Pairing: Linstead

Timeline: A couple years in the future

Genre: Angst/Pain

A/N: I'm trying something completely different from anything I've ever written with this fic and I would love any kind critiques you can offer. Sorry for any mistakes I may have made. There will be another author's note at the end as I do not want to spoil anything.

Dying feels almost serene. The noises that seem to follow her around are gone, and in their place there is silence. Sure, it may feel as if a burning hot iron rod had been shoved through her neck, and like there is an elephant sitting on her chest. But it's calm as the world around her slowly turns black.

She doesn't hear Jay begging her to keep her eyes open, to stay with him for just five more minutes until the ambulance could arrive. Her oxygen deprived brain doesn't allow her to think about their baby, only eight months old, waiting with the nanny for her parents to get home. The only thought in her mind is that she's dying, and everything else remains unimportant.

She didn't arrive at work this morning thinking she'd be on the floor of a house with a bullet hole in her neck a mere five hours later, but that was precisely what happened. The case they had been working had been simple, and the arrest the team had made had been almost too easy. So when a man they had not investigated burst into the room they were standing in with his gun already raised, it had been a shock that no one was prepared for. Erin had always feared that this would happen, that she would be killed on the job, and the fear had heightened even more so since becoming a mother. She was scared she would leave her daughter without a mother, and a father who would never recover and be who he was before.

She always thought that dying would feel different. That she'd have so much to say. That she'd be terrified. Even that she would be able to think. But she can't, and the darkness that had threatened to swallow her whole is the only thing there after her mind goes blank.

When she thought about this experience before she believed her thoughts would focus on the ones who mattered most to her. Hank. The only real father she had ever had. Without him, there wouldn't be the Erin Lindsay that exists; she wouldn't have done anything important with her life, and would have ended up just like her mother, in a string of marriages searching for something that she would never have, love. Camille. The mother she had longed for while she lived with Bunny. She taught her so much about love, and led her to her life now with her husband and daughter. Ella. Her daughter. The only person who could do almost nothing, and still have Erin smiling. Her existence had allowed Erin to be happier than she ever thought possible. Jay. The only reason she was still living after Nadia's death. The person who had given her more than she could have ever imagined; a home filled with love and laughter. They shared a love so strong she knew they would be able to do anything. She truly had made a home with him, and the thought of being ripped from it had given her countless nightmares, but Jay had always been there when she was ripped from sleep by these. He had comforted her, telling her that he would do everything he possible could to not allow it to happen.

But his best had not been enough.

Jay heard the sound of the gun going off, and he knew the path the bullet was taking was right toward his wife. Time seemed to slow down as he watched her fall backward; then even more as he saw the blood spilling out from her neck, but his gun fired toward the man within seconds and he had fallen limply toward the ground. He felt as if everything was moving in slow motion, and as hard as he tried he couldn't get to Erin a fast as he wanted. When he finally reached her though, and put his hands against the bullet hole in her neck, time sped up again, and his fingers could do nothing to stop the blood from rushing out from between them. He could hear Hank radioing for an ambulance and backup, but he could only focus on Erin, the love of his life, lying before him, bleeding out onto the tile floors.

He had prided himself on being someone who never begged for anything, but in this moment he begged whatever higher power there is to not take Erin away from him and their daughter. He begged Erin to keep her eyes open and on him. And he begged her to just stay alive until the ambulance could take her away to the hospital. But soon her eyes drifted shut, and the shallow breathing he could feel previously ceased seconds before the paramedics could reach her.

He knew Erin had been terrified of the possibility that she would be ripped from this earth by a small piece of metal fired from the gun of some criminal, but he had never allowed himself to truly realize that it could happen. He didn't know if he would be able to survive without her. He couldn't believe that the happy and safe place they had created together, the one they had lived in with their daughter for the last eight months, could be ripped from him. He had expected to grow old with her, to retire in Wisconsin together, to have more kids, and then spoil their grandkids rotten together.

He could feel the tears spill from his eyes as the paramedics pushed him away from her so they could assess her. He could feel his body wanting to give up and sink to the ground, but he followed them to where they were loading her into the ambulance, and he laced their fingers together as soon as he could. The line tracing the monitor that proved she was still alive, even if barely, was the only thing that allowed him to remain in some semblance of control in that moment as they raced toward the hospital. But when she was taken away by the doctors and rushed toward the operating room he couldn't stop himself from kicking a chair so hard it made an indent in the wall and then falling into it while sobs racked his body.

A/N 2: I do hope you enjoy where I take this in the next few chapters, but I apologize in advance cause it'll be painful before it's happy. I know very little about medicine and injuries of these sorts, only what I've been taught in my high school anatomy class and what I've researched myself, so I will be skipping over a lot of things that would have happened with an injury like this.