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He didn't realize what he'd done until he was already in the Suburban on his way to his childhood home.
He'd called Ma the night before to tell her he was in town and that he'd stop by when he was done with work for the day - and to ask her about the peach cobbler Garcia had been talking about all week. At the time, it had sounded like exactly the balm he needed to soothe his raw nerves after shaking that man's hand and seeing how many names were on that list - just an evening at home, teasing his sisters and enjoying meals he could never find an adequate replacement for in Virginia.
But as he reached the 94-Express split and got off at Marquette, it suddenly occurred to him:
They know.
Desi had a google alert on him - he knew because she had texted him to tease him about cases in the past when he'd been quoted in some local paper halfway across the country from anywhere she'd ever been. And he had just told the entire City of Chicago - and the entire internet - something he had never told anyone until this week.
It hadn't even occurred to him. By the time he stepped in front of the cameras, he'd already been getting stared at by the team for two days. JJ doing a cognitive interview on him like he wasn't the one who taught her how. Reid trying to spout facts about survivors gently in his directly because that was how the kid showed he cared. Hotch hovering over him like he was about to snap or do something stupid.
He hadn't planned on saying anything. He would have happily never told a single person what happened to him as long as he lived, but he hadn't been able to stop himself. The idea that what happened to Rodney made any of his actions okay - and the insinuation that he should be equally lawless - didn't sit well with him. He had to correct the narrative every bit as much as if the smug asshole Gordinski had been talking about victims growing up to molest the next generation. It was wrong. Just wrong. And so was letting the man get away with starting another lie-filled life on the inside - just another world where people thought he could do no wrong and was some selfless, Godly man. He had spent too many years in mandatory counseling having a kindly old psychiatrist in blue aligator loafers repeat over and over that none of what had happened to him had turned him into someone likely to become a monster - as though he hadn't worked his entire life to make sure that never happened. So he'd had to say something. He had worked too damn hard to put himself where he was to let someone else make excuses like that.
And it genuinely hadn't occurred to him that there was a key group of people in his life he hadn't told earlier in the week. Until his car turned onto the familiar streets and a chill ran down his spine.
Of all the people he had intended never to tell, his mother and sisters had been at the top of the list. No good could come of it. They would only be upset, Ma would blame herself, Sarah would wonder why she hadn't noticed her baby brother, and it would all just make things awful for them. His counselor had asked him about it pretty early on in the process, and he had shut the conversation down fast. No one wanted to think of their son, their brother, their cousin, their nephew like that. No one wanted to hear about that - even in vague terms. Hotch knowing for years had been bad enough, but at least his boss had enough distance and enough sense not to bring it up. But Ma...
He almost turned the car around, but he knew he would have to call to tell them he was bailing. That conversation would be almost worse than seeing them. If he simply didn't show, Desi would call Garcia who would tell her where the team was staying.
He hadn't actually told Garcia any of it. He wasn't sure who on the team had said something to her, but the broken tone in her voice over the phone the next time they talked had made clear she knew. He hoped she got he wasn't up for questions when he got back - just banter while they shared peach cobbler and listening to her voice and seeing her smile. That was what he needed after this week.
His hands gripped the wheel tighter as he drove through the old neighbourhood, streets he could navigate blindfolded. His stomach churned. He wasn't someone who got anxious easily, even as a kid, and between law enforcement training and time with the bomb squad his nerves were as steady as anyone he knew. But knowing how devastated Ma was going to be, and how he was going to have to try to reassure her that he was fine when nothing about him felt fine right now...
He parked outside his old building and stared straight ahead for several minutes, trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to say. How he could try to make this better for them and explain why he had loved them too much to ever make this their problem. Knowing the neighbours would be staring at the unfamiliar government car that lingered on the street for too long, he eventually turned off the engine and stared towards the apartment building, still at a loss as to what to say.
The dim glow of the light over the entrance and the worn linoleum under his feet always had a way of making him feel 17 again, the way he'd been when he'd last lived there. Reid had some theory about smells and atmospheric something bringing back memories when you were in a familiar place and said he got it every time he was in Vegas. He wasn't sure if that was what it was or just that being in a childhood home had a way of making a person feel like they did when they lived there - like listening to certain albums reminded him so strongly of middle school or college that he swore he could feel his long curls again.
He still had a key - at Ma's insistence, even though he was only there once or twice a year and never without other family around - so he unlocked the door and entered. Usually he would call out to announce his presence, but he didn't trust his voice at the moment. And he didn't need to: all three women sat around the oval dining table, staring at nothing.
No one moved. No one spoke. Just silence weighing heavily over the small apartment except for the ticking of the clock on the mantle that had belonged to his great-grandfather and ran slow no matter how many times he tried to fix it.
He wanted to say something to break the tension, but he didn't know where to start. What the hell was he supposed to say to them? No wonder they couldn't look at him.
"I'm sorry," he finally said quietly. "I didn't think about the fact that you'd see the interview."
"Are you kidding me?" Sarah spoke first, angry from the jump, like she always was. Her temper and need to defend people she cared about was as strong as his, he just usually held it in check better than she did. He had to. "You're sor-"
"Sarah." Desi cut her off, shaking her head. "He doesn't have to-"
"How the hell could you not tell us?"
