Warning for angst, strong language, and some graphic scenarios.

I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons.

It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?

John Lennon

Spencer Reid has dreams.

In these dreams, he sees nothing.

It's unnerving to have such an important sense whisked away, to live in a rolling ocean of black. Reid's never been a huge fan of the dark, after all. At first it was terrifying, confusing, horrible. It still is sometimes.

But, oh, what he can hear. Losing such a vital part of being human, and completely honing in on the thing you have left, is a wretched, organic experience that he can't even begin to explain.

It's a kind of all consuming darkness that seeps into every fiber of his being. But at the same time, colors are painted, vibrant and loud in his ears. At first sounds mean nothing, snippets, inconsequential and hollow as only utter confusion registers within him.

Where is he? Why can't he see? Why can't he move?

But slowly, slowly, things start to piece together, forming a very complex, very confounding puzzle that he couldn't see. He listens, silent and invisible as always, as people he comes to figure out as doctors talk freely around him. Words like 'coma' and 'unsure' and 'vitals' thrown around on a daily basis, flipping through the darkness, the only other tangible thing in his little dusky world.

Every ten minutes head injury claims the life of a child.

Oh God, a coma? He's in a coma? But how? He can't remember…

Head trauma is the number one cause of death and disability among people between the ages of 1 and 44.

But he can hear so much, how can he be in a coma. Of course, he doesn't know what kind of coma he's in, and considering the varying stages he—

About 5% to 10% of all coma patients are incapable of conscious behavior, and end up vegetative, which most of the public think of as prolonged coma.

… Will he ever wake up? Is he going to be trapped, paralyzed in this state forever?

He contemplates, day and night, whenever that is, as order, days, seconds are lost to him in this depthless, dark void. He conjugates all the French verbs (Étre, avoir été, étant, ayant étém été…), he recites Goldbach's Conjecture for a while (52 = 5 + 57, 54 = 11 + 43, 56 = 19 + 37), anything to calm him, to pass time. He focuses on anything but the world around him. The one can't see. The one he's stuck in.

Then, one day, one wonderful day, he hears something. And not a blurred word, or an ebbing sentence or whir of noise, but he honestly, purely, hears, sounds layering each other to remind him that there's a world out there other than the darkness. Something that penetrates the darkness and the facts he's surrounded himself with.

It's… an old radio. Static buzzing, antenna constantly being tweaked with a screech of metal against plastic, cart with old wheels rolling, one of them is crooked, making a ka-thump noise every few seconds. A song is scratching its way from the speakers, crawling its rusted melody out from the radio like it's trying to escape a field of barbed wire. Reid recognizes it.

It's Billy Joel's We Didn't Start The Fire.

Oh God. Reid hates this song.

Billy Joel did not bring up very happy memories of his childhood.

And yet… it's new. It's different. He can hear suddenly. He's suddenly not alone. The snippets are stringing together and now their continuous and glorious and he goddamn hates this song just as he goddamn loves it.

He listens to the song, the whole song in all its horrid glory and afterwards, he keeps listening. Suddenly sounds are miraculous little gifts, water to the thirsty man, that he picks apart like the frog he dissected in high school. Careful, meticulous, calculating. Sounds are becoming his very own language.

Soon, he has an entire day planned out. He is able to keep time with the sounds.

In the morning, a nurse comes in to check on him. Most of the times, it's a woman named Kelley. Her voice is soft, and plush, like a fluffed pillow or cotton candy. Warmly flowing around him as she rustles the sheets on his beds, moving his limbs with the quiet chafe of her skin against his, clacking dials on the machines next to him, chattering with other nurses, or occasionally talking to him directly. She tells him stories of how the sunrise is high, and the sky is as blue as her eyes, and he can hear the smile in her voice, it's kind like her, and fills the mornings with an optimism he greatly appreciates.

