Darling had just quit her job.
In front of the head of her unit in the FBI, in front of her unit chief and his manager, in front of her whole team; she had quit her job.
Not only that, but she had just finally gotten out of that prison.
A prison where she had yearned for all the things she would do once she got out, all the life she would live after seeing so many die, all the food she would eat to make up for the mush given to her day after day.
She had seen horrors, been stabbed, beaten, walked herself to her death, got electrocuted and cut through a man's fingers all within two hours.
And now she was out, she was free not only of that prison but a job where those things were seem as normal, as stories to show how dedicated you were to the agency- but now she was free, and she could do anything she wanted.
So naturally the first thing that Darling did after quitting was the only thing she had thought about for the last 20 minutes that she drove in whatever SWAT car he had accidentally stolen;
She got ice-cream.
As the teenager in the ice-cream shop handed her the cone of triple stacked ice-cream, Darling realised her one fundamental flaw in this 'very well thought-out' first hour of freedom adventure; she had no money to pay for it.
"Oh shoot, I'm sorry I left my wallet- well I'm not really too sure where it would be at this point" Darling shook her head, going to hand it back but the teenager just shook her head.
"It's, uh, on the house- you look like you could do with it" she glanced at the blood covering Darling, the makeshift bandage around her hip and her ankle completely turned red- taken mostly aback by the sweet smile on her lips still.
"Really? Thank you so much!" Darling knew she would be emotional after everything she had been through but bursting into tears and hugging this kid for simply giving her free ice-cream was a new level.
"I'll take her off your hands, her hugs have a tendency to become smothering" a voice chuckled from behind Darling where Morgan stood by the front door to the ice-cream shop, smiling at her as she turned to him.
"Derek" she felt the overwhelmed tears come to her eyes again before holding up her ice-cream excitedly, "look! They gave me ice-cream!"
"I can see that" he chuckled with amusement, walking over to her and placing cash on the counter for the girl who looked between them with not as much as bewilderment as Morgan expected.
"Are you guys gonna buy anything else or is that it today?"
Morgan tilted his head at her, taken aback by how casual she seemed to find all of this "we're good, thanks."
"Okay, have a ice-tastic day" she said with little to no enthusiasm, turning and leaning on the counter on her phone again as Morgan and Darling left the store and sat on the chairs outside the front.
"I've never seen someone react so casually to someone covered in blood before, you think she's a murderer in the making?" Morgan joked.
"Nah, you just see a lot of weird shit when you work in hospitality" Darling chuckled, "I'm probably not the strangest thing she's seen today."
"That's concerning" he laughed, unable to help himself watching Darling in utter awe of every move she made.
Every lick of her ice-cream, the light that hit her face from the simple flavours but to her were something so simplistically beautiful after not having it for so long, something that reminded her of the life before, of herself before that seemed so different to who she had to become to survive.
"What are you looking at?" Darling tilted her head at him, "do I have ice-cream on my face or something?"
"No, well I mean yeah you do-" he chuckled, his thumb brushing the edge of her lip and taking off the vanilla ice-cream and licking it off his thumb, "-but that's not what I was looking at."
"Did you just eat the ice-cream that was on my mouth?" She chuckled at him, unsure why that simple act brought a heat to her chest.
"It's good ice-cream" he shrugged, enjoying her familiar blushed cheeks.
"What were you looking at then?" She brushed past the overwhelming urge to throw herself onto him.
"You" he replied simply but with such utter devotion to his words, "just you."
"Oh yeah, I'm sure I look disgusting right now" she laughed down at herself, thinking he was staring at how bloodied and exhausted she looked- but he just shook his head sincerely.
"You look beautiful."
"Ha! That's the biggest lie of the century."
"I mean it-"
"Derek I'm covered in multiple people's blood, have more eye bags than on a college campus and am licking an ice-cream as if it's the last thing to eat on earth" she chuckled, "I most certainly do not look great, you don't have to pretend-"
"I'm not pretending" he sat forward, elbows resting on his thighs as his hands placed on her knees, softly rubbing them with his thumbs, "I don't know how you do it, but you still look like the most beautiful woman I've ever seen even half covered in sewage water."
"Derek-" Darling tried to argue, his hand placed over her mouth gently.
