A/N: Just a short one shot about Nathan from "Sex, Birth, Death."

Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds.

No Turning Back

"One day men will look back and say I gave birth to the twentieth century."
-Jack the Ripper-

I toss and I turn, my sheets twisting around my body, but no matter what position I lie in I still see the same face floating eerily behind my clenched eyelids. He stares down at me, his brown, stringy hair framing the meek smile on his face, and I feel my heart start to race at the thought of him.

This is better than my old dreams, the ones I had before I met him. Before he saved me. Back then, I would dream of death; my own hands wielding bloodied knives while hookers and whores lay at my feet in dark red pools that seeped towards the tips of my toes. Those were my wet-dreams, haunting my initiation into adolescence.

But I tried to stop it. I sought out the man who has taken their place. I went looking for a way to change who I was destined to become. My awareness, they claimed, would help to contain those urges.

But I still needed help.

I was so afraid of myself that I listened. I was so scared that I was a monster that I thought my only escape was death.

I remember how the blade felt. Cold and sharp as it pierced through my skin. And the whore's scream echoing in my ears as the warmth of blood seeped from my veins. I watched it trickle from my arms until I felt the effects, dizziness distorting my vision, and I lay back on the bed to let death take me.

The next thing I remember from that night is his body pressed against mine. His tearful words reached through the fog in my mind as he pressed his hands to my wrists to stop the flow of my blood…

"I'm not gonna let you die."

The memory of him gazing down at me, worry shining in his eyes, kept me alive more than his desperate rescue attempt could, because I swore I would live the best I could for him. I swore that I would be who he saw in me.

The problem, though, is that I still don't know who that is. Did he see a troubled boy who would grow up to be a good man, or did he see who I saw? A boy with thoughts so dark he was afraid to think, let alone sleep. A boy who wouldn't be able to control himself forever, who would give into the urges and finally watch some dirty whore's life slip from her eyes.

I thought I could appease both. I thought I could be both. But, really, there is no in-between for monsters. You are or you aren't…and, if you are, there's no turning back.