So let me tell you how I wrote the first chapter then had no idea whatsoever on how I should continue it. And that'swhy it took me forever and a year to update it. haha. In reality, I actually forgot about it, until I read another story which inspired me to continue it.
Hopefully my next update won't be as long as this one. It shouldn't. I would really like to thank everyone who read and reviewed. means a lot. Actually, I was surprised at how many reviews I got. It made me happy =)
Well, Anywho, hopefully you haven't forgotten about it because here's chapter 2...
Chapter 2
In times of a crisis, time either seems to go so fast, where you can't remember a thing in between, or it goes deathly slow and you're hyper-aware of everything around you. For a moment there is always that heart stopping pause when you realize that you are not watching a movie, but that you are living a reality. The only difference between fiction and non, nine times out of ten, the victim survives.
And this is what it feels like for Reid.
Reid opens his arms- by pure instinct- and she literally falls into them. It happens so fast, he doesn't even have a chance to panic over it. As it turns out, hell wasn't watching the people you love get hurt; it was coming in during the second act, when it was already too late to stop it from happening.
She lays motionless in his arms and slowly he lowers her to the floor of the Chapel. He lightly touches her face, whispers her name, and prays for her to wake up. He can't do this without her, but she doesn't even stir. All too quickly, his mind blinks back to normal speed, and he is suddenly aware of the danger they are truly in. Now, he begins to panic over it.
"Emily?"
By now, they have managed to pull everyone's attention towards them and away from that religious freak. He's knows that they have just interrupted whatever he had plan, but he can not worry about that now. All of his attention is focused on Emily. But before he knows it, Benjamin Cyrus is looming over him, eyes burning with anger and betrayal.
"What'd you do to her?" Reid forces out, daring himself to look the older man in the eye.
"I didn't do anything God wouldn't forgive me for."
Cyrus's voice is annoyingly calm. It makes Reid want to smack him, but instead, he chooses, "She's needs a doctor. A hospital."
"What do you care?" Cyrus shoots back. "She lied to you."
"No… no….she didn't lie to me," he tells Cyrus with more determination than he thinks possible.
There is a beat of silence as Reid watches the older man process that information in his head. It takes him a moment – as Reid had expected for someone as dumb as Cyrus – before his eyes grow wide with realization and anger. "You're the FBI agent?"
For the smallest of seconds, Reid thinks of Hotch. He knows that he can blow his chances and let the team down. He is even able to hear Hotch's voice inside his head: don't. It's as clear as day, but it's exactly what he chooses not to do. He isn't going to let Emily down a second time. This time, he's going down with her.
"God won't see you through because you weren't listening," Reid whispers, his words striking Cyrus like a whip. "Maybe if you open your eyes you would see –"
He is unable to finish, because the next thing he knows is the butt of Cyrus's gun crashing down over his head. Reid has no choice, but to join Emily in that dark abyss.
***
Things break all the time. Glass, and dishes, and fingernails. Cars and contracts and potato chips. You can break a record, a dog, a dollar. You can break the ice. There are coffee breaks and lunch breaks and prison breaks. Day breaks, waves break, voices break. Chains can be broken. So can silence, and fever.
Promises break.
Heart breaks.
People break.
Two weeks before the horrible ordeal in Colorado, Hotch had a nightmare in which two of his colleagues were held hostage. In the reverie they hadn't made it out alive. There had been blood. There had been two bodies without a face. It had scared the shit out of him, and as a result, he hadn't slept for weeks.
Now, that nightmare was the only thing he could think about. He remembers it clearly as Reid screams on the other line for help. The fact that Hotch is hyper-aware of the events unfolding in that compound building, send him into a world of hysterics. He can't handle it. Not this time.
But he isn't the only one.
Morgan, who is standing next to him, looks ready to kill someone. Rossi looks determined, but he can see the fear in the man's eyes.
Listening to Emily's crude beaten had been pure torture to sit through. And they just listened, utterly powerless to stop it. Hotch suddenly had a new definition for the word hell. And although he wasn't the one taking the beaten, he could feel her sorrow, which made it all the harder to breathe and impossible to think. But she told them she could take it, which is why they hadn't raided the compound to begin with.
He should have known that she would lie.
Because, the next thing he knows is Reid's frantic screaming on the other end. Morgan and Rossi shoot him nervous glances as if he knows all the answers. He doesn't know why they trust him, why they respect him. If anything they should be cursing him for sending two members of their team into that building alone.
Voices on the other line tear him from his thoughts. They are arguing. Something about a hospital. Something about God. And then Reid is accusing Cyrus and throwing words back in the man's face.
"Damn it," Morgan curses. "Cyrus's is going to kill him if he doesn't shut up."
Rossi lets out a heavy sigh. "I think he knows."
And as much as Hotch hates him for it, his friend is right. Almost instantly, Reid is cut off, and a second after, there's a loud thud. They are met by an enduring silence before Cyrus's voice cuts through it like a knife.
Maybe you'll learn to respect the will of God and you –
Unable to stand it any longer, Hotch throws the headphones off. He can't take it, and before he knows it, he is storming off the site. No one follows him, and he doesn't blame them. After all, he is heading no where. But the father he runs, the more he realizes he can't run from hell. It will always be there, scrapping the back of his feet, letting him know that it is not too far behind. And that's when his legs suddenly give out from under him, and he finds himself lying in the dirt.
The ground around him is dry and covered with little cracks. It reminds him of fault lines. It reminds him of his nightmare. He realizes then that people and objects aren't the only ones that break. The world itself is crumbling too, and it's the solid ground beneath his feet that's an illusion.