chapter fourteen / season three episode eight.

TW: cannibalism. this is the tracey lambert episode and if this episode upsets you in any way shape or form please do skip. prioritize yourself not this fic.

TRACEY LAMBERT WAS BLITZ ATTACKED IN A BATHROOM. Which had been set up for those traveling so that they could use it when desired.

This meant Tracey had gone missing around a vast amount of forest. Which then would lead to a search and rescue.

The Priest had shown up.

And Amelia had watched as Derek's back muscles had tensed, the profiler didn't even need her job to be able to see the glare he was hiding under his sunglasses.

Amelia approached him as they walked away from the Priest, "What was that?" She asked him, referring to his miniature outburst about the Priest's presence being unnecessary here.

Her hand came in contact with his bicep as if to stop him from walking away.

Derek shrugged her hand off and walked forward, "It's nothing." He mumbled.

Amelia stared at the back of his head before continuing, "That wasn't nothing, you've got a problem with the Priest, what is it?"

"It's nothing, Amelia." He insisted.

Amelia rolled her eyes, "Really? Then why is there a stick lodged so far up your ass that I can see it coming out your nose?"

"There's no stick, and there's no problem with the Priest." He turned around to face her, "Leave it."

Amelia watched him walk away and up the hill to where people were signing in to volunteer.

He had probably given her so much stick in his head for not opening up, and here he was.

Amelia wasn't going to say anything. She was going to say nothing, actually.

Amelia had gotten pretty used to be shrugged off when she wanted someone to talk to her, and she'd been given the cold shoulder more than a hundred times in her life.

If Derek didn't want to talk, then he didn't have to.

Who was she to make him talk?

His best friend? Probably not.

Unknowingly to her, Rossi had watched their entire interaction. He watched her approach Derek, seemingly unfazed by his attitude as if she'd been faced with it hundreds of times before, and he had watched when her face and how it only faltered for a second when Derek walked away.

It had been a frown for the smallest of seconds, that had then been replaced with a straight face. A face that screamed; 'This has happened to me before.'

Rossi had only heard about Amelia's parents from Penelope on accident, but he knew the signs when he saw them.

Luckily, Amelia did not have to walk with Derek on the search and rescue and she felt sorry for whoever did. And she had walked straight past the soup that reeked. (Amelia thought her soup was bad...)

Amelia thought that it would be best for her to remain as far away from Derek as possible, at least that's what her Mom had always encouraged whenever her father was in one of his moods after work.

'Men are better left alone when they get like this, you'll understand one day, Amelia.'

Amelia had thought it be patronizing as a child, or that her father simply didn't want to spend to with her. When she got older she finally realized why.

Her father's alone time meant any aggression he had towards the day could just be taken out with no one watching and loud swear words. If that alone time was interrupted by his wife or his child, then they would be the ones he swore at and they were the ones that flinched when he got closer.

It changed Amelia's perspective of her father, majorly.

She didn't want to get too close to Derek now and have it change her perspective of him.

Not Derek. He mattered too much to her. Maybe that's why she couldn't stand to see him in this rotten mood caused by the Priest and felt an undying urge to fix it, make him feel a little bit better. But it seemed talking and smiles didn't work.

And when that didn't work, Amelia knew only distance would.

Maybe Amelia's undying urge to fix things pushed people away, the desire to see them happy driving them away when she got too hellbent on making them feel better.

Amelia just wanted to make someone feel better, feel happier after a hard day because she knew she never made her father happier after a bad day.

She never made him proud, either. But that was a story for a different day.

"Tracey!" Amelia called as she walked in tow with the Unit Chief, and swatting a few flies out of her face. "Gross." She muttered.

It was only the two of them, so, the Unit Chief laughed quietly under his breath, "Not a fan of the wilderness?"

She looked up at Hotchner with raised eyebrows, "I had to borrow a pair of trainers, Hotchner, do I look like I'm made for the wilderness?"

Hotchner.

Hotchner's smile widened.

Amelia thought she had just made a funny comment of some sort.

"You might surprise me." He shrugged, the smile she had made never falling from his lips.

