A/N There is a bit of Italian in the story – the Babel Fish translation is at the end.

THE MIND THIEVES
Chapter 4
The Storm

"The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear"

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Aaron coughed as the rain splashed onto his face and washed the blood and dirt away. He wondered how long he'd been out, as the ground was waterlogged now. He rolled onto his front and pulled himself along to the tree he could see just ahead, dragging his useless legs behind him. The rip in his chest was open and bleeding and now he was soaked and very cold, chilled to the bone. He leaned against the tree and shivered.

Spencer, where are you? Please, call out to me; I don't even know if I'm going in the right direction...

Panting for breath, his chest and stomach hurting from being sick and the torn flesh on his hands and feet, he thought he might be sick again - the after effects of the antibiotic cocktail he had been on for the past two weeks. He rested his head in his hands and shook with cold and fear.

Where was Spencer? Was it too late?

Blood smeared from his hands onto the wet skin of his face. He shook uncontrollably with the cold and pain. Looking deeper into the darkness, he reached out for the branch of a tree and gritted his teeth as he pulled himself forward.

-0-0-0-

Some body was lying in the rain five yards ahead of Hotchner; Hazel eyes stared blankly into the dark sky; flashes of lightening reflected intermittently across his pale face; soft moans escaped his lips as he tried to remember who he was and where he was lying. He felt things full from his throat and nose, and he began to sense sound again as they slithered out of his ears. They pulled from his hips and waist and shrunk back in on themselves, leaving him helpless and broken. He touched his face with his freed hands and felt the last strand disappear. He opened his mouth and cried into the darkness.

Am I alone? Is there someone who can help me? Am I the only one?

He held his hand between his face and the sky and examined the shape of the shadow. Was this him? Or did he end somewhere else? Where did he end? Was he everything?

A sensation. Pain? He tried to draw away from it but it moved with him, stayed with him. He heard a sound... confusion...

-0-0-0-

"Spencer!" Aaron called. "For god's sake, answer me!"

A cry through the trees, and Aaron turned his head towards the sound. "Spence? Spencer, I'm here, I'm coming!"

He rolled away from the tree and pulled himself deeper into the forest. Suddenly his hand touched something – his chair – wrapped and entwined with evil looking brambles. Beyond, he could see some one lying on his back.

"Spencer!" he breathed. Not far but the thorns lay across his path as if protecting him, cutting him off, as if they wanted to keep Hotch from him... As if they knew he was there...

He would have to cross the barrier but in his condition it might as well have been the walls of Babylon.

He needed to get up.

As he lay there wondering how the hell he was going to get to him, he felt a stem against his bleeding right foot. He tried to pull his foot away, but it was gripped around his ankle, and was tightening. Thorns broke skin that was still unbroken, and pulled.

Aaron swung his arms over his head and tried to find something to hold onto, but there was nothing. Panic rising he snatched at the undergrowth and felt a root in his palm which he held onto as the bramble pulled harder on his foot.

He held on with both hands, remembering its strength when it pulled Reid away from him. He could feel his hands slipping around the root as his palms bled and coated the plant, and he wondered what would give first – his hip or shoulders.

The question was answered as his hip cracked and he felt his femur leave his pelvis. He screamed in agony and his fingers finally pulled away from their purchase.

Slowly the bramble shrank dragging him with it. Flailing in panic he tried to find something else to get hold of, but the root had been his last chance. He twisted round to his foot and saw the skin was being removed from his foot like a sock, and about two inches of muscle and bone was exposed in a ring around his ankle.

Desperate now, terrified he would pass out, he took hold of the stems that entwined his foot and pulled them away; quickly moving his hands out of the way before they could twist around his wrists. As soon as they were loose enough he eased his flailed foot through the loop. The stems hissed away back into the barrier and left Aaron lying in his back gasping in pain and smeared with blood.

"I need help," he whispered. "...somebody, please, help me..."

-0-0-0-

"Won't the polizia help?" Emily said, pacing. "They are Federal Agents after all."

"That means nothing here." He answered. "And they won't help us until they've been missing for twenty four hours. And technically they have only been missing since the taxi left the area. They won't alter that for us. We are just a group of tourists."

"We can't leave it until the morning." Emily said. "How are we going to get there?"

"Just a minute." Dave went to the reception and rang the bell. The night receptionist came from the back room rubbing his eyes.

"Can I help?"

"Abbiamo bisogno urgentemente di un'automobile."

The receptionist gave a list of phone numbers to Dave. "This one is best." he said, pointing to the top number. "But they are not open in the night."

"Posso prendere in prestito prego un'automobile?"

"Spiacente. Non abbiamo un'automobile disponibile per gli ospiti."

