"-Shit! The pigs got in! Run boys!" Morgan heard the inmates yelling, fleeing from the kitchen just like Darling had planned as they stayed hidden in the freezer.
"We gotta move man! Leave the slut!" One of the coughing prisoners yelled at J-bone who was still looking for Darling even all the smoke and chaos.
"Damn it-" he shook his head and covered his mouth, following the inmates out when they heard more 'shooting', "-I'll be back for you bitch!"
"Sure you will sweetheart" Darling whispered sarcastically to herself, counting 30 seconds before opening the door carefully, the eggy smoke coated smell immediately hitting them and making Morgen cover his mouth with a gag.
"What the hell did you put in those eggs? How did you know that would work-"
"Shush your mush before they come back- let's go this way" Darling whispered, taking his hand and pulling them out of the freezer along the wall to the door, struggling to see in the tear gas like smoke, but with more eggs, "now I need you to shout exactly what I say."
"What?"
"Trust me" she nodded, glancing over the counter at the prisoners who she needed to be further away for them to be in the clear.
"Okay, shout 'all units head into the A wing through the kitchen' in your big shot FBI voice" Darling ordered, grabbing a pan and scratching it with her acrylic nails so it made a fake sort of metallic radio sound before nodding to Morgan who looked all the more confused before yelling what she said, realising she was making him mimic a raid to move the inmates.
"'We have orders from the governor to kill any out of line inmates on sight and evacuate through main reception, abandon B wing.'"
After he followed her instructions again with confusion, they waited for a few moments, hearing the yelling and panic grow more distant as the inmates broke down the B wing door and ran that way.
"Wait-" Darling grabbed Morgan's arm as he went to open the kitchen door to check if it was clear, an uneasy feeling in her chest as if someone was waiting there to pounce at them- but it was too late, Morgan had already slightly opened the door that was then pushed all the way open, being jumped on by J bone- the only one who hadn't cleared out through the B wing exit.
"Ha!I ain't no fool! I knew that was a trick!" He yelled, smacking Morgan in the knee with a baton stolen from the officer, being hit in the face before he could defend himself or stop himself falling to his knees where J-bone's boot met his face.
"You look good on your knees, I wonder if that bitch of yours does as well" J-Bone mocked and went to punch Morgan, but a sudden weight on his back from Darling launching herself onto him without thinking stoped him mid swing.
"You bet your ass I do" she yelled, "but I don't get on my knees for a greasy rat man like you!"
"How about on your back then you little slut?" He tried to shake her off, grabbing her by the hair and throwing her over her shoulder, slamming her onto the metal kitchen island and instantly winding her with a pained yelp escaping her lips.
"Darling!" Morgan yelled with concern, pushing himself to his feet but J-bone turned and smacked him with the baton across the face and sent him to his knees once again.
He went to hit him a second time, but Morgan caught the baton mid swing, looking up at him with a suddenly overwhelmingly threatening expression and quick reflexes that startled J-bone as he stood up to his full height, wiping the blood from his nose and tilting his head down with a terrifying expression.
"My turn."
Before Morgan could throw his punch he was eager to get on with, a frying pan was smashed around the back of J-bone's head that sent him flying to the floor and revealed Darling who was knelt on the kitchen island holding said frying pan.
"God damn, who knew watching Tangled with Addie so many times would pay off?" She panted, looking up from the unconscious prisoner to Morgan who stared at her for a moment with a mixture of emotions; mostly shock.
"Jesus Derek, you couldn't have used your ridiculously scary reflexes when he jumped around the door? I think I can taste my spleen from how hard I hit that counter-" she hopped off the counter and looked up at him as she clutched her aching back.
"Did you just smack a guy over the head with a frying pan?!"
"Yeah?"
"After you built multiple egg bombs out of nothing?"
"Why are you recounting this?"
"And you put an egg timer in an oven to make it sound like bullets-"
"Oh okay I get it, you're in shock" Darling nodded and lent back on the counter as he shook his head with utter shock, "take a second to process it."
"How the hell did you know how to do that?"
