Waking Up into Darkness
By Yasashii Tsubasa
Summary: Post-Revelations. Ballet dancers are being murdered in NYC; as the BAU races to catch the killer, Reid realizes that the next victim is an old friend--and that if he can't control his own issues, than he might disintegrate the team
Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds, but I love it.
Rating: It's PG-13 for now, but it's leaning more towards R—drug use, slight gore, you know, all the scary stuff. Nothing really bad.
A/N: I am not a ballet dancer, but I have danced in modern and jazz styles for the better part of six years. I've wanted to get back into fan fiction for a long time, and Criminal Minds is a good place to start. I always appreciate feedback, and would love to know if you're enjoying this story.
"Are you listening?
Can you hear me?
Have you forgotten?" --Matchbox 20
Prologue: A Prelude to a Permanent Retirement
Maria Guimard took a dainty sip of water from her bottle; it was lukewarm and tasted faintly of copper, but it was nonetheless refreshing. The audience was still applauding, but Maria, the newest Prima Ballerina, did not do more than two curtain calls. She was backstage, safely squirreled away in the warm-up room, listening to the applause on the monitors and trying to slow her heartbeat.
Well, she thought, at least that old bastard of a choreographer knows how to please the masses.
She was still in her pointe shoes. Seven of her toes were bleeding steadily, sluggishly, and already Maria could feel the sticky wetness of it as it congealed on the soles of her shoes. The slippers were useless by this point—no one could dance in blood-filled shoes. Maria was secretly ashamed—but she was a bleeder, as the crude terminology went, and her toes were more likely to get worse as her career went on, not better.
I hate, hate, hate breaking in new pointe shoes.
She needed a cigarette before the rest of the cast came backstage. They were more annoying than they could ever know, and Maria couldn't stand them.
Grabbing her coat, the ballerina headed out into the chilly, snow-blown night. Her feet were so naturally small that the footprints she made soon blew away, as if she'd never been there at all.
It was a stagehand who found her, frozen blue in the snow, her eyes open and glassy, a perfectly preserved china doll from hell. Maria Guimard, the newest Prima Ballerina for the New York City Ballet Company, imported all the way from her native France, had been dead for over two hours by that point.
They found her feet, of course, much later than that.
--
Spencer Reid flinched sharply, jerked from sleep by something unknown. He opened his eyes and was greeted by the dark of his room, almost tangible, almost like a blanket tucking him in, swallowing him up, hiding him from the sight of others. He was drenched in sweat.
Damn it.
He had no idea of the time. He'd switched his normal digital alarm clock for an old analog that had no illumination, and the thought of turning the light on made his head pound. The darkness was enough. It was total, complete, sweeping to every corner of his bedroom and, Reid imagined, every crevice of his body—down his throat and spreading through his arms to his fingertips.
And to think, he used to be so afraid of the dark. Now he could barely stand the light.
He was totally alert, unable to get back to sleep, and Reid knew he'd have to get out of bed at some point and spend the rest of the night pacing, fretting, feeling strung out and dried up. His body felt as though it were made of sand—heavy and gritty. He'd already lost three pounds; he couldn't eat, couldn't stand the idea of feeling so sluggish.
You could take a little more Dilaudid. Just to help you sleep.
Reid shook his head firmly. No, he told himself. No more. I won't and I shouldn't and I can't. I just can't.
It would make you feel better.
The little voice in his head, the addict, the raging id.
No.
Yes.
Shut up.
Do it.
Reid grabbed the bottle of sleeping pills that sat on his bedside table; they were left over from when he'd had his wisdom teeth pulled. That would put him to sleep. He wouldn't have to find the little bottle of Dilaudid. He wouldn't have to do it.
He struggled with the cap of the bottle, but his hands were shaking again. Suddenly infuriated, Reid threw the bottle across the room violently; it hit the wall and shattered, throwing pills and shards of plastic in all directions.
Reid fell back on his mattress and covered his face with his pillow. He breathed in the cool smothering comfort of it and wondered what to do next.
This has to stop. I need to stop this. I have to be stronger than this.
But something in Reid knew that he was a twenty-four-year-old kid, a goddamn kid, and that he was in way over his head.
Damn it.
