This is my Last Resort (Chapter Eight) by Lexikal
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: Dark themes; violence; missing children/implied child abuse, lots of Reid angst...
Summary: Spencer Reid, third season-ish (2008-ish), is kidnapped/taken hostage and abused/terrorized along with a host of other "unwanted" children. Please see chapter one for more info.
Chapter Note: Reid begins to remember some strange events during the time he was kidnapped while under hypnosis. Reid angst ahead! You have been warned.
Fan Fic Music Video Note: I recently made a music video for this fic set to the song "Last Resort" by Papa Roach. If you are interested in watching this, go to YouTube and type in "lexikalfanfic", in quotations. A few videos should pop up (all fan fiction music videos). Select the one entitled "This is my last Resort" Criminal Minds Fan Fiction Music Video, and enjoy... or you can get the URL directly from my author's profile page. Take care, and happy reading! And, like always, please review!
"This is all?" Hotch asked. He'd read over Reid's horrible handwriting in a matter of minutes. "Reid, what you recall here... this might account for 2 or 3 hours of your abduction, at the most." Hotch said sternly.
Spencer Reid shrugged. "That's all I remember."
"And you don't remember being drugged or injected or knocked unconscious?" Hotch prodded. "Other than initially, in the park, when you felt that sharp sting in your thigh?"
Reid shook his head no.
"And obviously you weren't sleeping."
"I don't think so..." Reid trailed, and Hotch's eyebrows knitted together. Hotch picked up the phone and began to dial a number. Reid stood and Hotch motioned for him to stay seated. Aaron Hotchner said a name and Spencer Reid felt his blood drop a few degrees. Hotch was speaking to the Bureau's head shrink.
"You have an appointment at 1:00..." Hotch said when he hung up the phone.
"Hotch..." Reid whined.
"This is non-negotiable."
"Hotch, if my mind thinks whatever happened to me should be repressed, it's probably wise to let it do its thing and not go stirring up..."
"Ordinarily I'd agree with you," Hotch said, not unkindly. "But your memories are pretty much the only lead we have to go on right now. The profile has fallen apart..."
"You know, it's impossible to hypnotize someone who is resisting," Reid warned his boss.
"Reid, we need access to those memories. We need to know, because we need to find this woman, and these kids. We need to know what happened to you, what that you find so... appalling that you can't consciously recall it."
"Maybe nothing happened. Maybe the initial drug..."
"You were given a tox screen, so whatever you were injected with was metabolized and out of your system rapidly, or is a drug that isn't commonly tested for."
"I could go back and speak to Elle. She's six years old, and she has been with these people for years. She could tell us even more..."
"Elle, from the sounds of it, is playing games with you and right now we don't have time to be led on a wild goose chase by a manipulative child, victim or not."
Reid opened his mouth as if to say something, and then snapped it shut, angrily.
"Why don't we have the BAU's child psychiatrist talk to Elle? I'm not good with kids at the best of times, and..."
"We'll do that, too, but honestly, I value your memories and the veracity of your memories over the word of that child. We all heard that tape, Reid. Nobody blames her for being the way she is..."
"And how is she, Hotch?" Reid challenged, his eyes narrowing. "I found the kid bobbing unconsciously in freezing ice water for trying to get me water. Of course she displays classic-"
"Symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder?" Hotch cut Reid off. Reid nodded.
"Like I said, nobody blames this child, but we don't have time for head games right now."
"Memories obtained during hypnosis don't hold up in court, and for good reason. The hypnotized patient is highly suggestible and susceptible to confabulation..."
"Reid, right now we just want to find these kids. Let the lawyers deal with the prosecution of Dolores White after this is all over..."
"And what about Elle?" Reid said miserably.
"What about her?" Hotch asked, his tone almost infuriatingly blasé.
"What if it comes out that she had more to do with these UnSubs activities than simply asking for certain victims... nobody is going to want to foster, let alone adopt, a child like that and..."
"Reid, your job isn't to be this child's protector or friend or Guardian Ad Litem, it's to be an FBI agent with this bureau and help catch..."
Reid shook his head angrily and made sure to slam the door as loud as he could on the way out of the SAC's office.
Hotch escorted Reid down to the BAU's chief psychiatrist's office at quarter to one. It had almost been four days since Reid had been found, and every second was precious. So far no child matching the description of any of the children thought to be under the control of Dolores White had turned up, thank god, but that didn't mean one wouldn't soon...
The BAU's head shrink was a balding man in his 50s with kind eyes who specialized in treating traumatized field agents. Reid had seen him once or twice for assessments, but never for counselling, always dodging that particular bullet by using his intelligence to get out of what would have been, for any other agent, mandatory therapy.
"Agent Reid," the shrink said kindly, holding out his hand for a handshake. Reid shook the man's hand and sighed, obviously uncomfortable.