"No time for explanations right now big guy- come on, we've got to go" Darling looked at the clock on the wall before looking back at the unconscious prisoner, "but I kinda feel bad about leaving him here, should I get him a blanket or something?"
"The guy just tried to kill us, slammed you onto a table, gave me a fair few shiners and you feel 'bad' about leaving him here without a blanket?!"
"I don't know! You know that my southern hospitality kicks in when I get overwhelmed!"
"We need to get to Hotch or find somewhere with phone signal" Morgan ordered almost to himself as they left the kitchen carefully back into the now empty dining haul, "and find out what the hell is going on here."
"We can't go through B wing, the prisoners went that way" Darling pointed out.
"I guess we'll have to go back through the A block, stay close just in case any of them are hiding this way" Morgan decided quickly, unlocking the inner cage cell doors and then leading them both through the cell shed as Darling walked behind him with her hand automatically on his arm, gripping him for safety.
He glanced back at her, now absent of her strange confidence she had when in the kitchen ordering him about, replaced by her very real fear of the taunts from those men settling in, being in this place, not knowing what was fully happening, not being able to be prepared.
As confusing as it was seeing her so confident in her plan moments go, he would take it a million times over seeing her like this, he hated seeing her unsure of herself, he hated seeing her so scared.
"Are you okay?" He whispered, making her look up at him and notice him watching her- quickly pulling her hands away from his arm when she realised she was holding him.
"Sorry, sorry I didn't mean to cling to you" she apologised and cleared her throat awkwardly.
"No, no- it's okay, you can hold onto me if you need to" he nodded, trying to hide how he himself was comforted knowing she was there by him.
"I don't need to" she looked at the ground and carried on walking, going to walk past him with false confidence but he held his hand out and stopped her- gesturing quietly to the open cell that they were about to pass, pausing them when he heard a groan of pain from inside.
Darling peered around the corner with concern before he could stop her, covering her own mouth to hide her gasp at what she saw.
"H-help me! Please come in here and help me miss!" Officer Kooper cried, seemingly bleeding out on the floor with a shank in his stomach to the point the handle was almost completely gone.
"Jesus Christ" Morgan said in shock whilst Darling immediately ran over into the cell before either of them could notice the shadow behind the bunk.
Suddenly, that shadow grew and the prisoner who it belonged to pushed Darling against the wall as Kooper got up, revealing with the broken shank that it was all an act.
"Darling!" Morgan yelled, running over but Kooper pulled the cell door shut and barred it just before he could get there.
"I-it's best just to let them do what they want, if you object then they'll hurt her more- I tried to stop them but this is how it has to be now, it's what they want" he spoke slowly, pulling up a sheet across the laundry line in the cell to block Morgan's sight of Darling who was yelling and trying to push the much larger man away from her, "we should at least give her some privacy."
"D-Derek!" Her screams muffled with the large hand over her mouth behind the curtain.
"Open this god damn door you wack job!" Morgan shook the bars, grabbing Kooper by the collar through the bars and slamming him against them before he could push away.
"B-Bill! Bill help me!" Kooper attempted to cry over his shoulder to the prisoner who was taunting Darling as he pinned her against the wall.
"It's been a long time since I got to do this to a lady" he whispered grossly, sniffing her hair and letting his hands explore over her clothes.
"That's not quite the flex you think it is" Darling attempted to squirm away as his hand dragged down her back before turning her, slamming her against the wall with one arm across her chest and the other unbuttoning her shirt.
"Get your grubby hands off me!" She yelled and struggled to no avail.
"B-Bill! Bill help me! He's hurting me!" They both heard Kooper yell again.
"I'm busy!" Bill yelled back, getting fed up of the buttons and yanking Darling's shirt open with a hungry grin at her bra.
"Oh I'm going to ruin you" he licked his lips.
"Don't you touch her! Do you fucking hear me?! Don't you lay a god damn hand on her you son of a bitch!" Morgan yelled, pure anger radiating through him as he shook the bars, feeling utterly helpless to stop her from getting hurt but needing to, a sudden rage bursting through his veins- knowing he would tear this prison down brick by brick if it meant she wouldn't get hurt.
