Sister Sinner, Chapter Four
Request: Do you do cross-overs? I was thinking Neal Caffery’s younger sister works with the BAU, her brother, Mozzie, and Peter on a case, and ends up crushing on Derek Morgan.
Fandom: Criminal Minds/White Collar
Characters/Pairings: Derek Morgan/Reader; Garcia, Hotch, Prentiss, Reid, Rossi, Neal
Words: 2,136
Y/N - Your Name
“The good news is that he was definitely in contact with someone the entire time. The bad news is that the Gambinos – or whoever else might have been on the mic – only opened their end of the transmission when they communicated into his wire, which was for only seconds at a time and not long enough to trace. The radio signals bouncing out were encrypted very heavily with very dense coding and went through half a dozen proxy servers in the New England area before leaving the country.”
Garcia looked very nervous as she presented the results of your first undercover meeting with Gio, and although you couldn’t say you had enjoyed being in his company, you were kind of excited that you would have to keep reprising your role as Sofia. It felt good to be the one under pressure for once – the one in the loop, the one whose abilities were coveted, the one who had the power to make it or break it. Since going good, you’d been doing far less of your own thing, mostly because you knew it would make things rough for Neal if Peter (or anyone else in law enforcement, for that matter) caught you.
“Garcia,” Hotchner prompted, inserting just the one word in his boss voice between her rambling sentences.
The techie stopped, swallowed, and nodded. “What I’m trying to say, sir, is that they have someone with their own special spice of signal protection that I can’t get through without the cooperation of governments in China, Belarus-“
“Countries who are less likely to grant American law enforcement access to their satellite data,” you mused. Garcia nodded disappointedly. “Well, that’s fine. We don’t want to catch them now, anyway. We need more evidence, otherwise we’ve got them on shady charges at best. We want them on smuggling, even if we can’t nail ‘em for murder.”
“He said they will be in touch. He wasn’t speaking on his own.” Prentiss took a glance at Reid, who nodded and then repeated, word-for-word, what Gio had said to you. Your eyes lingered on him for a moment – odd but useful, kind of like Mozzie’s photographic memory. The black-haired woman continued with her reasoning. “He wasn’t even trying to be discreet.”
“Or he was, and he’s just bad at it,” you suggested.
Morgan was clicking the end of a pen on the desk. “Nah, these guys wouldn’t hire an amateur.”
“Maybe they pegged her as a smart one and assumed she would have done her homework,” Rossi posited wryly. “After all, what’ve we got on this Gio guy? Nothing. A high-profile armament doesn’t just drop into his lap unless someone knows who pads his pockets.”
“Then they’re definitely going to call on me again.” You just hoped they would have the class to not be like the femme fatale that had broken into Neal’s penthouse to call on him.
When Hotchner called for the dismissal, telling everyone to pack up and go get some rest before morning, it was like he was the teacher and everyone else was racing to leave before he tacked on a last-minute homework assignment. You waited for the room to empty out while stretching in your chair, letting the tiredness show on your face. Undercover operations were always more taxing than you expected them to be.
Morgan was the last in the conference room. The handsome agent had caught your interest several times – not just when he spoke, although you definitely liked that he had more than just a few brain cells floating around up there. JJ was pretty, and Reid was cute, but Morgan was attractive, in the way that gets people a fan following on social media with tags that you wouldn’t want to read off in a room full of children.
“Alright, Y/N.” He stopped while he was pushing in his chair and peered at you over the table, openly curious, but relaxed. “The suspense is gonna do me in if I don’t ask. So what’s it like? Being his sister.”
You raised an eyebrow and glibly responded. “Got a friendship crush on my brother, Morgan?”
He laughed, shaking his head. “Something like that shapes a person. Shapes their relationships. Siblings are impacted by how their brothers and sisters bond with them, the values they teach and the roles they fill. How did his antics fit into your life? Why did you let them stay?”
You seriously considered not answering. You understood his curiosity – it was far from unique to him – and appreciated that he had asked without sounding underhanded or judgmental. In the moment, though, you decided that it wasn’t going to hurt anything, and maybe if you let him see a little more than the others could, then he’d be a bit more motivated to trust you and feel like he knew you. You’d seen Peter and Neal fight because of lacking trust too many times, and you wanted real friendships, not friendships that fell apart as soon as there was a hint of doubt.
“Believe it or not,” you started, choosing your words carefully and leaning on the table, “Neal gave me an ultimatum.” The agent’s eyebrows went up slightly in surprise. “Not as such,” you elaborated pensively, “He would never intentionally do that. But the context mandated it. It was never said, but I understood. Be involved, and be my family. Or don’t, and…” You stopped, shaking your head, being mindful how much information you gave out. Neal’s reasons for running were personal. Not so personal that they weren’t your business, because they were mostly about your family, but private enough not to want to share. “If I hadn’t gone, I would’ve been safe. I would’ve been free. I would’ve known that I could go home every day to a woman who loved us and took care of us and been fed and housed. But I also would’ve lost my brother, and to me, that was unfathomable.”
Neal had promised, a long, long time ago, that you were his best friend, and he would never leave you. It was entirely possible he hadn’t realized what he’d been making you choose between at the time, but though he said he understood completely if you chose to remain in St. Louis, you had intuitively known that the next time you’d see him could be decades away, if ever. Runaways don’t come back home when they intend to successfully run away.