"Agent Hotchner tells me you don't want to be here, so I'll hurry this up and make it as pain-free as possible, okay?"
Reid shrugged. Hotch sat opposite the shrink, Douglas Charles, and Reid took the couch. He knew the hypnosis drill.
Hotch pulled his own tape recorder out of his pocket, even though a video camera had already been set up in the room and was ready to go.
"We're going to tape this session, if that's alright with you," Charles told Reid. Reid shrugged again. He didn't have much of a choice. Charles stood up and went over to the video camera and turned it on, checking to make sure it was focused on Reid and Reid's face. Reid wanted to say that he felt somewhat like an UnSub being interviewed, but he kept that thought to himself.
Charles came back over to Reid and began the induction, watching as the young man's eyes began to flicker and grow heavy before finally shutting altogether.
"Agent Reid?" Charles asked gently and soothingly, the voice of a good hypnotherapist, low, dulcet tones. Metrical.
"Yeah?" Reid slurred.
"We're going to go back in time to the day you and Agent Hotchner, Agent Prentiss and Agent Morgan were handing out flyers of a potential UnSub in the park. Do you remember that day?"
"Yeah..."
"How many days ago was that?"
"About...approximately eight days ago now. Eight days, almost. At around 3:15 pm today that will be when I was taken. Two hours or so from now. Approximately."
"Okay. And something happened that day. You were separated from your team. Do you remember how that happened?"
"I...I stopped for water..." Reid said tonelessly. "I stopped at the water fountain."
"You stopped at a water fountain?" Charles repeated.
"Yeah. My team walked around the corner, and then I felt a sharp pain in my thigh. I thought at first I had been stung by a bee or a wasp. But then... I got dizzy. I fell. There was a man's face over mine, Edward White's face. Hotch told me after I was found that Edward White shot himself in the dungeon at his home..."
"So you were drugged by one of the UnSubs," Charles said. Reid nodded.
"What happened then?"
"I...I...White managed to convince some passerby that I was his friend, that I was sick. Diabetic or something, I think that's what he said. And the man helped White walk me to the van that was waiting and they put me inside. And we drove off."
"Do you remember anything as you were driving? Were you conscious?"
"I was dizzy. Everything was spinning. The missing boy, Connor Stephens, was in the passenger seat for most of the ride. Elle was in the back with me. At one point I tugged on my handcuffs and they cut into my wrists. White asked Elle if I was fighting the restraints, something like... hard to remember... and she hit me in the head with a mag-lite."
"Why did she hit you, Agent Reid?"
"Punishment," Reid said simply.
Charles asked Reid questions for a while, and most of his responses were what Reid had already recorded and given to Hotch to read.
"When you finally got to the house, were you conscious?" Charles asked gently.
"Mmm...yeah. I had vomited in the car. So Elle had hit me again. In the stomach." Reid's face screwed up in pain as he relived the blow. The shrink threw a glance over at Hotch. Hotch's eyes were burning with anger. He hadn't heard this before.
"The little girl, Elle... the six year old? She hit you again?"
"Yeah."
"Was she told to, like the first time?"
Reid gently rocked his head from side to side, and then his eyes fluttered open, unaware of his current surroundings, trapped in some other time.
"I- I have a concussion." Reid said miserably. "I can't stop throwing up. She hits me around the legs. It doesn't really hurt, because she is so young, but it stings. Edward White is laughing. Telling her she is doing a good job, and tells me to stop disobeying my sister. But then I vomit again, and my mouth is full of blood, so maybe I was also hit in the mouth. I am still in the van and it gets on the... the blood and puke...gets all over, and White comes over and punches me in the head. In the temple. And everything goes black for a little while."
Reid's face had turned an alarming shade of white. His forehead was perspiring. "I don't feel well, but then everything goes black, and when I wake up, I am tied up. I am naked, except for my boxer shorts. Elle is there. She tells me I am on TV, that she was too, she tells me I'll get out faster, if I am good..."
"Out of where?" Charles asked calmly. "And remember, Agent Reid, you can remember all of these things, remember all the details, but you are just observing. You are not afraid. Your breathing is slow and even and you feel calm, but you're just watching all of this. Telling me all of this. Okay?"
"Okay," Reid said and exhaled sharply. A bit of colour began to return to his cheeks.
"It's hard to follow what she is saying, Elle. She doesn't make any sense. She has a doll with her- one of the doll's eyes is missing and the hair looks like it has been deliberately cut off with scissors. Elle tells me that if I lie to her, I will be punished, but she doesn't tell me what she means by this. I try to talk to her, ask her about Edward and Dolores White, her real parents. She said her real parents didn't want her... and that if I lie, I will be punished, and she leaves then. And later, she comes back..."
"How much later, Agent Reid?"
"I don't know. She brings a knife." Reid's voice was flat, detached, but beginning to hitch again and the shrink had to remind him that he was calm and a simple observer.