"Shh, just take the compliment" he chuckled, brushing her curtain bangs out of her face and finding his eyes scanning her with a soft gaze, "I really like the hair by the way."
"The hair?" She tilted her head before realising for the first time what had actually happened.
She turned and looked at herself in the reflection of the store window.
Her once long and lusciously thick bouncy dirty blonde locks were now capped messily at her jaw with the same level of bounce and thickness, but something else was different from just the drastic cut.
It wasn't her messy curtain bangs that she had someone kept the same length with only a shank in prison or the darker roots of her hair, or the fact it was chopped and voluminous compared to the silhouette of femininity that her hair had stood for before, and if she was honest, what she had hid behind.
She had always been praised for her hair in the most sickening ways;
Her father's hands clutching it as he told her she was never allowed to cut it, that it was his.
Jacob's fingers running through it to keep her close to him after he hit her.
The countless of men who had grabbed her hair, the boys in her class who pulled her plats, controlled her, mocked her with it, made her feel as if it was anything but her own.
It was something she learnt to try to take pride in, telling herself she could reclaim it if she styled it in a way she loved, that she could forget about all that her father had said about it, all of his touching's of it, all of his demands for her to be 'his little girl' with that hair he fisted with the touch not of a father's.
Darling tilted her head at her hair in the reflection, slowly lifting her hand to it and pausing with a moment of hesitation.
It was her hand, her own hand, that would be the first to run their fingers through it fully, to grip the strands in anyway she wanted because someone hadn't scarred her with it before.
It was her hand that had sliced it off.
It was her hand that had claimed it of her own, literally slicing free of the man who had a hold of it, giving him the layers of hair but not giving him herself with it.
"I... I like it" Darling spoke quietly after a few moments of silence, hand finally giving itself permission to touch the edge of her hair before fully letting it dance through it with sudden tears coming to her eyes.
Morgan watched her for a moment before getting up and crouching down in front of her, "I'm glad."
"I-I really like it" she found a sob come to her throat as she turned to him.
"Me too" he smiled softly to bring comfort to her, lifting his hand to touch her hair but pausing before he did and looking deeply into her eyes- knowing this was about more than just her hair.
"Can I-" he asked for permission before moving any closer, a simple act that made Darling almost burst into more tears with appreciation as she nodded.
Morgan lifted his hand slowly, softly feeling the edges of her hair before his hand made its way behind her head, cradling her head tenderly as his thumb brushed through her hair so carefully that Darling felt as if she could melt into his hand.
Her eyes closed as the tears fell, a small soft smile on her face whilst she leaned on his hand and took in the moment.
A moment not of claiming, a moment not of taking, a moment not of him grabbing her hair or stroking it to scare her or control her- but a moment of understanding, of softness, of love and a care that whispered louder than screaming could;
I will not hurt you.
Morgan's forehead found its way to rest on hers as they sat closer together, a gentle hint of a kiss placing on the tip of her nose.
"Derek?"
"Mhm?"
"This is a really nice moment and all, and I don't want to ruin it... but you really smell of sewage" she looked up at him, enjoying how he burst into laughter with his whole body like she had dreamed of watching him doing since being apart from him.
"You can't say anything you're got covered in more sewage than me" he chuckled, "not to mention you have blood and- oh my god!"
Morgan stood up suddenly, re-realising that Darling still hadn't gone to the hospital or even had her wounds properly bandaged up, "we need to get you to the hospital right now."
"But I haven't finished my ice-cream yet-" Darling tried to argue, Morgan already bringing her up to her feet and leading her towards the car he drove to find her.
He knew the fallout from her quitting after kissing him in front of everyone had to be dealt with, that he had to convince Hotch and Erin to get her back and deal with the situation.
But he couldn't think in that moment, that look of pure bliss on her face when she made that impulse decision, that gleam in her eye as she walked over to him just before.
All he could think about was following her, wherever she would go- to the ends of the earth or just to the local ice-cream shop, either way he would always follow her.
Morgan knew that more than ever now as he sat in the waiting room of the hospital that he should answer the many, many, calls and messages he was getting from Hotch and the team- but he didn't.
All he could do was keep his eye on the door where he had been taken an hour before by the very concerned nurses.
All he could do was feel his leg shake as he waited.
All he could do was feel the absence of her in his arms.
All he could do was think of how brave she looked when he found her, how she still was arguing against Luke despite him about to kill her, how she was standing up for herself- how she was still standing up for him like she always did.
