Archive of Our Own

Morgan scans their surroundings, assessing and cataloging the scene piece by piece. 

She’s taking in the graffiti left by the taggers, her head cocked to the side, when Karadec’s voice catches her attention. 

“I think I see a propane torch,” he says.

She looks away from the art, turning her head over her shoulder. He’s crouched down, peering through an open space in the makeshift fort made from the skeleton of wooden crates and flattened cardboard boxes over top. 

As he inches forward, closer to his find, Morgan’s gaze trails upward and latches onto a glove suspended from above by a long piece of string. It’s distended, but it doesn’t look right. It’s filled with something, and it’s not air; it’s too weighed down for that. 

There’s a propane torch, and flammable materials, and a glove filled with—

Shit. 

“Karadec, wait,” she rushes out, arm outstretched as if she’d be able to stop his reaching hand in time. She can’t know for sure, but it’s her most educated guess and she’s not willing to risk the alternative, so… “There’s gasoline in that glove. The whole place is gonna blow up.”

He stills, and then very slowly backs out of his spot. He looks around, taking in the scene the same way she just did; she watches his eyes move from the propane torch, to the wooden structure of the fort, up to the liquid-filled glove hanging above it. 

She can feel her pulse thumping beneath her skin. 

“Morgan, get out of here.”

She physically recoils at the command. “What? No,” she protests without a second thought. “I’m not leaving you. Whatever you need to do, it’ll get done twice as fast if we do it together.” 

He doesn’t even entertain the suggestion. 

“I’m right behind you,” he assures her instead, but his voice is tight when he says it. It’s less a promise and more of a placation and she knows that. 

“Be right beside me,” she counters. Holding her ground, she plants her heels and arches her brows at him. “If I’m leaving, you’re coming with me.” 

He turns around, eyeing the gasoline-filled glove with a twitch of his nose, and then looks back at her. There’s desperation in his eyes when he repeats, “Go. Morgan, please.” 

His voice breaks around the plea, a shaky sound she’s never heard come out of his mouth. It knocks her off balance, her stance softening. 

She wants to push back, but she knows he isn’t going to back down when it comes to her safety, and as badly as she wants to tell him that his safety matters too, staying here to argue is just going to waste more time they don’t have.

So, against her better judgment, she bites down on the inside of her cheek and sighs. 

“You better be right behind me.”

Karadec gives a curt nod, but he doesn’t say anything to assure her this time. His jaw is tight, lips pursed. There’s a grave expression on his face that he tries to mask with neutral determination. It would probably work, too, if she didn’t know him so well. 

“Stop that.”

“What?” he asks, a furrow between his brows. 

“Looking at me like you’re never going to see me again.”

“Morgan…”

With a shake of her head, she cuts him off. “Right behind me, partner.” 

She won’t accept any platitudes. He doesn’t even nod this time. There’s a crackle in the air and he wills her out with another urgent, “Get out of here.”

Morgan stares at him for another too-long moment. Words claw their way into her throat and die there, stuck beneath a lump of dread, and she swallows it all down before she finally turns away. 

The heels on her boots echo as she runs, each step thudding in time with the racing of her heart. The door to the stairwell sticks, and she has to slam her body against the push bar until it swings open and crashes against the wall. She sprints down the stairs, all the while listening for familiar footfalls behind her. 

I’m right behind you.

They never come. Her labored breathing is the only other thing she hears.

Morgan reaches the bottom floor, her legs carrying her the final few feet until she’s rushing out through the front door. She pauses for a second, both hands on her waist as her lungs attempt to expand against her ribs. 

She’s still trying to catch her breath when the world shifts around her. 

There’s a deafening boom, the sound of windows shattering and concrete splintering into pieces. It shakes the ground beneath her and it rattles her chest. The force of it has her doubling over, her arms raised to protect her head against the debris.

The sounds are sharp, an intense clash of glass and stone, and she doesn’t realize her eyes are squeezed shut until she has to peel them back open. She can hear the blood rushing in her ears as she begins to right herself, her back slowly straightening out. 

Everything is in slow motion as Morgan turns to look at the building she’d exited less than a minute ago, now a horrifying glow of flames and dark billowing smoke. 

Frozen in place, her feet rooted to the concrete, she can do nothing for a few seconds but stare in shocked, disbelieving silence at the carnage before her. The windows are blown out, more fire and smoke escaping the gaping holes the explosion left. 

And then her stomach drops. Eyes scanning the front of the building, she searches furiously for any indication that Karadec got out at the last second. 

But there’s nothing. No sign of him. Nothing is out here with her except pieces of wood still on fire, fractured chunks of glass, and rubble from the crumbled concrete. 

No, no, no.

She doesn’t even stop to think before she starts running, this time back in the direction of the building. As she rushes inside there’s a blip of a thought about possible structural damage and the odds that the rest of the building collapses in on itself, but it’s knocked out of place by the more pressing thought of Karadec lying somewhere among the chaos in need of help.

The air gets thicker the further inside she gets, the heat intensifying as she gets closer to the origin of the explosion. Visibility in the stairwell is near zero, black smoke filling the confined space; she squints through it, using one hand to feel her way up while she burrows her face into the crook of her other elbow to minimize her smoke inhalation. 

Remembering the state of the door, Morgan braces herself as she rams her shoulder into the push bar. It takes a few tries, the heat kissing her bare skin, before it gives way. She stumbles through, letting out a strangled, “Fuck,” when her ankle rolls on a displaced block of concrete and gives out beneath her. 

On the ground, Morgan takes a few long, unsteady breaths. Her ankle throbs, but she can’t even think about taking her boot off to assess the damage right now. 

She squints up at the doorway she’d just come through. The hinges are compromised and the door itself teeters off-center.

Pushing herself up, she decides the shooting pain is the least of her worries. She doesn’t want to be sitting in the line of fire should the door break free of the hinges and collapse. She takes an experimental step, immediately hissing the second any weight is put on her ankle. 

