A/N: Another chapter! Also, I submittedmy college applications, so hopefully will be updating more frequently. Let me know what you think. Reviews make me smile :)

Disclaimer: This is a dark story with violent themes. Proceed with caution. Also, I don't own Criminal Minds.

Time was paradoxical in that damp basement. The only luminescence came from those dim ceiling lights, so there was no telling day from night. In the outside world, however, morning had come. The three agents were all exhausted, but awake. They hadn't slept since the tasers. Their wandering minds hadn't let them.

By all calculations, Emily assumed Tom would be back soon, and that they were nearing the end of their three day stay. Whether that end came with the shining face of Derek Morgan kicking down the cellar door, or a blade to the abdomen, she wasn't sure. What she did know, what the profile had said, was that day 3 was the worst. It was hard to imagine it could get any grimmer than the lacerations and bruises that littered her body, or the memory of Tom's wandering hands about her body as he carved his name.

There was also the ravaging heat that had taken over her frame, which she did not recall existing in the days before. She turned her head towards JJ.

"Is it hot in here?"

She could feel Reid's body tense up from her left. She could tell he had some sort of statistic on his tongue, but was holding it back. JJ looked defeated and shook her head.

"I'm freezing," she said. Emily sighed. She suspected as much. It had to be an infection. And judging by the pus that had welled up in each knife wound, a bad one.

"Today's the last day," JJ breathed, staring straight ahead. The blonde remembered her previous conversation with Emily. If there was going to be an assault, it would happen today, likely right before they were killed.

"I don't know what else to do," Reid admitted helplessly. "Usually I can reason with these bastards but he's just... stone cold. I'm sorry for being so useless yesterday."

The girls shook their heads.

"It wasn't your fault. None of this is your fault," JJ cooed, stretching her chains in order to pat his shoe. Emily mumbled in agreement, giving Spencer a sideways hug. The profiler was still plagued with the tremors of withdrawal, and his cravings had never been worse. He couldn't focus on Tom, or the damn profile, because all he wanted was more. More of his vice. A chance to leave reality again, to swim in nothingness.

The door creaked and each agent visibly flinched, their bodies going taut against the concrete wall. Every injury screamed with anticipatory anguish.

"Good morning," Tom whistled cruelly as he made his way down the stairs. "Today's the day. My last day for fun."

Spencer swallowed an anxious lump and remembered Tom's words about his family. He had to try something.

"Tom. You don't have to kill us today. We can be your family."

Something changed in Tom's eyes, like a light had flickered on. His entire demeanor shifted from maniacal to almost childish.

"My dad was a bastard," the brute whimpered. Emily was shocked that a simple question could throw off this seemingly unshakable unsub. It was almost too easy.

"He was a bastard," Reid continued steadily, "and you didn't deserve that. But we could be your new family."

"I had two sisters," Tom said almost wistfully. "Katie and Cora. Dad used to bring us down to this very same pipe. And we would be down here for days, and he'd take turns hurting us. None of the threes I've had so far have fit. You've all been too angry, too mean. We loved Dad, even when he hurt us. I loved Dad."

The pieces immediately assembled in each profiler's mind. Tom was recreating a memory of abuse, only with himself casted as the father. That made Reid the younger version the man, whatever his real name was. Reid suspected that it was the unsub's father whose actual name was Tom. Emily and JJ would thus be the sisters. He'd killed the other sets of three because they didn't play to his fantasy on day 3, and wouldn't cooperate. In order to extend their lives, they would have to reenact a chilling game of make believe.

"We fit, Tom," Emily pleaded. "We're your family."

He seemed to mull this over. The three exchanged mixed expressions of hope and fear. If Tom were to keep them as members of his imaginary kin, how long would they last? What would they have to endure?

Whatever it was, it would probably be favorable to imminent death by the end of the day.

Tom fell to his knees, tears streaming from his dark eyes. He placed a meaty hand on Emily's cheek. It took everything she had not to flinch away from his touch.

"Katie? Is it really you?" He sobbed. "My beautiful daughter. My beautiful baby."

He pulled Prentiss into an embrace that felt far too tight. She swallowed stinging bile and fought the urge to cuss him out. She was Katie now. Hell, if it kept her alive, she could be fucking Santa Claus.

He then turned towards JJ and cooed over "Cora" for a minute, tracing a grimy finger along her collar bone. JJ held her breath the entire time with a tight, fake smile glued to her lips. She assessed the situation. If Tom was playing the abusive father, that meant he would continue to enact harm upon his "children." JJ guessed, by the way he looked at her and Prentiss, that his daughters were subject to specific torture. A chill ran up her spine, and she telepathically urged the team to hurry up.

