"...What's going o-...Reid?"

Spencer looked up to the door way through the crowd of people intruding on his bed, and saw one of the missing faces. Rossi eyed each individual slowly, a look of stunned frustration in his old eyes.

"Why am I the last to know...everything," he said slowly to himself, sounding out each word with irritation. Reid suddenly felt sorry for the man, despite not being able to get a word in edge-ways for a few minutes. The room barely fell quiet, even then.

Garcia was rambling at lightening speed, taking short fueling breaths between each word. He couldn't decipher her words even if he tried. But Hotch was watching her with the look he gave the young doctor when he was doing the same.

"Garc-...Garcia...Penelope!"

The woman snapped her head round in panic, stopped dead in her speech. "S-sir?"

His expression soften slightly at the fear on her face, and he let a small smile light up his dark eyes. "I think we ought to give Reid a little piece," he suggested, making eye contact with Prentiss and Rossi as he said it. They seemed to deflate with realization.

"Yeah, I-...Sorry, Reid," Penelope mumbled, and began rushing the others out of the room. Hotch followed the herd of his colleagues, only taking a moment to glance back at Reid, a fatherly kindness and wisdom in his eyes.

He heard a shifting in the seat next to him.

"I should go too," Anya began musing, avoiding his gaze as she pushed herself up with her hands gripping the arms of the chair. She straightened herself up before Spencer could say a word, and a pained wince crossed her pale face.

"It's fine," she rushed when he began flipping back his covers to help, and stared him down into submission. Replacing his covers back, she tried to conceal the way she clutched at her side by sitting back down. "So, how are you-"

"What happened after I blacked out?"

Anya was stunned into silence, and her eyes began to waver. Eventually she tore them away when his filled with pain as the silence drew on.

"Nothing, the team got there just in time."

Her eyes shifted under his pressuring gaze, but she stayed silent.

"Something happened, I don't have to be a genius to know that."

When she looked back up at him, tears brimmed at her ocean-colored eyes. Somehow, he knew, then.

"He hurt you. While I was out."

She didn't move, not even her eyes strayed. He witnessed each tear descend down her cheek, leaving a shining path in its wake.

"Just as they got there, he pulled me away from you." Her hand went to her face, shaking as she wiped the tears away. "But I was fine, discharged this morning. He missed each organ, and I think he meant to."

His brain tuned the final words out, and all he could feel was a bubbling rage fill the pit at his stomach. Sat in this room, all its color, and her beside him, he had nowhere else to direct it. When he spoke, his words seemed to cut the atmosphere with a knife.

"I was meant to protect you."

She snapped her eyes back to his, hurt and anger and pain replacing the sadness. "Don't you dare blame yourself."

"Who else," he groaned, and realized the burning in his throat as he said it. His hand flew to his neck in discomfort, where he felt the bandage over the wound.

"Are you-"

"I'm fine," he snapped in a sharp whisper, and she retreated back into her seat.

...

"Reid, you did protect me."

His eyes drifted to hers automatically, in question. He was still fuming at himself, that he was unable to protect perhaps the one person he wanted to most, in all his life. "I wasn't prepared, so how? I was careless."

"No...well, a little. But when he pulled that trigger, he was aiming at me. Don't you remember?"

He shook his head, that particular scene a blank in his otherwise precise memory.

"You jumped in front of me, and he clipped you. If it wasn't for you, I would probably be dead."

Reid pushed his brain to remember, but there was nothing between Aiden shooting his cell and the searing pain of the gun shot. He couldn't even remember what he was thinking, what was going through his mind. If anything at all.

She watched the young man's face twitch, as an array of emotions and thoughts crossed his face, an effort to remember. She thought it strange in a way, that she could remember clearly, now, from the panic and terror down to the thump next her feet as he began to fall, and he could not. She could, however, barely remember a thing from then, besides the blood soaked cloth clutched in her fingers, pressing as hard as she could without hurting any more of him. She was only going on what the others had recalled to her.

Finally, after what felt like hours of thoughtful quiet, his lips began to move. "I can only remember up until he began to pull the trigger."

She let a short, somewhat humourless laugh escape her, and she earned a puzzled look her way.

"It seems that my memory stops not long after that," she explained, a small smile remaining on her face, and his softened in response. His guilt, however, was not completely gone, but his small shy grin was a start. Slowly, he closed his eyes and let his head fall back onto the pillows, and she replaced her hand in his without thinking.

The last thing she saw was his expression melt into one of content, the last she felt was his thumb on her fingers. She was asleep within seconds, and she didn't even hear Rossi enter, and pause at the scene in the doorway.