's-Summer-Vacation road trip for a few days and we left the laptops at home for some serious family bonding time. :)

The drive to the airport is short, and Derek holds my hand the whole way while Claudia sits in the backseat with Charlie, reading Make Way for Ducklings to him for the thousandth time since I bought the book about six months ago. She talks to him excitedly, and is excited herself to be going to see her family. I'm nervous, but trying to push through.

I've spent the better part of the past several months avoiding crowds because I couldn't handle the empathetic stares of strangers. Being outside, before I lost my hair, wasn't terrible because I could hide a lot of what made me look the sickest behind sunglasses. But you slap a thin, pale woman in a scarf with no eyebrows or eyelashes in the middle of any indoor crowd and what you get is either people avoiding looking at you, or people looking at you with sad, concerned smiles, or brazen people who want to tell you their own cancer stories.

I'm not particularly fond of any of these scenarios, not because I don't appreciate sympathy, but because I am not the type who likes a heap of attention thrown at her, especially by strangers.

So, when Derek mentioned wanting to put Claudia on a plane to London for her birthday, on the Thursday after my tenth chemotherapy session, and then get me and Charlie on a plane with him to Boston for a long weekend, I was hesitant. For weeks now, I had hoped that if I died, Charlie would at least remember me loving him. And if I lived, I hoped that my treatment would not be a traumatizing memory for him; I wanted him to forget about it. I'd avoided pictures with him during this time, I'd brushed over my illness as much as I possibly could. I tried to make throwing up, tiring easily, or not being able to keep my eyes open seem like it was no big deal for his sake.

To thrust myself into the public to build a memory with Charlie and Derek seemed like an awful idea at first.

"Can we wait until I feel and look better? I don't want pictures with Charlie and me when I look like this." I'd said when Derek first brought up the idea.

"We could wait. Absolutely. But you look fantastic to me and Charlie, and you'll be able to rest in Boston as easily as you can here. And, Emily, there's nothing wrong with Charlie having tangible evidence of this time. He's going to face adversity at some point in his life. What better thing for him to have than proof that when his mother was fighting for her life, she didn't let it stop her from living?" was his soft response.

I looked at him, really looked at the man who had taken a leave of absence from the job he loved for the past ten weeks, and intended to stay with me through the remaining weeks of my treatment. He'd bent over backwards to both love me and not push me and he was asking for just four days. And he was right: I wanted Charlie to be a fighter, and I was mostly being a coward, hiding behind closed doors.

So I told him we could go, and I know I shouldn't worry so much: Derek Morgan has been in tune with me for weeks now, without missing a beat.

When we get to the airport, after we hug an ecstatic Claudia goodbye and get her on her flight home, he finds us a quiet restaurant to sit in until our flight is called. He sits me at a table and effectively uses his body to block me from view from most people. We wait until the last call to get in our first-class, first row seats, so I don't have to suffer the looks of people who pass us as they make their way to their own seats. We are also the first ones off the plane, and he's hired a driver so we don't have to wait for a cab.

The drive to the hotel is short, and we check in quickly. Derek has managed three hotel rooms in a row; one for his mom, and then two connecting rooms, one with a small toddler bed set up next to the queen bed. He is leaving it up to me, where I want to sleep.

The man must be more gracious and flexible and patient that the vast majority of the human population combined, and as fucking high as a kite: I'd slept better than I ever had in my life since I'd started sleeping nightly in his arms, and I'm not planning on changing that now.

Fran arrives at the hotel shortly after we do. She and Charlie reacquaint themselves with each other, like hardly any time at all has passed. We walk around the area near our hotel, which is right on the water, and have a pleasant dinner out together.

The whole time, I keep my eyes on Derek's and Charlie's and Fran's. I realize I could live happily out here in the open with them, even looking like this. I vow in that moment to enjoy the time we have together and take all the pictures we possibly can.

Charlie, who has always been flexible about where he sleeps at night, provided he gets read a book or two and gets a hug and kiss from someone he knows and trusts, falls right to sleep after Derek and I tuck him into bed. Then Derek goes to his room and I get ready for bed in the bathroom in this room.