"She tells me that she could cut my throat open like a pig. Like the boy in the corner."
"Did she cut the boy's throat in the corner?" Charles asked calmly.
"I-I...I don't know. I...his throat was cut she says. And she says she can cut mine, too. But... I don't know if she cut his throat..."
Hotch ground his teeth until he was certain the enamel would come off. He hadn't heard this part either.
"Did she threaten you in any other way?"
"She... she says with me tied up, she could cut one of my eyes out, and maybe I look scared because she says she can cut both of them out, and then I will be blind. I will walk in blackness, she says. That it doesn't matter if I am a grown-up and she is a child, because I am tied up and she is free...and how would I like to be in the dark forever and ever..." Reid licked his lips. "I don't feel well. I feel like I am going to puke."
"You're calm Agent Reid, you're calm. I want you to take deep breaths and think of something peaceful for a moment," Charles said, but Reid, even hypnotized, was rocking slightly, sitting up and rocking, his arms laced around his stomach in a self-hug. After about thirty seconds of rocking Reid stopped and leaned back, taking deep, gaspy breaths.
Hotch watched his agent, growing more and more concerned. What he was hearing was horrific, of course, but Reid had been through worse before. Reid had suffered much more at the hands of Tobias Hankel, for instance, and hadn't repressed those memories. Not like this. There had to be more that Reid hadn't divulged yet...
"Agent Reid, this all must have been quite terrifying for you," Charles said earnestly, leaning forward, watching the hypnotized agent. Reid kept licking his lips nervously. Hypnotized, he nodded.
"Yeah..."
"But you were kidnapped before. And you have been in very frightening situations before, haven't you?"
Reid licked his lips again. Nodded.
"But this situation, this time... you were more frightened than those other times, weren't you?"
"Yes..." Reid whined, and shut his eyes. His face was screwed up tight.
"Why, agent Reid? Why was this time so much more frightening..."
"Don't wanna say..." Reid stammered, his voice sounding almost drunk with fear.
"Is it because Elle is so young? That you didn't expect a child..."
"No," Reid said, shaking his head fervently. "It's cold in here."
"Where?"
"My insides are falling out!" Spencer Reid's voice was a sudden, panicked scream. Both Hotch and Charles sat up, as if shocked. Hotch glanced over at the psychiatrist, his eyebrows rising in a "what the hell is going on here" expression.
"I don't know what's real!" Reid barked out with a cry before either man could respond to his initial outburst and stood up, began to pace. Still hypnotized. "No... this can't be real. It has to be a trick or...it has to be a trick. A trick."
"What's a trick?" Charles said as calmly as he could.
"I...I am losing my mind." Reid said loudly. "Nothing makes sense. The skeleton in the corner is laughing at me... but I am not dreaming. I know I am not dreaming."
"The skeleton is laughing at you?"
"It... it is laughing at me. My brain is no longer working. I... my brain has been broken." Reid had turned translucent.
"Agent Reid, remember, you are just seeing these things now, you are an observer. At any time..."
Reid jolted up suddenly, no longer hypnotized. He stared around, as if horrified. Gasped. Gasped again. Then he was up and out of the room, running. Sprinting. Hotch trailed him down the hall. Reid burst into the men's room and barely made it to the sink before vomiting all over the place, all down the front of his sweater vest, the retching mixing with low, gasping moans. Tears.
Hotch watched the younger man for a moment, shocked. Shocked by what he had heard. Shocked by the frenzied display of emotion he was now seeing. It made no sense, but it did suggest that Reid had been drugged with something. Repeatedly, given the huge lapses in his memory. He'd ask Garcia later what drugs could produce such effects. LSD? Rohypnol? Some combination of the two?
It was possible. But why?
Reid was shaking violently, still leaning over the sink, the water running on cold. Hotch approached his agent slowly, wary of spooking him, and handed Reid a paper towel. Reid grabbed it and stood over the sink, still shaking.
"I want to go home, Hotch. I don't want to do this job anymore! I want to go home..."
"Reid, calm down..."
"I have to get out of here!" Reid said in a rush, and bolted out of the room.
"REID!" Hotch called, knowing better than to actually try and chase the man right now. Chasing him would only increase his panic.
Hotch sighed and pulled out his cell phone. Reid would have to go back to the bullpen to retrieve his bag and his keys.
"Morgan? Yeah, it's me. Yeah. No. He is panicking. Not sure yet. Yeah, when he gets there, keep him there. Don't let him leave. No. No matter what he says, stall him till I get there. Yeah. Okay. Thanks."
Hotch shut this phone and jogged in the direction of the bullpen. What the hell had happened in that house?
That's it for chapter 8, please review. I realize it's pretty short, but I am tired and I figured shorter, but more frequent chapters are ultimately more rewarding than longer chapters you have to wait forever to read. - Lexikal