She has no choice but to breathe through it, keeping her focus on Karadec instead of the sharp twinge that ignites with each step. As best as she can, she rushes through the hall until she sees the wide, tarp-hidden entryway at the end of the corridor. 

She can’t run, but she does hobble as quickly as physically possible. Flinging back the plastic, the scene before her has her eyes widening. 

The room is in complete shambles. 

The wind blows the black smoke back in through the giant holes in the walls, and her eyes begin to water. Support beams are bent under the pressure, the remains of the graffiti on the walls are cracked, the images splitting where the concrete’s separated in the blast, and there’s splattered colors all over from the paint cans getting tossed out of place.

She moves slowly, Karedec’s name scratching its way from her throat. 

“Karadec,” she shouts over the hissing of the flames. 

She takes another hesitant step, and the spot where she’d last seen him is nothing more than a pile of debris. The tower of boxes is no longer, the pieces of cardboard strewn all over the room, alight. The pieces of the wooden crates are torched, the blaze still going despite half of its kindling turning into nothing more than blackened ash. 

Bile churns low in her gut.  

Her throat burns. “Karadec!” 

Breathing quickening, she scans every inch of space she can. Her vision is blurry and distorted, the press of tears mixing with the sting of the smoke. 

There’s something on the ground, peeking out from behind the opposite side of the remains of the crates. She thinks it’s another piece of the rubble, a chunk of concrete broken off from the window frame or something, but as her vision settles she realizes it’s much, much worse. 

It’s a shoe. 

Morgan crosses the room much faster than her ankle should allow, barely dodging the flame-lit pieces of debris. She’s not concerned about that right now, because Karadec is laid out on the concrete. 

She drops to her knees beside him, hovering, because there are slabs of wood covering his body. It looks like was standing too close—why the hell was he standing so close?—and got blown back by the explosion with a cluster of the wooden crates. 

Ignoring the small sparks that continue to burn, she carefully moves them off of him one by one. The wood is searing to the touch but she doesn’t stop until she frees him from the debris. It’s not until she gets to one of the final pieces that she realizes there’s blood. 

Her heart drops.

There’s a small piece of wood, broken off and embedded into the right side of his abdomen, just below his ribs. Surrounding the piece of impaled wood is a pool of blood.

She doesn’t dare touch it. As badly as she wants to remove it, she knows that it’s stemming the blood loss right where it is. If she pulls it out, he could bleed out. She also doesn’t know if it’s puncturing anything vital.

“Karadec,” she rasps, one hand falling to his chest and the other pressing two fingers to his neck. Her palm rises beneath his breath and there’s a thready pulse beneath her fingertips. 

She lets out a wet, relieved sob. He’s breathing steadily, so at the very least she’s confident that the wood hasn’t pierced a lung.

He’s unconscious, and he’s injured, but he’s alive.

Neither of them will be for much longer, however, if she doesn’t get them out of here. She does a cursory assessment of him for other outward signs of injury. 

His clothes are singed and covered in soot from the charred wood, and there are dustings of the dirt on his face. There’s a gash along his temple, the blood trickling into his hairline, and she winces at the sight of it. Carefully, she slides her hand to the back of his head, pressing lightly along the crown. 

It’s wet. Sticky. 

Her stomach bottoms out when she pulls her hand away and there’s blood on her fingers. She knew it was almost certain, but confirmation that he hit his head doesn’t make her feel better.

“Karadec, come on,” she whispers, leaning down over him. 

Her other palm cups his cheek. She pats gently; not a smack, just a little tap to try to rouse him. 

Nothing. 

“Hey. Adam.” Tap, tap. “I need you to wake up, okay?” Another tap. No response. “Karadec, please. I—I don’t know what to do, I don’t—I’m not—”

Her voice cracks as the panic begins to creep in. 

Karadec’s unconscious. Her phone is in the car. She doesn’t trust the state of her ankle or the integrity of the building, especially the stairs, to make it outside and back up here again. She’s not weak, but she’s certainly not strong enough to lift all 200 pounds of his dead weight, not when she can barely move herself and especially not with the condition he’s in.

Her breathing starts to come in short, choppy bursts as her eyes water. She settles back onto her haunches, presses a palm to her heart, and closes her eyes as she takes a few deep breaths. 

She needs to calm the vibrating. The buzzing. The cinching of her lungs. 

Neither of them can afford for her to break down right now. Karadec got her through it last time, the steadiness of his breathing, his heart rate, but he’s the one who needs her now. 

She imagines the hug, the rhythm of his heart beating against hers. The warmth of his breaths against her neck. The comforting weight of his palms against her back. 

Morgan inhales through her nose, and then a slow release of breath through her mouth. She repeats this a few times, and then her eyes flutter open. When she blinks a tear slips over her cheek, and she brushes it away.

Okay. Think. 

She can’t pick him up, and she can’t go get her phone to call for help. But Karadec had his phone on him when they got here, she knows this. He always has his on him. 

And his phone is… she doesn’t see his phone. She pats him down, doesn’t feel a phone in any of his pockets. Looking around, she scans the immediate vicinity, and she sees it on the concrete a few feet away. It must’ve flung out when he was blown back by the blast. 

She leans her weight onto her right knee, ignoring the sting of glass as it digs into her skin, and stretches, reaching out to grab it. In her grip, shaky fingers fumble to try to unlock it, but the screen is black. There’s a long crack down the middle of the glass, and it doesn’t wake up when she taps the screen. 

A hysterical sound escapes her throat as she puts the phone back onto the concrete, her palm still cradling it. 

“You were supposed to be right behind me,” she tells him, her voice thin and gravely. Tears fill against her waterline and she covers her mouth with her hand. 

Something falls from the ceiling—a piece of the ceiling, she thinks—and lands just to her right, between the two of them. Morgan doesn’t hesitate to put herself between Karadec and any more loose pieces of ceiling, folding her body over his to cover him. 

