This is my Last Resort (Chapter Three) by Lexikal

Spoilers: None, really, but there is a brief mention of Tobias Hankel but no spoilers for that episode (somewhere in this story...I know I plan to include a Tobias Hankel comment in here sooner or later...).

Warnings: Chapter Three, we're getting even darker now... your eyes are getting heavy...

Summary: Spencer Reid, third season-ish, is taken hostage and abused along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please read the first chapter for the full summary and author's notes...

If I took my life tonight/ Chances are that I might/ Mutilation outta Sight/ And I'm contemplating Suicide...- "This is my Last Resort" by Papa Roach

Reid woke up and groaned. His entire chest hurt. He tried to lift himself up. Couldn't. He had to bite down on a short shriek of pain when he tried to move his shoulder. He had to breathe in short, tiny gasps. But at least he could breathe. That was good.

He knew he'd been shot. Probably a through-and-through, it felt clean. "Mommy" had been aiming for his chest, not his heart specifically, obviously, or he wouldn't be here, now. Or maybe she was just a lousy shot. She'd just wanted to shoot him. And she had.

It was pitch black in the oubliette. "Elle?" Reid rasped into the darkness. He could remember Elle down here too, remembered the sound of another gunshot shortly before he lost consciousness. "Elle?" He crawled through the straw, blindly feeling in the dark. Finally felt a small body. "ELLE!" There was no movement. Spencer Reid squinted in the darkness, and could dimly make out her shape, the curve of her forehead. Not much else. He fumbled and found the side of the child's neck, pressed two fingers strongly to it. Prayed.

Elle's heart was still beating.

"Elle, come on, wake up?" His voice was a low plead.

Time seemed to stretch forever. He shook her a bit harder.

"ELLE!"

"Spencer?" Her voice was tiny, weak. He nodded, then remembered that she couldn't see him.

"I'm here," Reid soothed, and scooped up the child.

"I feel cold," Elle admitted weakly, and Reid patted her down. Her t-shirt was covered in cold, sticky blood. As was the area on the ground around her. How much blood had she lost?

"Where...where do you hurt?" Reid asked nervously, afraid of the answer. There'd still been light down here earlier, though, and now it was pitch black. But Reid had no sense of time. Maybe this was a trick. Maybe...

"Stomach," the girl gasped. "Why did you come down here? You were supposed to lock us down here. Then you would only have had to deal with...Daddy..."

Reid's mind was swirling. Elle had gone down into the oubliette as a sacrifice, to give Reid- and the rest of them- a better chance at escaping. She'd known, or at least suspected, that she wasn't going to be coming out of this hole.

"I- I couldn't leave you down here with her alone. She would've killed you..." Reid trailed, gently rocking the small, cold body.

"Probably going to die now, anyway. You got shot, too." It wasn't a question.

"Yes," Reid admitted.

"Does yours hurt?" Elle asked, voice clogged with fatigue.

"Well... maybe a little bit," Reid lied. In reality, it felt like somebody was stabbing a white hot fire poker through his shoulder.

"I don't hurt," Elle informed the young agent quietly as he continued to rock her. "Am just cold. And tired."

"Elle, you've lost a lot of blood," Reid had found the child's gunshot wound, a small pocket in her stomach, still wet and bleeding. He wriggled out of his shirt, hissing in pain when his shoulder throbbed. He pressed the shirt hard against the gaping bullet wound, ignoring the weak, pained cries.

"It does hurt when you push on it like that," Elle informed Reid groggily, almost sarcastically, trying to pull away.

"I know...I'm sorry." Reid soothed. "But I need you to stay awake, okay? Keep talking to me?"

"I'm thirsty. And I want to sleep."

Reid knew the signs and symptoms of hypovolemic shock. C'mon guys... find us.

"I know, but you can't sleep. I'm not going to let you sleep..." Reid shifted the child, fully aware that his own shoulder would scream at him, but he welcomed the pain. He felt a little like drifting off, too. And if he did... Elle probably wouldn't wake up.

"Spencer..." Elle whined, and he cuddled her tighter to him, trying to transfer some of his own body heat. He'd been shot in the shoulder, but it was a clean shot, and he was an adult. More blood to lose before the situation became critical. Elle had been shot in the stomach. And Elle was six. He couldn't get her to a hospital, or even get her water to drink to restore fluid loss, but he could try to keep her warm, awake... talking. That would have to do, for now.

"Elle, you said you wanted me to lock you down here... with..." the word was hard to say, "Mommy. So I only had to deal with..."

"Yeah. One of them would be easier."

"So you deliberately planned on coming down here?" Reid asked, although he knew better. Elle had been caught off guard, just like him, and hadn't had a choice.

"No. But still. You should have locked us in. Then you could've gotten up and out of the dungeon. And out... and away." She sighed tiredly and wriggled in his arms. "I thought you were supposed to be smart. That's what Daddy said before we took you..."

"But I thought... I thought trying to get away was bad?" Reid asked gently, shifting the girl. He knew he was putting her in pain by moving her, but she needed to be more alert. He couldn't have her drifting off.

"It's bad if you get caught," Elle said simply. Reid exhaled. Had he misjudged the little girl this entire time?

"Have you ever tried to get away?"

"No. But I am not a grown-up."

Reid nodded in the darkness. "No. No, you're not, are you?"

