A/N: First of all, thank you for reading! All reviews and favorites are greatly appreciated. Secondly, I'd like your opinion on something. I already know which direction this story is going plot-wise, but I'm not sure if I want it to be a Moreid story or just a story about their friendship/brotherly love. Let me know which you'd like to read!

Derek Morgan's eyes flutter open. He's confused, and an excruciating pounding at the front of his head prevents him from thinking clearly. The room is eerily silent, which he finds odd considering he falls asleep with the television on every single night. He tries to roll over and look at the alarm clock, but he can't move. Something is restraining him. Did he bring a girl home last night? He can't remember.

Morgan racks his brain. It hurts to think. The last thing he remembers is telling his boss, Agent Hotchner, goodnight before leaving the BAU's office and going home to sleep. He remembers being exhausted after traveling all the way to Washington state for a case. There's no way he had been up to going out. Morgan closes his eyes again, performing a cognitive interview on himself to figure out what happened.

"Hey, kid. You headed home?" Morgan steps into the elevator with Dr. Reid, who jabs a long, skinny finger into the ground floor button.

"Yeah. I - I am." Reid rubs his eyes sleepily, not looking up from the tiled floor as he suppresses a yawn. Morgan looks at him worriedly.

"You know what, why don't I give you a ride? It's been a tough week. You look beat."

"That really isn't necessary," the younger agent begins. Morgan knows that Reid hates asking for favors as well as receiving them. He's the youngest agent of the BAU, and he doesn't want to come off as a child.

"Come on, Reid. It's really not a big deal. Your place isn't out of the way for me. I insist."

"Morgan, it's fine," Reid presses, his voice growing slightly irritated. "It isn't like I'm driving, anyway. You know I always take the subway."

"Yeah, I know. I just…" Morgan trails off, recalling a case in San Francisco from two weeks ago, where a serial killer had been targeting vulnerable young men on the subway system at night, raping them, strangling them, and then disposing of them in local bodies of water. He hates to make Reid feel weak, but he doesn't want anything happening to his best friend either.

"Please?" Morgan tries again, making himself sound much softer than usual. Morgan isn't really the type for exceptional manners or begging, but something in his gut gives him a bad feeling. "I owe you one for the burger you bought me today."

At his words, Reid finally looks up to meet Morgan's eyes. A small smile forms on his lips, and Morgan knows he has won. "That burger was seven dollars," Reid comments. "What kind of burger costs seven dollars?"

Morgan laughs, putting an arm around Reid's shoulder and guiding him out of the elevator. Considering Reid is wary of human contact of any kind, Morgan is somewhat surprised when the other profiler doesn't wriggle his way out of the position. He chalks it up to the doctor just being tired as they exit the building and head towards Morgan's car.

Morgan's eyes open again. This time, everything is blurry. It's dark outside, but he can make out some shadows and outlines. It definitely doesn't look like his bedroom, unless someone started growing trees in his house while he was in Washington. As he brings his hands up to rub his eyes, a sharp pain runs through his left arm. Morgan winces, trying to turn his head and examine the wound, though he doesn't seem to be able to move his neck at all. He tries to call out, but his throat is too dry.

Taking a few deep breaths, Morgan uses his other arm to clear his vision. He rubs his eyes with his fist, pulling away when something hot and sticky drips onto his arm. "What the…?" He says aloud. Instead of his own, deep voice, all Morgan hears is an intense ringing in his ears. It cuts through the silence like a knife, and he instinctively brings his hand up to his ear. It doesn't hurt and it doesn't seem to be bleeding, so Morgan takes this as a good sign. Whatever happened, the hearing loss is probably temporary and should clear up within a few minutes.

Since he can't move or hear, Morgan lets his eyelids close one more time, trying desperately to remember anything after the BAU parking lot. Brief images flash through his mind, but they are mostly dark and scattered into random pieces. As they swirl around in his head, only one vision is clear enough to make out.

Morgan's eyes glance towards his right, his lips curling up into a smile when he sees Reid curled up against the passenger door and his messenger bag clutched against his chest. He reaches over to wake him, and everything goes black.