“It’s okay,” she whispers, either to herself or to Karadec. She isn’t sure. Face pressed into his chest, her eyes close. “It’s okay. I’m not leaving you.”

She doesn’t know how long she stays there, huddled with an unconscious Karadec and flinching every time something else crackles, before she hears voices. She thinks they’re in her head at first, until her ears catch up and she hears the distinctive sound of sirens. 

“Anyone up here?” someone shouts.

Morgan’s heart picks up. “We’re in here!”

The relief at seeing a group of firemen come into view nearly bowls her over. One of the men rushes toward her, but she shakes her head.

“I’m fine,” she says, before he even has a chance to get a word in. “Help him.”

His eyes travel the length of her. “Ma’am, we really should—”

“Him first,” she cuts in. “Please. I’m fine, he’s unconscious, impaled, and I think he hit his head pretty bad. The back of his crown is bleeding.”

His blood is still on her fingers. They begin to shake. 

When it becomes clear that she won’t allow anyone to check her out until they tend to Karadec first, the men surround him. There’s no gurney, but a few men come in with a backboard and they load him onto it, securing his neck in a brace and buckling him in with two large straps, mindful of the protruding piece of wood. 

Morgan finally stands, only remembering her ankle when it buckles under her weight.

“Shit,” she hisses. 

One of the firemen is at her side in a second, an arm around her waist to help shift some of the weight off of her ankle. She refuses to leave first, insisting that they carry Karadec out of there ahead of them. He needs help the quickest, but she also doesn’t want to have to leave him. 

If he goes first, she can still keep an eye on him. 

“We need to move,” one of the firemen says just as a large piece of concrete wall crumbles and falls to the pavement outside. “Now.”

Morgan and her fireman make it a few steps before she doubles over, the pain in her ankle blinding now that the initial adrenaline of focusing on Karadec is gone. 

The man moves as if he’s about to pick her up, but Morgan puts space between them. 

“You don’t have to, I just… I just need a minute,” she breathes, willing the throbbing to subside long enough to make it outside. 

“We don’t have a minute,” he says, and at least he sounds marginally apologetic. “The explosion compromised the support beams below, and this concrete could collapse at any moment.” 

With a sigh, she reluctantly gives a small nod of consent. 

He scoops her into his arms, and together they finally get out of the building. She vaguely registers that there are other cars on the scene now, two firetrucks and ambulances, but her eyes are searching for one person only. 

She’s about to ask the fireman where his buddies took her partner when she hears her name. 

Selena’s eyes find hers, and then she’s rushing over. “Morgan.”

“I’m fine,” she says, ignoring the sigh from the man carrying her. She taps his arms, signaling to be let down. “It’s just my ankle. Probably a sprain. Where’s Karadec?”

“Slow down.” Selena looks at her, gaze dropping and then rising back to her face. “Morgan, you’re bleeding.”

She frowns. “What? No, it’s not—” It’s not my blood is on the tip of her tongue, but then she glances down and… “Oh.”

Her arms are covered in small cuts and slashes. She stares at them, blankly, like they’ve just suddenly appeared.

“I didn’t, uh, I didn’t notice,” she says after a long pause. “They must’ve been from the initial blast, I… I had my arms protecting my head when the explosion went off.”

Selena nods softly. “Your legs.”

Morgan looks down, and then winces. Her knees are bloody and scraped up, tiny shards of glass stuck in her skin, and there are scratches along her shins. She doesn’t know if they’re from the initial fall after her ankle rolled or from dropping herself down beside Karadec. Maybe both. 

“It’s nothing.” She swallows, ignoring the look of disapproval on Selena’s face. “Karadec, he… he was right there when the explosion happened, right next to it. He got knocked unconscious by the blast.”

“Morgan.”

“His head is bleeding and he has a piece of wood in his stomach,” she continues, her eyes stinging with the reality of it. Head swiveling around, she searches for him, but he’s nowhere to be seen. “Where is he?”

Her heartrate starts to speed up.

“Morgan,” Selena repeats, catching her attention. Eyes wide, she turns back to her. Selena takes hold of her hands. “The ambulance took him. They’re getting him there as quickly as they can.”

She looks over, and realizes one of the two ambulances is gone.

“What? No, I—I was supposed to go.”

“Oh, you’re going,” she says. Morgan stares at her. “I have no confidence you’re going to let the paramedics here check you out, so I’m driving you to the hospital.”

She wants to protest, but she knows it’s no use. She needs to be at the hospital to see how Karadec is, and she supposes it wouldn’t be the worst thing to have her ankle looked at. And maybe her arms. And legs. Maybe get some ointment or something.

These cuts really sting now that she knows they’re there.

“Okay,” she says.

She lets Selena help her into the car, gritting her teeth against every ache and spark of pain, and together they head to the hospital. 

Morgan sits on an examination bed in a small room. The paper covering crinkles beneath her with every minor movement as she shifts her position. 

Her ankle is wrapped in an ace bandage, and the compression is helping. Not as much as the drugs they gave her for the pain, but helping nonetheless. It’s a confirmed sprain, and she’s been instructed to minimize putting weight on it for the next 48 hours, ice it regularly, and elevate it whenever possible. They’ll send her off with a prescription, or so she’s told.

There’s a knock at the door and she hopes it’s the doctor here to tell her she’s free to go. 

Instead, it’s Selena’s head that pops in.

“Karadec?” is the first thing that comes out of her mouth.

Selena comes in further. “He was just taken back to a room,” she says. “They ran some tests and took some scans, so hopefully that’ll give us an idea of how hard he hit his head.” 

Morgan purses her lips. “I need to see him,” she says. “I need to get out of here.” 

She can’t walk, though. She’s waiting for crutches, which is the only reason she hasn’t busted out of this room on her own already. 

“You will,” Selena assures her. “How are you feeling?”

