Friends and Changes

©mccabebabe

(A CM Fanfiction) Warning: contains implied character death until…..

K+ (Reid, Garcia, team)

Criminal Minds belongs to ABC, CBS, Mark Gordon Company etc. I own nothing.

It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change. -Charles Darwin

Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future – John F. Kennedy

The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance. –Nathaniel Branden

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She heard the soft rustle of the bedding and hastily put her cellphone away, hurrying over to his bedside as he moved. SSA Jennifer "JJ" Jareau had spent the better part of the last eleven days at the bedside of her injured colleague, sharing the sentry duties with another of their coworkers, technical analyst Penelope Garcia. Their two newest team members, Dr. Tara Lewis and Agent Luke Alvez were out with their interim chief SSA David Rossi, trying to find the person responsible for the disaster which had forever changed the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit.

SSA Dr. Spencer Reid lay in the hospital bed before her, seriously injured when he'd thrown himself at Garcia to shield her from the explosion. He'd been wearing his Kevlar, which had taken the brunt of the blast but the resulting shrapnel had inflicted injuries on them both. Garcia had sustained mostly superficial cuts to her legs and arms, stitches being the end result of the one long gash on her left leg; the most serious injury she'd suffered. Reid had now been unconscious for over a week as the doctors treated a variety of injuries not the least of which was a head injury the severity of which had not yet been determined.

She bent over him as he stirred slightly but did not awaken. His head rolled from one side to the other but his eyes didn't open.

"Spence?" she whispered hopefully, reaching out with one hand to touch him but stopping herself short. The left side of his face was bandaged, from the hairline by his temple all the way down along his cheek and jaw to his neck. There was a dressing covering a circle from his crown around to the back of his head as well. JJ wasn't sure if there were stitches under that bandaging. He was outfitted in a simple blue hospital gown but bulky surgical dressing was visible under the garment's left shoulder and all down along his arm. Even some of his fingers were encased in bandaging. He was covered with a blanket from chest level down such that JJ didn't know how much more extensively he was bandaged but judging from the tattered remains of the pants and shirt he'd been wearing at the time, the news was likely not much better. His watch had been shattered in the explosion, as had his sidearm, those items she had seen when she had taken custody of his patient belongings bag. Both his cell phone and his wallet had also suffered damage. JJ was quite certain they'd suffered burns, which to her greater concern, likely meant Reid himself had been burned.

For several days, he'd been in a medically induced coma to aid healing. Although they had yet to be apprised of the extent of his injuries, Reid's doctor had assured Garcia and JJ that he expected Reid to recover from most of them. The head injury was his primary concern, and until Reid regained consciousness, the doctor would not make a prognosis about it. He'd made it sound like it could range in severity from 'nothing at all' to 'life altering' and the unknown gnawed at both JJ and Garcia relentlessly. What if Reid was done as a profiler? What if there was brain damage? Tears pricked at JJ's eyes as she wondered if her best friend would ever be the same.

Who am I kidding? She thought, as memories of the past two weeks flooded through her. Nothing will ever be the same again. Even if he makes a full recovery. We're a mess! Garcia and I are distracted. Spence is hurt. And Hotch. Oh my God. Hotch is dead.

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"Temporarily. All right. Until you can find someone to do the job who actually wants it," Rossi spoke into his cell phone and grunted an acknowledgement to whatever his caller said then clicked it off and shoved it back into his pocket. He sat at the round table in the conference room and met the gaze of one of his coworkers.

"But you've done the job before, Dave, you sure you don't want it?"

"Abso-flippin'-lutely not, Tara," he barked out in reply, shaking his head emphatically as he spoke. "I watched this job rip Aaron's marriage apart, damn near wrecked his relationship with Jack. And ultimately killed him. No flippin' thank you," he stated unequivocally. There was an awkward moment of complete silence in the room as they each remembered their late leader.

"Have we got an update on Reid?" Agent Luke Alvez wanted to know as he entered the room and sat down across from the others.

Rossi shook his head and replied "Haven't heard anything new from JJ or Garcia in," he paused to consult his watch, "a couple of hours. I'm assuming no change then."

Alvez tossed a file and a few photographs on the table and muttered, "I wanna nail this sonuvabitch."

"We all do," Lewis concurred. Sighing, she reviewed the file in her hand.

The three of them went over the information they'd already gathered, hoping the exercise would trigger more ideas that would lead them to their unsub. Or rather, lead to his co-conspirators. Rossi was convinced the man, who had also died in the blast wasn't working alone and voiced this opinion out loud. Continuing his train of thought silently, Rossi felt certain that the explosion had gone off prematurely, the unsub had a specific target in mind when he'd—

"He wasn't expecting to run into law enforcement at the coffee shop." Rossi exclaimed.

"He panicked and set it off accidentally," Alvez surmised, picking up on Rossi's thought.

"Why haven't we got any hit on an ID for him though?" Lewis complained. "No fingerprints, no tattoos or identifying marks. No matches on any International agencies. He had no ID on him. Nothing to connect him to anything? There has to be some way—"

"There wasn't enough of him left to identify." He shrugged and added, "They'll do DNA testing, I'm sure. And we've got people checking for the sources of his bomb components," Rossi told them. He released a deep sigh and continued, "I think the anti-terrorist task force is probably gonna take over this case."

"Was that your phone call earlier?" Alvez asked him.

Rossi shook his head. "No. That was Cruz asking me to take over Hotch's job. But he did mention that this case was probably bigger than us. And he understands we wanna keep on it too." His jaw set in determination and anger, "We are gonna nail the jagoffs responsible for killing Hotch."

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"For the tenth time, Penelope, I don't think it's your fault! Spence and Hotch wanted coffees too," JJ said in as reassuring a voice she could muster. "You followed procedures, they were still in their Kevlars, they stayed with the car, and you went in to get coffees."

"And food. And probably more than I should have got. I couldn't carry it all. Reid got out of the car to come and help me when I came out the coffee shop door and—" she stopped short as a thought occurred to her.

"What, Pen?"

"The bomber." Garcia's eyes widened as she looked across the room to the unconscious Reid and then back to JJ. "He was walking through the parking spaces when Reid got out to help me, JJ!"

"Pen, we already figured out that he was surprised to find FBI at the coffee shop, that it probably spooked him."

"Oh. Okay, right." Garcia pursed her lips and her attention returned to her laptop.

After a few moments of silence, JJ got up from her chair and addressed Garcia in a whisper, "I'm actually gonna head out for a bit, Garcia, if that's okay."

Garcia nodded, "Of course, I've got this. You know, JJ, as soon as he wakes up or I hear anything, I will let you and the others know." She tapped a few keys then made eye contact with JJ again, "Go!"

"Okay. But Pen? Try and think back and remember everything that happened up until the blast. I know you're having a little bit of trouble with memory, that's probably 'cause you blacked out, but think about it, maybe write it down if anything new comes to you." Her brow furrowed as a thought occurred to her, "You sure it's okay for me to go, Pen?"

"I'm fine, JJ. It's Gorgeous Gray Matter we need to worry about," she said sadly, waving her hand in his direction, her attention returning once again to her laptop.