Here to Misbehave | S.R.

Ch. 26 | The Lonely

Summary: At the hospital there are many tears to be shed, but even more questions to be asked.

Content Warning: Guns, hospitals, death and dying mention, blood

—————————————————

Silence could mean many things in a hostage situation. At first, it was preferable; a sign that no one was being harmed. The quiet, relative calmness maintained the current body count.

But when the silence eventually broke, it rattled the earth. The second short spray of bullets was much closer to the door now. If Morgan had any longer to think, he would have held his phone to his ear to hear what Garcia was screaming into the receiver. There was no time to think, though, with his eyes trained on the doors in the hopes he would see Reid.

The SWAT team stopped dead in their tracks, trying to get a grasp of what they were about to walk into. The burst fire was too punctuated for it to have been a full scale assault. The silence settled over them again. Then all at once, a bottleneck of chaos blended SWAT and the sudden outpouring of hostages from the heavy double doors of the bank.

There was no Reid.

It wasn't even Garcia who alerted him of the fate of the people who didn't emerge. No, it was the last woman scrambling out of the doors holding a small child. Morgan rushed forward, fighting through the crowd in an attempt to get through to the inside.

"There's a bomb inside!" The woman yelled, but it seemed Morgan was the only one who could hear her. He didn't care about an explosive yet though, his mind zeroed in on the one confirmation he needed before he could care about anything else.

"Someone help, there's a girl in there! She was shot!"

Finally, Morgan had some information that he could work with. Unfortunately, it was the second to last thing he wanted to hear. With a deep breath, he turned back to see the medics scattering among the crowd of newly released hostages.

"We need medics inside!" He shouted over the fray. The woman, noticing that he was the only one listening, ran over to him with a wild look in her eyes.

"It was the girl who–" Her words caught in her throat, her breathing just as rapid as her heart, "Sh-She saved us! But they..."

"Is there a man with her?" Morgan interrupted, knowing it wasn't proper, but needing the answer before the paramedics reemerged.

"Yes!" She shouted back, clutching her baby tighter as one of the paramedics approached them. Morgan held up a hand to tell them to wait a moment longer, noticing that the woman was free of blood or other obvious injury.

"Yes..." She trailed off more quietly, "There was a tall man, with brown hair. There was a lot of blood but... I don't think it was his. He was trying to help her, I think."

That did very little to comfort him, but he still put on the calmest face he could and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Thank you. Please go with the paramedics, okay?"

The woman nodded blankly, clearly still shell-shocked from whatever she'd seen inside. Morgan's stomach knotted, his heart alternating between beating too hard and not at all.

He racked his brain to try and figure out if this was, in some way, his fault. After all, he had been aware of her being in there, and the fact that she was there with Reid. Hell, he'd even known there was some unknown. possibly relevant information in her past. Even if he found out now what was in those files, it was too late for the information to be useful.

And then, there was another commotion at the doors. The stretcher's white sheets staining red beneath the small, writhing figure currently screaming incoherently. While Morgan's eyes were on her, Hotch's were on Reid, who emerged wide-eyed and frantic. There was no hesitation before he bolted after the bed, jumping into the back of the ambulance and disappearing behind the doors.