Disclaimer: I, sadly, do not own Criminal Minds or its characters.
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Reid woke again, but this time it wasn't from the sound of his cell phone ringing. He heard loud voices. They were familiar to him, but he knew they didn't belong to his father. They were yelling at him, calling his name. No...not my name.
"Put down the gun!" Morgan!
"Mr. Reid, drop your weapon and step away from him!" Hotch!
Reid tried opening his eyes to see what exactly was going on around him, but his eyelids didn't seem to want to listen. He lay still as he observed his surroundings with his other senses instead.
From what he could tell, someone was standing near where he lay, apparently wielding a gun. My father. Probably my gun, too. And by the continuing commands and orders coming from Hotch and Morgan, he wasn't listening.
Hotch and Morgan being here meant this was finally going to be over. Reid was relieved, but he wondered why his father was even still here. He had to have known someone would be coming to his apartment to check on him soon. He easily could have finished this and left. Why hadn't he?
It was possible his father had just thought that he had more time before anyone came. He was probably trying to get every last bit of enjoyment out of making him suffer that he could and took his sweet time. Lucky for me, he did.
"You don't want to do this. We can sort this out, but you need to put down the gun first," Hotch continued speaking.
For Hotch himself to come must have meant he was extremely worried about him, Reid realized. Hotch was probably initially going to come by himself, but Reid was sure Morgan would have insisted on coming with, too. It's probably a good thing he did.
They could try and talk his father down all they wanted, but Reid doubted it was going to help. His father had already gotten this far, so there was a good chance he was going to try to finish what he had started.
Reid's father finally spoke, but unlike Hotch's and Morgan's urgent and demanding voices, his was calm and quiet, almost like he was having just a normal, everyday conversation with a friend. "He's already dead, you know."
No, I'm not! Wait...Am I? The thought crossed his mind that he could be having some sort of afterlife experience. He had never believed in that sort of thing before, but after what his father just did to him, he was beginning to think almost anything was possible.
"Then why are you pointing your gun at him like he's still alive?" Hotch asked, but his father didn't respond.
A deathly silence filled the room. There was a drastic change in tension as everyone seemed to be waiting for something to happen, for someone to make the first move. Reid could sense his father shifting slightly, quickly followed by shouts from Hotch and Morgan.
"Don't!"
"Don't do it!"
Reid was beginning to lose his sense of the world around him again as everything seemed to be slowly fading away. He knew the noises he heard next should have been much louder, but to him, they only sounded like two faint popping noises. Gunshots...