Based on the description Barker had given the team, they'd worked up a profile, and J.J. had put the face of "Daddy" on the local and national news stations almost 4 days to the hour after Reid's disappearance. The media circus was having a field day with it. Not only did serial killers who targeted children guarantee more viewers, but the kidnapping of a baby-faced, genius FBI agent was just too much.

The calls began to pour into the Quantico field office within ten minutes of the first news segment airing.

Along with "Daddy's" police sketch was a brief run-down of his general appearance and behaviour.

"Sir?" J.J. asked nervously, poking her head into Hotch's office. "Got one that doesn't sound like a total psycho. Garcia is tracing the call but..."

"What, J.J.?" Hotch asked tiredly. He hadn't slept more than a handful of hours since Reid had been taken. None of them had.

"But I think you might want to talk to him... claims Daddy is his neighbour."

"We have a name for Daddy, yet?" Hotch asked morosely, following J.J. towards the tech room where Garcia was working her magic. "The call's been routed in here?" Hotch asked Garcia, and she nodded, and pressed a button.

"Go ahead, Sir," Garcia said to the computer. Hotch waited a beat. A man's voice filled the air.

"I'm telling you that's my neighbour. I've seen him with that boy that was on the news. Little girl too. I'd know that face anywhere."

"Sir," Hotch interrupted, directing his voice towards the computer as Garcia had. "What makes you think your neighbour is the man we're looking for?"

"Besides it being him?" the man on the other end blurted, obviously annoyed. "I'm out watering my roses about three years ago, kinda' late for me, I admit it. Night time, maybe midnight, maybe a bit later. Didn't want the water to burn the leaves. Anyway. Ed pulls up in his van and takes out this little girl. I dunno. Couldn't have been more than 3 or so. Kid was crying something fierce. I know for a fact he can't have kids, cause his wife can't... Dolores, you know? She's barren? I ask Ed what he's doing with this little girl, and he tells me it's his granddaughter, and from time to time I see her. Not often, just every so often. 'Cept I've known them both over 15 years, and far as I know Ed was never married to anyone but Dolores, so how does he get a grandbaby suddenly? Never thought much about it, though, I mean... guy was always pretty decent to me. Dolores, too, actually. Then about seven months ago or so, some other kid. A boy. The teenage one. I'm sure of it."

Hotch stared stone-faced at Garcia and nodded.

"Sir, can I have your address, please?"

"Sure but...you should know, I saw their van pull out early this morning..."

"The address, please..." Hotch snapped tiredly, but Garcia's fingers were already tapping crazily on the keyboard.

"Just a second, please, sir," Garcia told the caller, and pressed a button, effectively putting him on hold.

"Sir," she whispered to Hotch, frowning. "Our caller is phoning from 1238 Phoenix street; that's about 40 minutes from here..."

"Okay, we need to find neighbours with the names Ed or Dolores, or some combination of..."

"Sir!" Garcia snapped, and tapped the computer screen. Hotch leaned forward and studied the screen, eyes narrowing. Hotch wanted to swear. Above the address 1238 Phoenix Street were the names: Edward and Dolores White.

Their caller was the UnSub.

"Keep him on the line, Garcia," Hotch half-hissed, half-whispered. Garcia nodded, and pressed a button and the sound of Daddy's voice once again filled the room.

The last thing Hotch heard as he left the tech office was the UnSub telling Garcia that he thought Dolores and Ed had taken the boy and the little girl to their lake house. No, he didn't know where that was. No, he had never seen the missing FBI agent...

That's it for chapter 3- I wanted to make it longer but I am going to be away from the net for a few days and I wanted to post this. So, no, Elle doesn't die (yes, she was shot in the stomach, and yes, I do realize how serious a wound that is- usually fatal very quickly, but not always). One reader commented that there should be a spoiler or warning for the death of a child, but Elle wasn't killed (even though, prior to Reid being shot, the gun was flush with her temple, when Mommy shot Reid, Elle managed to pull away and try to run... and Mommy is obviously pretty out of it (to say the least), anyway... Reid is still alive. Elle is still alive. The team is narrowing down their location. So no deaths.

I realize this story might not seem entirely plausible in parts (then again, many episodes of CM don't seem plausible to me, and that's partially why this is fan fiction...). When it comes to this story, that's largely due to two factors- I like to push characters to their limit and see how much they can take before they break, so even if an injury is quickly fatal 99% of the time I like to toy with characters surviving, etc. I can't toy with them as much as I'd like as MA fics are not permitted on this site so surviving severe physical injuries is one way I do that. Also, this story in particular was in part inspired by the Wes Craven movie "The People Under the Stairs" (not the episode Moseley lane, actually, which I have never seen the entire way through), which is a really dark and gory movie (apparently... I find it funny, but it's probably best to call it dark and gory as most people tell me that's how they think of it), but one I've loved since I was a small child.

Please read and review. And no, this is not a death fic or a tragedy. At least not for Reid, or any of the other team members, or Elle (I've grown to like that character now).

Thanks for the compliments and the construcive criticism- ALL of it is much appreciated. Don't worry, medical help is coming for both Reid and Elle soon (they have been suffering from their injuries for about 2 hours now, so Elle is really sick at this point), but I just want to repeat- this fic isn't a tragedy.

-Lexikal