Her shoulders drop. “Tired. Sore.” She looks down. The cuts and scrapes on her arms and legs have been cleaned; the deeper, more serious ones have been bandaged. “Like I can still hear my heart beating in my ears.” 

“That’ll go away.” Selena’s voice is sympathetic. “It takes a while.”

Morgan scoffs. “I’m sure.”

“I heard you had to get stitches?” Selena asks, a frown on her face. 

She nods, twisting her upper body to point at her left shoulder blade. “A piece of glass was embedded. Pretty deep. I think he said there were twelve stitches.” Selena’s face scrunches and Morgan lets out a laugh, though it’s more hysterical than humorous. “I didn’t feel it. Is that even normal? What does that say about me?”

“It says that you were so focused on the well-being of your partner that you didn’t even think twice about your own injuries.” 

Morgan glances away, doesn’t say anything. 

A nurse comes in with a pair of crutches, and with a little help Morgan’s able to shuffle her way off of the table and out of the room. Selena’s at her side, and they both stop in the hallway.

“Where’s his room?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go home? Get some rest?” she suggests. “He’ll probably be out for a while, and it’ll be a few hours before any test results come back.”

But she shakes her head. “No, I’m fine.” Selena gives her a look, and she sighs. “I’ll be fine. I just want to check in on him first.”

With a nod, Selena relents. “Okay. Come on, I’ll show you.” They approach the elevator, slowly as Morgan familiarizes herself with the crutches. “I’ll stay outside while you go in with him. I’m going to check in with Oz and Daphne.”

“Where are they?” 

“Running down a lead on who might’ve set the explosion,” she says. “Daphne was able to find some peculiarities when she went through the case files, so they’re following the trail.” 

Morgan nods. She’s quiet, but her mind is racing. 

They stop outside of a room on the fourth floor. The crutches are irritating where they continue to brush against the upper part of her ribs, and she has to take a minute to breathe. 

“Take your time,” Selena says, softly. She rests a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll fill you in after.”

And then Morgan watches as she heads down the hall, turning back to the door to Karadec’s room once she disappears around the corner. The door is already cracked, so she eases it open further with the end of her crutch. 

Karadec’s in the bed, dressed now in a hospital gown instead of his tattered work clothes. There’s an IV in his right hand, and the gash at his temple is patched together with a butterfly bandage. She can’t see beneath the blanket and the gown, but there’s no longer a piece of wood sticking out of his abdomen, which is good.

She shuffles farther into the room, leaning her crutches against the bedside chair as she lowers herself into it. The relief of sitting down is overwhelming. 

Even more so with Karadec right in front of her. 

All things considered, he doesn’t look that bad for a man who got blown up. There are some cuts on his face that don’t warrant bandaging, just scratches from debris. She can see the edge of a white gauze peeking out from the back of his head, and she wonders if he had to get stitches for whatever wound was making it bleed or if cleaning and covering it was enough. 

The longer she stares at him, the tighter her throat gets.

Something shifts in the air, makes it feel thicker. 

She really thought she lost him for a while there, and the feelings that have stirred up aren’t ones she can unpack right now. They’re not feelings she has any right to, either, because he’s with someone else. But that doesn’t stop it from making her feel sick, physically sick—the thought of losing him, of walking into Major Crimes and seeing his desk empty, of even trying to go back to the way her life was before he came into it and changed everything.

Morgan takes his hand in hers, rubs gentle passes along his skin with the pad of her thumb. She allows herself this closeness, the softness of his skin beneath her fingertips, the tangible proof that he’s here, for only a minute or two, and then she releases him. Her hands drop back into her lap. 

Her chest aches.

With one final glance at Karadec, emotion coiling around her ribs like yarn to a spindle, Morgan hoists herself from the chair. Afflicted leg bent, she grabs her crutches and hops into place. Once she has them securely under her, she makes her way back out into the hallway. 

She isn’t sure where Selena went, so she follows the path she saw her go earlier, and eventually she finds her sitting in a chair in one of the waiting areas. 

“I didn’t expect you to come out so soon,” Selena comments when she sees her.

Morgan manages a tight smile. “Yeah, I’m a little more tired than I thought,” she lies. “Daph and Oz find anything?”

Thankfully, Selena accepts the change of topic with no questions.

“They brought in a suspect. Computer records show Google searches for homemade explosives, so he’s looking promising as our guy.” 

“Good,” Morgan breathes, relieved. 

“They’re letting him sweat a little, and then they’re going to interrogate him. I told them to keep me updated.”

“Are you gonna stay here?” she asks. 

Selena nods. “I want to be here when there’s news about his test results, and I know we’d all feel better if there was someone here with him.” 

She’s right. And as much as Morgan wants to be that person, as badly as she wants to sit herself at his bedside and be there when he wakes up, she can’t. 

For herself, for him, for them, she can’t. 

“I think I need to go get some rest.”

“Good, I agree. Try to relax. You’ll be the first call I make when I know anything.”

With a nod, Morgan eases herself up from the chair. Selena helps with a hand at her elbow, cupping gently until she’s situated with the crutches. 

She takes a step, and then she turns to look back over her shoulder. 

“Someone should call Lucia,” she manages, swallowing thickly. “She should know.”

There’s a flicker of something in Selena’s eyes, a lingering look, but she only nods. “I’ll take care of it.” 

The corners of Morgan’s lips twitch into a not-quite smile, and then she turns away.

She’s trying to get comfortable on the couch—which, as it turns out, is difficult to do with the stitches on her shoulder blade—when she gets the call from Selena. Her heart is in her throat with each lead-up word, and she doesn’t release the breath she’s holding until she says it. 

Aside from a moderate concussion, Karadec’s scans show no significant trauma to the brain. 

They won’t know if there’s any memory loss until he wakes up, she says, but they’re hopeful based on his tests that there won’t be anything substantial. 

“What about the piece of wood he was stabbed with?”

“They were able to remove it. There’ll likely be some scar tissue, but it didn’t puncture any major organs and there shouldn’t be any long-term issues once the stitches come out.”

