Inspired by the 1x04 cold-open and the story of the Nightingale Strangler. Set in a near future.

It was supposed to be just another ordinary undercover mission.

She promised she'd be home in time for a real date – between the two of them, that is.

"How do I look?" she asked with a playful grin when she came out of the precinct's locker room, changed from her Sergeant uniform to more casual clothes.

He stared at her in silence for a beat, gazed at the beautiful green dress covering her body and falling on all right places, before answering.

"You look amazing," he said with a truthful, awestruck smile. She always did anyways – no matter what she was (or was not) wearing.

He noticed how the tip of her ears started to colour in a new shade of red following the compliment, soon spreading down to her cheeks, and his smile grew bigger, matching her own.

"I wish I were the one you're getting ready to go on a date with, though."

She took a step closer and both his hands in hers.

"Well, if things go according to plan…" She brushed her thumb against his, locking eyes with him. "I won't be eating anything anyways, and we'll still have plenty of time to go out and celebrate after," she suggested, exchanging a knowing nod with him. She freed one of her hands to let it rest over his heart and dreamily play with the collar of his hoodie.

"I'd love that."

He leaned in for a quick kiss, quietly staring at her for a short while after they parted, then rearranged a strand of hair on top of her ear to cover the electronics of her newly put glasses-camera, leaving his hand there afterwards, absentmindedly brushing her cheek with his fingers as he spoke again.

"Let's get through your persona one last time."

"My name is Alice Rodriguez, I'm a librarian, divorced three times and in search of true love." Amy perfectly recited the traits of the character her husband helped her come up with a few weeks ago, when her mission first started. She had indeed signed into a famous dating app under the made-up name in order to find and track down a criminal who had been terrorizing the women of New-York for quite some time.

He had already made five different victims in the area – all hopeless, lonely women he had encountered on said dating app – by asking them out, poisoning their food before strangling them in his van.

Pretty gnarly, if you asked Jake.

But, after reaching dead end after dead end, the man seeming to be an expert who knew how to leave no trace behind, they had finally managed to get a vague description of him: they were looking for a white male with brown hair and a small, significant scar on his right cheek.

Just like the one the person the Sergeant was about to meet with had on his own face.

The plan was simple, then: lure him into having dinner with her and catch him in the act, when he'd try to hurt her, gathering all the evidence they needed to lock him up.

She wasn't going alone, obviously – her whole team and their Captain would be there as well, watching from the outside (hence the glasses-camera) to make sure everything was going well and be there in case she needed backup – which Amy was positive she wouldn't. It was her first big case she'd been assigned since her graduation, and she well-intended to prove her value with it.

She'd been working on it for too long for something to mess up this close to the end.

"Well, seems like you're ready." Her husband proudly smiled at her once she finished revising her persona with details. He started to walk towards the exit door, where her squad was waiting for her, but she stopped him in his tracks before he could pass it.

"Almost," she answered, and he frowned, confused, turning back to her and watching as she took off her wedding ring for the very first time since the day he put it there himself, only a few months ago. And, even though it hadn't been that long she had it, it left a mark on her finger where it was supposed to be, just like she already felt like she was missing something.

She approached Jake and carefully put it in his palm. "Can you keep it for me?"

He simply nodded in response, closing his hand into a fist around the little piece of jewelry, holding onto it as if guarding it was the most important mission he'd ever been given.

"Now I'm ready." She smiled at him, satisfied. But, before she could leave, being the one who prevented her from going this time, he wrapped his free hand around her waist and kissed her, a little more fiercely and desperate than the first time but still short enough to be considered workplace-appropriate.

He let his forehead rest against hers and they both kept their eyes closed for a while when they drew apart, getting lost in the moment. He hesitated for a second before asking in a whisper, "Polish or pizza?"

She opened her eyes, meeting his gaze, and offered him an amused grin in return. He didn't have to explain for Amy to understand he was talking about their upcoming date.

(He didn't have to say for Amy to know that behind such common words, he actually meant 'be careful and come back safe.' He believed in her, of course he did, and he believed in her skills as a Sergeant, but he couldn't help but feel a little worried about her mission anyway – she was going after an actual serial killer, after all, not fighting some common, harmless crime.)

"Surprise me." She met his lips in another quick peck and offered him a reassuring smile before they finally joined her squad and their Captain outside.

It was supposed to be just another ordinary undercover mission.

Jake was sitting at his desk, working late on some paperwork in the quiet, almost empty bullpen, waiting for Amy to come back so that they could leave the precinct together when he received the phone call. The instant he saw the name appear on his screen – Officer Jennings –, he knew something had happened, and his heart dropped in his chest even before he heard the news.

"Hello?" His voice came out as hoarse when he picked up, despite his (failed) attempts at keeping his calm.

"Detective Peralta?" Gary's usual over-excited tone was replaced with tremors of panic here, which didn't help the feeling in Jake's guts to go away – on the contrary, it only grew bigger. A heavy silence took over for what felt like an eternity before Amy's best Officer started talking again, unsure, afraid of how his interlocutor was going to react. "There's been an issue."

"What kind of issue?!" Jake closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, taking in this too vague piece of information.

When he opened them again, his gaze fixated on something standing up in the middle of the mess that was his desk – his wife's wedding ring, shining among all of his different toys. He grabbed it, nervously playing with it, turning it around his fingers absentmindedly while not so patiently waiting for an answer to his question.

"We lost her."

The truth was out, and a dreadful beat passed.

"What do you mean, you lost her? She's supposed to be wearing a camera on her!"

