Do you want to play? - A Criminal Minds fanfic

Epilogue

1 year later

Emily and Grace sat cuddled up on the couch in front of the TV, waiting for Derek to come home. Ever since Esther disappeared Derek had tried to track her down, which wasn't an easy task. They had no idea where she'd gone, if she left the country or not. What they had witnessed was beyond anything they'd ever seen before and Emily tried to tell Derek that he needed to stop because Esther couldn't be found. Maybe she truly had vanished when she was shot. Literally.

Derek wouldn't listen, though. He didn't want anyone to harm his family ever again and he needed her to pay for killing Garcia. There was no way he was going to let her get away with it.

He kept tabs on every time someone called 911 about a murdered family, wondering if Esther was behind it. If she ever was, she was gone before he even had the time to check it out. It took his focus away from his job and he knew he was on a thin line, but he didn't care if he got fired. That would just give him more time to find the girl who almost killed his family.

The door opened and slammed shut, announcing Derek's arrival. Emily turned her head slightly toward the doorframe, expecting her husband to come through the door. When he didn't, Emily shifted her body away from her daughter.

"I'll be right back, sweetie," Emily said as she stood up.

"Okay, mom, but hurry so you don't miss the movie."

"I will," Emily said with a soft smile.

Grace had started talking freely first three months after Esther's death. They had taken her to a therapist and slowly she'd started talking again. The girl still got nightmares about what she'd seen and her parents let her sleep in their bed. Or it was mostly for themselves. They didn't want her to sleep in her own bed with the fear of finding their daughter dead the next morning. Emily had even quit her job and taken one as a teacher to be as much as possible with her when Esther was still out there. It was even hard to let Grace go to school every morning. She knew that Esther had killed a girl during school hours. JJ had been the one to persuade Emily to let Grace go to school so she'd have a normal childhood. Emily knew it was important.

"Hey," Emily said as she entered the kitchen where her husband was pouring himself a glass of water. "How was work?"

Something was different between the two, but they were working really hard to restore it. Their friends saw what had happened to their relationship, but both Emily and Morgan refused to go out for dinner, afraid that what happened to Garcia would repeat itself.

"It was okay. Uneventful," Morgan said, shrugging.

"Did you find anything new?" Emily dared to ask, biting her lip.

"There was a family killed in Iowa. Only survivor was a little girl. I don't know if it's her," Morgan explained.

This was their normal conversations every time Morgan came home from work. Emily always wanted to know if he'd made any progress, even if she didn't think he ever would and she had always been right. He always reached a dead end.

Esther would never be found and their relationship would probably never be the same.

The end