He opens his eyes with a start, panic coursing through his body like a raging wildfire. "Reid?" Morgan shouts desperately. It comes out scratchy and broken, but Morgan can hear himself. His voice is muffled underneath of the ringing in his head, which has quieted some since it first started. He thinks he can hear sirens in the distance, but fears it is his mind playing tricks on him.

"Okay," Morgan whispers, willing himself to stay calm. "Okay, I need to get out of here." Very slowly and even more painfully, Morgan crosses his right arm over his chest and fiddles with his seatbelt. It feels as if he is being stabbed in the ribs over and over again, but he ignores it. Finally, the belt clicks loose. Morgan breathes a sigh of relief, but the real task has just began.

With everything he has in him, Morgan forces himself to move his head to the left. It hurts, but not nearly as bad as his arm does. He looks down at it, half expecting to find a bloody bone sticking out of his skin. There is blood, but it doesn't appear to be broken. Instead, a large slab of glass sticks through his skin, just below the elbow. He bites down on his lip hard and pulls it out, tossing it out of the broken window and struggling to stay conscious.

While Morgan has had a touch-and-go relationship with his faith for many years, he prays to God that when he turns his head to the other side, he will see nothing but an empty seat. "God, please tell me I took him home already. Please." His breath is shaky as he slowly turns his head, keeping his eyes closed for fear of what he might see. When he opens them again, his heart catches in his throat.

"R - Reid," Morgan chokes out.

There's blood everywhere. Reid isn't moving. His head is turned towards the crushed window, blocking Morgan's view to get a good look at his face. Morgan howls in pain as he turns his body to the side, placing two of his fingers against his friend's neck.

"No, no, no…" Not feeling a pulse, Morgan's thoughts become jumbled and hazy. Tears sting his eyes and roll down his cheeks. "Come on, Derek," he instructs himself, "Get it together. Now isn't the time."

Thinking quickly, Morgan gently unwraps Reid's purple scarf from around his neck. Using his right hand and his teeth, he wraps it around his own arm and ties it as tightly as he can, hoping to slow the blood gushing from where the glass had been. He then tries his own door, not really surprised when it doesn't budge. Morgan twists around in his seat as white-hot pain rushes through him from head to toe. He has to cling to the steering wheel for a moment to keep from passing out. Once the nausea has subsided, he raises his boots up to the window and kicks the rest of the glass out, pushing himself out feet first.

He falls onto the cool grass and lays there for no more than a minute, quickly regaining his footing and scurrying around to the other side of the car. Both sides and the top are smashed in, suggesting that the car rolled all the way down the steep hill to the left of them.

Morgan reaches the passenger side of the car and frantically yanks at the handle. "Dammit!" He yells when it doesn't budge. The window is smashed in, but the sheet of glass remains in the frame despite the thousands of tiny cracks trailing across it. Because Reid's head is resting against it in a bloody mess, Morgan knows he can't kick the glass in as he did on his own side.

The ringing in his ears has stopped entirely now, and Morgan is certain that he hears sirens. They are growing louder, and he makes the difficult decision to leave Reid and climb up the hill, afraid that they will pass them by since the wreckage is down over a bank. The ground is slippery and everything hurts, but Morgan manages to reach the pavement just as flashing red and white lights speed around the corner. He steps into the middle of the road and puts a hand up to flag the ambulance down, blinded and slightly dazed by the bright yellow headlights.

The driver comes to a screeching halt and three paramedics hop out of the back just as a fire truck squeals up behind them. "My friend…" Morgan chokes out as the world around him starts to spin. "I think he's...you have to help him."

"Sir, I need you to just relax and lie down." A young, brunette paramedic puts a hand on Morgan's back to steady him as a man rushes over with a gurney. The two of them carefully guide Morgan to lay down, but he resists them.

"No!" Morgan screams, panic rising in his chest once more. "My friend is down there! Go to him! I'm fine!"

"Sir," the woman says calmly, looking Morgan directly in the eyes as she tries to soothe him. "You have a concussion. We're going to help him, but we need you to lie down."

"His name…" Morgan begins. A strange feeling washes over him. His body feels weightless, but at the same time, it's as if all the gravity in the world is pressing down and crushing him into the core of the Earth. "His name is Spencer and I can't lose him." For the second time tonight, the world around him switches off.