He heard Sarah get up from the table more than saw it, his gaze locked on his mother. She was staring down at the tablecloth, fingers clutching her favourite mug - the one Desi had made her for Mother's Day in elementary school, light purple with white thumbprint daisies. He couldn't see her eyes from this angle, and she hadn't looked in his direction once.
He felt like he was 11 years old again, short and scrawny, toe of his dirty sneakers digging into the threadbare living room carpet while he waited for her to start shouting at him after he got released from juvie. She'd been so furious at him, so scared for him, so sure of the path he was going down, and all he had been able to think was how ashamed his father would be of him. Officer Hank Morgan, who prayed daily and swore that God protected anyone with a badge, who was so proud of keeping the neighbourhood safe from folks who ran around and made trouble.
Would his father have been ashamed of him for this? For not being able to stop it? For not telling someone? For not coming forward years ago and keeping it from happening to anyone else?
"Ma-" His voice broke as he tried to get her attention, tried to force her to look at him or scream or something. "Please. I'm sorry-"
"Don't you dare apologize to me." Her voice was tight, shaking, like she could barely force the air through her throat enough to get the words out. "How-...how long was it-..."
He wanted to lie to her and say it was only once. That it was a misunderstanding he'd wandered into and had made sure it never happened again. He wanted to spare her feeling like she could have done something to stop it, because she couldn't have. Not without him telling her, and there was no way. "I..." He couldn't get the lie out.
"...It was the whole time. Wasn't it?" Desi asked quietly. He couldn't say anything, but he knew his face wasn't hiding much of anything right now. It was so much harder to keep up the mask around family, even if his week had been easier. "God, Derek..."
"How could you not say anything?" Sarah's voice shook with anger, and he had no doubt if Carl Buford weren't already in jail, his big sister would be figuring out a way to destroy the man. If his suspicions were correct, he might have managed that already tonight, but he didn't feel any victory in it.
He should have said something. Even if he couldn't have as a kid, if he'd tried even a few years earlier...once he'd gotten out of the neighbourhood, graduated, joined the Bureau. All it would have taken would have been one tip call, one interview, then another would come forward, and another. And the list would have been half as long. Maybe shorter.
There were so many fucking names on that list, and it still wasn't everyone.
So much for having been 'special.'
"Mama, please." He rarely called her that now, not since he was little except in jest. But he could feel what little control he'd managed to hang onto all week slipping.
She looked up at him from her seat, eyes bloodshot and full of tears, so much pain etched on her face... "Oh, Baby, I'm so sorry." It only took another moment for her to rise, and by the time her arms opened towards him he was already clinging to her like he hadn't since he was 8. "I didn't know. I had no idea, I never would have- I thought...I didn't..." He could feel her tears soaking into his tshirt, and he stroked her hair like she used to do for him when he was sick.
"I know," he whispered. "And I couldn't-..."
"Of course you couldn't. You were so young. But I...a mother's supposed to know, and I-..." She fell further apart, holding onto him tightly and murmuring "I'm so sorry Baby, I'm so sorry" between her sobs.
"There was nothing you could have done. I did everything I could to make sure no one knew." This was why he'd never wanted to tell her. It was even less her fault than his own. And if he'd said something back then, then what? How was he going to get out of the neighbourhood and go to college without his sick benefactor? Where would he have ended up without that center and its structure and the football that had saved him?
Did that mean it was worth it? That he'd just paid too high a price to get what he needed?
"We should have seen..." Sarah trailed off.
"You were working two jobs and going to night classes. I was your pain in the ass little brother. Ma was bustin her ass to keep food on the table. Why would you have seen anything? And Pops hadn't been gone long, and we were all...I made sure no one saw anything." His voice sounded steadier than he felt, and he was glad for it. "You trusted him. So did I. You couldn't have...." He let out a long sigh. "There was nothing any of you could have done. I made sure of that."
He couldn't have uttered a word of it back then. And not just because he was afraid of what he'd lose - the only thing like a father he had left, someone who gave him time no one else had for him.
Saying the words out loud made things real.
His counselor had forced him to say it. Every session for weeks on end. Active voice, passive voice, with a variety of verbs. Even now, he avoided those verbs unless he had no other choice - even in his mind. It was 'what happened' or 'what he did' or maybe 'what happened to me' if he was letting himself feel a little more strongly about it than he usually allowed. And that was 20 years after the last time - more time than had passed between his birth and when it stopped. He never could have said anything at the time - to anyone, let alone to the family he was supposed to be protecting.
"There was nothing any of you could have done," he repeated a little stronger, holding his mother tightly as she tried to regain her composure.
There were things he could have done, but they couldn't have. And he could have kept his mouth shut.
He didn't really believe that. He'd been right to say what he had, how and when he had. But keeping secrets felt a lot easier than trying to comfort them about what had happened. What had happened to him.
"I'm fine now." It was a half-truth, but he was sure if he said it often enough it might become true someday. "I had work-mandated counseling, dealt with it, locked up the bad guys, I'm fine."
His team would have called him out immediately. His family chose to believe him. It was easier for everyone that way.