Spencer Reid was so far beyond cold that the word had ceased to have any meaning to him. He was freezing, icy, frosty, frigid . . . no, maybe not frigid, that had connotations that Morgan would tease him about if given the opportunity. Morgan. Morgan would be freezing, too, Reid remembered, left behind in a car that had surely become an icebox by now, and he had to keep going if he was going to be able to help Morgan. So he continued to stumble forward blindly on feet he could no longer feel, forcing himself to move downhill, always downhill, although he couldn't precisely recollect why downhill was so important.

Because his mind insisted on keeping itself busy, even when it was numb and sluggish, he found himself recalling times in his past when he had been cold, and comparing them to what he was feeling now: Tied naked to a goalpost outside his Las Vegas high school, manacled to a chair in a shack in Georgia, standing on a boat dock in Alaska pointing a gun at a young boy who just wanted to be loved. None of those experiences had brought him anywhere near to the bone-deep iciness he was experiencing now. He quickly realized that he had no pleasant memories of being cold, not one. Other people might remember skiing or ice skating or sledding, but he had grown up in the desert, and wouldn't have been interested in such athletic pursuits anyway. Some people might think about snuggling with a lover beside a bonfire or on a hayride, but he had never had a lover with whom to cuddle in that way. Now that he thought about it, the only reason people had for enjoying the cold was in finding ways to try and escape it, either through raising their own temperature with exercise or by finding a heat source, human or otherwise. He simply could not imagine anyone relishing the cold for its own sake. There was no fun to be had at freezing temperatures, none whatsoever.

"The average low temperature in Lake Lure is forty-six degrees Fahrenheit," he muttered, dredging up facts he'd read somewhere. "There are only three days a year when the temperature drops into the single digits, and only seven days a year when the temperature stays below freezing all day. Compared to, say, Mt. Mitchell, where the temperature has fallen to negative thirty-four degrees before, it's practically toasty here. And today, it's probably only in the high twenties. Besides, people do not freeze to death unless they're wet. As long as I keep moving, I should be all right."

What he really wanted to do, more than anything he had ever wanted to do in his life, was lie down and go to sleep. He could picture himself lying in his snug bed, with an electric blanket pulled up under his chin, thermostat set at the reasonable seventy-five degrees that Morgan claimed made the apartment too hot for normal people. Or maybe lying on the couch in JJ's living room, while Henry roasted marshmallows over a fire blazing in their fireplace. JJ would bring hot chocolate, and once he dropped off, as he had many Sunday afternoons in the past, she would throw the afghan from the back of the couch over him while Will pulled Henry out to play in another room and let Uncle Spence sleep. Surely a few minutes wouldn't hurt, and if he was sleeping he wouldn't have to feel the sharp pain under his shoulder blade or the throbbing in his head, could close his eyes instead of squinting against the continuous onslaught of the stinging flakes of ice, could maybe at least pretend to feel warm for a precious span of time. He could dream about Maeve, and if he didn't wake up, would that really be such a bad thing?

Suddenly Reid's feet went out from under him. Blinded by the snow and the quickly approaching darkness, he had missed the dip downward in the unbroken field of white. He slid and tumbled, fortunately not down the side of a mountain but far and fast enough to cause him considerable pain. He rolled up against an enormous pine tree, his hurt shoulder banging against the trunk with an audible thud that brought a cascade of snow from the branches above down upon him. He quickly used his good arm to scrape enough away from his face to allow him to breathe, then lay gasping and groaning. "Well, I'm awake now," he finally announced to no one, and slowly started using the branches of the tree to pull himself out of the snow pile and back onto his feet. He had a hard time finding purchase on the snow-overlaid icy pine needles, and it was several minutes before he could stand relatively upright under the towering fir.

He had bruises on top of his bruises, but nothing seemed to be any more broken than it had been before he fell, and the adrenaline rush had actually cleared his brain a bit. He suddenly remembered that he was supposed to be checking his phone, well, Morgan's phone, to see if he had a signal. He had no idea how much time had passed since the last time he had pulled it out of his pocket. Sometime previously he had finished reading To Build a Fire to himself and had moved on to White Fang, but had lost the train of that story fairly early on. About that time he had also stopped verifying the lack of bars. "Spencer Reid, you're an idiot," he told himself. His only purpose in this mad journey was to find a phone signal, and he'd forgotten to do it. Shaking his head ruefully, he managed to work the cell out of his coat pocket, relieved to see that he hadn't lost it or smashed it in his fall down the hill. His hand was too cold to properly work the buttons, so he pushed the front of the phone against his cheek, pressing several keys at once and turning on the screen. One signal bar lit up faintly. He was close, so close to being able to call for help. If he just kept moving, he should soon be near enough to a tower. Downhill, that was the key.

Reid stepped out from under the pine tree so that he could figure out the best way to move forward. He had to duck under the weighted-down branches, his eyes still glued to the screen of the cell. Once he was clear, he looked up and hastily fell back, allowing the branches of the tree to scrape against his back and bringing still more snow down on his head, but a little more snow was the least of his worries. The tree against which he had fetched up was growing on a shelf, halfway down the hill. Above him the slope was gradual, which had allowed him to slide relatively gently down to his current position. Below him, the drop was abrupt. Had he taken another step, he would have plunged thirty feet or more straight down.

Reid had to sit and breathe deeply for several minutes before he could calm himself enough to think rationally again. He didn't usually consider himself to be afraid of heights, but the sheer drop inches from his feet nearly paralyzed him. Once he thought he was in control enough to stand, he carefully placed the phone back into his pocket and took a firm hold of one of the tree branches, wanting an anchor in case he slid. Once he was standing, he judiciously considered his options. He could not stay where he was. Without a cell phone signal, no one would ever find him. Obviously going forward was not a possibility. He studied the hill down which he had previously fallen. Under normal circumstances he imagined he could climb back up it fairly easily, but circumstances were far from normal. While not terribly steep, the slope was coated with ice and snow; he only had one arm with which to steady himself should he fall; and with the sheer drop at the bottom, the consequences of sliding down again could quite possibly be fatal.

Reid edged gingerly around the large pine tree, keeping tight hold of the branches as much as he could. On the other side, the shelf on which he was standing seemed to continue along the side of the mountain for at least some distance. With the white blanket of snow it was difficult to gauge where the ridge might end, but it was the only alternative open to him. "It's wider than it looks," Reid reassured himself. "At least three feet, the standard width of a sidewalk in DC. You walk down those without falling off the edge all the time. You can do this." Despite his self-assertions, it was ten more minutes before Reid was able to force himself to let go of the tree and step out along the shelf. In the end he was only able to do so by imagining the team finding him there, too scared to move, and how disappointed he thought they would all be. He took one step, and then another. For a moment he glanced over toward the drop to his left, and then quickly shifted his eyes forward. "You can do this," he told himself again. Because, really, what choice did he have?

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AN: Thanks to whoever nominated my story "All Grown Up" for the Profiler's Choice Awards. It makes me feel all warm and squishy inside.