Morgan couldn't think about how utterly terrified he was finding her like that, finding her acting so brave- because he knew her, he knew it was all an act, and he knew most of all that the more Darling acted like something didn't bother her, the more it really tore her apart inside.
He couldn't stop his legs as they pushed him to his feet, he couldn't stop every need coursing through him to tell her everything he was thinking so that she would tell him even a snippet of what she was feeling, to force her to tell him what she was thinking, to beg her if he had to so that she wouldn't bottle it up like he vowed to himself he wouldn't let her do again.
"Darling-" Morgan felt a strange panic in his voice as he opened the door, unsure why he was almost scared that she wouldn't be there.
He wanted to cry at her, to scream at her to tell him what happened in that prison so she didn't have to feel it alone, to let every moment of pain he felt without her fall out of his mouth.
But when he saw her sat on the edge of the hospital bed, head dropped into her hands as tears spilled from her eyes and all of her paper-mâché walls torn down now that she was alone with the nurses getting more bandages, he couldn't say a word.
Not one coherent sentence came together when he saw the paragraphs of unspoken flooding her face as she sobbed quietly to herself, the kind of silent crying she had become all-too good at in her life.
The kind of crying that was assisted by head smothered into a pillow to muffle out the echoes of unshed tears, the kind of crying that brought concealer in every bag that was brought to a cubical before the fake smile could face; the kind of crying that Darling Dawson had gotten too good at.
A crying that was personal, a crying that was deep below the surface like an ill-looked after wound, heart wrenching like an operation gone wrong- painful, personal, hers.
No, he couldn't say anything to bring comfort or pass blame.
Not when he saw her there, utterly undone as a person, completely open like she had never been before.
He had seen Darling cry before, he had seen her sob until her eyes were sore and his chest wet from her tears.
But he had never seen this.
The agony on her blank face swamped with drops of liquid devastation.
Her arms clutching herself in any attempt to hold herself together as she fell apart.
The look of pure defeat that had been hand sewn away by herself countless of times like a quilt of band aids held together by a thread on top of a sink hole.
Morgan didn't say anything, he didn't try to fill that sinkhole or sew up the quilt for her, he just walked over and sat by her side in silence, Darling not even noticing he was there until the bed shifted under his weight.
"D-Derek I-" She quickly looked up at him, attempting to think of any way to joke or talk her way out of him seeing her like this.
"Continue" he spoke quietly, taking her hand and placing a soft yet purposeful kiss on it, "I'll be right here, you don't have to hide it from me or turn it your tears into laughter Darl- I'll still be right here."
"I-" She couldn't speak, she could barely look at him until his hand tucked under her chin and softly brought her gaze to meet his.
"I know I can't take the pain away, I wish I could- god, I wish so much that I could" he shook his head with a burning in his chest to be able to stop anything hurting her, to be able to take the years of pain she had hidden from him too, to even feel it himself at full force instead if it meant it would never be able to touch her, "I would give the moon and the stars to be able to do that, I'd pluck them out of the sky myself-"
"I don't think that's physically possible-" she found herself joking through still flowing tears, although her voice was faint and deflated, as if even her humour had been taken from her.
"I would find a way" he gently stroked a tear off her face with his thumb, "for you, my Darling, I will always find a way."
Darling couldn't speak, she wasn't even sure she was breathing at this point with how much her chest ached, how much her heart both stung and now sang from his words, him next to her, his true devotion to his words.
The thing that Darling had learnt from a young age was that men had the tendency to make lavish gestures, poets being the worst because they didn't need thousands to be able to give a gift to cover lies.
And Darling had heard a lot of them; promises broken, bracelets to make up for bruising wrists and paragraphs of the most beautiful words ever pieced together to hide the lack of meaning behind them.
Men all trying to dig their way into her hearts for the only purpose of unzipping her trousers.
But Darling knew with her whole heart, with her poorly mended soul, that this wasn't the case.
Because this wasn't just a man, this was Morgan, her Morgan.
And he already had her heart, he always had even without either of them knowing.
Every word he said, every promise he made, every declaration he spoke; all of it was true.
He was the only man who had ever made her certain, ever made her sure, never made her read into every action or word to search for meaning.
Because he meant it all.
And he always would.