Amelia scoffed, "Believe me, I'm not made for this wilderness, and the wilderness does not want me."

"It's a good thing you left Florida when you were three." Amelia looked up at him with a smile, she didn't know he had been listening in.

"I was one of the lucky ones." She wiggled her eyebrows at him and turned when she heard the panting of an officer.

"Agent Hotchner! Agent Levine! One of the Volunteers has gone missing!"

✺

Sheryl had just gone. One moment she had been stood next to her husband, searching in the bushes and such and then she was gone.

Just like that.

That, to the ordinary people, felt incredible. It was mere seconds and Sheryl had been taken by the unsub.

The BAU had seen it hundreds of times, but it didn't matter how many times it still made them feel sick.

That someone could just vanish. Just like that.

Derek has stormed out of one of the conference rooms, with a disheartened Priest stood watching him.

Amelia shrunk a little in the seat she was sat in, just watching him go.

It wasn't her place. She shouldn't have meddled. She had been taught not, and look what disobeying what she knew got her.

Emily and Dave watched her curiously, almost expecting her to waltz out, hot on the heels of Derek.

Emily nearly had a heart attack at the thought of the golden trio collapsing right in-front of her eyes. Penelope wasn't talking to Derek, Derek wasn't talking to Amelia and Penelope better still be talking to Amelia or else Emily might fall to the ground and cry.

Florida really brought out the worst in everything, didn't it?

Emily watched Rossi follow Derek out.

Amelia stayed put.

Emily took a seat next to Amelia, "What are you doing?"

"Sitting down. Highlighting my file." She pointed out the obvious and didn't spare a glance at the agent next to her.

Emily was far too good at reading people, Amelia in particular and the woman didn't feel like being read like an open book tonight.

Emily rolled her eyes, "I can see that, I mean why aren't you following Derek?"

Emily watched a crease form in-between Amelia's eyebrows as she spoke, "Why would I?"

"You two are practically glued at the hip on cases, and you don't stop bickering. So, when he storms out of a building it's a bit odd that you aren't the first one following after him." Emily pointed out.

Amelia shrugged, still not looking up from her file, "If he wanted me to speak to him, he'd say."

Emily's eyes widened, it wasn't often Amelia spoke like that. "How'd you mean?" Emily managed to ask.

Amelia bit the inside of her cheek before responding.

"I'm not going to make him speak to me when he's clearly in a bad mood." It doesn't end well, normally.

"Who said he's in a bad mood?" Emily asked.

Amelia looked up from her file with the raise of an eyebrow, "Really, Em? Have you looked at Derek today? He's not spent more than ten minutes in a foul mood."

"Yeah," Emily played dumb, "But didn't you talk to him?"

"Yeah, I talked to him about Penelope. And then I tried to talk to him about the Priest but I'm not going to push him." Again, it doesn't end well.

Emily frowned, it wasn't like Amelia to not be persistent. "That's not like you."

"It is." Amelia nodded.

It is like her with men double her weight and twice her strength.

Amelia didn't argue with men in bad moods. It never ended well.

"When men get like that..." Amelia quoted her Mom before trailing off into silence.

Emily would figure the rest out for herself, and immediately draw herself to false conclusions about the childhood Amelia had.

One thing for sure was that she couldn't wait for Thomas Levine to drop dead.

Speaking of people dropping dead, Agent Hotchner came running out towards them and ordering them to follow him, claiming a body had just been found by Derek in a church.

✺

Maria Lopez, Hispanic, 34 years old and had initially not been the victim they were looking for, Maria was a victim they hadn't even known was missing in the first place.

9 months she'd been missing. Killed 72 hours ago.
For 9 months, Agent Hotchner theorized she had been frozen after death.

Emily came back into their conference room, her eyes scanning over the room and finding Amelia sat by JJ and Derek at a complete opposite end to her. She frowned but spoke her information anyway, "Dr Fulton confirmed it. Maria Lopez was frozen shortly after her death."

"Well, that explains why we haven't been able to find the other victims. He's keeping them." Derek said.

JJ looked through her notes and asked, "How do you get to cannibalism?"

