Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds.

Summary: To find out exactly what happened to them, the team would be forced to take Emily and Reid back to the scene of the crime. Reid/Emily/Morgan/Hotch focus.

A/N: All the characters will be in this, but it mostly centers on Prentiss, Reid, and Morgan. Okay, so this idea has been in my head for awhile now and I finally decided to give it a shot and write a story for once. So I hope it's okay. The inspiration from this story comes from the movie Seven and The story Seasons Without Sun on the bones fandom. It's an amazing story, read it if you like the tv Bones. (Oh, and the first few lines - with some changes - is from the book The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.)

--Seven--

"Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independed of heaven and hell," George Orwell

Chapter 1

It felt as if the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it had pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the abandoned building, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice. The men – and a few women – were dressed all in black, which held three or four letters written across their backs. They moved fast, keeping the heavy metal at eyes level. It had been exactly five months, three weeks, twenty-seven minutes and seventeen seconds since they had last seen their beloved colleagues, and tonight that clock stopped ticking.

Yes, tonight, they were finally getting their friends back.

Derek Morgan found himself accompanying a SWAT team through the dark, abandoned building. It was late, it was cold, and it was the darkest moment before dawn. The snow had been falling consistently for some time now and the sky was black with despair. But it had been over five months and nothing was going to stop him. The hallway was long and dark. Just like the sky. The color of black. The color of hopelessness. The color of the doors. They were both tall and menacing, and they threatened him to guess what was behind them. Endless possibilities raced through his mind, but they had been studying this profile for months. Yes, he already knew.

They searched every inch of the six rooms, but nobody was there. The building was as empty as it looked from the outside. For a moment, fear swelled up inside of him as he wondered if they got the wrong place, but he shook himself of that barbaric thought. Garcia was never wrong.

"Morgan." It was Rossi. "He could have moved them."

"No. They're here," he insisted. They waited too long for this moment. They were here. He was sure of it. "He wouldn't have had time to move them."

"He's right," Hotch told them. "There's no way this guy could have known that we were coming, and even if he did, he wouldn't have been able to move them far."

They know that Reid and Emily weren't dead, but it still didn't stop that nagging feeling in their chests. It taunted them; saying they were too late, out of time. The voice of death wouldn't leave them alone, and it would never until they found their friends alive.

"Hey!" A voice called from another room. "I think I found something!"

They wasted no time running to the end of the hall and out the door, where a woman with curly red hair stood. Her name was Jessica and she had helped them in more ways than one with this case. Morgan would give her his life for just that.

"Footprints," she said, pointing to the snow. "Three sets."

Rossi looked up at the sky, which threatened to fall at any moment, and then back at the footsteps, which were already disappearing with a fresh coat of snow. They led dangerously into the frosty forest, winding around the trees before vanishing into the dark. "We'll never find them at this hour."

"If we don't find them now," Morgan argued, "they'll die. That blizzard is going to hit soon."

Hotch sighed. "Bring in the dogs."

7

The wind howled. The sky grew darker, blacker. The snow began to fall in heavy and unending clumps. They could barely see two feet in front of them, but it was only the beginning. The real storm was meant to hit in an hour. Yet, they still trudged on.

And on.

"Agent Morgan, Agent Hotchner," a man called from behind them, but Morgan hardly spared a glance. The snow was already above his ankles, which was making their journey more difficult than necessary. "Stop."

And only because they couldn't feel their feet anymore, they obeyed. "What?" Hotch asked, more than annoyed.

"We can't go any further. The storm will hit soon. If we continue, we might not make it back," the head of the search party struggled to explain. Morgan was pretty sure the guy's name was Eric. He looked like an Eric.

Morgan looked the man straight in the eye. "I'm not stopping."

"Neither am I," Hotch said, taking his side.

"Please," Rossi begged, "just a little longer."

"We have to go back. If we don't go now, then we'll never make it down the mountain in time before the storm hits." Eric sighed. "Look guys…"

The man spoke two words then and said them with great uneasiness. In translation, two giant words that were struggled with, carried on his shoulder, and then dropped as a bungling pair at his feet. They fell off sideways as Hotch and the others veered with them and could no longer sustain their weight. Together, they sat in the snow, large and loud and clumsy. The two words: I'm sorry.

