AN – hello again! I'm not making you wait a year for another chapter, look at me go! Our boys are in a rough spot, are they going to be able to get out of it? I guess you'll just have to read and find out…
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This is it, he thinks.
This is the end.
Reid's eyes remain closed despite Hotch's pleading, all traces of the stoic and collected 'Agent Hotchner' having long since disappeared, and blood continues to ooze out of the stab wounds, forming a dark puddle on the floor and seeping into Hotch's pants as he kneels beside his fallen partner. As Hotch presses harder against the wounds, he offers a silent prayer to a god he's not sure he even believes in, begging for Reid's life to be saved. But one look at Reid's face is enough to convince him that his prayers are to go unanswered.
The man before him is deathly pale, the colour gone from him cheeks as blood continues to drain from his body. Instinctively, Hotch reaches out a hand and presses two fingers into Reid's neck. What he feels causes a new wave of panic to crash through his body.
The pulse is there, but only just, and it's racing away like they'd just been chasing after an UnSub. Hotch swears repeatedly under his breath, moving to straddle Reid's hips so that he can press all his weight into his makeshift bandage. His mind swirls hazily, lost in a sea of worry and guilt and hopelessness.
What's the plan, Hotchner? a voice in his head asks through the fog of anxiety. He's not sure if it's his own voice, or the UnSubs', but the question echoes over and over again in his brain. What's the plan? How are you going to get out of this?
The answer hits him even harder than he question; he doesn't know. He has no idea how to get out of this cell, and without access to proper medical attention, Reid will die. "Fuck," he mutters angrily to himself, his thoughts willing Reid to wake up but having no success. "Please, Spencer, you have to hold on," he adds more gently. "Please. Please. You have to make it out of here. You can do this, I know you can do this. Fuck."
Fixates as he is on the unconscious man in front of him, he almost misses it. The faint crash of something being knocked down. The trampling of footsteps. The shouting of multiple people. But the part of his brain still stuck in profiler mode catches the sounds of disturbance, and his gaze flicks nervously to the door. As thick as it is, it muffles most of the noise coming from the rest of the building, but Hotch still recognises the sound of footsteps approaching, and his stomach turns with distress. "Shit," he murmurs, sure that the UnSubs are about the burst into the room and continue their sadistic games with the two agents. So when the door is finally thrown open and the source of the footsteps enter the room and reveal themselves, it takes Hotch a moment to process what he's seeing.
Because it's not the UnSubs.
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There's a deafening silence for a moment as several people enter the room, Hotch locking eyes with them but finding himself unable to speak, before one of the new arrivals exclaims, "Hotch, what the hell happened?"
Hotch watches as Morgan rushes across the room and crouches down next to Reid, putting his fingers to the younger man's neck in the same manner Hotch had done previously. Feeling the weak and thready pulse, Morgan cries over his shoulder, "we need a medic down here!" before turning back to the senior agent. "Hotch, what happened to him?"
It's a simple question. Hotch knows exactly what happened. Yet he suddenly finds him unable to speak, a whirlwind of emotions fighting for dominance over his brain. There's the relief at being found, the hope that maybe Reid might get out of this alive, intertwined with the shame of having to admit what he'd done, and the thought of voicing those events out loud causes the tears to roll faster down Hotch's cheeks.
His gaze drops to his hands, and is only raised again by a gentle touch on his shoulder. Rossi, having entered the room alongside Morgan, had moved to Hotch's side to provide comfort to his friend. "Aaron, we need to know what happened here," Rossi coaxes. "How bad is he hurt?"
"It's bad, Dave," Hotch manages to choke out, the words catching on the tight lump in his throat. "He has five abdominal stab wounds. Hunting knives. He… it's bad."
"Shit," Morgan swears in anger. "Those guys are going to pay for this."
It wasn't them, it was me, Hotch's thoughts interject, but before he can say it out loud, they are interrupted by a stampede of EMTs storming into the room, quickly locating their patient and crossing the floor straight to him. Hotch is physically pulled away from Reid so that the medics can begin applying pressure bandages to the wounds, and Hotch finds the sudden lack of physical contact only enhances his anguish as he has to restrain himself from fighting off the medics to get himself back to Reid's side. Rossi's strong grip on his arm, pulling Hotch to his feet, is the only thing that grounds him as the EMTs swarm around his partner, the medics' concerned faces doing nothing to calm the team's nerves. Bits of medical jargon are hurriedly tossed around, and most of it escapes Hotch's attention, his mind adrift in a sea of painful memories, but one particular sentence brings him crashing back to reality, his already extreme panic being sent into overdrive.
"He has no pulse!"
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AN – oh no, another cliffhanger! Yes, I am mean. No, I don't intend to stop being mean! Luckily for you all, there will be another chapter of this eventually, so hopefully I won't keep you in suspense for too long! Ciao until next time!