Queen to Knight

Eyes glazed over, Reid's hands trembled, trying to force themselves forward. He kept telling himself this wasn't happening, that he wouldn't do this to him, that he'd stop… that he had to stop, but it didn't happen. Gideon inserted the needle into him and shot a cool clear liquid inside him.

He shivered, he didn't even recognize why he'd have done it as his mind fogged over. He hadn't used any drugs in years, and the potency of this one as it kicked in scared him. Just the sensation of that pinch before the metal slid in had made his body instantly expecting, he loathed himself for that. The room around his was sloping to it's side, that made no sense Reid knew intuitively, so he realized he was the one slouching to a side. He fell off the folding chair and hit the ground with a thud. He was vaguely aware of the hand-print of pink bleeding through his white bandage over his arm. Where Gideon had squeezed was bleeding through, he wondered if any of his sutures were torn. As pink became red he started to think it was fairly likely.

He felt dizzy as seconds turned to a minute, and yet he still realized far too much red was coming through white to be good.

Gideon was talking again, frantically waving his arms for emphasis, had Reid pushed too hard? He remembered asking him how Stephen would feel to know his dad had kidnapped him… and then his demeanor had changed. Drastically. He started talking about talking with Stephen, about bringing it up between the three of them… he thought it was a step in the right direction until he felt the needle-stick. His head was getting heavy, his neck was having a hard time keeping it propped upright.

That hand was gesticulating less now, moving back to the pocket housing what Reid suspected was a sedative. He withdrew the needle.

Reid's eyes went wide, "Gideon… not another… can't take more…" he was trying to plead, trying to reason, trying to not OD on a drug he didn't even know, but none of that seemed to reach the other. He began crawling on his hands away from the chair, toward the door, dragging his legs behind him, they themselves weighed far too much to move. Even the biting sting in his arm was fighting him on this. "You said… you weren't… trying to… kill me!" He panted.

"You were the one who wanted to talk to Stephen." Gideon acted like it was as if he were being handed a phone upon request then suddenly denying it as if it were an insult.

"…What the hell… Gideon…?"

"Stephen's dead. How else do you talk to the dead?"

Reid's eyes went wider, it suddenly was making sense. "When…?"

"Two months ago. He and his fiancée, both." Everything clicked into place.

"Jesus… Gideon… just because he died… doesn't mean… Hotch and I were going to… leave you like that…!" It became too hard to focus, too hard to keep his eyes open, but as his lids fell shut he could tell Gideon was trying his damnedest not to cry.

"Checkmate."

'Gideon…?' Reid wondered to himself. He looked at the board in front of him. He was moving the piece, so why did Gideon call the checkmate…? It wasn't even a checkmate, it was a check. He looked at what laid before him. The game had changed, they hadn't been following the rules. Gideon had left himself in check to checkmate Reid. There were pieces missing, parts of the board gone, the dimensions off.

"Definitely not on your game today." Prentiss offered, she smiled and placed a third set of pieces, red, against the board baffling Reid further. They were adding factors in a straight-forward strategy game.

'What the hell…?' It reminded him of how Death would play a game against a challenger, if the challenger was ready to play for his life. He remembered that in some instances, Death cheated, but then again, sometimes people cheated Death, so it must be fair.

He moved his white bishop into Gideon's king, completing his check into a checkmate that Gideon had ignored. "You lose."

"So do you." He mentioned, looking at the extra set on the board, the red pieces were now drops of blood coming from his arm, Prentiss nowhere in sight. "Mutual defeat."

"That goes against the natural order, doesn't it…? Old outliving young…?"

"I know. That's why I'm not going to let you die." Reid's mind reeled, that was Gideon speaking, it was Hotch.

"Hotch…!"

Gideon had injected himself for a third time as Hotch struggled with the door. He could see through the window, Reid lying there on the ground, Gideon sitting in that damn chair, he was trying to commit homicide-suicide… that selfish bastard.

