A/N Please head all warning, violence, language and mild sexual content, nothing graphic.

I own nothing from CM only my own characters

Prologue

Midnight

He was thrilled, he'd returned to the beautiful meadow he knew so well. There was peace for him here. The sun was bright gold on his face and shoulders, but not harsh and blinding. He sat down in the middle of the tall grass. As tall as he was the grasses still hid his lanky frame from the world. They waved softly in the perfumed breeze. The smell reminded him of early childhood before his mother changed, before his father left, before the endless beatings of his sadistic classmates, before his world became a constant wash of darkness and bright harshness. He closed his eyes and breathed it in like ambrosia, his heart beat slowing, slowing. He was utterly still as he never was in the "real world." There were so many things he despised about the real world, pain, loneliness, humiliation, and so much more. He often wished he could stay here always.

He did not hear her sit down next to him. He only sensed her presence as he always did. He didn't open his eyes. He wouldn't see her face. He never did and he was tired of asking her why he couldn't see her. She always said he wasn't ready to see her yet.

"Hi, you're back. I am so glad you came." Her voice was familiar, but not like someone you talk to and know, but like something you hear and don't recognize unless you really think about it and he didn't want to think. He had to think every day of his life. He was expected to pull appropriate information out of the minutiae in his brain on a daily basis. His coworkers expected it from him. Sometimes he hated them for their expectations, they way they expected him to pull off miracles for them and he resented it more than he would ever say.

"Hi yourself, when are you going to tell me your name and let me see your face?" He asked this with no trace of a stutter or his usual blush when talking to women outside of his job.

"Actually I think you will be seeing me very soon." she said her voice a soothing timbre he that always quieted his soul.

He was surprised into opening his eyes at that last remark. He immediately wished he hadn't, the scene had changed drastically around him. The smell was horrible, enormous, he wanted to vomit. She was gone and he saw another woman lying on a bed. She had been horribly mutilated and beaten. He didn't want to see this, but he had no choice but to look. He stepped closer walking through the woman's blood.

Her eyes were open and staring at infinity, her mouth open in a scream. He stumbled back to the wall when her head turned and she said. "You wanted to see me Spencer, well here I am. But you have to be quick or you'll never see me again."

He screamed and screamed, bolting up out of sleep into his dark bedroom. He fumbled for the bedside light. His breath came in harsh sobs. He threw off the bedclothes and leaped out of bed, stumbling into the bathroom and falling to his knees in front of the toilet. He was violently ill, bring up everything he had eaten the evening before and he continued to dry heave for some time, wincing at the burning sensation in his throat from stomach acids. Finally the dry heaves stopped, he fumbled for some toilet tissue and wiped his mouth and chin. He slammed the lid down and flushed the toilet. He stayed there on his knees for some time with his head on the lid, weeping as a small child wept when badly frightened by the monsters in his closet.

Across town in a small one bedroom rental house, Jennifer Jareau tossed and moaned in her bed. But these weren't moans of pain or distress. She cried out his name and her eyes popped open, she sat up turning on her bedside table lamp.

"Damn it," she said running her hands through sleep tousled blonde hair. She sat for awhile, legs drawn up, and her back against the headboard. She relished and she hated the sensations she still felt from the highly erotic dream she had just had about him. Against her better sense she wondered what kind of a lover he would be in real life. He was fantastic in her dreams and that was the problem, how could she continue to go to work, every day and wear this mask of "I don't care" when she had such arousing dreams about him. Sighing she got out of bed and walked in the kitchen. While she waited for the tea she wanted to steep, she weighed her options. On the one hand she could just ignore the dreams and the feelings they stirred up and hope they went away. Or she could confront him, proposition him for a one night stand and get it out of her system. On the other hand she could quit her job and never see him again. Or she could just ignore him from now on and hope no one wondered why. Lowering her head to the table she began to softly bang her head against it.

"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."
--Edgar Allan Poe