Suddenly, he heard a new commotion from behind the curtain; yelling, shoving, a terrifying yelp of pain that surprisingly didn't come from Darling as the curtain was pulled down by a bloodied Bill stumbling back into it, smashing into Kooper and pushing him from holding the doors closed.
"Darling!" Morgan yelled as she pushed herself from the sink she had been thrown into after she bit Bill, blood trickling from her mouth down her neck towards her exposed bra as she ran towards Morgan, spitting out something from her mouth as she wiped the blood away with shaking hands and an automatic gagging from the taste of blood in her throat.
"T-that bitch bit my fucking nose off! Get her Kooper!" Bill yelled, going to grab Darling's hair but feeling Morgan's intense punch at his face instead, sending him toppling backwards into Kooper but slipping in his own blood and smashing his head on the wall.
Morgan tried to quickly take Darling's hand and help her out of the cell but Kooper grabbed her ankle first, dragging her down with a smashing of her head into the ground.
"Mother fu-" she scrambled across the floor, mumbling sarcastically to herself as she brawled with Kooper, "t-transfer to Virginia they said, it's safer there, it's just an office job they said-"
"Get off her!" Morgan yelled, kicking him in the face off Darling and dragging her to her feet.
"I have to do what they say! I need them to respect me! I need them to like me! Please! Just give her back!" Kooper cried as Darling and Morgan ran from the cell, pausing when they saw a few inmates stop at B wing door into the cafeteria and spot them, being alerted by Kooper and Bills yelling and heading towards the noise.
"Aye! It's the big chocolate heaven of my dreams" one of them licked their lips at Morgan whilst most of them yelled the majority of the objectifications at Darling.
"Oh shit! Look at that body on her! Get these doors open! I want to rip that bra off her with my bare teeth!"
"Shit, shit, shit- stay behind me Darl- Kooper has the keys, what do we do?" Morgan panicked towards the other exit as the inmates all tried to get through the opposite caged bars to get to them.
"No... no he doesn't" Darling panted, holding up bloodied keys and radio that she managed to pull from Kooper in the brawl on the floor.
"How the hell did you do manage to do that?!" Morgan asked in utter shock as she ran over to the gates, unlocking it with shaky, bloodied hands- which was when he noticed the tears stained on her face, the blood down her neck from literally biting the entire tip of of Bill's nose off, her top torn open and bra exposed-realising how terrified she now looked as she still managed to take control.
"L-let's get out of here!" Darling grabbed his hand as she managed to get the gates opened, swinging it shut and locking it behind them just as the prisoners broke through bars the other side of the room and ran at them- led by J-bone who had woken up in the kitchen thoroughly pissed off from the frying pan indent in the back of his head.
He growled and hit the bars as Darling backed up from it, Morgan taking the keys and opening the door behind them.
"Don't think I won't get to you Darling, these bars won't be able to hold all of us pounding at it for long- much like you won't either" he snarled at her, looking down her body and licking his lips whilst Morgan ran out of the door, expecting her to be right behind him but she was frozen staring at J-bone.
Her body wouldn't move, her mind span, everything became intensely overwhelming to the point she physically couldn't move herself- scared that if she looked away from J-bone or the other prisoners jumping at the bars that they would suddenly be in there with her.
"Darling! Let's go!" Morgan yelled, grabbing her arm and pulling her through the door that he slammed behind him it.
"Jesus Christ- that situation went from 0 to 100 real fast" he shook his head breathlessly before looking over at Darling who just stared at the door, the severity of what just happened hit her.
"Holy mother of fucking Jesus" she finally spoke, stumbling back into Morgan who was already behind her to catch her.
"It's okay, you're okay, it's okay" he tried to comfort.
"I-it's okay, I'm okay, it's okay" she repeated frantically to try to convince herself with his words as he held her with his hands looped under her arms, looking down at her, only now fully realising her top had been torn open, the buttons missing and half of it ripped completely in two from Kooper grabbing her.
