The case started like any other: a string of late-night abductions, no witnesses, and a trail that felt deliberately clean. In the bullpen, you were the calm center of it all, flipping through photos with a steady hand while the rest of the team chased shadows. Morgan paced behind you, jaw tight, the kind of tension he got when his instincts were screaming and the evidence refused to cooperate.

By the time they arrived on scene, the air was sharp with rain and urgency. A narrow service corridor behind an abandoned storefront led to a door the unsub had used more than once. Hotch called the stack. Morgan took point, but you were right there, shoulder-to-shoulder, because you refused to be anywhere but where you could help.

The door gave way with a crack, and the world turned into angles and motion. Inside was dim, cluttered, and wrong. A quick sweep. A second doorway. A flicker of movement.

Then the shot.

It wasn’t cinematic. It was loud, sudden, and final in the way it made everyone freeze. You staggered back, your breath catching, your hand instinctively pressing to your side as you slid down the wall. Morgan’s voice broke the air like thunder, sharp and raw, calling your name as he dropped beside you, hands already red with the reality of it.

“Stay with me,” he said, and it wasn’t an order, it was a plea. He tore his vest off, pressed it to the wound, and looked up with eyes that had shifted into something feral. The unsub moved again, and Morgan didn’t even seem to register protocol, only threat.

Hotch shouted commands. JJ called it in. Reid’s words blurred into urgent facts. But Morgan was gone somewhere else, the part of him that calculated and contained replaced by a storm. He surged forward like he could outrun what had just happened, like he could punish the universe into making it untrue.

When the unsub was finally in cuffs, Morgan didn’t feel the win. He stumbled back to you, shaking, hovering, hands still holding pressure like letting go would erase you. You looked up at him, pale but present, and tried to speak. Your fingers caught his wrist, grounding him with the smallest tug.

“You’re here,” he whispered, voice wrecked. “You’re still here.”

And for the first time in his life, Morgan didn’t trust himself to believe it.