The rest of the day is a mess of doctors, and silence, and visitors, and more doctors and poking and prodding that he can't feel but he deduces from the glorious sounds around him. He knows at noon sharp, Dr. Grange checks on him. His voice is like a muffler backfiring. Reid builds a picture of a burly, short man with an overbearing, jet-black mustache, because Grange's feet always shuffle like a penguin, and when he speaks, he does so in a huffy, gravelly manor, always slightly muffled. Occasionally, he'll make out the crinkly noise one would make while stroking a thick, walrus mustache. He likes Dr. Grange. He laughs a lot, and it's an incredibly refreshing sound, even if it does vaguely resemble that of a choking boar.

At night, he's not sure when but it's always the same time, he'll hear music floating down the hallway. He's come to figure out it's the night janitor. He (or she, considering Reid's never actually heard the person speak) is Reid's favorite person by far. Because he doesn't talk. He just moseys along, with his scathing, piss poor radio that plays Cat Stevens, and Three Dog Night, and Bon Jovi as he passes by. Reid looks forward to his visits, because he can listen to the peaceful music, listen to the simplicity of the tunes that are as much trapped in the darkness as he is, and not worry or fear for that short while.

He has a schedule, it's not perfect, but it's reliable enough not to drive him mad in his perpetual state of darkness. He knows what to expect each day. He knows what time it is, because at around one every day an orderly will check in on him. He doesn't know her name, but she has a thick southern accent and calls him doll and jokes with others that she wants herself a cutie genius doctor. Apparently this is highly amusing, as she must be in her sixties and already married, according to others' remarks. She's nice though, and her country voice is like drizzled molasses in a glass of ice tea, refreshing and warm and bright with life.

Most importantly though, he knows when his team comes.

In his dreams, he hears brightness and beauty.

JJ visits him at least once a week. If they don't have a case, she'll come on Saturdays. Most of the time, she brings Henry and Will along. Reid thinks for moral support.

Her voice is like freshly squeezed lemonade and the sun. She walks to his bed, his prison, and greets him as Spence, always. She scrapes a chair closer to him, and whispers to Henry to say hi to his godfather. Henry's voice is like a bubbly soda and a bird soaring in the sky. He giggles, and babbles on for a while, a wild stream of consciousness that's so pure and beautiful Reid treasures every word. The rabbles and extravagant tales, though, soon peter out. He speaks with a dropping inflection, like he's tuckered out from talking so much.

JJ gets Will to take Henry for some water or a snack from the vending machine. Once they're gone, she sighs a long, weary sigh that runs from her raspberry lips and sinks through the air like its as groggy as she is.

The chair creaks as she shifts her weights, and presses forward on the white mattress he's lying one, leaning into the bed with a far away creak. She brushes away what he assumes to be runaway golden locks with a gentle whoosh. She reaches out, and he can hear her folding their fingers together, her thumb keeping a soft rhythm on the back of his hand. She compresses and then decompresses the weight of his hand in hers, squeezing.

"I'm so sorry, Spence." A golden light of sound, a sunset blazing with colors and beauty, a bittersweet pucker as you quench your thirst. "I'm so impossibly sorry. I'd do anything to fix this. I wish I could go back in time and… I'm so sorry." The sun has been squashed and the glass emptied as she rushes out the words, forces them, chocking on them in her throat. Why is she sorry? She didn't do anything.

A rasping noise catches against her lips, and that suffocating, blocked sound is back.

Thump.

A tear, twirling down and descending to the pristine white sheets one associates with a hospital. It's sucked into the bed like quicksand, sinking down, just a small drop of liquid remaining on the surface of the sheets. More thumps follow, and they reach out to each other, latching on and forming a bigger blotch, a miniature pool of wetness that makes louder, splatting sounds for the tears that fall on it.

The sheets on his bed crinkle and bunch as she practically collapses onto him, her breathing stifled by his steadily rising chest as she rests her shaking, sobbing self on his otherwise still body. She can hear the beat of his heart, the rushing of his blood, beneath the thin hospital gown and he can hear her hitched gasps of air and murmuring apologies that are beautiful and sweet and bursting brilliantly with life.