I'm tired and alive at the same time. It's a feeling I've become accustomed to the past few weeks, a different kind of tired than before. Chemotherapy is exhausting, but I actually feel like I'm getting better. My eyes look better, with the dark circles only faintly visible. I'm on about half as much Prednisone as I was before, and the swelling in my face has diminished quite a bit. I'm gaining weight slowly but surely and don't require as much sleep each day. Compared to how I felt back in July, I'm downright sprightly now.

Clad in loose pajamas, I exit the bathroom and move to the doorway between this room and Derek's. He's sitting in bed, light on next to him, and a book in his hands. He smiles when he sees me, and I don't hesitate or wait for any awkward questions. It does feel different. He's been crawling into my bed at night after I'm already asleep, and my body moves towards his without any conscious thought; this is me coming into what feels like his bed while we're both wide awake. But I make the walk and get into what has become "my side" without saying anything.

He moves his arm immediately, so there is a space for my head on his shoulder and I lay there. My heart is beating just as fast as it was when he first kissed me in that field in Manassas, and I take a deep breath before sinking totally against him, my mind swirling.

"Is this okay?" I ask in a hushed whisper.

He laughs quietly and kisses my head. It's going to be strange when I have hair again; I've become very accustomed to the feeling of his lips against my bald head. "Better than okay," he replies.

We haven't exchanged actual words of love yet, haven't talked about what happens when my treatment is all over, haven't talked about a future at all except that I know he sees me in his future and he knows that's where I want to be. I don't want to get into those discussions tonight, but I reach out and take his hand in mine, feeling like I need to give him something back, for bringing me and Charlie to Boston, for bringing me this far in his loving arms, for loving me when I was initially just hoping for anything besides hate.

"That morning before you left my bedroom in my flat in London, you kissed me here," I say softly as I press his fingers against my chest. "After I found out I was pregnant, I'd lay in bed with my hand against my chest right there, talking to you about the baby inside of me, talking to you about how I felt, how terrified I was, and how sorry I was that I hadn't called you. I wished you could hear me so you would come to me because I was too ashamed and scared to contact you."

I feel his shoulder shift under me and at first I'm scared that he's getting up to leave the bed because of my words, but he's not. He adjusts himself so he's laying on his side, facing me, and rests his hand back against my chest. "How often?" he asks.

"How often did I talk to you?" I ask. He nods and I say, "Almost every day during my pregnancy, and then a couple times a week after Charlie was born until he was about a year and a half old, and then maybe a couple of times a month."

"Until you got sick?" he asks.

I raise my forehead in question. He's right; once I started feeling sick, I stopped talking to him, because I was so absorbed in my own personal fear and mortality. And then it was just about getting back to DC and talking to him in person. "Yes, until I got sick and I knew something was really wrong. Why?"

His lips trail a random path all over my face before he smiles at me. "Maybe I could hear you. I used to dream about that night, almost every night for months and months, and then frequently, a couple times a week, and then it started tapering off. The last time I dreamed about you was in June, about a month before you emailed me, right about the time you started feeling sick and knew something was really wrong."

I blink at him, but keep my eyes on his. We are profilers. We deal in facts and realities. We deal in tangible evidence and concrete psychology. We are not dreamers, we do not deal in the abstract, we do not live in a fantasy world. The psychology of loss is more likely here. He thought about that night a lot at first, and then it tapered off; I talked to him a lot at first and then it tapered off.

But he's smiling at me and I want to believe in this, that maybe there was a part of him that heard me, that maybe there was always something between us that transcended reality and irrefutable facts. That maybe the nearly three years we were apart were not without connection.

The question that has been in the back of my mind for awhile now, the wondering about if we would have ended up here without my cancer and me only telling him about Charlie, dies somewhere in my mind. If I believe in our connection, then I know the answer.

I don't believe in fate and destiny as a rule, but in that moment, I accept it. I don't question his reasoning, and I don't second guess myself. I kiss his lips gently and whisper, "I love you," before my lips totally part from his, so the first time I say those words are not just sound, but the feel of his lips against mine, too. So I feel his absolutely joyful smile against my lips before I see it.

I feel his fingertips against my head and cheeks, fingertips that have ignited a fire on my skin for weeks now, and his lips are pressing against mine. He kisses me until I feel like I'm in a different world than the one that I have always known, and when I am breathless and wishing I had a little more weight on me and a lot more stamina, he tucks my head against his chest and wraps me in his arms. "I love you, Emily Prentiss," he whispers back.

