(Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds or its characters)

Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. Sorry to leave it on such an awful cliffhanger. Hopefully, this chapter makes up for it... its longer, I promise.

anyway, thanks again. Hope everyone is safe and having a nice time despite the circumstances. I've got my final university assignments coming up so I'm busy busy busy.

Enjoy.

Hotch paced across the large windows facing the bullpen. He passed by the door before turning and pacing back the other way.

Emily looked up from biting her nails and she watched Aaron for a moment. "Hotch?"

Aaron shook his head, lifting his arms up over his head and shaking his it more violently.

"Aaron." Rossi stood up from his chair as Aaron turned to face them. He didn't look at any of them, just stared blankly at the wall opposite.

"I thought I had protected them from him and from that."

Morgan looked down at the table, shaking his head as he did.

"We don't know that yet," JJ mumbled but she was looking down hopelessly at the table, not believing a single one of her words.

"Yes, we do. That man is sick... he's vile. Spencer doesn't deserve it."

"Neither did you Aaron," Rossi said and he watched sadly as Aaron turned back toward the window. They were silent, letting the notions of what had been said sink in.

JJ couldn't take it and was the first to break the silence.

"I don't even know where we start," JJ mumbled, pressing her elbows to the table and looking down.

"Where we normally start," Emily said but JJ quickly shook her head.

"We never deal with things like this, Emily. I can't treat it like a normal case."

"Maybe you shouldn't be on it," Morgan muttered.

"None of us should be on it. You know that. Are you willing to step down?"

Rossi glared at Morgan as the younger agent looked away.

"Well?"

Derek shook his head. "No."

"Exactly. We all feel the same on this. And JJ's right, it's hard to approach it as we normally would but we have no other choice. If we don't start now god knows how far the unsub will get with Spencer."

Derek and Emily were nodding, looking up at Rossi as they did. JJ wiped away a tear before she nodded too.

Rossi glanced across at Aaron and then at Sean who seemed to be hanging off his every word.

"I-I'll help in any way," Sean said. Rossi smiled softly at him.

"You'll do better under the same protection as Jack. You should probably join them until this is over."

Sean looked at Aaron who still didn't respond. He eventually nodded.

Rossi looked back at Aaron then. "Aaron?"

"Yes?"

"Can you do this?"

Aaron turned around finally, fixing Rossi with a determined look. "Yes," he said firmly. He looked around at his team and he nodded.

"We should start with Spencer's car," he said and he watched as Garcia started to type quietly from her corner. "Any sightings of it in the last twenty four hours. We need to wait for the CSI report."

"Alright. Aaron I think it would be beneficial for us to know everything you know about your father."

Aaron nodded slowly at Rossi and he moved away from the window and took a seat.

He looked around at his team, wondering where to even start.

Spencer woke up and rolled onto his side. As he did a grotesquely wrenching pain rocketed up his legs and he gasped, nearly screaming into his pillow which he pressed his face into.

He panted down into the musty smelling pillow, trying to pull himself away from the agony and back to reality.

He didn't move again but he did manage to peel his eyes open. He found his face pressed up against his pillow, his body turned awkwardly on its side. A thin bedsheet was splayed over him and it shook with the trembling of his body.

The pain of being in such a position had Spencer dreading the prospect of turning back over. He glared down at the pillow, the pain in his leg growing the longer he lay on his side.

"It's okay," he whispered, closing his eyes for a moment and taking a deep breath. "It's okay... it's okay."

Spencer grit his teeth and with one more deep, shaky breath he twisted onto his back, growling in pain as he did.

He panted harshly and stared up at the ceiling which was spinning ever so slightly and for a moment Spencer thought he might pass out. Thankfully the pain in his leg had eased from the new position.

Once the spinning stopped Spencer lifted his head off the bed a little, trying to look down at his legs which were pulsing with an almost unbearable throb.

His head ached as he lifted it from the pillow and his upper body trembled. The effort was exhausting but Spencer managed to look down and he saw his one leg, the one that had caused unimaginable pain a few moments before, had slid out from the bedsheets. It was tied together with another torn sheet. The bedsheet was stained red where it clung closest to his leg, and his foot, his shoe missing, was blackened with dirt and painted with blood.

Spencer let his head drop back, sick with the realisation that it was blood he was looking at which meant his leg was in a bad state.

His body shook as he looked back up at the ceiling, unaware of the sweat trickling from his forehead and along his hairline.

His leg was broken. At least the one wrapped in the bloody sheet was for sure, likely an open fracture from the blood and the amount of pain Spencer was in. Spencer took a deep breath and wiggled the toes on his uninjured foot. To his relief, they moved without the same stabbing pain of his other leg, but it didn't come without discomfort.

He licked his lips as he tried to glance down again but he decided it was too painful to try and lift himself up. He raised one arm slowly, wincing at the twinge of pain in his joints. He brought his hand up to his gaze and it wavered through the air.

Spencer blinked twice to see his bloody palm clearly. There were deep grooves in his palm, small stones were stuck under the ragged skin and Spencer lifted his other palm. There were much the same fragments of sidewalk in the skin of his other hand and Spencer knew if they weren't cleaned soon he'd gain a bad infection.

He let his hands fall back to the bed, wishing his thoughts away from the state of his leg which would most definitely be infected soon enough if not already.

Another bead of sweat trickled down his brow and Spencer groaned again, his leg throbbing insistently.

What happened?

Spencer looked up, following the speckled ceiling as he tried to figure out what could have happened for him to be in such a state. He turned his head to the side, toward the only light in the room and he saw a window, the thin curtains drawn over the assaulting sunlight.