He wants to cry with her. To beg her to explain her sadness so that he may take it away, banish it from her pure, lovely soul. Because her lovely, pure voice is being weighed down, being sunk with something dreadfully ugly and tarnished—something that does not belong with the beautiful, bright creature that is his friend.

Eventually, too early and too late, she sweeps her head back from his chest and flattens down the soaked material of his gown with a gentle caress and shuffle of fabric.

She stands up, and places a small, meaningful kiss to his forehead. Her lips hover above him as she pulls away and she releases a quiet sigh that pushes away from his head, spreading out with a tiny ripple in the atmosphere and across his skin.

Like ripping a Band-Aid off, the door shuts swiftly and painfully when she leaves.

He dreams of a place where the sun shines and lemon trees flourish.

In his dreams, he hears shadows and hollow oak trees.

Often times, at night (he knows because it's after the janitor's music session but definitely before the morning shift of nurses) someone comes and sits in his room.

The first time it happened, it scared the shit out of him. A mysterious stranger in the dead of night coming into his room? It wasn't until the near end of the alien person's visit that first night his worries dissipated. He heard the rough, coughing of a quiet promise to get him out of there, and felt anxiety melt away.

Since then, he's not completely sure when Morgan will come. If he comes during the day, it's only because of the rest of the team. No, like the shadows in his former, visual, life, he slinks in at night, quiet and reliable and invisible all at once. As strange as it is, Morgan's one of favorite visitors. He comes, and sits silently. Company and yet not. There and yet in his own world. It's nice to have the human companionship without any complications. It's a symbiotic relationship—they just need to be, and it's enough for both of them. It's exactly what they both need.

The darkness he's submerged in feels infinitely darker with Morgan there. It also feels infinitely safer. Morgan breathes in steady, shallow inhales that match the time of his high pitched heart monitor. Some nights, Morgan will crinkle the fibers of his sheets, leaning to him to place a hand over his. He wishes he could feel it, so badly he wishes he could feel something.

But most of the times, Morgan just sits as Reid just lays and those times are some of his favorite. Morgan, the epitome of strength Morgan, is there and he feels less alone in the dark, because though he's sure Morgan is looking right at him, he's also sure that Morgan's trapped in the same darkness as he. They're just an old pair of friends, wallowing in their own grief together and it's the most comforted Reid's ever felt in the strangest, most organic way.

Morgan doesn't speak, not really, which is plenty fine by Reid. The silence fits better than words.

But occasionally, on those exceptions, Morgan talks. He tells Reid things he's never heard before and sometimes, a lot of the times, it scares him.

But most, most of the times, it warms him—he feels Morgan's words and the broken, slapped with crazy glue, but broken strength behind them. He feels.

Morgan won't speak for long on those one in a million nights. Just blunt, to the point statements that he can't tell anyone but he must tell Reid because Reid can't tell anyone either and Reid will listen and Reid will be a body with no mind, which sometimes, is exactly what someone needs.

"I had a nightmare." Morgan confesses, empty, sharp words slicing into Reid's flesh. "Having, I guess is better to say. It's the same one, ever since…" Reid can hear the hesitance, the small intake of breath, the pause, the fear. "Ever since the explosion." Morgan pushes through it because no one is there to judge, no one is there to wince at the facts—body no mind, companion no emotion. "I'm falling. Not just in my nightmare but, I'm just… falling. Everything is moving so fast, so quickly around me and I can't keep up, man. It's like… It's like the world has fast-forwarded to now from years ago and I can barely remember what I had for breakfast yesterday but at the same time, nothing's changed. The world stopped, and time's gone nowhere. And I just… I just keep falling, Reid. And the world keeps falling with me, so I guess what I'm wondering is—

"Have I ever even moved?"

Reid has no answer, even if he could. The shadows are silent, creeping around him as they all contemplate. Morgan sighs; a cold, clear sound like it's a bouncing echo from a hollow oak tree. It ricochets off the thick bark and back to the shadows, back to them.

