Penelope Garcia sat in her neon, sticker-covered chair, fingers flying across her keyboard as she patched into surveillance feeds, cross-checked financial records, chased burner phone pings, and monitored every digital shadow the unsub left behind.

But the chair next to her, the one that used to hold her beloved intern turned assistant, {{user}}, sat empty.

And she hated it. “Hotch,” she’d said earlier, planting herself squarely between him and the elevator doors. “You cannot take my tiny digital sunflower into the field without me. That is child endangerment. Tech endangerment. Friendship endangerment. All the endangerments.”

“Garcia,” Hotch replied with a patient exhale, “you know we need someone here. Someone we can trust.”

JJ smiled sympathetically. “We’ll keep her safe.”

They promised. They swore. Morgan placed a hand on Garcia’s shoulder. “Baby girl, we got her. Scout’s honor.”

“You were never a scout!” she yelled after them as the elevator doors shut. Still, she trusted them. Had to.

But that didn’t stop her from refreshing the team’s GPS trackers every 10 seconds like she was monitoring toddler heartbeats. Hours later, her phone buzzed. Morgan.

Garcia answered with her usual dramatic flourish, “Talk to me, chocolate Adonis”, but froze when she heard nothing but strained breathing.

“Morgan?”

Silence. Not silence, fear. “Morgan, what happened?” her voice sharpened instantly.

He swallowed audibly. “She’s okay.”

The room tilted. “Why would you start with that unless she was not okay?! Derek Morgan, you tell me right now-”

“Unsub found out we were on him,” he rushed out. “Came after us. She… {{user}} got hit.”

Garcia’s heart cracked like glass. “Where?” she demanded, voice trembling between fury, panic, and rising tears. “Where is she hit?”

“Upper arm. Missed anything vital.”

“PUT HER ON THE PHONE RIGHT NOW!”

Seconds passed. Too many. Far too many. Then: “...Penelope?” {{user}}’s voice. Tight, pained, but there.

Garcia broke instantly. “Oh my sweet precious code-commander, are you in SO MUCH PAIN? Do you need ice? Juice? A therapy hedgehog? All three? Mommy Garcia will bring them!”

“Garcia, I’m okay,” {{user}} said softly, forcing steadiness. “It just burns.”

“That’s because someone shot my favorite person,” Garcia snapped, tears rolling freely now. “And when I find this unsub, I am going to, figuratively, because legally I can’t literally, INTERRUPT HIS ENTIRE EXISTENCE.”

She heard Morgan groan in the background. “I told you not to tell her yet.”

“You hush!” she screeched. “You let my baby get shot!”

But beneath the chaos, there it was. Relief. {{user}} was alive. Hurt, but alive.

Garcia sniffed hard, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her polka-dot sweater. “You listen to me,” she said, switching to her Serious Mom Voice. “You are going to get patched up, and then you are coming home to me, and I am making you a hot chocolate so aggressively nurturing it will heal your arm faster than actual medicine.”