Chapter 21

The Same Old Thing

To torture a man you have to know his pleasures: - Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

A/N: Not sure why…but this is how it came out of my brain and into my fingers……it's sort of morphed. Please R&R. Pb XOX

Disclaimer: Criminal Minds is not mine.

It's one of those times where as a kid I have to take things into my own hands. Dad's not happy that this Morgan geezer is here and so I will remove him. As kids do.

I've been watching him for a little while and for a while he was watching me too and I know I have to do this with caution.

And so I am here keeping out of the way kicking the dust in the road and keeping my back to the guys. Crime Scene people have arrived and tape is being stuck up and little yellow triangles in the road. Just like they do on the television. They have been taking swabs of stuff and taking a shit load of photos and I have his mother of a stone in my hand….more of a small rock….and I can throw hard.

And with remarkable accuracy for a kid!

I need to get into position though. No point in wasting my chance.

"Oy you!" I shout out. He's done looking at the road and was looking bored and so he is turning to look at me. "You play sports?" And I see his face frown. "Do you have a ball I can kick around?" Stupid question but that's good. I'm a kid!

"No kid. I don't have a ball. We don't have time to play games." He starts to turn away again. That's good. He is standing side on to me now and I get my hand ready to throw. I give my dad a quick glance. He knows what I am going to do. He can feel it. He blinks at me and then turns back to what he was doing – bitching out the crime scene people – go dad go!

I toss the stone and shout out at the last minute. Too late. I make sure it is too late. "Ahoy Agent Morgan." But the stone has made contact with the side of his face right next to his eye. He shouts out and turns to me and again I glance over at dad who is ignoring it but the Morgan bloke is coming over towards me. I have made his face bleed and he looks bloody angry with me. I am going to have to defend myself and then dad will help out too….I hope..

I'm just a kid!

I don't know better.

"What the hell are you playing at?" And his dark face is near mine and I can smell him. I can see blood on the side of his face and he's not looking too happy.

So I tell him to "Fuck off." And that's when he does it. That was when he made a grab for my arm….but I'm too quick for him and my other hand has already made contact with his groin and I am squeezing and twisting and he is shouting out and grabbing for me again and that is when dad arrives.

"Let go of him." But he is talking to the Fed…not me cos he has his hand on my shoulder as I squeeze more and twist harder and this is something a kid can do to an adult and they scream.

Dad stands behind me now and he pulls me back and I let go and watch the big dark bloke go down to his knees and start to vomit into the road. Dad gives me a reassuring squeeze of the shoulder and turns to Rossi who is demanding what happened.

"I defended myself. He went for me!" I am shouting and making a bigger fuss than I need to but it makes adults pissed off when I do this. "He has no right to touch me. He was going to hit me!"

There is blood in the vomit and I am glad I hurt him good. It doesn't look like he will be getting up and being part of the rescue mission now. He is coughing and gagging and making all sorts of strange noises and Rossi wants to know what happened….so I start to cry and say he went for me.

"I threw a stone and hit him by mistake…." Big shuddering breaths….. "And he came at me with his fists!" Squeezing out the tears now. "I did the only thing I could think of!" I turn now and bury my head in my father's clothing and sob uncontrollably. I can feel my father rest a hand on the back of my head and twist his fingers through my hair and my hormones begin to run riot again but when I press forwards he takes a step back and bends down to talk secrets in my ear.

"Not now." In whispered tones –" but you did a good job."

I keep my hands close on my dad and I listen to what he has to say.

-o-o-o-

"He can defend himself." I look at what Sam has done to Morgan and I feel pride in my heart. He did do a good job on him. I want him out of the way. I don't want his help. I want to talk this over with Rossi not him.

Rossi is talking to me now. "They have found Hotch's car." I nod at him. I thought they would.

"How far away?" I guide Sam slowly away from the injured Morgan who is on his knees now. Sam is wriggling and messing with me and I need him to pack it in. This isn't the time or place for games. I need to get Spence. My wrist hurts and my fingers are still numb and I want to shout at the lot of them to stop messing around and just do what they are meant to do. Sam has his arms tightly around my waist and is pressing hard against me and it – really – is – a – bad –time. I pull him off and pick him up.