"Hey, here-" Morgan cleared his throat and took off his overshirt that was on top of his t-shirt, handing it to her as he stepped back.
"W-what? What for?" Darling looked confused at him for a moment before seeing his gaze awkwardly drop to gesture at her chest for her before turning around to give her privacy.
"Oh shoot- I liked this shirt, oh, uh, sorry for making you look at my boobs" she apologised with a chuckle through sniffles, taking off her blouse and buttoning up his shirt that was rather oversized.
"No problem" Morgan couldn't help laughing, something that seemed to be able to happen around Darling even in the most intense and severe situations.
"At least I picked a good day to wear my nice bra- which is now covered in blood" she pulled the oversized shirt from her to look down at the blood infused with the lace of her bra and the blood on her extra high waisted waistband of her wide legged trousers.
"How the hell did you manage to bite the tip of a guy's nose off by the way?"
"I don't know, I just panicked and I guess I got strong chompers" Darling shrugged, wiping her mouth properly with her torn blouse, getting the blood and tears off her face, "it was not a pleasant experience though."
"I assume not" Morgan chuckled, placing his hands on her shoulders and looking down at her with a tilting of his head, "hey- are you okay? That must have been a really scary situation."
"It..." she shook her head before clearing her throat and forcing a smile, "I'm okay."
"Darling-" he tried to say but the door next to them jolted slightly with someone throwing themselves at it.
"Oh shit- they've gotten through" Morgan instinctively pushed Darling behind him but she had already grabbed his arm in fear as the person banged on the door to try to break it down.
He looked around the hallway and grabbed her hand, locking his fingers around hers so he knew she was there, that she was okay, that she was with him, "this way."
They ran down the corridor towards the main entrance but stopped in their tracks when they saw more prisoners in the reception area, all throwing things about and taunting the officers they had tied up.
Morgan thought fast and quickly grabbed Darling, twisting them both behind a wall as one of the prisoners turned around and almost spotted them, his body flush against hers.
Darling couldn't help her surprised gasp as Morgan pinned her to the wall, his hand quickly covering her mouth as he pressed his body over hers and listened out to see if the prisoners had spotted them, waiting for a few moments until they seemed to be in the clear and he let a small breath of relief out, glancing down at her but pausing with a double take at her expression that was not what he expected.
Her hands were on his elbows almost pulling him to her instead of out of fear, her gaze flicking down his face momentarily to his lips before she seemed to snap out of whatever emotion Morgan couldn't quite read on her face and looked next to them to a door.
"T-this way" she ducked under his arm and pushed it open without thinking past the confusing blush on her cheeks.
"Wait-" Morgan tried to stop her but it was too late; the door opened and an alarm rang out.
"Shit!" Darling yelled, running down the corridor through the door with Morgan running behind her after he tried to open the door up again but it was suddenly locked, "what kind of door in a prison is left alarmed and unlocked and then locks when it is opened?!"
The answer came when they stopped in front of a sign underneath a flickering buzzing light that read; 'psych ward for the criminally insane.'
That was also when they realised that the doors inside said psych ward were all open to the double locked padded rooms surrounding them.
"Uh oh this doesn't look good" Darling stared at the blood in multiple now empty rooms.
"I'll try to call Hotch" Morgan took the radio and focused on trying to connect the frequencies.
"Locked in with the criminally insane... great, that's just... great" Darling swallowed her fear and felt a hand on her shoulder from behind, going to take comfort in her friend's hand once again but soon realising that Morgan was stood next to her not behind her, turning quickly to see a strange man in a broken straight jacket staring down at her with his hand on her shoulder.
"H-holy mother of-" she stammered at the blood splattered all over his jacket, the intestines of someone else in his other hand and the needle stabbing into his eye- presumably by the nurse who's intestines he had ripped out, but he didn't seem one bit bothered by it.
Darling swallowed her fear and grabbed Morgan's hand to get his attention instead of screaming like every part of her was telling her to do.
"You okay?-" He turned from the radio, staring in shock at the man behind Darling and his grip on her shoulder.