“Be involved?” Morgan repeated, crossing his arms.
You surveyed his face and decided the gesture wasn’t in disapproval, so you expanded on it.
“Not commit crime. Just run away.” You shrugged. “Be involved in his new life, whatever it meant. Neal did his best to keep me clean and safe, but… there’s always a degree of inevitability. Especially in a hypothetical situation where people want money and are allegedly more or less cheated out of it. I could’ve stayed or gone any time I wanted, but it wasn’t worth losing him.
“We were a bit codependent.” You chuckled reminiscently. “Not as much anymore. It’s hard to be codependent when one of the parties are in prison.”
“I bet.”
You licked your lips and swallowed. “Anyway.” You stood up to leave. That was more sharing and caring than you usually did in a month, even with El, the undisputed queen of compassionate and empathetic conversation. “Neal was – and still is – my best friend. I’m not always happy with the choices he’s made. And I’m definitely not always happy with their consequences. Yet, I can never regret the choice I made to follow him. Whatever you might want to accuse him of, he has always done his best for the people he loves, and that’s better than a lot of others.”
Before you left, you paused. And turned around. You’d tried explaining your story to a couple of people before, people you’d known longer and trusted more, and in spite of this, you had never had a more thoughtful or quiet audience.
“Agent Morgan?” You let your own interest loose and looked right at him, making eye contact and holding it with piercing, alert brown eyes. “Do you believe that choices change the courses of our lives?”
He pondered it a moment, then nodded decisively. “I do. Yes. One thought, one idea, one feeling in the right place, time, or context can be enough to have someone stoned for treason or venerated as a saint. It could leave in a moment or it could persist and become an entire cultural revolution. Why?”
“Do you have any of those choices in your past?” You couldn’t help but ask and hope you weren’t going nosy.
Morgan weighed this thoughtfully. “Oh, yes. Most definitely.” He decided, and seemed content to say so. Then, even though you thought it had been implied that you wanted to know a bit more than just the yes or no answer, he picked up his phone and left.
You sucked on the inside of your cheek. You weren’t sure whether or not you were a huge fan or Morgan’s quick leave, but you did know that the role he had chosen for himself, as an FBI agent, would either fill quickly without him or leave a gap in his team that damaged their effectiveness.
Teams were like organisms, sometimes, except where Morgan’s was well-used to him and functioned like a well-oiled machine, Sofia was in the business of selling hers. There was something very poetic about how each of you used people and relationships to get where you needed to be, and for just a moment, you felt a hot flash of jealousy, because you wanted to claim a sense of belonging. You wanted to be able to say that you were required and comfortable.
Except that was all very ridiculous and you shoved it aside as quickly as you could. Morgan had a pretty good life, from where you were standing, but that didn’t mean you wanted what he had. If you prioritized things like that, then you never would’ve run away with Neal in the first place. Right?
It was a nightmare come true.
You couldn’t convince yourself that Mozzie was lying, not after everything, not after hearing for yourself the recording of the gavel being banged.
You cried into Neal’s shoulder while he cradled you lovingly, shushing you softly and rubbing up and down your back the same way he did after you were hurt in Copenhagen and he couldn’t take you to the hospital for fear of both of you being caught. While your shoulders shook, he was admirably composed for a man who knew he was hugging his sister for the last time for at least four years.
“You should’ve let me do it,” you whimpered, digging your hands into his jacket. “I’m not eighteen for another few months. They might’ve charged me as a minor.”
“It’s a grand felony,” Neal gently corrected you, pushing your hair out of your face. “They’d have tried you as an adult. And you know I’d never let anything happen to you.”
“Like this is so much better,” you retorted. Despite that you were starting to argue, you still held tight to him. “You’re gonna be trapped in a cage and I’m gonna be alone.”
“You won’t,” he promised, rubbing a tear off of your face with an earnest, sentimental look on his face. “Mozzie and Kate will take care of you. Kate will make sure you’re not alone and Moz will keep you supplied with money, food, clothes – he has connections.”
You sniffed and looked deeply into his eyes, trying to memorize the blue and the youth in his face. You knew prison could change a person and couldn’t believe this would be your last opportunity to see your brother as you knew him now. “But they’re not you.”
His smile turned sad. “I know. I’m going to miss you, too, sweetie. We knew this could happen. I told you Burke was good.”
Good? Burke was taking your only family away. “I hope he goes to hell,” you spat hatefully.
Neal’s surprised and scolding expression was the only reason you felt even a little bit remorseful for saying it. He tilted your chin to look at him in the eyes and said firmly, “Hey, don’t go there. He’s a good man, he’s doing his job. He told the DA I cooperated once I was caught. If it wasn’t for him, I’d probably be doing ten.”
“I still hate him enough for the both of us, since you’ve clearly lost your mind.” You mumbled into his shirt, hugging him tightly again and wishing you could ignore that Neal wasn’t wearing one of the nice suits he loved.
He’d been forced to wear an outfit supplied by the Department of Justice instead.
A/N: This one took a while and was harder to write - it was mostly filler. I hope you enjoyed!
On the tags list are: @bestillmystuckyheart, @skeletoresinthebasement, @werewitchling, @1enchantedfantasy1, and @ragweed98!