"The unsub wasn't looking for sex, he was looking for their legs." Amelia said, her stomach twisting at her own words, "He fed Abbey fingers and tried to tell us."

"The fingers were a message, 'I've killed before', was only part of it." The Unit Chief added on. "'I'm eating them' was the other."

"Cannibalism, the greatest taboo." Rossi said, "That explains his drive to blame his appetite on an outside force."

JJ rubbed her temple, "Why would anyone want to eat human flesh?"

"It's like a sexual urge. The cross-wiring of the two most basic human drives, sustenance and sex." Reid explained.

"It all fits." Derek shrugged.

Amelia's phone rung, "Hi Pen." (Emily nearly wiped the sweat that formed on her brow from her favorite trio nearly splitting up) "I'm putting you on speaker."

"Thank you, my love," she praised in her usual manner before speaking, "So, I can't find any patients in Florida who have the charming cocktail of being both a satanist and a cannibal. However, Hazelwood mental institution is the place to go when looking for Florida's most dangerous kinds of wackos, and they had a fire in 1998 that destroyed all their records."

"How far away is Hazelwood?" Hotchner asked.

"70 miles." Spencer responded instantly.

"JJ, tell them we're on our way, Reid."

Amelia might be glad she didn't have that job.

✺

Floyd Feylinn Ferell.

Was there a better name for a satanist cannibal?

Derek, by no surprise, had kicked down the front door to Ferell's house, they had walked in with their guns raised and found nothing. Except for some dirty pots in the kitchen, but on the surface level there was nothing to pin this guy down as their satanist cannibal.

"It's clear." Derek admitted.

When silence fell upon them, there was the faint music of 'Sittin' in the dark' playing somewhere in the house, and playing on some sort of phonograph.

There it stood, the one room in the house with its door shut and the music eerily playing out into the corridor.

Oh, did it give Amelia the heebie jeebies.

Derek, did not kick down the door to this room, and instead opened the door very slowly, as he twisted the door knob.

A basement. Could this get any creepier?

The music got louder as they got closer but there was still three more closed door for them to get through.

JJ and Florida's detective would take one - which would lead to their unsub's freezer which stored the bodies he had been taking over the last year.

Rossi and Emily would take the second - which would lead into a small room where the unsub managed to keep his victims pinned down on a table, in some form of cage, where Sheryl would be this time.

Amelia and Derek would take the third - the third was the one they relied on to find Tracey Lambert. And Tracey would not be there.

The only thing Derek and Amelia would find is their unsub, in nothing but a pair of underwear with the music playing and words written along every wall, in any space the unsub could find.

No Tracey.

Amelia stood directly behind the unsub and pressed her gun to the back of his head, "Put your hands up." She ordered through gritted teeth. She dug the barrel of her gun into his head harder, "Now! Feylinn!"

Derek nodded his head, and Amelia pulled her gun back off his greasy head but still pointing the weapon at him as Derek put him in the cuffs.

"Where's Tracey Lambert?" Amelia demanded to know the answer from him, and took a step back when the unsub was a little too close for her liking.

"Let's go." Derek led him out of the small room as Rossi stepped into it.

Amelia shared a look with him before leaving the room.

She didn't want to spend another second in there.

✺

Francisco Goya, were the paintings the unsub had been exposed to as apart of his therapeutic art therapy.

To which Emily had commented, "I don't think it worked."

"He kills them after 72 hours. Tracey's been gone for 24." Hotchner said, handing Derek a book of Feylinn's recipes, "See if you can find out where she is."

"I'll do what I can."

Amelia didn't quite know what to do when Feylinn told them that his recipes had smiley faces and sad faces next to them: she didn't know whether to puke or swallow her tears back up.

Amelia applauded Derek for being able to even stand in the same room as their unsub, let alone talk to him, even if they weren't getting anywhere with the location of Tracey or the voices in Floyd's head.

"I'm not supposed to tell you, I'm only supposed to tell Father Marks." He said. "I'm going to stop talking now."

Stop breathing now, that would be nice.

Father Marks came into the room with Derek following after him. There seemed to be more respect between the two and Derek didn't seem to tense as much when the Priest sat down beside him.

