He was sitting near the ambulance, bundled in Gideon's jacket and still shaking a little. As he got closer, Morgan could see the blood on his shirt, from a stab wound the unsub had managed to inflict before Hotch shot him. It wasn't anything major but it was the first time Reid was injured in the field and it had been a shock for them all. The knowledge that their good doctor could have died at the hands of one of the monsters they hunted daily had felt like an ice-cold shower. It shouldn't have been — they all knew what those people were capable of, had witnessed it in person — but Reid was the kid of the team, the one you always expect to be safe, to be waiting for you in the bullpen sipping his outrageously sweetened coffee.

"Hey, pretty boy." He said, ruffling his hair. "How you feelin'?"

Reid snorted, trying to hide his shaking hands.

"Like someone who just got injured." He replied with a small smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Smartass." Morgan said "But, seriously, you did good, kid. Everyone else would have freaked out when the unsub pointed the knife at them, you tried to talk him down instead."

"And almost got myself killed."

"Oh, take a compliment, would you? You. Did. Good. Don't ever try to say the contrary."

Reid shrugged, but he looked less somber and more like himself. There was still doubt in him together with a sense of failure that — and Morgan knew this — would never quite go away but it was something. Reid would never be the same as he was before the BAU, it was too much to hope for with a job like theirs after all, but that didn't mean he lost himself.

Change wasn't such a bad thing sometimes.