So this will be my first story on this site. Thank you for reading, please tell me what you think in the reviews!!

This is an AU. The path of the story will diverge. George Foyet, A.K.A. the Boston Reaper, will make an appearance eventually. Only the first chapter will be in the format of her journal, but pieces of it will be included due to it's importance to the story.

I don't own Criminal Minds, nor anything that seems like real life. Anything that has any correlation to real life events or other fandoms, save CM, is completely coincidental. I only own my dark, twisted thoughts, characters and ideas.

This is placed after (S4,E2) The Angel Maker and before (S4,E3) Minimal Loss.

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September 23, 2008

Journal Entry One

I know where I want to be in life. I know where I'm going and I know how to get there. What I didn't expect was my therapist, only necessary due to the excessive violence and extreme nature of my job as a behavioral analyst of the FBI, to demand a journal project on my team. Well, we did just complete a rather harrowing case about obsession, loss, love, stabbing constellations into people and possible necromancy. So anyway... We don't know if she will be reading these, so Derek will probably blow it off. Spencer will write every second of everyday down. JJ most likely already journals. Emily will do one liners and say it's because she already has paperwork to deal with. Hotch will add it to his long list of things to do. Garcia will make fiction of it all, likely to have smut in it. Rossi will have fun with it. And I guess I will just start at my most life changing memory.

When I was 13, freshly turned, an event happened that changed my view on life completely. Not that my view wasn't already skewed but even so. It started out a normal week. The kids went to school. The adults went to work. We did our homework, had dinner, and had an hour or so before bed. However, one thing wasn't so constant. My father, someone who for the longest time I looked up to, was habitually absent. Almost as if he preferred being away opposed to being with his family. I was told stories of a hero Army man that was off saving the world, but I feel like it would have hurt less if I was just told the truth. He was, no, is a hardened criminal. The very few times he showed his face at the house, usually at night, he was drunk or high of some street drug. This night was no different save for one thing, my sister and I were awake. Dillon, my father, entered rather loudly. Stumbling along the hall from the foyer, knocking things from the walls and off the shelves without care.

My sister, clad in her Pooh Bear onesie, cautiously walked down the stairs to see what was going on. I quietly checked on my younger brothers, even though they're known to be heavy sleepers. Marcus, the nine year old, still snoring, was tucked away in his Batman bedspread. Devin, the six year old, was turning in his sleep as his hair splays out across his dark blue pillow.

As silently as possible, I shut the door and started after my sister. I heard the raised voices grow louder the closer I got to the master bedroom. My too long, sky blue pajama bottoms were trying to trip me as I began to move faster. The door was cracked in such a way that light splashed the dark hallway in momentary brightness, when the shadow casting bodies moved to and fro inside. Stepping over the creaky floorboard that we never got around to fixing, I tried to take a peek into the room. The yelling had escalated to shouting and growled out words coated in anger and hostility. Before my eyes could really adjust to the contrast of the light, I felt someone put their hand over my mouth and their arm around my waist. They quickly pulled me backwards. My heart jumped into my throat, or so it felt, making it hard to breathe or focus.

We ended up in the hall closet, surrounded by heavy winter coats. The door closing shut with an ominous click. I swerved to my would-be attacker, my arm raised in preparedness of hit, slap, whatever would get me out of the situation only to see the off gold and red of my sisters clothes. "Reava?" I whispered, my eyes asking the questions that my mouth couldn't seem to form. 'Why? What's going on?' She just raised her pointer finger to her her mouth in the universal 'shhh' motion. I started to open my mouth again, but at that point I couldn't muster enough strength to put my vast amount of thoughts into coherent words. Not that it would have mattered, her attention was no longer on me, but through the shutters that lined the front of the closet door. Looking through myself, I noticed how the angle was perfect to see into the master bedroom without having to push the door open more…

'So that's how she knew what our Christmas presents were before we unwrapped them.'

At this point I had no delusions of the jolly man in a red suit that knows all and gives presents to children. However, I'd rather watch Santa and my mom wrapping millions of gifts then see my father aim a gun at my mother any day of the week.

She had her jewelry box in her hands, slowly moving towards a pile of electronics and clothes that was haphazardly thrown together. He was telling her to get more -at the time I wondered what he wanted with it all- and to not try anything. She started going for the decorations on the walls. From the pair of handmade felt angel wings held together by tape to the precious stones collection that had been steadily growing over the years. He had apparently decided that she wasn't going fast enough as he grabbed her wrist, causing her to drop six or seven of the stones. He pulled her out of the room, through the hall, passed the stairs and out the front door. My sister pushed the doors to the closet, so hard they hit the walls and left indentations, and chased after them. She screamed at me to 'call 911' over her shoulder, and I saw her jump forward before the door closed and I lost my visual. I dashed across the living room to the phone stand and dialed. "Nine-one-one, what's your emergency?" A kindly woman asked over the line, but before I could respond a loud bang rang out. "Help please!" Gripping the phone to my chest as I ran, the woman frantically speaking muffled by the fabric of my shirt, I headed for the front door.

The scene I entered onto was straight out of a horror movie. My sister in the grass, un-moving. My mom being held by my dad with a gun to her head. My father, with hazy eyes and unstable movements, holding the gun and screaming obscenities. It probably only lasted seconds, but to me, I stood there frozen to the patio for years. Watching it frame by frame, unable to do, say, think anything. The phone had gone silent by now and I could barely make out the sirens in the distance. Suddenly he looked towards me, his features softening slightly. Pushing my mom to the ground, he took another step towards me. Before he could take another someone shouted 'FREEZE!' as the sound of guns being cocked filled the air. He seemed to snap out of the daze he was in as he looked out to the scattered police hiding behind their cars and car doors.

As he was distracted, a cop came up from behind him, kicked the gun from his hand and tackled him to the ground. It all happened so fast. One second he's staring at me with a look that kind of resembles remorse, and the next he's on the ground, struggling against the cop with a vicious sneer on his face. Yelling over all the other noise about how he was in the right and how everyone will pay. He didn't stop, even as the cops pushed him into the squad car at an angle. After the car drove off, I could still hear his raging. His vow of revenge. I could hear it ringing in my ears as a cop led me to my mom. She was sitting in the back of an ambulance with my sister laid out on the gurney. I could just barely make out her telling me that it was all gonna be okay, that Reava was only knocked out. That my brothers would be coming to the hospital with my Grandmother after the cops talked to her. But even now, as I go to classes, to work and home again, I can hear him. Telling me that he'll come for me and those I love one day.

I guess that's the true meaning of 'know thyself, know thy enemy' (-Sun Tzu). But it's also the reason I can't trust people anymore, to a certain degree, even my mother. Because if she trusted like that once, she could do it again, and I don't think I can live with that pain twice over. I'm alone, and self-isolation hurts. Never being able to be close to someone without questioning their every motive, doubting their honesty. Being so paranoid that I lock the door to my bedroom at night and sleep, if I do, with my bedside lamp turned on and a knife under my pillow. I know that anything can happen. I know my family loves me. I know that living with constant vigilance and extreme paranoia could kill me faster than anything I come across in this life. But I also knew that my dad was a hero that could do no wrong and was coming home one day to be a family again. I knew that my mom was so strong, nothing nor no one could defeat her. I knew that life was perfect. And now it's only as perfect as I make it out to be.