When he reached Reid, Tom tousled his mop of shaggy chestnut hair and grinned.

"My boy," he said. "I knew you were right. I knew you could be Jamie."

2 days later

Neither Hotch nor any other member of the BAU had received an updated live stream link in three days. That put the total days since the abduction at five, two over the amount of time the unsub usually kept his victims. It was perplexing. No dead bodies, but no further videos or attempted contact. What in the hell had happened to Emily, JJ, and Spencer?

For sanity's sake, Aaron and the team worked under the presumption that the missing three were alive. This did not prevent the constant bouts of silence or the moments of utter anger, but it was better than unadulterated grief.

Rossi had withdrawn into himself, taking on a caretaker role. He checked up on everyone, patting their backs and whispering encouragement. He'd lost all of his usual wit and sarcasm. There was no time for such luxuries anymore. Despite his semblance of steadiness, Aaron didn't miss the deep sadness in Dave's gaze, or his escapes to the bathroom with watery eyes. It was completely atypical for the man who was usually a pillar of emotional regulation.

Garcia had tried to keep up appearances at first, but in each day that had passed since the abduction, she dug her personal hole a little deeper. First she stopped wearing any of her signature makeup and eccentric hairdoos. Her wardrobe got darker, reflecting the storm within. Penelope looked like a different person now, with swollen eyes and a perpetually shaking lower lip. Even her words had lost their fire.

Hotch had watched Morgan punch a total of three walls since the disappearance, with his only good arm. Derek was seething, a constant bucket of irritability and rage. No one, not even Garcia, could tug him back down to levelness. He hated himself for being the only one that made it out of those woods, that much was obvious. Aaron wasn't sure how much longer Morgan could survive in this manor. He seemed near combustion.

And Hotch. Hotch was coping. Sure, he'd slept maybe a total of ten hours in the past five days. Sure, he couldn't think about his team without picturing the limp corpses of three of its members. But he was strong, because Reid and Prentiss and JJ needed him to be strong. They were out there, and they were probably hurting. And goddamnit, Hotch was going to find them and make them okay again if it was the last thing he did.

They were dirtier now, resembling a band of homeless youths. Ever since the family charade had begun, only their feet remained chained to the pipe, and they now had a much larger range of mobility. When they slept, they huddled together like a dwindling pack. Tom had supplied them with more water and a couple of slices of Wonder Bread, but that was about it. It was incredible how much five days had changed them. Each agent looked smaller, their jawlines sharp and weathered and their stomachs concave. There were new wounds sprinkled amongst those previously inflicted. More cuts littered each of their arms and legs, a tortuous exercise that had been forced on them yesterday. The day before that, Reid had been injected with more Dilaudid from the vials, sending him once again into a haze of semi-consciousness. The punches and kicks had continued, but they'd all begun to grow numb to the incessant pain. It was routine now.

Tom had planted more sloppy kisses and unwanted touches upon JJ and Emily's bodies. It had escalated, that was for sure, but so far not beyond that. Each day, the agents cherished the time when Tom was not in the cellar and tried their best to distract themselves. Sometimes they joked and laughed together, an strange ideation of forced normalcy. Sometimes they plotted ways to escape, though nothing ever fell into place. As they grew weaker, their bond as a trio was strengthened. Often one of them would purposely endure abuse in order to direct Tom away from someone who was already hurting. It was a sense of camaraderie only formed by the worst of situations.

On the afternoon of day 5, Spencer had pulled such a stunt. Tom was kicking Emily with a fervor. The brunette cried and screamed like Reid had never heard before. He knew there her pain was exponentially increased by the infected cuts that littered her body. They all had infections now, though. Emily's was just the most severe.

Reid had begun to cuss and spit at the unsub, launching himself as far forwards as possible to try and intervene. This had been unfortunately effective. Tom had delivered one sharp blow to Reid's eye before exiting the dungeon, grumbling to himself about how Jamie was always getting into trouble.

"Spence?" JJ rasped, watching him writhe on the floor in pain while simultaneously holding tight to a crying Emily.

"Eye socket," Reid groaned back. "He shattered it."

Jennifer Jareau leaned her head against Emily's dark and tangled locks, internally sighing. Five days. Five days of pain, of hopelessness, of sheer terror. It may as well have been a century. She was so tired. They all were. Little parts of her once steel psyche had already begun to crumble. When he had sliced into her arm just that morning, she hadn't stopped herself from calling him a sick motherfucker. The performance, being Cora, was beginning to be too much. A tiny voice in her head urged her to give up, to succumb to the evils of the cellar.

Emily and Reid, in their own worlds of pain, were silently thinking the exact same thing.