He kicked the door twice before dislodging it, it had hurt like hell be he managed to break the molding in with the door, padlock and all tottering overtop Reid who groaned at the sudden weight.

"REID!" Reid blinked back the tiredness to try to focus on the present. His arm was burning, something was pushing into him, "Reid! Reid open your eyes… you have to stay awake…!"

Hotch was dialing now… 911? No, Garcia, Reid realized.

"Garcia, we need a medevac at the location… two." He readjusted the hold on Reid's wrist, "He used something on Reid… Reid, if you can hear me I need you to try to wake up… come on, Spencer… don't do this to me…"

Reid's fingers twitched, he was sure with Hotch pinning his arm he could feel the muscles underneath his grip flex. He could hear Hotch smile under his tone of speech, it was a subtle difference but he could see it irradiate from behind his eyelids like falling asleep in the sun.

"Gideon's down, I have to check… I'll be right back, just hold on for me, that's an order."

'Jesus, was this his End Game?' Hotch thought, not daring to mention it and let Reid hear him. He wasn't sure if Reid even knew Gideon was down, he was so out of it. He checked Gideon's pulse. He wasn't sure how he felt when he felt the older man's carotid artery twitch periodically under his fingertips. He was alive, which he knew was probably for the best, but simultaneously… he looked at Spencer, really was that fair?

He went back to Reid, if he had to consciously choose which life to save, there was no way it wouldn't be Reid's when given the options.

"Reid you have to hang on for me… I have some important questions I have to ask you." He said continuing he added, "Besides… I have to chew you out for standing me up… Do you know how long I had that reservation for? A year. I organized it a year ago, Reid. On our last anniversary. You'd better plan on a way of making that up to me."

He stopped talking when he noticed Reid blinking, he was trying to come around. Hotch was trying to figure out how long Reid had been under the influence of the drug, his bleeding wasn't slowing down but it was a petered bleed. Then again, Reid had lost a bit of blood before the doctors had sutured it up the first time… and hadn't gotten a transfusion, it was possible that he could bleed to death…

"You know as much as I was afraid of hurting others, I never wanted to be alone." Gideon was looking at Reid over the board now, but Reid wasn't a player anymore, now he was a piece. He glanced at his fellow pieces, Hotch was there too, so was Morgan, and Prentiss, JJ, Garcia… some paramedics and cops he didn't even know were there too. "But I'd never kill you. It's against the natural order of things."

He was smiling, that too-smug I saw it coming and you didn't smile he'd have when truly contented.

Reid's eyes widened, "You only wanted me to be here at the end… you weren't going to really kill me at all… but then why, why say what you did about Hotch and me?"

"Father of the bride can hardly just hand the bride over without some grand-standing, now can he?"

Reid was crying. He couldn't help it, he was in this position so that any would-be rescuers wouldn't help Gideon, he was a decoy.

"Help… him…" Reid tried to find his voice, the drugs making it hard for the words to come out as anything but scratched garble. "Hotch… help… Gideon… I'll… be… fine…!" He kept repeating the mantra hoping somehow it would be heard, that it would slip past the veil and reach the ears of someone more capable than himself at the moment.

"Reid!" Hotch snatched upon the hope of hearing Reid's voice, "Reid just hang on… I'm cordoning off the bleeding, you're going to be fine… I swear to god I won't let you die-"

"Gideon's dying… I'll be… fine… help… Gideon… please… help… him…" The mantra restarted, Reid unsure if any of his words reached anyone as the shed flooded with search-beams and a whooping sound of helicopter blades pulling air around them in fast rotation.

Hotch looked at Reid daftly, then back to Gideon, Hotch did something that seemed to go against his grain when he stood up and walked away from Reid's prone form, but since he was so used to taking Reid's suggestions on the field it seemed natural to do so now, too. Then, he started the chest compressions. Like hell he'd let Gideon have his way, the man got that far too much in life as it were, be damned if he'd let him walk into the sunset with the winning hand one last time. The bastard would have to face the consequences of his actions and Spencer and Aaron's personal wraths.

TBC.