No Differences

story creds: The_Bookkeeper - ao3
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Derek Morgan had been in a lot of bad situations in his life, from finding himself speechless at his father's funeral to the unspeakable things which had poisoned his adolescence to being put under the infallible microscope otherwise known as Aaron Hotchner when he was late for a meeting. He liked to think he could deal with almost anything life threw at him. Not necessarily easily, not even always well, but he could deal.

For instance: he could deal with being trapped by a cave-in. He was uninjured, he had space and air and some level of light, and Hotch knew more or less where he was and would probably have him freed within a few hours, a day at the most. He wasn't even worried. Not looking forward to spending an indeterminate amount of time covered in whatever it was that had exploded and caused the cave-in in the first place, but not worried.

He could deal with having lost track of Reid. He wasn't happy about it, and his brain kept cycling through all the things that happened to the kid when he was out of sight or even when he was right there in front of him but just beyond his reach, but he wasn't panicking. Reid was too smart for anyone's good and way stronger than he looked. No matter what, he would, eventually, be fine, or as fine as he ever was. And probably, hopefully, he was fine right now, so Derek wasn't going to worry about that yet.

He could even deal with Dean Winchester pointing a loaded gun at his head. Talking down armed psychopaths was part of his job, after all. Of course, usually he had backup. And usually it wasn't his own gun which was being aimed at him.

Also, he usually wasn't dealing with all three of those things at the same time.

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24 hours earlier:

"Alright, Hotch, what's so important you had to drag us in on a Saturday night?" Rossi asked what everyone was thinking. "I've got a half-finished lasagna in my fridge."

Morgan had been half-finished with something else entirely, but the next words out of Hotch's mouth drove all thought of that from his mind.

"The Winchesters are back."

The screen blinked to life, displaying two mug shots, both young Caucasian men. One in his mid-to-late-twenties, short hair, blatantly irreverent; the other a few years younger, long hair, looking resigned and vaguely embarrassed as if he and his brother had been arrested for public indecency and not several counts of murder. Both were handsome, and pages and pages of witness reports, school records, and other documents said that they were intelligent, charismatic, and resourceful.

They also said they were dead.

"A sighting was reported in a diner in Kentucky, just outside of Mammoth Caves National Park. A security camera outside a nearby bank confirmed it," Hotch explained. "It appears that they faked their deaths. None of the remains from the police station explosion could be positively identified, so it is quite possible that the Winchesters escaped beforehand or even caused the explosion themselves."

"Fire has been used in the past as a forensic countermeasure to prevent accurate body identification in the past," Reid offered. "In 1994 Marine staff sergeant Arthur Bennett burned his trailer with a body inside after he was charged with child molestation. The fraud wasn't discovered until three years later, during which time he continued to prey on children under an assumed identity."