Tomorrow we will go to the public gardens with Charlie and Fran. There will be duck statues and duck boats. We will walk the path that the ducks took in Charlie's book. We will buy him more stuffed ducks and we will smile and laugh. And I will take pictures, with me in them. We will take pictures together, me and Derek and our son.

But for tonight, I will rest my weary head against Derek's chest and sleep. And I'll dream like I have for the past few weeks, with me and Charlie and Derek together, taming wild, fiery horses, and making the sun rise and set the way it should every day.

I can't even begin to add up the amount of hours I've spent online reading about chemotherapy, but the bottom line is that it's supposed to kill the cancer while just barely not totally destroying the person its treating. In the grand scheme of things, Emily's been lucky. She had her platelet issue, but she's never gotten sick, she's never had a massive infection, she's never landed in the hospital for days trying to combat the side effects.

In the end, she was a fighter like I always knew she could be, like the woman I've always known. And she has very nearly kicked cancer's ass, just like I knew she would.

The problem with planning any sort of celebration on the last day of anyone's chemotherapy is the fact that the person receiving that last injection of intravenous drugs still has side-effects. When the nurse disconnects Emily from her IV for the last time, with Dr. McKenzie standing near with a smile on his face, and Elizabeth Prentiss in the room blinking back tears, I pay no special attention to either of them. My eyes are locked with Emily's, and the happy, relieved tears cascading down her face, her face that is starting to look more like I remembered it, despite her lack of hair.

All signs point to this being a successful treatment. It's been twelve weeks of relative hell, but a triumph at the same time. She'll have to endure blood tests, medicine, and the treatment on her liver in the next couple of weeks, but we are both clinging to more than a hope that a full remission is in her near future.

Her cheeks are already flushed with fever from her treatment, but she looks at me and whispers, "We made it."

I take a deep breath and shake my head. "You made it."

But she shakes her head right back at me, "Just like when we were partners. I'm here because you had my back and I trusted you completely."

I gather her feverish body in my arms and I kiss the tears from her cheeks, not caring that her mother is there.

It's only then that I realize I am crying, too.

We are both just a little more than cautiously happy, we are both hopeful of the future even though we haven't talked about what exactly that looks like.

I take her home to a house full of flowers and balloons, and to a quiet group of people who are her family as much as mine. Hotch, Rossi, Reid, JJ and Penelope greet her with hugs that she reciprocates. Claudia is there with Charlie. Claudia cries and clings to Emily and says, "I always knew it." Charlie doesn't quite know what's going on, only that soon the trips to the hospital will be less, and that maybe his mommy's hair is going to start growing back soon. But he's caught up in the mood and hugs Emily fiercely. She kisses his cheek over and over while I help hold him up in her tired arms.

The BAU leaves softly, with talks of a larger party that weekend to celebrate, which Emily agrees to.

I tuck her gently into bed, and like I have for every even week of her treatment, I spend most of the next forty-eight hours in bed beside her, checking her temperature, keeping my hand against her forehead, alternating so that there is always a cool hand at the ready.

When she blinks her eyes open early on Wednesday morning and I can see that the fever is gone, I kiss her. I go about the morning like it's any other morning, except that there are no more pills to take for the time being. Her body is getting a little break. I make her a milkshake. When her mother arrives a couple of hours later and Emily fades off into a nap, I nod at Claudia who knows my plan. She smiles excitedly at me and nods back.

I drive to Rossi's house first, to collect some supplies, before stopping at the store to get the rest. I arrive at the property and get down to the business of setting up a large canopy with covered sides in the marked off area that will eventually be the dining room in the house I'm having built there, in the area where they'll be pouring a foundation next week.

I run extension cords and set up small, white Christmas lights inside the canopy. And then, around the edges, I set up the lights that are encased with little bronze suns that I found at the store. I get a heater ready to be turned on. I lay down blankets and pillows on the ground, and put together a small, low-lying table I found at the store.

When it looks perfect, I leave to head back to Bethesda. I'll coax Emily into another nap this afternoon. And then, this evening, when she's well-rested, I'll pick up some take-out food, and I'll drive her back here.

I hope that I have not overstepped. I hope that she'll love the idea of this new home as much as I do.