Morgan never says things to comfort Reid, no proclamations of friendship or promises he can't keep. Just reality.

Just truth and shadows and dusty trees with long, spiny branches that beckon him with secret calls.

Just him. Just them.

Reid stores every visit in a special corner of his mind, like a polished jewel. Carefully, he details every moment, filling it away, rubies and emeralds and diamonds sparkling. He's not sure whether Morgan's visits are the ones he very most wants to, has to, remember when (if) he wakes, or the ones he wants to scurry away into the sanctity of his subconscious. He wants to ask Morgan the question, not for an answer, but for the same purpose of Morgan's—just so that it may be out there. Just so that they may both know, tucked away in their own thoughts, but still somehow it connects them.

Morgan says nothing when he eventually, too soon, pads out of his room, closing the door with a quiet swoosh of air.

He dreams of an empty forest and two beings enjoying the solitude together.

In his dreams, he hears rainbows and blooming flowers.

Penelope, he likes to think of her first name now because somehow it makes him feel even closer to her, comes every single day. On the few occasions she couldn't come, she sent Kevin. Reid appreciates it, but those days are his worst because there's no one like Penelope. Simple and fact.

She speaks of everything. Quite literally, everything. She rambles about office gossip, all of which completely shocks him because he didn't even know that Shelly from DOD was gay, but right on, girl.

He finds himself enjoying the completely mundane and yet totally wild tales that for all he knows are an utter fabrication.

He's not so sure he minds either way.

Penelope bathes him in colorful tones and a tango of inflections as she recounts her day, almost minute for minute, and fills him in on how the team is doing, and describes to him in vivid detail the flowers or decorations she's brought in for the day.

"So you know those lovely daises I brought in? Well they're wilted now—I don't know what is but daises never last in here. Roses kick ass in the hospital lighting, though, so I got this giant purple vase from under my sink, and on the counter to your left, it's filled with every color rose. I even got some green roses, which are admittedly not very green green, but more a pale-sorcery-smoke-green, you know? They smell almost as good as you, my sweet little muffin. Which also reminds me that I found the cute-est little bakery by your apartment and I'm very disappointed you never told me about it, because their muffins taste like how I imagine a Derek Morgan muffin tastes. Mmm. What would you call a DM muffin? What about chocolate…" She chatters on aimlessly and Reid finds his dark, empty mind blooming with the flowers she describes—white, wilting daises that have the rough texture of leather and weeping-willow appearance of a forgotten dream, sorcery-smoke-green roses that mingle with its blood red and tangerine cousins, standing out and drifting along in a puff a magic. He thinks of buttery, crumbling muffins, sweet and warm on his tongue—taste is something he's barely able to remember without her theses days. He smells the tickle of pollen and the brush of petals and her loud perfume of sweet pea and vanilla—she tells him of everything she feels and experiences, she tells him of the world he's in but not a part of and it's bittersweet and beautiful.

Sometimes, she'll speak of team. Of how Morgan's spending more time at the gym than usual, but he met a girl, and he'll never admit it, but he likes her. Garcia hopes she's good for him. She doesn't say why. She speaks of how Prentiss cut her hair—not noticeable, just a few inches off, but it looks good—and how Sergio had to go to vet's. Nothing serious. Just a tummy ache, she assures. She doesn't say why Prentiss was so frantically worried about the smallest thing she rushed her cat to emergency care. She speaks of how Jack is the smartest kid in class, and that Hotch is finally reading all of those books, the classics, he'd gotten for Jack, to him. She doesn't comment on the timing. She speaks of Rossi, and how he says he might write another book, she thinks it's a good idea. She doesn't say what it will be about. She speaks of how JJ and Will went on a couple's getaway for a weekend, and had her look after Henry. She doesn't say why they needed the seclusion in the first place.

She doesn't speak of herself.

