Roll Ten: Deranged

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"Dr. Reagan?" Reid stepped carefully into the darkened house, his senses alive with the probabilities of what he could find inside. "Dr. Reagan? It's Dr. Reid with the FBI—you're in danger. I need you to come with me, to safety. Hello?"

Silence answered. Silence, and the dark.

Reid hated the dark. He shivered, gripped his gun tighter in hands that were slippery and tense, and slowly advanced into that waiting black.

"Dr. Reid?" called a voice. Reid turned towards the place that voice was sounding from on impulse, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. The voice was… vacant. Wrong. Female. "I received Agent Rossi's message. I'm in the study."

He paced forward, feet angled to keep his body as small as possible as he walked into the barely lit room, narrowing his eyes against the glare from the lamp behind the Dr's body. Standing mutely, smiling oddly, she watched him enter.

He noted the knife a second too late.

"No!" he cried, leaping forward, but the knife plunged home and red sprayed. She crumpled, her body not quite masking the scuff of a boot on the rug behind him. Reid ducked and turned right into a blow that threw him down, head whirling, mouth and nose thick with—

Sage. The gas was noxious and stinging, needle-like strikes that battered his face and burned unendingly. He choked, trying to scrub his mouth free with hands that weren't holding his gun anymore, feeling the world dip and cough and try to heave him away.

The disorientation was immediate, terrifying, and completely impossible to defend against.

He blinked and the room blinked with him. Blinked again and giddied sideways, hands skittering on the rug that pulled away from his jittering fingers. A hand touched his shoulder, steadying him, and every part of him turned and yearned to that touch, that fixed point of contact. Unwillingly, he looked. Found a mouth and two eyes and nothing familiar. He tried to strike at it and felt the air push back at him, his limbs heavy and his body no longer his own. Fear hit and it was paralysing.

Gun. Where's my gun, my phone, Hotch HotchHotchhelppleasehelp—

"You can't move," the mouth said to him, and his body stilled without his consent. "Tell me what you're feeling, Dr. Reid."

His mouth stammered, yelped. His voice thin. Was his phone ringing, chattering back? He couldn't tell. He looked at it and the phone stopped, going black. Maybe it had never rung.

"Perceptual anomalies," he said, shuddering as the grasping dark clawed at the edge of the room. He'd scuttled back, at some point, away from the other mouth, and his hands and hip were sunk into a carpet of wet red. He studied his fingers, bloodied fingers. Was it his? Someone else's?

His heart skipped, galloped, dropped heavily into the damp below and forgot how to thump along.

Did he do this?

"Hallucinations," he whispered to the accusing red on his fingers. "Loss of context as to what is reality and what is a product of the stimulant psychosis."

The mouth approached, rearranged itself into curious eyes as it crouched in front. Long clawed fingers reached for his hands and he squeaked and tried to yank them away. Where they touched the blood, it smeared and left his fingers cold. "This isn't a hallucination, Dr. Reid," said Mr. Scratch, his mouth a void. Sage was strong and Reid coughed and sucked it in again, head thumping, eyes aching, body still. "This is real. You know this is real. Whose blood is this?"

Reid looked at the blood again, curling towards it. Around it. Hiding from it. "Help me, Hotch, please," he thought or whispered or hoped.

"What are you feeling?" snarled Mr. Scratch again. "Whose blood is that? Turn around."

Reid shook his head no no. "Changes in thought, emotion, and consciousness," he mumbled. "I'm panicking. Scared. Symptoms of shock. Nothing is real."

"That is." The fingers jabbed. Reid's neck itched. Someone was behind him. He scratched at his hands, rubbing rubbing rubbing and maybe the blood was his. "Turn around. I said turn around."

Reid turned. Looked down. Swallowed.

"Dissociation of sensory input causing derealization, the perception of the outside world as being dream-like or unreal," he mewled, shaking shaking. Helpless. Help me. "I'm dissociating. Depersonalization. Detaching from my body; feeling unreal; feeling able to observe my actions but not actively take control. This is the drug—"

This is you.

"—nothing I'm feeling is real or viable—"

You did this.

"—and you won't control me—"

But I already am.

Reid swallowed again, tasted sage, and looked away from the bloodied body of Aaron Hotchner laying broken and twisted behind him. Then looked back. Examined. Profiled. "He put up a fight. Assailant was approximately the same size as him, physically weaker. He… he only has defensive wounds. No… no offensive…"

Why.

He slipped his fingers over the bloody streaks marring his friend's face. Stood up and stepped back, reeling. "Because he didn't want to hurt me," he breathed, and the knife was in his hands. He stepped again, into more wet, more red, and looked down to JJ, who would never look back again.

Oops. She couldn't hurt you either. Mistake.

He ran. Fell. Smashed his knee into the corner of a coffee table, and skittered back on limbs that crabbed around him and forgot how to move, to flee, limbs that wanted him to see the blood surrounding him. You did this youdidthis you always knew you were capable of madness.

Emily. She stepped into the room, her eyes sad. I always knew you'd snap one day, she said sadly, but she put her gun away. Oh, Spence. But like this? Why would you do this? To Aaron? To Dave? To me?

"Don't," he begged her. "Don't come over here." She ignored him, walking towards him with her hands held out to him. Begging. Pleading him to be okay. "Stop. No no no not Emily not EmilynotEmily…"

The knife laughed and laughed and he thought it might be him who was grossly pleased.

Arms around him. Emily hugged him close and he hugged her back, tucking his mouth and nose against the curve of her neck and hiccupping between laughs as he sobbed. Broken, heaving, wheezing sobs that tore and whistled and he couldn't stop them. Couldn't stop from crying, from breaking, from the mind he'd always been so fucking proud of shattering like a mug swept carelessly from a table.

He felt the knife stutter across her ribs as it slipped between them. Felt the easy slide. Felt the pressure.

Screamed as the hilt shuddered and pressed against her skin and she took one wet sounding breath and sagged into his grip. He fell with her and hoped he'd die instead.

He thought he might have thrown the knife. He thought he might have thrown up.

All he knew for sure was he was on his knees cradling her against his chest and she was bleeding bleeding and he'd done it.

Don't blame you, she said. Smiling. Her lovely, lovely smile, and he didn't know what to say—

She died.

No fanfare. There one minute, gone the next, and he curled around her and used her silent chest to muffle his screams.

Get up. They're coming. Stop them.

But he refused. He stayed with her until they came and he wished he'd die. Stayed with her until a hand touched his shoulder—oh my god, Spence, Hotch he's bleeding—and someone else ran past—get the fucking medic in here—and still she was gone.

Looking up at the ghost of Aaron Hotchner, he managed a broken, "I killed her," and then he managed nothing at all.

The darkness was welcoming this time, and he wasn't scared at all.