This is my Last Resort (Chapter Ten) 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.
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 so far). 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!
Reid dumped his bag near the door, kicked his shoes off and made his way to the bathroom. He pulled a bottle of aspirin from his medicine cabinet and crunched two tablets in his mouth, relishing the acrid taste. He put the stopper in the tub, turned on the water and watched the bath fill- standing up for a complete shower seemed exhausting- but the water was hot. Too hot. He watched the water steam, the steam curl and fog the mirror.
He blinked and the phone was ringing, the water sloshing over the edges of the tub. What the hell? It had been less than half an inch full... just a second ago. Reid turned the water off and stared into the tub. His bathroom floor was covered in water. Reid plunged a hand into the water and snatched it back with a scalded scream, staring at his red hand.
He was shaking as he made his way to the living room and picked up the phone.
"Hey Kid, I told you I'd phone," Morgan said by way of introduction.
"Yeah," Reid said tonelessly.
"Reid? You okay, man?"
"I just... I slightly flooded my bathroom." Reid said in the same dull, emotionless voice.
"Flooded your bathroom... how?"
"I was filling the tub, and the next thing I knew... the water was running over the sides and the phone was ringing. I have to go clean it up before it leaks to the downstairs apartment."
"Kid, you're not telling me something." Morgan pressed softly.
"I... the look of the water was wrong. The heat was wrong, and then the steam..."
"Reid, what are you talking about?"
"I don't know, Morgan," Reid said tremulously. "The water was just wrong... the look of it."
"Kid, I am coming over there..."
"Morgan, I am fine."
"Even if I believed that, which I don't, I am going to help you clean up the mess." Morgan hung up then, before Reid could even begin to argue.
Reid put the phone back in the cradle and sat down wearily on his couch. He shut his eyes, and could still see the laughing skeleton, but now there was more... he let out a small, strangled noise, something between a laugh and a sob. I am cracking up here.
The images were so clear. Edward White was dragging him by the hair up the steps of the Oubliette, grinning maniacally. Elle was trailing him, staring at him curiously, apparently unaffected by his moans of pain. He was thrown near the bathtub- the same bathtub He'd found Elle floating in- and Edward White put the stopper in and turned on the tap. Just one- the hot water tap.
"Please... don't."
"You're filthy. You vomited on yourself. You're disgusting." Edward White said solemnly, but he was still smiling.
"Why did he puke, Elle?"
"He thought the skeleton was alive," the little girl said in the same solemn tone as her UnSub "father", but then began to laugh. The noise was unnerving and strange and disorienting and made Reid's skin crawl. In any other context her laugh would have sounded normal and happy and joyous, but given the circumstances, it was terrifying.
"He thought the skeleton was alive, huh?" White said, and giggled... an actual giggle.
"Please, don't do this." Reid could feel the incredible heat radiating off the tub.
"You did it to yourself, boy. You stink." He was yanked up by his hair and thrown, protesting but weak, into the tub.
The heat was disorienting and excruciating and he screamed and thrashed weakly, hollering. His heart was racing with fear and pain.
"You wash yourself, or I'll make it hotter," White said sternly, throwing the young man a steel wool scouring pad.
Reid tried to gasp through the pain. During his career he'd been beaten and tortured, even shot. But nothing compared to this pain- this incredible, unbearable, inescapable heat.
"I'll wash him, Daddy." Elle offered helpfully.
"Elle...please...please help me..." Reid screamed. He couldn't stop screaming, but part of his mind had drifted above his body and was watching as a detached observer. Was this dying? Was this what being cooked alive felt like? God, if he ever got out of this in one piece, he'd never eat lobster again.
"Stop being a baby," Elle said, and sunk her hands into the steaming water, apparently indifferent to the pain. She began to scrub his chest and neck. Reid choked and screamed and writhed before blackness took him.
"Reid?" Morgan sounded scared. Reid sat up with a jolt and looked at his friend.
"What happened?" Reid asked in a gasp and got up. He felt like he was going to panic.
"Kid, you're white. What the hell is going on?"
"Bathroom flooded." Reid said stubbornly, shaking his head in dismay. Derek Morgan's face hardened with concern but eventually the older man went to clean up the mess. Reid sat on his couch, head down, trying to make sense of what he'd just experienced. Had that happened? And if it had, why wasn't he burned?
Simple answer: the water had been hot enough to hurt like hell, but not hot enough to cause blistering. He'd probably been scarlet for a while, and then it had faded. Reid stared at his hands and flexed them, and considered this.
And how had Elle plunged her hands into that water without as much as a moan?
A few minutes later Morgan came back.
"Okay, I mopped up the water. Couldn't drain the tub, though... what were you thinking, only boiling water like that... Reid?"
"They washed me in scalding water. After I vomited. I can't remember." Reid gently hit the sides of his head with his fists, obviously frustrated. "Everything is strange and disconnected." He hit his head a bit harder and Morgan stepped forward.
"Reid... stop hitting yourself!"
"None of it is in order!" Reid said miserably, and Morgan thought about that last comment. To Derek Morgan, things were often out of order, but he didn't have a near perfect memory. What was it like for Reid, not only to have huge gaping amnesiac pits in his mind, but also for the memories he did have, to be so strange and distorted?
"We'll figure out what happened, Kid. Just calm down."
"If I was drugged, we might never know what happened. Ever."
"Do you... do you really want to remember? I mean, these people tortured you. We know that for a certainty. If we can catch Dolores White and save those kids, do you really have to remember?"
"Yes," Reid said in a croak.
"Why?"
"The blackness... it's scarier than the memories. The blackness is scarier."
"Reid, people repress things for a reason. You know that."
"Elle..." He was up off the couch, scrambling for the phone. "Elle knows. She knows everything that happened. She'll tell me. I'll make her tell me."
"Reid..."
Reid was still punching in numbers, the hospital paediatrics unit. From memory. Morgan grabbed his wrist lightly and took the phone. Put it back in the cradle.
"Reid, you heard that kiddie shrink over the phone. The kid is a little sociopath. She is not going to tell you anything useful..."
"I am a profiler. I can profile a child... now that I know what she is."
"You're already confused. She'll mix lies with the truth. You know she will. All you'll accomplish by talking to her now is... you'll confuse yourself more, give her the upper hand, and anything solid we do have will be contaminated. She likes to control you. You know that."
"So what do we do then?" Reid barked impatiently. Morgan watched Spencer Reid pace, obviously agitated.
"We do what we do with any UnSub. We provoke them, not the other way around. We throw them off their game. Don't we?"
Reid eventually nodded.
"She wants Dolores White... the woman she calls Mommy. We want Dolores White. So we use that. We get her to tell us anything she might know about where this UnSub is, and we use that, and we find White. We find those kids. That'll have to be good enough."
Reid nodded again, but he didn't look convinced.
Okay, very short, I know. I have been kind of off my game for the last few weeks and really tired (having a very hard time focusing and concentrating on anything!), so I just wanted to update, so that readers of this know that I haven't abandoned it. This will probably be a fairly long story when I am eventually done with it, so I have to pace myself. Please review if you liked it! ANY review is better than nothing, because while I like being complimented (who doesn't?) I also like general feedback and I like knowing what readers DON'T like. Thanks again for reading!