Once, he'll never forget it, as she prattled on, her one-sided discussion took an unexpected turn. She mentioned, only in passing, to not worry about his mom. She'd had it covered. She told him of her trip to Las Vegas, where she met with his mother in person, to explain. Diana scratched and clawed and screamed and had to be sedated. Garcia stayed there for a week longer than she anticipated, just to comfort his mother. Just to be sure she understood why he could no longer write letters—just to be sure his mother understood why she was writing her letters instead.

At the end of that visit, she leaned in closely, her hot, sweet pea and vanilla breath flowing to his ear as she whispered that, just in case, she still had that recording. She didn't specify. She didn't have to. She murmured, a dead of the night secret, a fragile glass heirloom, a red wax-sealed envelope that is never to be opened, to him that the team loved him, that everyone loved him, but that he didn't need to worry about anything. That if it were his time, they would still love him. They would miss him dreadfully, but never stop loving. She asked him to try until he was absolutely sure he couldn't anymore. She gave him permission; she gave him absolution of this world that no matter what happened, he would never truly die.

Reid, with the most intense overwhelming urge, wanted to cry. Wanted to cry for the sake of crying and hold Garcia and thank her a million times over for being the most courageous, selfless person he knew. The rainbow after the storm, peeking through the dewy sky and the thick atmosphere that smells clean and new, and she shines on them with tender, bright colors and she makes herself a promise of right, and of better, and of love in the darkest of places. Where he is now.

She still talks aimlessly as she leaves, calling out a final—but it's always more like a beginning—goodbye.

He dreams of a place where someone else is to be her rainbow.

In his dreams, he hears a fireplace and the night sky.

She comes once a week. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. Always just a little past the afternoon.

She doesn't speak much—at least, not in the sense that he's used to—but she certainly talks during the visits.

Prentiss comes like the night, natural and expected but not, so drastic and different than what you've become accustomed to. She leans back, pressing her spine against the hard plastic chair, and shifts her weight with rustling fabric and the toss of her hair. There's a thick compress of air, like its being sucked down a vortex. He recognizes the heavy crackling and soft chafe of fingers against paper.

She flips open the book, and scrolls her nail down the page, finding her last place.

"Sorrow to counterfeit and wail—Thus we began our little tale," she recites, tongue clicking and throat vibrating with such its own uniqueness Reid wonders why he's never taken a moment to just listen to her before. But its one of the only things he wonders when she's there. He likes that he gets to become lost, no thinking or wondering or fating, in the story that he's read before and her voice that he's heard a thousand times. It's all so new yet comfortable. It's exciting yet routine.

Her words soothe over him, like cool water washing out a wound or gliding a jacket onto your body right from the dryer on a chilled morning. She doesn't say anything if its not printed. She doesn't comment on where they are or why or what she feels or her pains or his. She just reads. Sometimes, he wants to live in those moments forever.

Her breath is quiet and mingles towards his, which is harsher and more present but less alive than her quiet, gentle exhales, pauses as she flips a page, or wets her lips with a flick of her tongue. Her voice is like that comfort you get from sitting on a wooly blanket, and molding your ice hands in the thick, heated space just in front of a fireplace. She's like the mysterious crackle a flame gives, before disappearing to nowhere right in front of you, a burst of light and then nothing.

Her voice reminds him of something, something tugging at the edges of his memory, pestering with the smell of smoke and the burning, exploding pain…

No. He mustn't go there. Not now. Not with her in this moment where everything is peaceful and right.

Once in a while, he hears, he swears he can hear it, the quiet roll of a bead of water as it slides to the pages she's painting for him with her voice, and listens to it splat against the paper, soaking through to the next chapter. With it, he notices the slight shift in her voice, the heaviness it now carries, the muggy thickness as she clears her throat and starts a sentence over, wash, rinse, repeat, as if there was never that moment at all.

Stars zipping in the black above him, until its day again and he can barely remember what night looks like. A fireplace, and dying flames, an escaped ember twirls up until it simply fizzes out and falls back down to earth, forgotten as the warmth rages on, and on, and he falls back down to earth and listens as everything (him, her, the sky, the fire, the burning, horrible pain and he just wants to die) but her words fade away.