“Great,” she exhales, her eyes slipping closed. “That’s great news.”

“It sure is,” Selena says. She’s quiet for a moment, and it’s not until she speaks again that Morgan thinks the silence was her considering her words. “I spoke with Lucia. She was going to head straight to the hospital.”

She bites down on her bottom lip. “Oh. Good.” 

It is good. It is. Lucia’s his girlfriend, his partner in a way that takes hierarchy over their own partnership. She should be there. She should be the one there when Karadec wakes up. 

She knows all of this to be true. 

She just wishes that made it feel better. 

Beeping. A steady, rhythmic beeping. 

The sound floats into his consciousness before anything else, and he wonders what it is. He wishes it would stop. It’s loud, and the next thing he registers then is the headache, a radiating pain that throbs at his temples and around to the base of his skull.

The incessant beeping is not helping.

Nor is the light. It’s bright, wherever he is. His eyes aren’t open, but there’s a harsh glow beating down against the backs of his eyelids.  

He can hear distant sounds. Some voices he can’t make out, more beeping, the squeak of wheels as they scrape along the floor.

He’s in a bed, he knows that much. Not his bed—his is much more comfortable than this—but a bed nonetheless. Slowly, he squints his eyes open. His vision is out of focus, but he can tell now that he’s in the hospital. The machine beside his bed is both the source of the beeping and the dead giveaway, the display showing a bunch of lines and numbers that he can’t make out. 

His eyes fall closed again. He hates hospitals. 

He lays there for a few moments, quiet, trying to dull the pulsing of his skull, and then he remembers why he’s in the hospital. 

The case. The building with the graffiti tags on the walls and a dead body on the roof. A propane tank and a glove filled with gasoline. The explosion… 

The explosion. 

Morgan. 

“Morgan?” 

His throat is dry; his voice comes out in a deep rasp, a sharp hint of urgency in her name. 

“Adam,” he hears, and it sounds like her voice, and he relaxes. 

His eyes peel open again, and he has to blink a few times to push back the same haziness. 

“Adam,” comes again, but the voice shifts, and when his vision clears it’s Lucia sitting in the chair beside him. 

Her expression is tight, the smile on her face forced and pinched at the edges.  

For a few beats, he just stares at her. His mind is racing, his head is pounding. It feels like his brain is too big for his skull, ballooned and pressing for release. 

“How are you feeling?” she asks, reaching over to cover his hand with her palm. Her touch is cold. When he doesn’t answer, she tries again. “Do you remember what happened?”

Her name sits on his tongue. 

“Morgan,” he lets it free. “Where is she?”

Something in Lucia’s jaw twitches. “I don’t know,” she says. Her tone is light, but she does gently release his hand. 

He glances down at the hand now in her lap, and then back. He doesn’t address it. 

“Is she okay?” he asks. 

He tries to sit up further, tries to shift his position, and then groans when his body protests against that. He feels like one giant bruise. 

“Hey, careful. You have a concussion, surgical stitches from a piece of wood they removed from your abdomen, and three broken ribs. Try not to agitate them.”

The concussion explains the splitting headache and the gentle roll of nausea. The stab of pain in his side makes him wince. It’s not the first time he’s had to deal with broken ribs, but it might be his least favorite injury to have. You can’t do anything for them except apply ice and take over the counter pain medication, and it’s a bitch. 

Repositioning, he tries to ease himself back against the pillow.

The pain isn’t the most pressing thing on his mind right now, though. 

Because Morgan could have broken ribs, too, or worse, and not having a clue is causing him more distress than his own injuries. 

“Lucia, do you have any information about Morgan?” 

“No, I don’t, but I’m sure she’s all right. I think we should be focusing on you right now,” Lucia tells him. She tries to shoot him a smile, and he knows he should tell her that he feels fine (he doesn’t) and thank her for coming (she really didn’t have to), but all he can focus on is how the last time he saw Morgan the very building they were in was mere moments from exploding. 

Did she get out safely? Was she still in the building when it went up in flames? 

Is she okay?

He doesn’t know, and not knowing is making his chest heavy. 

Lucia is still talking. 

“—got blown up, Adam,” he hears the tail end of her sentence.

“I know,” he finds himself saying. “But I’m right here, and Morgan was with me in that building, and I don’t even know if she got out in time or if she’s in another room in this hospital somewhere.” 

Digging in her pocket, she hands her phone to him. “Here. Call someone. Find out.”

He ignores the touch of irritation in her voice and accepts the phone. 

“Thanks.” As he starts dialing Selena’s number, he asks, “Where’s my phone?”

“It’s not in the bag with your personal items, so either you didn’t have it with you or it didn’t make it out of the explosion.” 

Karadec frowns. He doesn’t want to have to set up a new phone, but that’s a problem for another day.

Selena picks up on the third ring.

“Selena, hey, it’s me. Yes, I’m okay, I—no, I didn’t leave AMA,” he says. Lucia smirks a little beside him. “I have a headache, and I feel like I got hit by a cinderblock, but I’ll be fine. Do you—is Morgan okay? Did she make it out of the building before the explosion?” 

He waits with baited breath for a few seconds while Selena speaks. When she does, she’s okay, his shoulders drop immediately, his heart retreating from its place in his throat. 

The relief is short-lived, because the continuation of her sentence sends a bright spark of worry up the length of his spine. 

—but she had to be carried out by one of the firemen.

She didn’t make it out in time. 

She was still in the building when the blast went off. 

He pales just thinking about it. Selena’s still talking, and he zones back in with a twitch between his brows as she explains. 

She’s pretty scratched up from the debris, and she twisted an ankle. But she’s okay, Adam. She’s not the one in a hospital bed. 

He exhales, a small breath of relief. Morgan isn’t in the hospital. She didn’t come away unscathed, but her injuries aren’t bad enough to warrant being admitted, and that allows some of the prickling at the tips of his fingers to recede. 