"Will you be my friend?" The man asked in a childish voice that didn't quite match his body or size.
Darling gave Morgan a panicked 'get him off me' look that could very well be compared to an arachnophobe having a spider on their shoulder.
"Hey there buddy, do you think you could let her go so we can talk?" Morgan tried to speak calmly to the strange man who wouldn't look at him in the eyes, but he thought it more strange that he almost recognised the man but couldn't quite place where from.
"I want her to be my friend."
"What the hell? What the hell? What the hell?" Darling mouthed to Morgan who hushed her and gave a fake smile to the man, going into full negotiation tactics from his bomb squad leader years.
"I know, but you have to let her go and then she'll be your friend- won't you Darling?" He prompted, she stared at him with an outraged expression he would normally laugh at but just gave her a 'trust me, go along with it' look.
"Y-yeah, I mean yes of course I want to be your friend" Darling looked over her shoulder with a forced smile at the man who tilted his head at her.
"You're pretty."
"O-oh thanks, uh, you're... pretty too?" She tried to say anything to stop him from potentially having her guts in his other hand.
"You think I'm pretty?" The man's blank face turned into a smile that didn't quite seem like it belonged to him, far too wide for his face, toothy and pure like a child's with a wicked twist that came from age.
Darling nodded up at him, words flooding out of fear before she could stop her rambling "v-very pretty. You have, uh, nice eyes- or I mean, a nice eye."
Morgan couldn't help his shocked snicker at her ramblings about the man's needle filled eye before clearing his throat when the inmate suddenly stared at him.
"Don't laugh at my friend" he threatened.
"I-I wasn't, I swear."
"She's my friend, you will not be mean to her- she is my friend" he dropped the intestines, placing that other hand on Darling's shoulder and yanking her away from Morgan.
"Okay, okay- she's your friend" Morgan spoke calmly to try to resolve the situation and get Darling away from him, "but you can't grab friends like that- or she won't want to be your friend."
"What?!" The man grew angry.
"Not helping Derek" Darling said between gritted teeth as the man's grip grew.
"S-sorry, sorry, I didn't mean it like that-"
"You don't want to be my friend!?" The man yanked Darling around to face him and shook her, "why not?!"
"N-no I do! He just misspoke, I promise I do! We're friends, you and I are friends of course-" She tried to reason but his anger was growing now and she had to do something to stop it.
Morgan watched her step closer and wrap her arms around the man's waist in a hug, getting covered in the blood from his straight jacket not to mention the blood coating his hands.
"W-what are you doing?"
"Hugging you- that's what friend's do, is that okay?" She tried to stop her voice shaking from hugging a literal insane criminal covered in guts who clearly had the ability to do the same to her if she said the wrong thing.
The man faltered for a moment before hugging her back, his cold bloodied hands pulling her closer to him.
"I haven't 'hugged' anyone before" he spoke with puzzlement, "it's... nice, am I doing it right?"
Darling nodded unconvincingly before clearing her throat, "yeah, yep- you're a great hugger."
"Darling step away from him" Morgan's concern took over his rational thinking but she hushed him to stop the man she was reluctantly hugging from getting angry again.
He didn't know what to do, everything he had tried to do to de-escalate the situation only seemed to make it worse; he was trying to think as a profiler agent but also too clouded by trying to make sure Darling was okay which seemed to be making him make the wrong decisions.
"I'm okay Derek, you work on the radio whilst I talk to- what's your name?" Darling asked the man.
"My name?"
"Yes, my name is Darling- what is your name?"
He fell quiet for a moment before answering with shame to his voice, "I'm... I'm not sure."
There was a silence before Darling spoke with her usual friendly tone, "that's okay sugar, that just means you get to pick a new one."
He looked down at her with puzzlement before nodding, that same childish grin coming back that told Morgan he did not have the mentality of a 40 year old looking man- more of a 13 year old boy who had been heavily medicated day after day for his psychotic tendencies so much that he didn't remember his own name.
"Will you help me pick it?" He asked down at Darling.
"Of course I can."
"How did you pick your name?"