Amelia thought that was nice for Derek.

"Thank you for coming, Father."

"Anything I can do..." Father Marks stopped talking when he saw Derek's raised hand.

"Floyd," Derek said, "I had to pull some serious strings to get him here. My bosses didn't like the idea at all of sending him in. Now they're going to allow him to sit here and listen, but you're going to talk to me, alright?"

"Okay. I've done some really bad things."

We know.

"Everybody's done things they're not proud of, Floyd." Not everybody's ate somebody's legs. "The only thing that helps is to talk about them."

Amelia tore her eyes away from the interrogation and looked at Rossi, "What's going on in that head of yours, old man?"

"When he entered the park, Feylinn, signed the volunteer sign in sheet, but his name's not on the list of any searches." Rossi said, causing many eyebrows to furrow in the room.

Amelia tried to remember if she saw him. Like at all.

She pictured his house. His kitchen.

She pictured watching people sign in and the crowds of people that walked past. She didn't see Floyd. Not in the searchers crowd.

She'd walked past the sign in sheets and very quickly walked past the weird smelling soup.

Her eyes widened in alarm.

Oh.

No. No. No. No. No.

"Oh, no." She murmured, quietly, but in a room full of agents and a detective who stood silently trying to place him she was heard quite well.

"What?" Agent Hotchner turned around and noticed her sickly expression.

"Tell us where is Tracey Lambert?" Amelia heard Derek ask.

"Father, I feel so alone." Floyd said.

"What is it, Levine?"

"He didn't search..." she said slowly, trying to come to terms with what she had just realized.

"I feel like God has abandoned me." Floyd said, "Why?"

"You are not alone, my son." Father told him, and leaned forward in his seat to be closer to Floyd, "God is in all of us."

Hotchner turned back to Amelia, but she didn't speak. She knew what was coming.

"So is Tracey Lambert."

All eyes fell onto the unsub.

Amelia swallowed the lump in her throat, "He was serving the weird smelling soup I was talking about."

They had barely anytime to react before they heard shouts coming from the interrogation room, the men ran out to stop Father Marks from strangling the manically laughing unsub, while the women were quite happy to watch the Father try and strangle Floyd.

Amelia passed Derek in the corridor and offered him a small smile before making her way down it.

Leaving a frowning Derek behind.

✺

"Carl Buford."

Derek said and sat himself down beside Amelia on the jet.

Amelia didn't know any Carls, and they hadn't been any of today's victims, so what was Derek talking about?

He nervously toyed with his fingers in his lap, "He was the reason I prayed everyday, and God never answered."

Amelia saw the vulnerability he was showing her, she reached for his hands and held onto them, "You don't have to tell me this, Derek. If this is something you want to keep personal, you can, I'm not mad at you if that's what this is about. I was giving you space. You don't have to feel forced into telling me anything."

The last thing Amelia wanted him to think that she had somehow guilt tripped him into speaking his mind. She'd only ever want him to open up if he was comfortable with it.

And she knew that this small jet was not the best place to open up.

"I don't feel forced, Amelia." He shook his head and squeezed her hands, "I want to. I do. Because, you're my best friend. And we don't have breakfast or a tub of ice cream but I know I can be honest with you."

I can be honest with you.

Amelia already felt her vision become blurred and Derek hadn't even started telling his story.

For the man who made her feel on top of the world everyday, he sure did have a lot in his past, things that would've dragged many down and they never would've got back up.

But, Derek did.

He got back up after his father was shot, right in-front of him. He got back up but he'd fallen right under the wing of his father figure, who had only taken advantage of the vulnerability of a grieving teenage boy. Carl Buford had managed to traumatize a teenage boy, in ways that Derek thought he might never recover from. But, it didn't matter what crossed Derek's mind, it didn't matter how many times he imagined his life ending, it didn't.

Because Derek wouldn't let Carl win.

Not after Carl had stolen his childhood, his innocence and most of all, his faith.

Carl wasn't allowed to win.

Derek wouldn't let him.

Carl didn't win, Carl ended up in the place he deserved.