Even so, Karadec has a feeling there’s something she isn’t telling him. There’s something in the tone of her voice. It’s… off, uneven in a way that Selena typically isn’t, and that only makes him worry more. 

But his head is still throbbing and, whatever else, the most important thing is that Morgan’s okay. 

“Thanks, Selena,” he breathes. 

Get some rest. Don’t give the nurses a hard time. 

He huffs. “Okay. Yeah. Keep me updated on what the team finds.” 

Karadec ends the call and lets his head fall back against the bed, his eyes falling closed. The pulsing is dull behind his eyes now. 

Forcing them back open, he hands the phone back to Lucia. “Thank you.” 

“Is Morgan okay?” she asks.

“Yeah. She was still in the building when the explosion went off,” he recounts, the words rough on his tongue. He reminds himself that she’s okay, and he takes a deep breath. “Selena said she’s pretty banged up, but no life-threatening injuries and she’s not in the hospital.” 

Lucia nods, a thoughtful expression on her face. There’s a look that lingers in her eyes, a flash of something he can’t quite place.  

“You really care about her, don’t you?” Her voice is carefully neutral. 

The question takes him by surprise. He frowns. “What? Of course I do. She’s my partner,” Karadec says. He pauses, and then adds: “She’s my friend.”

Lucia doesn’t say anything for a long moment. When she does, she meets his eyes.

“Is that what she is?” 

His immediate reaction is yes, of course. That’s what he should say. He should assure her that what he and Morgan have is strictly platonic, that there’s nothing more than a friendship  between them. He should, he should, he should. 

But he can’t, because that would be a lie. 

Because in that room, knowing that there was going to be an explosion, he wasn’t trying to stop it. He knew that was out of his depth, way beyond his capabilities in the time he had. He was trying to delay it, so Morgan could make it out. 

Because right before he watched the glove pop, the only person he thought of was her. 

Lucia hums. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” 

He didn’t speak, but he supposes he didn’t have to; his silence said everything for him. 

“Lucia…” Her name hangs between them for a tense moment. “Morgan and I, we didn’t—nothing has happened between us, I swear.” 

Because he refuses to let that be something she has any nagging doubts about. 

“I know you’re not a cheater, Adam,” she says, though there’s a look of relief that flickers across her face for a brief second. He can’t fault her for it. “I think I’ve suspected, deep down, since the first time I saw you two together. When you told me that she changed you, that she helped you become a better man… I knew it for sure then, but I guess I just wasn’t ready to let you go a second time.”

His face falls. “Lucia, I… I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head. “I won’t lie and say that it doesn’t sting, but you can’t make the heart want something, or someone, that it doesn’t.”

“I meant it when I said I didn’t want to hurt you,” Karadec says, earnest. 

“I know,” she smiles. This one is genuine. “You’re not the same man I loved all those years ago. You’re a good man, you’re just… not for me anymore. It’ll take a while to really come to grips with that, but I’ll get there.”

It’s true; he’s not the same man he was when he and Lucia were together the first time. He’s changed. He’s no longer the man who couldn’t love anything more than the job. That’s all she’d wanted back then, a partner who put her first, who chose her above the work.  

A part of him feels a twinge of guilt for becoming that man, but for someone else. Someone who never asked him to change, but who just helped him bring to light parts of himself that he didn’t even know he had. 

“This isn’t Morgan’s fault,” he finds himself saying. It might not be smart to bring her up right now, given the circumstances, but he doesn’t want Lucia to harbor any negative feelings toward her. This isn’t on her. 

Lucia’s laugh takes him aback. 

“Of course it’s not. It’s nobody’s fault, Adam. Sure, I feel a bit of jealousy; I understand, but I’m still human. I’m not immune to it. But she… I think she’ll be good for you. She loosens you up. Helps you take yourself less seriously. You need that.” 

He considers her, and then he can’t help but say, “You’re talking about this like this is going to become… something. Between me and Morgan.”

“You pretty much just admitted that you have feelings for her, didn’t you?”

“A relationship goes both ways,” he mumbles. His ribs are starting to flare again, and the pulsing at the back of his head is kicking up. It’s too bright in this room. 

She scoffs. “Do you really think she doesn’t feel the same way?” When he just stares blankly at her, she sighs. “You’re a smart man, but you can be so incredibly dumb sometimes.” 

Karadec frowns. “I’m sorry?”

“I haven’t spent much time around Morgan, but even I’ve seen the way she looks at you. It’s… specific. As a woman, you recognize it.”

“Specific,” he repeats, deadpan.

“Yes, specific.” She pats his blanket-covered knee. “I know it’s daunting, especially because she’s your partner, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

Karadec regards her curiously. “How aren’t you upset with me?”

“I am upset,” she corrects with a sad smile. “But not with you. We both deserve to be happy, and if that’s not with each other, then it’s not with each other. We’ll only get carpal tunnel from holding onto something we once felt.” 

“I was happy with you, Lucia. I don’t want you to think…”

They were happy. He thinks she was exactly what he needed back then, even if he was too scared, too work-oriented to really appreciate what he had. He’s no stranger to self-sabotage, even if it’s not intentional. 

“I know,” Lucia says. “I know it hasn’t all been a facade. I’ve been happy with you, too, but sometimes that’s not enough to be someone’s person.” 

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, because he isn’t sure what else to say. 

“Don’t be. We had two pretty good runs, don’t you think?”

With a smile, he agrees. “Yeah, we did.”

Lucia stands from her seat and steps closer to the head of the bed. Leaning forward, she presses a kiss to his forehead. 

“Goodbye, Adam,” she says softly. She squeezes his shoulder. “You deserve to be truly, unequivocally happy. Don’t let that go.”

Don’t let her go. 

He squeezes her hand once before letting his touch fall away, and he watches Lucia go.