"With serious air then went away," she continues, the hiccup, the choke, the tear, forgotten—was it ever even there? did the ember ever die? was it ever alive to start?—as her words are steadfast, "As men who much had done that day."

Time is lost when she's there, and he doesn't mind. When she finally stops reading, a soft snap of paper as she marks her place, it's much, much too soon and yet it might be far, far too late. She clutches the book in her hand, and he can hear her fingers pressing in and scraping the rough cover as she takes the step to him.

She leans down, and he estimates their cheeks are just about pressed together by the closeness of her breathing and the graze of her shirt on the material of his sheets, and she whispers the same thing, always. She whispers it so low, it echoes in his mind a few times after, just so that he's sure she's spoken, just so that he may solidify her words. "Am I not singing?—see, I am swinging—Swinging the nest where my darling lies." She doesn't move, but doesn't say anything more, as if to wait for her words to sink in, as if to wait for him to jump up, and exclaim, 'Yes! I understand! There's no need to worry, I understand!'.

He never does.

She stays, she hovers, a few seconds longer and somewhere he feels warmth (not the burning, but warmth) and he promises to tell her he understands when he wakes. He promises to wake for her. He wishes she'd hear him, just as he hears her, so loudly, so clear, like cold, running water pouring over his mind. Like the dead-maybe-never-even-alive embers and like the forgotten night sky. Like her and like him and like them and yet not at all.

She presses her lips to his cheek, and just holds her position, their heads resting on one another, like they're both keeping each other from collapsing right then there because they are, he just wishes he could say so.

Prentiss' footsteps are practically silent, the door closing with the faintest, most imperceptible sound—as if she were never even there.

He dreams of a place where her voice lingers and where they are both real.

In his dreams, he hears innocence and steel.

When Hotch comes to visit, it's because of Jack, because he's much too overrun with guilt to come by himself. Reid sometimes wishes that his boss would live up to his fearless title.

"… And daddy read me that one book about the whale, and I told my teacher, and she gave me a gold star!" Jack exuberates, rushed, biting sentences raining over Reid. "So then later, when we were drawing, a I drew a picture for you and I put the star on it—look, look, it's right on the, um," he falters, clear, cold water voice dripping and splatting to the sink with hesitancy, "daddy," he whispers, breathing hushed, "daddy what's that?" There's a rough jab, his finger pushing into the construction paper as it wobbles in his little hand.

Hotch mutters something into Jack's ear.

"The blowhole! That's how whales breathe, you know." He adds, and Reid can imagine his chest puffing out, to impress him.

Jack babbles on and on, telling Reid everything from how his friend Maddy is going to Disneyworld, to the fact he made a totally cool macaroni mural of his dad that's hanging on the fridge.

Jack's voice is sweet and loud because he doesn't know much about anything else—only that yes he does, because he is a child who has already experienced too much tragedy. It's a bright, confetti pop, and a myriad of party streamers that float endlessly to the floor. It's infused with an innocence that can't be faked, and a knowing that everyone seems to lose overtime.

Hotch only speaks if prompted by his son, but otherwise lets him talk enough for the both of them. His voice is hard steel that gives away nothing and reflects emotions, what little seep through the cracks, onto his son. "And last weekend, my teacher had us write a letter to the bravest person that we know. I wrote it about you, because I 'membered that daddy told me you saved a whole bunch of people even though that got you hurt, which is really, really brave." Shuffling and soft crinkling and hushed commands as Jack tells his father to read it for him.

Hotch sounds close to a chuckle, but it chokes and dies in his throat, because he's here, and he hasn't the right to feel happy here.