He saw a small slither of the parking lot outside and Spencer remembered his car. The breath left Spencer as suddenly as the realisation had come and he tried to sit up again, really screaming this time around.

He pushed himself up onto the pillows, crying out at the intensity of pain and discomfort it caused. He needed to get out.

Spencer took one second to catch a breath before he pushed himself up again, crying out through his gritted teeth. He shuffled to the edge of the bed and with a cry, he moved his uninjured leg toward the edge of the bed. He would have to reach down and lift his other leg. Whatever he did, he needed to get up and get out right-

Footsteps interrupted Spencer's thoughts. He sat up, sweat slipping into his eyes as he watched the door to the bedroom open.

"No."

Spencer felt the fight leave him as he stared at Ed. The man had a carrier bag in his hand and a wet cloth in the other. He stood for a moment, staring at Spencer who had barely made it out of the bed.

He quirked an eyebrow and Spencer glanced at the window before again trying to get out of the bed and away from his father.

Ed chuckled and moved over to the side of the bed that Spencer was still trying to get out of and he took Spencer by his shoulders and guided him down to the bed again.

Spencer whimpered, unable to stop Ed, the pain in his leg too great. He let his head hit the pillow and he cried out loudly when his legs were pushed back under the covers.

"Please," Spencer whispered. With the sweat that had collected on his cheeks and in his eyes, he looked up through bleary eyes at Ed.

Ed grinned and reached over Spencer with the cloth in his hand. Spencer flinched as Ed pressed the cool cloth to his forehead.

"Nasty accident you had," he said and he chuckled. Spencer trembled as he looked up at his laughing father. He wiped the cloth across Spencer's face before leaving it folded against Spencer's hot forehead.

"There. See, I'm taking care of you."

Spencer gritted his teeth, his whole body shaking as he glared at Ed. "You did this to me," he hissed.

Ed sat back and he started to laugh again. "No, no," he said, shaking his head fondly at Spencer. He then had the audacity to pat Spencer's broken leg, wrenching a scream from his lips. Spencer gasped, staring up at the ceiling with cloudy eyes that squinted in pain.

"Oops, sorry." Ed dropped his hand on Spencer's other leg. "As I was saying. I was just trying to catch up to you. You jumped in front of my car."

"No... I did-"

"Yes, yes you did. I tried to swerve. You left the car in quite the state. I had to hire a new one."

Another pain hit Spencer. He looked at Ed sadly. His car. Ed had just left his car. It could get towed and... Spencer's lip trembled when he thought of how much his little car meant to him.

Ed wasn't paying attention. He was rooting around the carrier bag. Spencer sniffed, wiping the tears from his eyes when he looked at what Ed was pulling out. There was gauze and disinfectant and even pain killers.

The relief Spencer felt when he saw the gauze was replaced by sudden fear upon seeing the pain killers.

"I'm not so bad," Ed said with a grin, holding the pain killers up and giving them a shake.

"I don't want them," Spencer said. He couldn't take his eyes away from the small box of pills.

Ed frowned and looked at the box.

"Please don't make me take them." Spencer's voice cracked in distress and Ed narrowed his eyes.

"Why not?"

"Please just don't. I'm begging you not to."

Ed looked at the pills for a moment and then at Spencer before he smiled and he dropped the pills back into the bag. "Fine," he said and Spencer let out a breath of relief.

Ed grabbed Spencer's bad leg and the relief was once again destroyed. Spencer screamed out in pain, his back bucking off the bed when Ed squeezed his leg.

Ed chuckled. "You'll be begging for them soon enough. I need to clean this."

Spencer gasped, his back arched off the bed as Ed untied the bedsheet from Spencer's leg.

Ed rustled through the bag and he pulled out the bottle of strong disinfectant. Spencer looked at his leg and saw that his diagnosis had been right. The sight of his snapped bone sticking through his calf was one that nearly made him sick.

He'd seen worse. He'd seen so much worse and had not only managed to hold his lunch in, but he'd poked and prodded and assessed the sickening sights on a professional level. But this wasn't a dead victim. This was a very much alive specimen. It was him.

There was something so sickening about seeing such an awful injury on himself, to the point where he was swallowing hard as not to throw up.

He could see all the different layers of his skin culminate to the point where the bone stuck through. The injury had stopped bleeding but Spencer could see from the unnatural staining of his leg that he had bled profusely.

Spencer broke eye contact with his broken leg and he looked up at Ed from where he was awkwardly lay.

Ed had gotten the cap off the disinfectant and he reeled back from it. "It's strong," he said with a laugh, squinting as he gave the stuff another sniff.

Spencer couldn't move. He stared at the bottle and realised what he was about to feel.

Ed was still grinning repulsively as he tilted the bottle.

Spencer watched helplessly as the stuff spilled down onto his leg.

He hadn't realised agony until the disinfectant hit his open wound. Spencer writhed on the bed, screaming as Ed poured more over his leg.

It was only a few seconds more of agony before Spencer's body gave out and fell unconscious, his body falling still under Ed's ministrations.

Ed lifted the bottle up and he screwed the cap on. As he did he watched Spencer's face.

He walked around the bed again and sat down beside his unconscious son. He looked down at Spencer's pale face and he slowly reached out and stroked his cheek. Spencer didn't stir. His face was smooth of emotion.

Ed glanced at the gap in the curtains and he smiled. "They haven't caught up yet," he mumbled, looking back at his son.

"And they won't."

Thanks for reading. Please let me know your thoughts in the reviews. I always appreciate seeing them.

Stay safe and I'll see you all soon.