But because there was such a thing as a miracle, the two search dogs from up ahead barked their signal bark. You could say it was fate. You could say it was just meant to be. Or you could even say they were just lucky. But whatever you believed in, it all came down to one thing: who did you blame when something went wrong? That was the question Morgan had been asking himself for that last five months. Was he to blame? Was it Hotch or Rossi? Hell, at one point he even blamed Reid for the kidnapping, but now that question seemed so absurd, he wondered how he could really blame anyone at all.

But mind you, he had yet to reach those barking dogs. Maybe then, he might blame someone.

It was race against time and finally that race had come to an end. And where exactly? At an old abandoned shack, less than a mile away from the abandoned building. From the outside, it was wooden, dismantled, and looked like it could have hardly withstood the howling wind. No doubt it would be torn to pieces in a few short hours.

"Reid, Emily!" Morgan called out, but his voice got lost in the night.

Catching the signal from Hotch, he raised his gun and kicked down the door. They stormed in, ransacking the small place with a prize in sight. It was dark, just like the sky, just like their souls, but they could see them. They were hardly recognizable cowering in the corner, clinging to each for life and warmth, but it was them. They wore nothing but overgrown knitted sweaters, but they were alive. Their unsub, however, was nowhere in sight. Letting out a sigh of relief and frustration, Morgan took a step towards them.

"Thank God." Even he could hear the crack, the yearning in his voice. Any other time he might have cared that he showed so much emotion in front of his co-workers, but now, now he relished in it.

"Reid, Emily," Hotch said. If Reid and Emily were aware that they were there with them, they gave no outward indication of it.

"Hey, kid…" Rossi tried this time.

They didn't even flinch and if it wasn't for the way they were violently shivering, Morgan would have thought they were dead. They looked dead, but he quickly pushed that thought away, ridding himself of the thought. Sighing once more, Morgan took another step towards them. He waited so long for this moment, but now that it was finally happening, he really wasn't sure what to do. But he didn't have to decided, because at that moment he stepped on a creepy floor board and Reid's head snapped up.

The kid's eyes were wide open now, but registered nothing at all. As Morgan witnessed this reaction from him, or lack of one, it served to bring a sharp, twisting pain to his heart. Emily, however, still had her face buried somewhere in Reid's shoulder, but even in the dimly lit light Morgan could see the outline of angry red welts, where wire had been tightly wrapped around.

"…Spencer…it's Morgan," he tried. He took the tiniest of steps closer, but Reid panicked then and not wanting to scare them, Morgan retreated. Never had he expected to see such all-consuming fright in his friend's eyes. Even when Reid had been kidnapped by Tobias over a year ago, this wasn't the same fear. Now, all Morgan saw was hopelessness. "Kid, calm down. It's Derek. I'm not going to hurt you. You're okay now. You're okay."

He tried to keep his voice smooth and soft like honey, but nothing seemed to make the connection in Reid's mind. The boy genius, who remembered everything he read, who could read twenty thousand words per minute, did not remember him.

"My God," Rossi breathed out, "they don't know who we are."

"Emily," Morgan tried instead, but that caused Reid to turn on them so suddenly, it made them all jump back in surprise.

"Reid…" Hotch spoke calmly, hesitantly.

"Leave her alone," Reid rasped out as he stumbled to his feet and pulled Emily up along with him. Now they could see their almost transparent skin, see their unnatural thinness, and see the violent bruises matting their bodies, which told the story of what had happened to them.

Morgan hardly recognized Reid's voice. It was the first time he had heard him speak in over five months and it was not the voice he had been hoping for. "Reid… we aren't going to hurt you. It's us….Me. Morgan. Don't you remember?"

Reid gave him an odd look of fear before raising a shaking hand. It disappeared into his knitted shirt before pulling out an all too familiar object. Morgan felt his stomach lurch inside of him at having to raise his own gun back up, but if Reid didn't drop the weapon, then neither could he.

"Reid…?" Rossi began, unsure, but he too raised his gun.

Morgan eyed the barrel of the gun which was currently being occupied by his deranged friend. How Reid got a gun, he couldn't be sure, nor did he care. When he imagined their rescue, this wasn't how it was played out. There was no blizzard. Emily and Reid were left unscratched. Their unsub was caught. And there most definitely was no gun involved. But nothing had been going as according to plan.

And it wouldn't.

"Put down the gun, Reid," he tried again.

But Reid looked Morgan straight in the eye before clicking off the safety and aiming it straight at Morgan's head.

So should I continue?