"Well I didn't get to pick mine like you will, my mama did that when I was a baby."
"Why did she pick the name Darling then? That's a very silly name" the man said matter of factly which she chuckled slightly at.
"She named me after the last name of a country singer that she loved, Helen Darling her name was" she explained as Morgan listened in too, he didn't know that about her but the fact made him smile, knowing the name he always thought suited her well came from something her mother loved.
"Okay... who is your favourite singer?" The man asked.
"Mine? Oh I don't know, I do love a bit of Cher-" Darling fell into her usual people skills that always amused Morgan at how she could naturally jump into a conversation with anyone like they had been friends for years, knowing that she could make anyone feel comfortable with how open she seemed with her friendly smile and ramblings- just a natural warmth and extraverted bubbliness to her that even a place like this didn't seem to dampen.
"-and you can't go wrong with a bit of Elton John, of course Beyonce has always been an all time favourite" Darling continued.
"Beyonce? Like the lady in Dream girls? They play that movie at break time a lot" the man pointed out which made Darling chuckle.
"Yes it is sugar, just like dream girls."
"Sugar?" The man tilted his head, "you've called me that twice now, what does it mean?"
"Oh I apologise, it's just a friendly sort of pet name used a lot where I'm from as a term of endearment" she smiled, he slowly nodded with puzzlement as he mulled it over before smiling.
"I like it- that is my name now."
She tilted her head, "you want your name to be sugar?"
"Yes- because you called me it, and you're my friend."
Darling let a small, but still cautious, smile appear on her face and nodded, "okay then Sugar, do you think you can let me step back?"
He hadn't realised his hands had been gripping the back of her shirt so she wouldn't move but he shook his head.
"You're going to leave me if I do."
"No I won't, I... I promise you, and I always keep to my promises, it's a rule of mine" she smiled up at him, "here, look-"
Morgan watched as she lifted her hand and held it out, "-you can hold my hand, that way you'll know I'm still here but we don't have to stay in the hug."
"But I like the hug" he frowned.
"But what makes a hug so special is that it ends, you can't enjoy something fully unless there's an ending for you to appreciate it" Darling spoke knowingly, "but the end of something doesn't mean it can't happen again, it's like a goodbye when you know you will reunite again; it hurts and it's sad to say goodbye but you know the hello will be all the more worth it because you had to live with the pain of that goodbye. There's always the option for another hug, another hello, another goodbye with a hello to follow."
Morgan soaked in her words and read into them more than he intended to, tilting his head at her as he watched 'Sugar' step back, taking her hand with reluctance to leave the hug.
"You've got blood on you" Sugar made a grossed out face at Darling who's face had speckles of blood on it as well as down her shirt and on her arms from the embrace.
"It seems I do" she chuckled and tried not to focus on the intestines on the floor or the fact they had just been in the hand of the man she was holding and she tried not to vomit at- it wasn't like this kind of thing was her usual day to day life.
"I didn't do that" he followed her gaze and explained, "I found them and wanted to return them to whoever lost them."
She looked up at him with puzzlement but believed him and nodded with a small smile of concern, "what happened to your eye?"
His one good eye seemed to darken with pain for a moment as a deep sadness went through him, "Doctor Kelly... she didn't want to be my friend when the alarms went off before- she hurt me."
"I'm... I'm sorry that she hurt you" Darling still didn't understand how he was so not bothered by the pain of a needle jabbed into his eye but realised that he must be heavily medicated.
He went to speak but a scream and cackle of laughter was heard down the corridor that he seemed immune to as he watched Darling jump from it.
"You're scared" he said matter of factly.
"W-what?" She looked at him.
He scanned her face for a moment before nodding as if he decided something, "I will protect you, I will tell them not to hurt you."
"Pardon?"
Morgan looked away from the radio with a shared confusion at Darling and the man.
"You are my friend, I will protect you; the other's in here won't hurt you when I'm with you" he nodded before looking past her at Morgan.
"Who is he?"
"He's my friend" Darling looked over at Morgan- neither of them expecting this interaction to go this way at all when the man first grabbed Darling.
