Disclaimer: Natsumi does not own Criminal Minds or any of its characters.
A/N: Hey everyone, Isuzu here. I'm here to tell all of you that Natsumi finally was able to decide to do a series of fics. Lucky you. Not so much me, who has to get on her ass about actually finishing the damned things. But here is the starting point. Please give her reviews, or she might despair and give up all hope of ever finishing the series. Have fun reading.
When Spencer Reid gets nightmares, it's never about the normal things that people worry about. When he gets nightmares, it's about things that truly and deeply terrify him beyond all doubt. Sometimes it's about his mother, other times it's about what might one day happen to one of his team mates. But most of the time, it's about the ones he couldn't save. It's about the people that he couldn't help, couldn't free from their tormentors or from what many would consider just punishment. He'll see faces, hear voices, and sometimes, when it's really bad, he'll feel them.
Some nights, especially after a really bad case, he'll see a lot of the different serial killers and rapist that he's faced down on this job, and the endings to their stories will change, for the worse. He'll see them get away, or they won't make it in time to save the last victim. Sometimes they manage to get one of his teammates shot down, or drowned or burned. But always, he remembers the look in their eyes. He'll remember that gleam in their eyes when they talk about how they killed. He'll see how their faces light up or glow or just radiate this morbid, twisted and wrong contentment with what they've done.
Other times, he'll see the families and friends who have had to lose their loved ones-either to the killer or the killer's need to do what he or she did. He can still remember so many families after their personal devastation. Mothers who had to go to identify the ravaged, tainted and dead bodies of their daughters. Fathers who had to bury their sons long before their time. Sons and daughters who lost their parents, unable to understand why, in this world where people talked of safety and security, they had lost their safe haven, their home, their guardian, their friends and the ones that they knew would always love them, to someone that could not and did not care that they would have to live on without their parents. He'll see countless small towns, all of them in shock, suddenly much more aware of how close evil is to home, and afraid of their own shadows. But in every vision like this, it's the eyes that get him the most; the way they have this haunted look in them, as though they aren't completely there anymore, too deep in hurt, the shock, the disbelief and the total and absolute and consuming pain that will never go away because they lost someone. And that's a look he can't forget, not for as long as he lives. Because for him, it's proof that somehow, he failed them.
But the worst, the worst of his nightmares are when it's the children. He'll see them, countless children, all of them young and innocent, staring up at him with smiles one minute, clean and pure and safe. But then, he'll turn around and there will be the same child he just saw, bruised, battered or bloody, but always hurting. Sometimes he'll see gun shot wounds. Other times he sees the evidence of what was done to them: burn marks, blood covering their clothes at the crotch area, bruises from chains or ropes or hands. He'll see their tear stained faces, their eyes still wet with tears, but the eyes themselves dark, the color leeched out of them from death. He'll hear them crying to him. They all cried different things. Some cried for help, others screamed that it was his fault for not saving them. Some cried, asking why he didn't save them, why he wasn't strong enough, smart enough, good enough, better than their torturers. And inside, he'll hear his nine year old self asking him why? Why couldn't he do it? What happened? Why did they have to suffer? Why? Why, why, why why whywhywhywhy-
And then he wakes up.
At first, it's in a haze of confusion and panic, like suddenly he's back in that cabin after having woken up from another night of seeing Tobias. But then, he'll do a quick pat down: his feet are fine, his head only slightly aches, the area where he used to shoot up is scared over and beginning to smooth, and he's laying down on his bed in his room, safe, secure, alone. He's all right. It's okay, they've caught bad guys, they've saved people and they've made home just a little safer.
But still, he'll see them all around him, the ghosts of so many lost souls, and for a moment, he wants to quit, he wants to leave. He wants to go back home to Las Vegas, see his mom and talk to her about how he can't do this anymore, how he can't last here, how the pressure is getting to him.
But then, he turns his head to the nightstand by his bed, and he'll see the pictures that he keeps there for nights like this. He sees JJ, Elle, Garcia and Morgan standing beside him, holding up peace signs, smiling as he sheepishly grins at the camera, his birthday cake hat on his head. He sees himself and Gideon, at the academy when he first met him. He sees his newest team photo, with Hotch, Morgan, Garcia, Prentiss, himself and Rossi.
And then he remembers those he did save. The ones that were still alive, healing, and were going to make it. And he reminds himself: I can't go when there's still more to do. So for a while, he stares up at the ceiling as his mind calms down, until his heart stops beating so fast, and the voices fade into the background like they always do. He whispers something that he can never really remember saying, turns over so that he's facing the pictures and goes back to sleep, knowing that in the morning he's got more things to do, more cases to solve and more lives to save.
And his dreams are peaceful.
A/N: Reid down, Morgan to go.