Alone in his hospital room, he lets his shoulders slump against the back of the raised bed. Images of Morgan flash through his mind, a slideshow of snippets from the first day they met all the way to a few hours ago, the desperate look on her face when she pleaded with him to be right beside her. 

A new kind of headache flares, a tightness that pulls back at his temples. 

Don’t let her go.

It’s his final thought before he drifts into a fitful sleep.

When Karadec wakes up again, it’s with a grunt and a face scrunched in discomfort. There’s still a dull throbbing at the base of his skull, but at least it’s lessened in its intensity. The nausea isn’t so prominent now, which is good, because he doesn’t think he could make it to the bathroom across the room right now. 

He takes a deep breath that he immediately regrets, the piercing pain in his side reminding him of the broken ribs. Shorter, more shallow breaths it is from now on. 

His eyes flutter open, and it takes a moment for his vision to adjust again. It’s still bright, but not so much so that he has to squint against it. There’s someone sitting at his bedside again, but he’s not confused this time; he’d recognize that silhouette anywhere. 

She’s not looking at him, her eyes trained down at the hands she wrings in her lap. 

“Morgan.” Her name is a relieved exhale. 

Her head lifts, and her face brightens. Beautiful. 

“Hey there, big guy,” she smiles softly. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I was blown up.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It wasn’t a joke,” he says, even as his lips twitch at the edges. “Are you okay?”

She shakes her head, and his stomach drops until she says: “I don’t think so, buddy. Don’t deflect. You first.” 

He chuckles, then winces. “Three broken ribs. Don’t make me laugh,” he rasps. “I have a headache from the concussion.” 

“And from this, I’m sure,” Morgan murmurs, reaching forward and brushing a gentle finger along the butterfly bandage near his temple. 

His breath catches and, like she’s only just realized what she’s doing, she lets her arm drop.

“Sorry.”

Karadec swallows, shakes his head. “It’s okay,” he tells her. “Yeah, that’s not helping. The stitches from the piece of wood keep pulling, but it’s mostly just uncomfortable. I’m all right.” 

“Good,” she says quietly. 

His gaze settles just over her right shoulder where he can see a pair of crutches leaning against the back of the chair. “How’s your ankle?” 

She glances down, and then lifts her leg for him to see. “Swollen, but still attached.”

It’s wrapped in an ace bandage, no boot.  

“It’s killing you not being able to wear heels, isn’t it?”

Her brows furrow. “I don’t know what you mean.” 

She lowers that leg carefully to the floor, and then she raises the other in its place. She still has on a heeled boot that hits at mid-shin, and he laughs. 

“You’re still wearing them?”

With a shrug, she says, “I can’t put my weight on the sprained one, so it’s not like I’m walking lopsided or anything.” 

“Fair enough,” he concedes. He’s quiet for a moment. “Selena said you got pretty banged up by the uh… by the blast?” 

Picturing her being in the explosion, even if to a lesser degree than he was, makes his mouth dry.

Morgan sighs. “Yeah, but it’s not so bad.” 

She moves to shrug out of the cardigan she’s wearing, and when she tugs it down her arms his eyes widen. There are lacerations down both forearms, cuts from where the glass and debris were blown into her skin. At least half of them are red and angry. 

“Not so bad?” he parrots. “Morgan…”

“They’ll heal.” She waves him off with a flick of her wrist. “I had my arms behind my head when the blast happened, so they got the brunt of the impact.” 

Her choice of words hits him. 

“The brunt. Are there more?”

She hesitates, and he doesn’t like that. Eventually, she says:

“I got some stitches on my shoulder blade, that’s all.” 

“Stitches?” 

“Twelve of them, so not many,” she tells him, downplaying it. Twelve stitches isn’t not many. “There was a piece of glass, I guess it dug in when the windows shattered, but I didn’t even feel it. I didn’t feel any of them, actually. Selena had to point out that I was bleeding.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, except, “How didn’t you feel it?”

Morgan’s lips curve into a sad smile. “I was focusing on my partner,” she says, soft. 

Oh. He doesn’t know how he feels about that. 

“Morgan…” 

“You scared me,” she whispers, and there are tears welling up in her eyes now. The sight of them makes his chest ache. “I thought… I really thought I lost you.” 

Her voice is thick with the effort of fighting back the emotion. 

“I’m right here,” he says. 

Morgan sniffs, licks at her lips. “Do you know what it felt like? Standing outside after the blast, realizing you hadn’t made it out, and watching the building go up in flames?”

All he can do is stare at her, taking in the pain on her face and knowing he put it there. 

“It’s fucking terrifying,” she answers for him, a wet, humorless laugh pushing past her lips. “I thought you were gone, and then when I ran back in there and I found—”

Her words from before don’t even truly register until now. 

“Wait, you were outside?” 

“What?” 

“When the explosion happened, you were outside already.” 

Morgan nods slowly. “Yeah. It happened so quickly. I got outside, and then less than thirty seconds later all hell broke loose.” 

“But Selena said you had to be carried out by one of the firemen—” His brain finally catches up to everything she’s said. “Wait, you ran back into a burning building?” 

“Well, yeah,” she says. Simple. As if that’s not an insane thing she’s just told him. 

He’s horrified. 

“What were you thinking?”

Her eyes widen. “What was I thinking?” she mocks, incredulous. “I was thinking that if you weren’t dead that I needed to do everything I could to get you out of there.”

She ran into an unstable, burning building she’d escaped from. For him. To find him. 

It hits him then, the gravity of it all. Because if that’s not love, he doesn’t know what is. Love makes you do stupid things, and that was probably the stupidest thing he’s known her to do. She could’ve died—

When he glances back up at Morgan, tears have slipped over her cheeks. Her fingers are shaky where they’re steepled over her mouth, and he can tell that she’s trying to reel it all in. 

Fighting against the way his body protests, Karadec pushes himself forward so he can be closer to her.

“Morgan, no,” he says, her tears cleaving his heart down the middle. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to—I just don’t like the thought of you throwing yourself into danger like that.”