Amelia hoped he was getting beat to shit.

Carl ended up in the cell, but Derek was still left with those wounds that he had to heal by himself. Scars that cut so deep, they looked like they would never heal.

But he met Penelope, and his trust issues were no match for her. She made him feel a safety he hadn't felt in years, a safety that had been taken from him when he didn't deserve it.

Derek met the rest of the members of the BAU, and he managed to fit in with a past he was desperate to hide. It worked for a while, until they found out and he had been so scared that they would look at him like some form of monster or they'd look at him with that pity in their eyes that they hated.

They didn't.

They treated him as though he was the same Derek they knew before they'd found out.

And Amelia came along. His heart had that same fluttering feeling of safety that he had when he first met Penelope. And he knew, he knew from that first moment that not even his trust issues could beat the kindness of Amelia Levine.

Her tears had fallen onto the material of his shirt, coincidentally the same shirt she had wet with her tears only two weeks ago. But, this time it wasn't just her tears, it was Derek's as well.

And they found themselves in the same position, just roles reversed; Amelia's arm wrapped around his shoulder, holding him tight and squeezing his hand.

They were the only two still awake on the jet.

Amelia hadn't spoken yet, and that scared Derek the most.

He trusted Amelia, with his life, but the silence from her was making his heart drop lower and lower, second by second.

He wanted to beg her to say something.

But he didn't.

Derek just felt the circles that were being drawn on his back by Amelia, and felt that drop in his heart grow smaller and smaller.

"You are so fucking brave." She whispered, her voice full of emotion, "And there are not enough words to say how proud I am of you, Derek."

"You beat your monster, he's behind bars and will never see the light of day. And you did that. He made you suffer and now you get to see him pay." She sniffled, "Your dad would be so proud of you."

"And this has caused you so much pain, Derek, and I'm sorry it had to happen to you because you don't deserve that. But, thank you trusting me. Because, I'm not gonna let anything like that ever happen to you again." She tightened her hold on him, "And I promise you, your monster is getting fucked up behind those bars."

The vulgar language made him laugh quietly.

Derek hiccuped.

Amelia, somehow, held him closer. "I love you." She admitted.

Her friend knew exactly how she meant it. And if tears weren't streaming down his face, he'd probably smile.

"I really, really, love you, Derek Morgan. And, you know what, I'm going to make sure you know that everyday. Because you deserve to know it. And you deserve to know that you can be loved from good people."

He squeezed his eyes shut and found serenity in the warmth and comfort that his best friend radiated.

Amelia's hand ran up and down his back in a soothing manner, "And you don't have to do anymore talking. You can go to sleep, and I'll be right here when you wake up."

He nodded his head and shut his eyes.

Amelia was sure he wouldn't actually sleep. He might close his eyes in an attempt to make the night go by faster but he wouldn't sleep.

And for his sake, Amelia wouldn't either.

✺

She didn't sleep a single wink. She murmured to him softly every so often, just to remind him that she was still here and he was still safe.

But she didn't sleep.

Neither of them did.

Which made both of them a liability on the road, so it was a good thing only one of them was driving home tonight.

Amelia had tried to get Derek to stay over at her apartment tonight but it seemed he had a place to visit first. For the twenty minutes of the drive home, they hadn't spoken and Amelia wasn't going to pry into where Derek was taking a detour to tonight.

Derek had been the one to reveal he was going to a church tonight.

Amelia had smiled at him and held his hand in hers while she drove.

She gave him a tight hug and squeeze before watching him enter the church and insisting that he call her when he was ready.

Amelia had to get home first before he did that, considering her phone was dead and she undoubtedly had messages she already had to open.

The second she had put her phone on charge it blew up with text messages. Many from Penelope questioning if her outfit for tonight was perfect.

Amelia responded with; "Perf!" But it was definitely far too late for Penelope's fashion advice.

She expected a witty response from the tech analyst but it never came.

The only thing that did come was a phone call, from Aaron Hotchner.

And that instant drop of her heart.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:
so when i said it gets better for amelia, i lied! it actually gets monumentally worse for the next two chapters

she will never know peace im afraid