NIGHTMARE

The sound of leaves crunching under his feet makes his heart skip a beat; he pauses afraid to take another step. The voices ahead continue arguing and he takes another step. There's two of them, they're arguing. He moves closer. He and JJ are outnumbered so he doesn't want to engage. He'd called to JJ to follow, she should be right behind him. If they can get an angle on the unsubs they might be able to bring them in, if not they'll be able to keep up surveillance until Hotch and the others show up. He cranes his neck this way and that, trying to get a visual on the unsubs. He can barely make out the back of Tobias Henkel, but can't see the other one at all. He should be able to see him.

Suddenly he hears JJ scream coming from behind him. The other one must have circled around and come up behind them. He breaks training and starts to run toward the sound of her voice. He hears gunshots. Three. Hotch always trains three shots, pause, three shots. He prays it's JJ doing the shooting, not the other unsub. But they sounded like they were coming from the other direction, damn cornstalks must be distorting the sound, he pauses for a split second to get his bearings, he can't help JJ if he takes off in the wrong direction.

He's on the ground scrabbling for his dropped weapon before his mind is able to process the pain of the blow to his jaw. He freezes as Henkel leaps over him and grabs the gun practically from his fingertips. He rolls to his back, raised up on his elbows - it's the most defensible position available to him. He needs to see Henkel to talk him down. As he starts to reason with the man, he sees something that strikes fear into his heart even more than the sight of his own gun pointed at him - he sees his first glimpse of Charles.

He feels himself begin to quiver as the Devil himself stares him down.

Tobias approaches him with a needle, the poison that would nearly destroy his life and he begs. "Please don't. Please don't. I can't. Not again."

He feels the pain, the two broken metatarsi, the giant bruise on his back mirrored by a bruised sternum and a broken rib from Tobias performing CPR. His mouth and lungs are filled with the stale stench of death, a killer's breath. His eyes are blurred from three days with no contact solution combined with a bit of a concussion, but he can still see the bullet in the revolver's chamber, he has two clicks to come up with some way to tell the team he's in a cemetery. His mind races it's way through the Bible as he refuses Raphael's demands to sign the death warrant of one of his friends. 'Think, think. Some passage with the words cemetery, some passage about burial?'

He has one click left, one chance, he has the passage, thank God he hadn't had to go past Genesis - but who will understand the message? It has to be Gideon or Hotch. They've studied the Bible as well as the Torah and the Qur'an. He had no clue how well Prentiss knew the Bible. JJ, as good as she was, wasn't a profiler, she'd gone to Sunday school every week as a child, but he needed a sure thing. Morgan had no interest in religion except as it met with work - someday maybe he'd find out why, for now he just accepted. Someday? Was there going to be a someday? Focus. Hotch! Narcissism! Spout Hotch's take on narcissism. Hotch had kicked the snot out of him a mere hour after they had had the debate over the signs and symptoms of narcissism, he'd remember. He had to remember. If he gave the definition he believed to be false, Hotch would see he was lying. He had to know. Reid couldn't bear to die with Hotch thinking he had marked him for death.

He finishes talking and sees Raphael lower the gun. It worked. Charles was the one who had been obsessed with the Bible; Raphael only knew what Charles had shoved down Tobias's throat. The real Charles Henkel would have caught his lie, but Tobias didn't, therefore Raphael didn't.

He jumps as Raphael raises the gun and fires over his head into the wall behind him. He waits silently - will Raphael leave now to go murder Hotch or will he bide his time. He watches as his friend's Raphael pushes a button and his friends' faces appear on the screen. JJ and Penelope are crying. Morgan looks like he wants to crawl through the computer screen and beat something to death - and oh, how he wished that could really happen. He sees Hotch still, then rush from the room. There was no anger on his face, no fear either. Gideon follows him, then the rest. Raphael turns the camera off; he switches the monitors to his other victims. Hotch is temporarily out of his sight, out of his mind, he has other 'sinners' to watch. 'Sinners' who are in the room with their computers.

Suddenly Tobias is approaching him again. He has the needle out. Reid waits anxiously as the belt is tightened around his arm, as the veins begin to pop. He smiles a little as Tobias confirms that they are in a cemetery, his clue was good. He watches as the needle slides into his vein, the slight pinch feels wonderful, the drugs burns a little as it enters his body, but it's followed by the bliss, the freedom, the comfort - Charles isn't in that place where he goes, he can't reach him there. He feels a slight niggle of worry in the back of his mind - there's only a few substances that are physically addicting in so few doses, but he's pretty sure this is one of them. Between the physical need and the emotional he's not sure he'll ever be ale to escape this shack.

The world starts to gray out when suddenly he's pulled back by the pain: It's wrong, as it's happening he knows it's wrong, but this is the point when Charles begins to beat him. He knows begging for his life won't work. Charles has no human compassion left. He cries out for Tobias to save him anyway. He begs for his life. His head is whipped around as the blows rain down on him. The beating is always much more severe than, always last much longer, but it still ends the same. The chair falls. He feels the impact of the chair back against him, feels the impact against his heart. He feels his heart stop, his body begin to convulse, his vision grays as he loses consciousness, as the blackness takes him, as he dies.

*****

Chelsea watches as her brothers moans, tears run down his face, he mumbles random words, "don't," "please no," "I don't want it," - she doesn't know what 'it' is, or was, but it must have been terrible - "don't kill them," "please save me," he cries out for the members of his team and somebody named Gideon and a Tobias. Her heart breaks when she hears him calling out for his mom and dad.

She wants to rush over and shake him awake, but she remembers his warning. His warning that it could actually be dangerous to touch him during a nightmare. She hadn't fully believed him, thought he was exaggerating, but seeing him writhing on the couch when sleep should be holding him immobile and hearing the fear and desperation in his voice, she could easily see him waking up fighting for his life.

She also remembers his request: "Even if they seem bad, I'd rather sleep through them and not remember, than wake up to someone telling me 'it's only a dream.'"

She watched until he quieted, clutching a compliant Crookshanks to her chest and vowed to be really well-behaved for the rest of the day. She decided to start by making a fresh pot of coffee for him. And maybe ask him some trivia question about the original Star Trek series. She let Crookshanks down and headed for the kitchen.

Author's note 1: The next chapter will not be nearly so angsty. I promise.

Author's note 2: Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, I'm sorry I've taken so long to respond, but I will give individual responses to everybody.