Her glassy eyes meet his. “And I don’t like the thought of you being dead.” 

“Me either,” he says. With his heart crashing against his bruised ribs, he inches himself out onto a fragile limb and can only hope she doesn’t let the branch snap beneath him. “I’ve got a lot to live for these days.” 

His gentle gaze held securely on hers leaves no room for misunderstandings. 

Morgan’s eyes search his face, and he can see the gears turning, her mind running away with his words and trying to make sense of them. He doesn’t fill the silence for her; he knows she needs these few moments to parse through it herself. 

“Me?” she asks, caught somewhere between disbelief and an inkling of hope. 

“You ran into a burning building for me.”

“You’d do the same for me,” she says, no hesitation, no doubt. 

Karadec nods. “I would.” 

Easy, a fact. 

There are few places she wouldn’t follow her. 

She’s silent for a few long, terrifying beats. And then: 

“Karadec, I…” 

Oh. Oh, no. 

He’s got this all wrong. Lucia was wrong. He wishes the hospital room floor would open up and swallow him whole. 

“Shit, Morgan, I’m sorry, I thought—”

“No, don’t,” she interrupts, her nose wrinkled and her lips pursed. She shakes her head, her eyes imploring. “You’re not… you thought right, but I’m not—I won’t come between a relationship. I couldn’t live with myself.”

Oh, Morgan. 

His shoulders relax. Something releases deep in his chest, and he huffs out a relieved breath. 

“There’s no relationship to come between,” he murmurs. At her confused, furrowed brow, he clarifies: “We decided that it would be best if we went our separate ways.” 

“What? When?”

“Earlier today.” 

“But I thought you were happy?” she asks, her voice small. 

Karadec nods. “I was happy. But…” 

“But what?” 

He’s quiet, trying to find a way to put it into words. Because he was happy with Lucia, and he thinks they could’ve settled into their relationship. But settling wouldn’t have been fair to either of them. Being together never would’ve been that spark of lightning. 

In the end, it really only comes down to one thing. 

“Morgan, I almost died,” he starts, shaking his head slightly before he lets out a soft laugh, “and all I could think about was you.” 

Her lips part, a quiet oh slipping free. 

He continues talking, and all she can do is listen. 

“Near death experiences can really shed some clarity on certain things for a person. I don’t know what that means for us, or if you’d want it to mean anything. I know you said I didn’t get this all wrong, but I’m not—I’m not expecting anything here,” he says. She can feel her pulse racing beneath her skin. “All I know is that it wouldn’t be fair to Lucia, or to me, to stay in a relationship when my heart was somewhere else.”

Her cheeks are pink, her eyes shiny. 

“I do,” she whispers. 

He blinks. “What?”

“Want it to mean something,” she says. “I do.”

She’s only a foot away, but he needs her to be closer. 

“Will you come over here, please?” 

She hesitates. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t. I promise.”

Carefully, Morgan pushes herself from the chair. She uses the edge of the bed and the bedside table to haul herself closer without needing to use the crutches. She turns her body, angling so she can sit herself on the bed with him, settling near his hips. 

He finds her arm immediately, the pad of his thumb dragging gently along all of the cuts and grazes that mar her skin. Some are longer, deeper, not quite deep enough to require stitches but enough that he can tell they bled. Others are more surface-level, like she’d scratched herself with her own sharp nail. 

Goosebumps break out in the path of his touch. She shivers from it. 

“Where’s your heart now?” she asks in a whisper.

He takes a delicate grasp of her hand, curls his fingers around hers, and brings their intertwined hold to rest over his heart. 

“Right here.” 

Her lips curve into perhaps the softest smile he’s ever seen. She gently untangles their fingers, only to flatten her palm directly above his heart. She can feel it beating beneath her palm, a fluttering, real thing. His hand rises to cover the back of her hand again, warm. 

He shifts, just slightly, and a rib juts into something it shouldn’t be and he hisses.

“Are you okay?” she asks, her free hand finding his hip. He nods, but it’s not convincing. “On a scale of one to ten, how’s the pain? And remember, I’ll know if you lie.”

Karadec laughs lightly, and then groans. “I wouldn’t dream of trying,” he breathes. “About a seven.” 

She frowns. “I can get one of the nurses, see if you can have another dose of something.”

“I don’t want my brain to be clouded while you’re here,” he declines. He wants his head to be clear, wants to have control over this moment. “I’ll be fine.” 

There’s a look on her face he doesn’t think he’s seen before, one he can’t quite pinpoint, but then she’s leaning down and wrapping her arms around his neck. He doesn’t hesitate to hold her close, careful to keep his touch away from where he knows the stitches are on her back. 

Quietly, Morgan murmurs into his ear, “Don’t do that to me again.”

“I’ll do everything I can not to,” he says, because he knows he can’t promise that they’ll never be in a situation like that again, one of them in danger and the other one forced to worry. 

He’ll never admit this aloud to her, but he hopes in every scenario it’s him. 

“Next time, when you say you’re going to be right behind me—”

“I’ll be right behind you.”

She shakes her head. “No, you’ll be right beside me. I know you wouldn’t leave me, and I’m not leaving you again.”

“Beside you,” he echoes. “I like the sound of that.” 

“Yeah,” she smiles. “I do, too.” 

Her hand lifts, delicately cupping the side of his face where the scratches are most prominent, the tips of her fingers brushing the gash near his hairline. 

Her eyes find his, bright blue and sparkling in the meager light that shines in through the room’s wall of windows. She’s so beautiful like this, sunlit and soft. Morgan. 

Karadec’s breath catches in his chest as he watches her lean in. With her fingers threading lightly in his hair, she dusts a lingering kiss to the corner of his mouth. 

It feels right for this limbo they’re in, somewhere between partners, friends, and something more. It’s gentle, full of love, and a promise that they’ll figure this out, whatever they are. 

Side by side.