Title: You Broke My Bones

Author: Me!

Rating: M

Summary: The BAU becomes too much for Reid to handle. But his old and current jobs are bound to collide.

Disclaimer: I don't own Criminals or any of the characters. BUT I do own the plot

Chapter: 0. Hope and the Ripple Effect

I don't know what's worth fighting for
Or why I have to scream
I don't know why I instigate
And say what I don't mean
I don't know how I got this way
I'll never be alright
Breaking the Habit
by
Linkin Park

The last time he felt this helpless was in New Orleans, just after being kidnapped by Tobias Hankle. He'd been with his friend, when the call came. He ignored it. He missed the plane. He needed to know if he had the strength. The strength to stay with the job and the strength to leave. He'd decided then that he would never miss the plane again.

Then Gideon had left. Gideon had stopped believing. He'd stopped believing in happy endings. Reid never understood that. How could he not do this job? How could he just wake up one morning and decide he couldn't do it anymore?

Now he knew. He couldn't do it anymore. He couldn't cope with knowing that by the time the victims got to them it was too late. He couldn't cope with that. They weren't saving people. The people were already gone by the time they reached them.

Their job had a rippled effect. Even if you save one life, someone is still hurting. Even if they did stop somebody from killing someone, someone in the world was still grieving from the pain they caused.

He was sick of it. He was sick of delving into a criminal's mind all day long. Sick of only seeing sick things, sick of knowing how a criminal would act. He just wanted to save lives. And he couldn't do that in his job anymore.

But he couldn't step away entirely. No, he could never step away entirely. He needed to help people. So he decided to do the one thing he could think of- the one thing he could still cope with- that would let him save lives.

He decided to become a doctor.

He became a doctor because he knew that by the time people got to him, they could still be saved. He knew there would still be hope for them.

Hope.

He'd never really had hope before. Of course, there was the hope they were right about a profile, that they wouldn't get an innocent man arrested, but it was a different sort of hope.

He decided he liked this hope much better.

He wanted to be able to save lives. Not the sort of saving lives he was used to- that they caught the guy before he killed again- but the sort of saving lives where he actually had the power to save someone's life. Where he could actually stop a person dying, right in front of him, and not by the ripple effect.

The ripple effect.

It had such a hold over his old job. The ripple effect. It had such a powerful effect. That by stopping this guy, someone's life could be saved. That by this person killing someone, this person's life was ruined.

He was sick of the ripple effect.

He became a doctor so there wouldn't be a ripple effect. Or so the ripple effect wouldn't be so powerful.

He became a doctor so there would still be hope.

For him.