"Yeah, about that…" Jake could hear Gary swallow before going on with his explanation. "We think Humbert somehow sensed that something was going on, because he wouldn't stop asking Sergeant Santiago to take off her glasses, arguing he wanted to see what she looked like without them. She tried to find excuses not to, but was forced to oblige at some point if she didn't want to blow up her cover.

She never put them back on and, by the time we came to check on her inside the restaurant, the waiter told us they had left through a back door. And the van's not here anymore."

It took everything in Jake's power not to burst out in anger at the Officer on the other end of the line and tell him that he had one job and managed to fail at it, his hand now clenching into a fist around the silver band he was still holding onto. He could feel his nail digging through his palm as he somehow managed to even his breathing, which would most definitely leave marks later, but he didn't care.

He had more important things to think about – like, figuring out where his wife went, and save her before it was too late.

"I'm coming over." He didn't wait for any approbation or any other word and hung up immediately, already gathering up his stuff.

As he drove towards the restaurant where Amy and her perp had been last seen, Jake couldn't stop the images of her strangled, lifeless body lying in a dark, damp street haunting his thoughts. He tried to chase them away, putting his whole attention on the road ahead. She's tough, and she's smart, he repeated in his mind, wanting to reassure himself this way. She got this. You're gonna find her, and put this son of a bitch behind bars, and you'll be able to take her out on a real date, like she promised you would.

He started making plans, then, finding that it helped a lot, picturing himself with his wife at the restaurant – or maybe he'd just cook her something, as she'd like to stay at home after such a night? This would be a real surprise, as she asked him to before they parted a few hours ago.

Yes, that's what they'd do, he decided. Dinner and a movie. Just the two of them curled up on the couch.

Safe and sound. Home.

It was supposed to be just another ordinary undercover mission.

Though here Amy is, lying on the dirty hard cold floor, barely conscious of where she is and what's going on around her, her vision blurry as she slowly opens back her eyes, some sound resonating in her ears and making her head ache even more than it already is – and she doesn't know why it's aching like this in the first place.

"Ames?!" Jake repeats her name again when he sees her blink one, two, three times until her confused gaze eventually fixates on him. "Hi, babe." He lets out a relieved sigh that she's finally come back to them and doesn't seem too physically hurt, managing a small, shy smile at her. "It's me, Jake. Do you know where you are?" he asks in a concerned, yet very soft, voice.

She doesn't answer right away – takes a second to think, furrowing her brows in concentration, images of her night slowly but surely coming back in pieces to her mind. Suddenly, her expression switches to something more agitated, looking around in panic. "Humbert…" she whispers as she tries to move, but her husband keeps her in place – she needs to lay still.

"Shhh." He gently makes her look back at him. "It's alright. We took care of him. It's over. You're all safe now," he promises, and his words manage to calm her down a little, resting her head back on the floor, staring at the ceiling of the abandoned building the criminal dragged her in after he discovered her ruse and both of their plans got ruined, lost in thoughts.

She concentrates on trying to take deep, even breaths.

Next to her, Jake watches her for a moment, unable to look away from her even for a second, reminding himself that she's indeed here and well in front of him, before he comes to brush a strand of loose hair off her face with his finger. His wife reacts by instantly jumping in startlement at the simple touch, which makes him remove his hand fast, the farthest away from her.

He studies her, worry coursing inside his eyes as he does so, scanning her in search of a potential injury or anything that would explain such a rejection from her.

She seems fine, though – physically, at least.

"What did he do to you?!" he asks, then. His voice his strangely calm, despite the blood boiling in his veins at the thought of Humbert hurting the love of his life to the point that she can't seem to stand her husband's simple and soft touch on her skin. Amy, who turned her gaze to look at him, looks away again, unable to meet his eyes, feeling somehow ashamed and mad at herself for reacting like this.

She wishes her body wouldn't tense the way it did at her husband's touch.

She wishes it could tell the difference between some monster's gross grip around her waist and lowering to her butt as he lead her to his van, playing happy couples in the middle of the crowded street all the while threatening her with a knife pointed at her – 'a word and you're dead' – and Jake's gentle stroke of her face.

Most of all, she wishes he wouldn't look at her like he is, right now – with guilt of hurting her shining in his brown eyes.

He's not. Humbert was the son of a bitch who took her there.

"Can we talk about it later?" She shyly brings her gaze back at him after a while spent in complete silence, and he offers her a reassuring smile.

"Of course," he immediately agrees. "Whenever you feel like it." She notices how his hand twitches along his side and he has to restrain himself from reaching to her again, and her heart clenches in her chest.

She wants to say something to ease the pain, but she's cut off before she can even open her mouth by the sound of an ambulance coming their way to take her to the hospital. Despite her protests that she's fine, willing to go home and forget about everything that happened, wishing things would go back to normal the sooner possible, she has to stay the night in observation, Jake sleeping on a chair by her side.

It takes a little longer to recover but, in the end, when she eventually gets the date she was supposed to have with her husband on that night, him surprising her with both her favourite Polish and pizza take out to enjoy alone at home when she's back from the hospital, her body only warms up now when he gently, ever-so carefully claps his hands around her waist while she initiates the kiss, thanking him for the sweet, loving attention.

When they part, he draws himself a little away from her, searching for something inside his pocket he's kept there all along, taking out her wedding ring.

"Do you, Amy Santiago," he asks, imitating Holt's voice perfectly. "Take Jake Peralta to be your husband?"

She lets out a small, amused chuckle. "I do."

He then slides the ring back where it belongs on her left finger, and she smiles as she looks at it.

Now she's completely home, she thinks. Alright.)