"Just stop that will you!" I shout in his face and throw him hard away from me and I hear his small shout of shock and then I hear his body smack against a tree and his shouts stop.

"What the hell?" And now Rossi has a turn at shouting. I look and he is running towards where Sam is laying. He will be fine.

"He will be fine." I let him know in an irritated voice. "He bounces." And I start to walk towards Morgan who is still bent double and while he is there I take my frustration out on him. My knee meets his chin with a loud cracking sound and he falls to the road and finally stops him moaning sounds and when I turn back to see what Rossi I doing he is crouched down with my son who is bleeding and he is looking at me.

"What?!" And I am so annoyed by the whole situation that I want to just walk off and leave them and so I do. "Fuck you all then! I'll go get him on my own." And I leave the road and walk off through the trees.

This would be my home. If I could this would be my eternal resting place. The forest. It is where I am from…and where I will eventually go back to and right now it is where I will go and think. Sam will find me if he needs to but I think he is going to try to bond with Rossi. Great let him. I tried with that man… I tried hard.

I can hear him calling me and I keep walking. Really I am listening out for Sam, but he doesn't call me and really I would have been disappointed in him if he had.

What I need to do is contact Spence. I'm rubbing at my arm where the brace is meant to keep it safe. "Fucking falling apart." I am muttering to myself – but at least my foot is repaired but yet I still don't fancy running too fast or too far just yet. I need to find somewhere secure where I can hunker down and put my feelers out. I don't like cutting myself off from my surroundings when I am this exposed. That was the mistake Sam made. He won't be doing that again in a hurry…and now I am thinking of my boy and in my heart is a very special place for him. More so than Rosa, but I wonder if it will ever be more than Spence. That Spencer Reid captured my soul a long time ago. Long before he was a Fed. Long before all this shit. Right way back he has been there part of my and I have yearned for him and wanted him and he has rejected me time after FUCKING time.

Suddenly I feel a deep down anger. All this time…all this teaching….first Spence and then Rosa and now Sam. The other's they say were like trials. To see how I did…Firstly something disposable and then something precious yet replaceable…and finally Sam. The end goal – except I've not finished…I've not disposed of Spencer…cos he is more to me than some test to see how I do – how far I will go…how much I will take and give ….

……….I am walking down and incline and at the bottom there is deep dark undergrowth. This is where I think I will crawl and curl up and contact Spencer from.

It smells good. I can smell the earth and if I think hard and long enough I can hear the river and sense that ancient woman sitting with me.

'SPENCE! – Where the fuck are you?"

No half ways…a good old shout out.

And he would have heard that. So I will stay here and I will wait.

-o-o-o-

They took the dogs away.

I can feel Ardal on my back still – very still. I try to think and concentrate and work out if that movement is my breaths or his. I want it to be him. I cant bare the thought of what he just did.

There is silence. All I can hear is my heart thumping in my chest and my stupid panicked breathing.

And the dripping. The steady drip drip of blood.

If I open my eyes I can see it. I am laying in Ardal's blood. I can feel it warm on the side of my face. I can feel it over my back and in my hair and there is that smell. That god-awful stench of a fresh kill. I want to move. I need to get out from under here but I can't.

Fear has me trapped. All the time I can't see it then it might not be him. It's some vile trick to break me and I think they will win. If Ardal is the weight on my back then I want to die. I can see his arm. Just part of it and really it is enough to tell me all I need to know but I will deny that. Just a glimpse of part of a blood covered arm isn't enough. It could be anyone.

My mind is playing tricks on me. So I am closing my eyes tightly and hopefully in the morning it will be gone. They will have removed him. I try to move my fingers. I want to hold onto him. I need to show him that I am sorry. I didn't want this to happen to him. He was protecting me again – the same as he did before.

I sigh and with the sigh I start to cry.

And I can't stop.

And I feel pathetic and small and stupid and I have no right to feel sorry for myself but I don't know what else to do. I can't give them what they want and I don't know why they want to know who I have been sleeping with…or why they asked me my security code. I don't understand any of this.

I am meant to be a genius. So come on now genius – work it out. What are they doing this for? Why set the dogs on us. On Ardal.

They just meant to scare me. If that was the plan then they did good! I am scared. I am laying in a puddle of piss to prove I am scared. Urine and blood. Oh god I need to get out of here. But I can't move. I daren't move.

