January 21st: Rossi's Letting Go
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January 21st: After - Super Saturday word count - - pay an escalation cost for each add-on.
400 words- Congratulations, your characters have survived an apocalypse! Now what?
+200 words- Journal/diary/epistolary format.
+200 words- Your setting for today.
+200 words- Give them a Bolivian Army ending
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Something was wrong.
The door burst open and the kid plus Prentiss came tumbling through, and Rossi had never been so fucking glad to see them. But something was wrong. The illusions were gone, worn off suddenly about an hour before, so thankfully he wasn't having to explain his, uh, that, but…
"I don't know why he's unconscious," Prentiss murmured, crouched over Hotch with her hands on his chest. "He hasn't taken a head injury, and you said whatever spell was messing you up the cloud took the bulk of." She was pretty good at sensing magic, even if she couldn't wield it, but the dark little niggle of something seat right in their unit chief's brain…
Yeah, only he could see that.
Said cloud had vanished. Getting thicker and thicker with whatever nasty spell it was eating away from them until it had disappeared with a sad little whomf. As soon as it popped out of existence, Hotch had made a slow kind of wheezing sound and gone limp.
And Rossi was scared, beyond any fear he'd felt before.
"There's something there," he told them when Morgan and JJ found them and they carefully worked together to guide the unconscious man towards the exit of the cave, Reid leading the way. "I don't know what it is, but that stoaty bastard has done something to him. He almost killed me with a dream. Sick sense of humour aside, there's a nasty streak to his magic. We should be careful—"
They were squeezing out the gap, almost manhandling their poor boss between them—guy was heavy—when the curse snapped into life, cutting him off mid-speech.
He fought it off, numbly and feeling the ground tip up under him, but the others didn't stand a chance.
He saw them hit the ground before he joined them.
.
.
Blinking.
Blinking hurt.
Fuck it was cold.
Rossi blinked the hurt away and looked around, his neck crinking. His brain was… foggy. Confused. Aching. Trying to hide something from him. He rapped his fingers on his hip, suddenly aware that he was laying in the snow and that snow was more red than white. Overhead, a purple-orange sky burned.
Tap tap tap went his fingers, and he focused on them with his mind and his magic, blocking out whatever was trying to confuse him. Tap tap tap—the curse. They'd triggered that stoat-fuck's final curse.
Okay. That was doable.
He struggled up to find Reid staring down at a rifle in his hands, dressed to the nines in snow gear and what looked like body armour underneath. JJ hunkered by his side, her own eyes cold and locked on the ridge of the ice shelf they were perched on, a semi-automatic tight in her grip and a scar across her face.
"Dave," said Hotch softly from behind him, and he turned to find the man sitting there with what looked like a whole chunk of leg gone that shouldn't be gone. Rossi blanched, stared at it, stared at Emily who appeared to be struggling to tug all the gory bits back into a rough leg shape. Unsuccessfully. "They're catching up."
From down the mountain, there was a chorus of hungry growls.
"I'm out of ammo," Morgan called, jogging up through the snow with Will behind him. Both dressed for combat and grim-faced. "Will, too. What do we do?"
Rossi looked to Reid, who was frowning. If anyone was going to twig this was a…
"Nothing," Reid said quietly, and the roars got louder. He looked at Rossi and his mouth went tight, struggling upright against the wind that pushed them down. "Dave, don't worry. I think… I think it's his final test. And the others won't remember this."
"Remember what?" Emily snarled, as Hotch went quiet under her, his eyes huge and glazed. So much fucking blood. "Jesus, Reid, our homes are gone, our families. What kind of a test is this?"
"This guy is a sicko," Rossi pointed out, inching his way back to nudge Emily aside. Cursed dream or not, shock would kill her and she wasn't dealing well with feeling Hotch bleed out under her. He took over, his stomach lurching at the feel of the wound, reminding himself that Hotch was fine—probably tuckered out on the sandy floor of that fucking cave with them all trapped in whatever nightmare the mad stoat had been making him live through.
Hotch hadn't had a James to lead him out of his.
"And?" Reid asked.
Rossi looked him dead in the eye as the ridge swarmed with men who weren't men at all, but monsters. If he looked directly at them, he could see their unsubs there. Past nightmares. Foyet, Doyle, The Fox… all white eyed and deadly.
He didn't look directly at them.
"This is going to hurt," he said simply. "He wants to watch how well we die."
They all stared at him, stunned. Guns clicked emptily as they tried to shoot. Reid dropped his, taking three steps back and wrapping himself around Emily like a really noodly blanket made of arms and ridiculous hair. Emily huddled back.
"No," breathed Hotch, and Rossi crouched lower. "No…"
"It's not real," he promised, finding a hand and squeezing it tight. "The world is fine and so are we, and we'll wake up as soon as we do what he doesn't expect us to do." Hotch didn't seem to believe him, broken by whatever nightmare he'd been living.
"Which is?" cried JJ, as the monsters reached for her and Will despite their frantic attempts to get away.
"Let go," Reid cried, and when they reached him he did nothing but hold onto Emily like she was all he had left. "Just let go! If you fight, he'll hold the curse longer! Let go!"
They did. Rossi did too. That didn't stop them screaming. Even Reid.
Especially Reid, because they went for Emily first.
But Rossi didn't look away, watching the bastards coming for him. And when he woke up from this…
That stoat was fucked.