"Your friend? I thought I was your friend?" The man suddenly seemed angry, very much not liking the idea of that.
"She meant that I'm her boyfriend, you're her friend, her only friend" Morgan quickly lied, seeing Sugar's grip on Darling's hand increase.
"Boyfriend..." Sugar played with the word on his tongue that he didn't understand as Darling prayed he would believe Morgan's lie when the man's grip on her hand slowly increased.
"What is a boyfriend?"
"Y-yes, my boyfriend; it's, uh... oh okay, it's like a friend that you can kiss- like... okay, like Jimmie and Lorrell in Dream Girls but without the affair" she tried to explain, he tilted his head before nodding slowly.
"Can he be my boyfriend too?" He suddenly asked Darling who almost snorted with a surprised laugh but just cleared her throat and nodded, "y-yeah sure, I mean of course."
Morgan gave her a 'what the hell is happening?' look of confusion before the man looked at him and he forced a smile.
"Hello boyfriend" Sugar smiled, not knowing what a 'boyfriend' was really.
"Hi?" Morgan gave an awkward wave.
"What do you have there?" Sugar nodded at the radio.
"It's a radio, to talk to our frie- I mean, to talk to someone who can help us" he explained, careful of his words, "but it's broken."
"A radio? Like what they have in the locked area? With the wires and speakers?" Sugar asked.
Darling and Morgan exchanged glances and nodded at each other before Darling turned to Sugar with a spark of a plan.
"Do you think you could take us to this locked area Sugar? It would mean an awful lot."
"Okay" he smiled simply and started walking them down the corridor like it was a casual stroll despite the screams and cries all around them from various corridors that sent chills down Darling's spine until Sugar led them to the end of a particularly dark corridor where a row of bars separated them from the other side of the ward.
"Here we are."
"What's in there?" Morgan asked.
"That's where we go when we're not good, we don't get rooms in there; we just have to sit in our corners" he seemed to shudder, "even the doctors don't come in, but past it at the end of the corridor is the computer room with the radio- Doctor Kelly ran down there to call for help after... after she hurt me, but Greg went in too and I think he... got her before she made it to that door."
Darling gave a comforting squeeze of his hand before looking at Morgan and mouthing 'what do we do?'
"I'm not sure; even if we could pry open these bars, the door down there looks like it's a keycard that we don't have" he sighed and rubbed his head as Darling nodded before she started to think out loud again, seeming to fall back into the way she acted in the kitchen, her mind running at rapid speed that Morgan hadn't seen fully before.
"Okay... okay let me think, we could pry it open and then attempt to knock down the door but then we have to deal with the people in there and not having a bar door to lock anymore. Or! Okay we get through these bars, we go through the ceiling tiles, if we could get up there and then down the other side of that door- but how can we be sure someone isn't in there? Come on, think Darling-"
Morgan knew that she was smarter than most people thought despite her often trying to hide it; the woman had gone to high school almost 5 years early for her age for Christ sakes, of course he knew she was smarter than she was letting on.
It had taken him years to find out about her intensely high IQ and he knew she was an overthinker despite how relaxed she seemed all of the time- and even him finding out about her IQ was an accident because they were playing a drinking game and she accidentally let it slip out when she got too tipsy.
Her mind was always running; always examining everything like she was taking it apart and putting it back together, always trying to understand and fix things in the most logical way.
He didn't know until a few years prior that she was being heavily medicated to try to block off that over analysing part of her brain, to try to slow her intelligence that brought a plethora of mental health issues that she never talked about.
She was always just 'happy go lucky Darling,' too 'ditsy' to have a care in the world let alone always be thinking about the world and its many, many problems and possible solutions every second of the day.
He had only found out because he was visiting her and her medication got delivered to her apartment when just he was in.
It had caused an argument between them of sorts; he didn't understand why she was trying to 'get rid' of that part of her, why she was trying to deny that she had intelligence- once again bringing up the college argument from years ago that, like most of their arguments, was never resolved.
He didn't know, however, just how painfully exhausting that was mentally on her.
Because she had never told him, and she never planned to.