And suddenly there is the sound of foot steps again and I can hear locks opening and my cell door swing open and they are dragging Ardal off my back.

"Please – please don't." My voice is very quiet I don't know if they heard me, but they ignore me either way and I feel the weight being dragged off my back. I try again to hold on with my fingers but I can't. They work in silence and I can hear the body being dragged across the floor and it makes me want to scream because I know that should have been me…except they wouldn't have done that to me. I have something they want. Ardal had nothing.

I can feel the tears tracking down my face and I hope they think they are tears of anger and not of the pity I am feeling for myself…and I try to stop feeling like this but I just want to be left alone to curl up and die. I need this all to stop and I don't know how to make them stop.

"What do you want from me?" I whisper to them.

Someone puts a hand on my shoulder and rolls me over onto my back in the blood and mess on the floor.

"I want the names of all your sex partners." The voice is hard and harsh and I don't understand why they need to know such a thing.

"You already know." Is my answer.

"Hotchner."

And it wasn't a question and I just stare at them and hope that isn't an answer. One of them pulls me to my feet and a knife is produced. I sigh and close my eyes and I bite down on my bottom lip and I await the pain, but they use the knife to cut off my Tshirt and it is a bit of a relief that it has gone.

One of them holds me upright and another talks to me.

"Do you have sex with Hotchner?"

And the question just makes me angry and I am trying not to make this worse than it can be and so I shake my head. This has the effect of one of them enclosing a hand around my neck and pushing me backwards. My feet slip and slid in Ardal's blood and I get a fresh waft of his death and I open my mouth to scream but the hand is too tight on my throat and nothing happens. I want to pull the hands away but I think now even if my arms weren't held so tightly behind my back that I wouldn't be able to stop this new onslaught.

He holds me against the wall now. My feet are on the floor and the grip is released slightly. I am horribly exposed and I try to think what Gideon would do in this situation but of course Gideon would never have been in this situation in the first place.

"Who is Flanders?" The voice is so close to my face that I can smell his breath and it makes me screw my eyes up and try to think of anything but Floyd. I can't tell them about him. If they don't kill me for it then he will – and – I need Floyd.

I am asked again. "Who is Flanders? How do you know him?" And I just stare at him. I'm not going to answer.

The hand tightens around my neck again and I am lifted off the floor. It feels like he is going to break my neck as he turns with me and pulls me away from the wall and now I am flying………..

………………….I hit the bars with my right side and my head cracks against them and my legs give way under me as I slide to the floor again and before I can even get my breath back again he is there and I am being pulled to my feet and dragged out of the cell.

I try to walk. I do my best – but they are much to fast for me and I end up being dragged. One man under each arm but my feet stop trying to get a grip on the floor and I try to relax into them and hope that what they have planned won't hurt too much.

For too long.

I am dragged down a few steps and across a floor to the back of the room where there is a pile of packing crates. Someone climbs on the top of them and I can see they are wobbly only about three foot off the ground but high enough.

"Get up there." I am told and I frown because I don't think I can with no hands to support me but they half drag me up there anyway. It's not too high….only it will hurt if I fall onto the stone floor below.

Once balanced they push my head down and suddenly I realise what they are meaning to do. A collar is put around my neck and the chain attached to a ring in the ceiling.

"Please don't." I say to them.

And again I sound miserable and pathetic. Now they pull me so I am upright and the cuffs holding my arms behind my back and linked to a bar running along the wall. If I fall – when I fall…they will ensure I do eventually my shoulders will be ripped out of their sockets and I will choke slowly on the wide collar around my neck.

"Please – don't do this."

But they ignore me. I am more fun to play games with. I'm not going to tell them who Flanders is. My use to them suddenly ended.

They jump down from the boxes and leave me there. I have to keep still now. The ones holding the boxes stable have let go and so I close my eyes and try to remember when I was a kid and the fun things I did and it forces big wet tears out of my eyes – only this time it is fear. I admit it.

As they back away and they smile at me and say "See you later Dr Reid." Someone comes in with the dogs and they let them go….and at the same time something screams in my head so loudly that I think I am going to pass out and my nose starts to bleed.

'SPENCE! Where the fuck are you?'