"Grazie." Dave took the list back to Emily. "Nothing." He said with a sigh and sat down opposite her. "So much for relaxing healing time."

"Dave, I need to go to bed for an hour or so. "

"You are right." He answered. "We will need to be fully alert tomorrow. The cab will be here at six. I'll meet you here at five thirty."

Emily stood up and walked to the door, Dave watched her go. He knew about her feelings for Hotch and understood her disquiet. He went to the bar and paid the tab, and went to his room. He really didn't think he would sleep though. He didn't bother to get undressed. He lay on the bed with his hands behind his head and listened to the rain on the window and stressed about two of his friends alone and lost in the storm.

-0-0-0-

Each drop of rain that hit his skinned ankle sent shocks of pain into his body. It amazed him how a useless limb could give him so much pain. He gripped his dislocated hip and tried to move to the tree he had seen with a branch overhanging Spencer. In agonised movements, he pulled himself along with one hand, gripping his right hip with the other. It was slow and excruciating, but the cold had numbed him a little, and his body shook and trembled with the cold. When he finally reached the tree, he leaned back on the trunk and howled with pain, screaming into the night.

He looked up at the tree. There was no way he could climb it, crippled with a dislocated hip. He would have to move around the thorns or through them.

There was a dead tree to his right. He reached over to it and tested its strength. It was brittle and he thought he could push it across the barrier. Gritting his teeth he leaned over and pushed his weight onto the bole of the tree, and slowly the old dead tree fell across the brambles.

"I'm almost there, Spence. I'm almost there!" he said and climbed onto the fallen trunk.

So close... so close, Spencer, I'm almost there...

-0-0-0-

A sound? I know I should know what it is but my mind will not recognise it. It there another one? Or am I alone. I open my mouth and try to copy the sound I heard but it is not the same, just a scream of confusion and I think I am hurting and I can feel a new sensation. I don't know what it is but it is making me shake and the shaking is good.

A sound again, this is different – differentiated words not a scream but I don't understand them they make no sense to me. I look up again at the sky; the rain hits my eyes and my face and the hurting does not stop and where is everything? I remember there was more but it is empty now. Please, sky, help me if you can, something, someone, help me...

-0-0-0-

Hotchner saw Reid lift his hand and stare at it.

"Spencer!"

He felt the roughness of the tree trunk graze his legs through the thin cotton shorts that clung wetly to him. Glancing back, he saw the blood trail he had left smeared onto leaves and branches behind him. He hoped that the rain would not wash it all away.

Dave would come for him soon.

His left leg he could move, although it had no strength, but his right leg hung uselessly. Each time he inched his way closer to Reid, it felt as if someone was twisting his leg from his hip. He lay forward on the rotting tree and rested, his arms embracing the slippery bark. He dug his fingers into its softness, and prayed that it wouldn't snap and let him fall into the wicked bramble growth below. He knew he wouldn't survive that. The thought gave him new impetus, and he moved a little further forwards, moaning softly, tears of pain springing from tightly closed eye lids as his damaged hip engulfed his body in brittle and unbearable agony. His hands slick with blood slipped suddenly either side of the tree, and he hit his face hard on the bark, and for a second he blacked out as he crashed downwards towards the forest floor.

-0-0-0-

Emily paced her room. Sleep? That was a joke. She opened her window and watched the rain and the lightning in the distance. The sky was black, the moon on the other side of the storm clouds. She shivered, and hoped her friends had found somewhere dry to shelter; they were only wearing thin cotton clothes.

She remembered the night before, when he held her in his arms, doing nothing, just holding her. It was enough but she knew he felt he had let her down. She could honestly love this man. She just needed him to be back with her.

She thought about Reid, and how he had so wanted to be the one for him. She knew he had been hurt by what she did, and now it felt as if she had betrayed him. But she could not let a chance to be with Aaron pass her by, even if it meant letting a good friend down.

She checked the time – three forty nine. She threw herself on the bed and closed her eyes, and sheer exhaustion took her.

-0-0-0-

I heard what I think could be something breaking, the sounds of a voice – I am not alone here, there is another someone calling ... to me? Is that me? The voice is crying now, and a crashing sound.

I turn my head and I see something. I hold my hand up and compare the shape – another hand, reaching for me... I reach out towards it and it clings to me. Another...

...another person is here. I listen to the sounds he makes as he gets slowly closer, and his arms are deep red with blood and his body has left a smear of red behind him. He is hurting and I want to stop his agony. He is making a sound – breathing – each is laboured and accompanied by a cry – but I want him to stop hurting.

I turn to my side and reach for him...

-0-0-0-

TRANSLATION

We need a car urgently.
Please may I borrow a car?
Sorry, we don't have a car available for guests
Thank you

Apologies to any Italian readers – blame Babel Fish!