Until he found her pill bottle and the argument broke out...
"-Why? Just tell me why Darling? Is it because of what your dad and brother's think of your IQ?" Morgan followed her into her bathroom as she put the bottle in her cabinet, "you shouldn't be medicated-"
"I have no shame in my medication" she dismissed him, "and it's awful judgey of you to look down at me for taking medication by the way."
"There is no shame in medication Darl, I'm not saying that but there is a shame in doing it to push an incredible gift of yours away and numb yourself with this stuff, it's such wasted potential-" he started to rant but she swiftly turned to him and snapped.
"A gift?!" She suddenly yelled- something she rarely did at him- and then laughed sarcastically, something she often did.
"This isn't some kind of a gift Derek; it's a god damn nightmare to live with!"
He tilted his head with confusion both at her yelling and her words, going to speak but she carried on.
"You really don't get it, do you? God I thought that the 'big shot profiler' would have been able to figure it out after all of these years" she shook her head and tore open her medicine cabinet full to the brim of empty pill bottles.
"Let me explain it to you then; I was first put on this one at 7 years old when I tried to kill myself because I couldn't figure out how to solve world peace and my brain wouldn't let me rest until I did, these pills don't do anything anymore so I have to keep changing prescriptions again and again when my brain becomes used to it. This one I was put on when I checked myself into the hospital two days after prom because I was calculating how many years I'd get in prison if I was found with the bottle of vodka that I drank all night to stop my brain trying to focus on everything at once and making me do nothing at the same time to a debilitating degree. Oh and this one! This one was from when I tried to figure out how to stop Tobias doing drugs by doing them myself and then trying to find a cure for the side effects for 10 days straight without sleeping or eating- but guess what? My stupid brain didn't feel a thing from literal tranquillisers! So I had to take myself to the hospital yet again and get them to sedate me to stop me explaining my calculations."
He stared in shock as she grabbed old pill bottle after pill bottle she had saved over the years to keep track of what didn't work anymore and threw them at his feet.
"So don't tell me it's a god damn gift that I'm throwing away by just trying to live and be a normal human who's brain goes so fast that one day it might literally self-combust running through every possibility to any single problem ever! Do not tell me that when it has ruined my life and I have been the only one doing anything to stop it; not my dad who tried to beat the brain out of me, not my brothers who hide how scared of me they are, not even you who didn't notice when I've been at my absolute limit and kept encouraging me to keep pushing myself. Becoming 'wasted potential' is a dream for me Derek! To look back at my life and think; 'damn, I didn't try to do anything at all' would be everything I could ever want if I could just get my god damn brain to shut up and not run at light speed I'd be so god damn happy. So you sit up on your unmedicated high horse with your perfectly fine brain and judge me all you want but I have been doing this for years all on my own, looking after myself and when all I want to do is let go, I force myself to stay and find a solution to live with this brain because I deserve to live not in pain! I am not ashamed; not for not going to college where I know I would have pushed myself to the breaking point, not for getting the help I deserve, not for living my own damn life how I want to instead of how you think I should!"
A silence swept through the bathroom, pill bottles on the floor by their feet, a sense of bubbling between them that hadn't been talked about before and just pushed away like they usually did- just the start of secrets revealed to Morgan by someone he thought shared everything with him like he did her.
"If you're not ashamed of taking them... then why didn't you tell me?" He asked quietly with tears in his eyes, holding onto that resentment like grasping for straws when all he wanted to do now was apologise and pull her into a hug, apologising for not noticing all of these years, to just hold her and somehow take the pain away which he knew wasn't possible.
But instead of doing that he just held onto that selfish bitterness that he knew wasn't fair, that he knew wasn't him.
She looked up at him and for the first time he thought he saw something he had never seen in her eyes when she looked at him- a hint of hatred, disappointment in what he said, and more so what he didn't say.
"Because Derek, this isn't about you."
"I can't help being upset thinking about you going through that all alone and not telling me about it Darling" he shook his head, she gritted her teeth and spoke before walking past him coldly.
"Then don't think about it."