Chapter 12
Gradually the physical damage healed. The clips were removed from Reid's face and the stitches from his arm. The plaster taken off his arm when the bone healed. The bruises on his body faded.
But his eyes had a haunted dark look. His lips sad, unsmiling. As his wounds healed, the inner damage grew deeper, feelings of self loathing, abhorrence, dominated his thinking. When the team visited, he hid away, unable to allow them to see him, unable to speak. How could he? His secret was all he had left; he could not give that away. This all embracing darkness that surrounded him, how could they not see it? How could they not hate him?
Hotch tried. He sat on Spencer's bed, talking to him, telling him it was not his fault, that he was not dirty. Tried to make him understand that what Cross had done to him did not make him unlovable, and that if he would only let them, he had friends who would carry him through this, be there with him.
But he wouldn't speak of it, wouldn't allow Hotch to tell the others.
Spencer refused any kind of counseling. He was dismayed that there were people who knew of his ordeal, when they looked at him, he could see disgust in their eyes. He stopped looking at people. His eyes became unfocussed, distant.
When Hotch thought about what Cross had done to him, it made his blood run cold. This man had been an innocent, now he had been destroyed.
Spencer was still living, but he had lost his life.
Although he couldn't see Reid, he felt his pain through the trembling of his body, the shuddering in his voice.
Hotch cried a lot.
He cried for Spence.
He cried for his lost family, for the little boy he never saw.
He cried for the lost life.
Night times were the worst. Hotch lay in his own penetrating darkness. He could hear Spencer's agony as he cried out unknowingly in his sleep, the nightmares ripping his soul apart. Sometimes he would get up and lay on the bed next to him, just so that maybe he would respond to the closeness of a friend. Sometimes he would sit and hold his hand. But the dreams went on.
Night after awful night.
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The team still visited, but they had cases to work on, and it seemed that their lives had
taken a different path. And they didn't see Reid as he did. They didn't know what he had been through, still going through.
The girls tried to understand. JJ and Garcia forgave his absences. They could forgive him anything, because he was Reid. His vulnerability made him more lovable than ever. But they couldn't really understand, because they didn't know.
Emily found it difficult to empathise. She had trouble dealing with her own emotions, so she shut them off. This overt manifestation of grief that permeated Reid frightened her, and not knowing Reid like the others, she backed away from him, unable to handle it.
Morgan didn't joke and tease like he used to. He knew there was something terribly wrong, but he didn't know what it was. He knew Reid had always been tormented by nightmares, and thought maybe he was having flashbacks. Reid had been near death, and barely survived. He wished he knew how to reach out to him, but his own emotional stability was shaky, Whatever was tearing Spence apart, he doubted that his own fragile self control would make it through.
So Hotch kept trying.
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Aaron's leg was no longer in a cage, and the pins had been removed. Gradually he was learning to get about on his own. When he reached each milestone in his recovery, when he should have been celebrating, he just sat with his hands on his face, wishing he could share it.
But the people with whom he wanted to share it were unreachable.
He wondered why he wanted to recover.
Haley was gone, the team didn't need him.
Just as they moved on without Gideon, they moved on without him.
Then he would hear Reid crying, relive those terrible screams, and he knew why. Reid needed him. Even though Reid didn't know it, Hotch was there for him.
The wound on Aaron's head was healed, the bandages and stitches gone, his hair growing back. Spencer's arm was beginning to recover movement, the scars on his face fading
From the outside, they both looked whole.
But inside, they were still dying.