"Dear Uncle Spencer," Hotch begins, shoe squeaking on the floor as Jack clambers up on his lap to read along with him. There's a sharp scream of paper as Jack jabs his finger to the point where Hotch left off. Hotch feels the smile trickle away as soon as it's there, but thanks Jack for his help. "You are very brave. You are almost as brave as daddy, which is really awesome. You saved a bunch of people and stopped a bad guy from winning so you're like a superhero. You're also very smart and silly but fun to be around. I miss you a lot." There's a catch in Hotch's throat, and his grip tightens with an audible crumple. "I am proud to have an uncle as cool as you." Reid is surprised the words don't buckle and break beneath the extreme weight Hotch's voice bestows them with. "You are a very brave person, and I hope you feel better soon so that you can see all the really good pictures I drew for you. Love Sincerely, Jack Hotchner."

Jack makes a delighted squealing noise. He promises to come back soon and throws his tiny body over Reid's immobile one, wrapping thin arms in an awkward semi-circle with wrinkled sheets and steady breathing and the tick of his loose shoelace hitting the metal bottom of the hospital bed as it dangles, suspended in the air.

Before he leaves Reid with echoing talk of whether or not he can have ice cream tonight, he, dutifully and politely, pauses at the door, and says, "Goodbye, Uncle Spence! Daddy, say goodbye."

Another pause, one that takes too long and too short, and cold and bitter and too knowing and not knowing at all.

A rough swallow and a deep, extending-his-lungs-to-the-bottom-of-his-toes breath, and Hotch says, "Goodbye, Reid." There's so much, so much, that's said in the two words, and in his silence that reeks of guilt and untold pain. Yet, at the same time, his silence, and the letter, and those two goddamn words that are packed with years of meaning, leave Hotch more open, more exposed and vulnerable and human, then Reid can ever remember. Reid swears that Hotch sees, feels, the same thing even through he'll never know. He'll never truly know. So they both indulge themselves with fantasies and tales of great whales and macaroni portraits and letters never sent and words never spoken and silence howled so incredibly loud because its all they can.

Jack chirps on about double scoops and cotton candy flavors as his squeaky sneakers tap, tap, tap, tap on out to the hallway, and it's absurd, but Reid thinks he hears the distinguished, heavier beats of Hotch's footsteps hesitate at the door, just for a moment, before shutting the door behind them—but then again, Reid supposes he'll never truly know.

He dreams of a place where, just once, just once again, they all get to know the things they used to breathe, the things they used to be.

In his dreams, he hears silent grief and invisible bridges.

Rossi doesn't visit. Reid's not sure if it's because he can't or doesn't know quite how to, or what, but he doesn't.

He comes on the monthly (Garcia's insistence) visits from the whole team, where everyone piles in and awkwardly talks to him and each other for a while, until the awkwardness fades, and they're so good at faking lightheartedness, for a while, they believe the jokes and laughter they fill his room with as well. But other than that, he doesn't visit.

Reid can't seem to mind.

Somehow, it makes sense. Somehow, it's so expectedly Rossi, he almost appreciates it.

He understands that he's not close with the older agent, that they didn't get off on the right foot, that there's a mutual respect between them (even if it's just the thinnest sliver on Rossi's side), that he likes Rossi, that he cares about him because he's apart of the team, that there's not much else. And because of this, he doesn't mind even a little. Coming on those once a month rendezvous speak a lot to him, anyway.

Once, though, Rossi was forced to be alone with Reid.

It was one the group visits. JJ had gone with Will to get Henry a snack from a vending machine down the hall. Garcia was making a quick run to the store, because someone had chipped the lip of a vase, overflowing with daises that looked a bit brown, because it was an unacceptable imperfection. Morgan was stuck outside the room, discussing cookies or something with a few nurses. Prentiss excused herself to the bathroom, blaming the crap hospital coffee. Hotch had little boy Jack tugging at his pant leg and insisting on going with Henry to get a snack.

And that is how the unflappable David Rossi found himself in a completely unprepared situation.

Reid listens to him shift slightly on the balls of his feet, taking one hand to stroke his salt and pepper beard and the other to glance at his watch. Reid doesn't take offense, he's not trying to be personably mean, but Rossi's always, no matter how much he's apart of the team, been a solitary creature. And when he can't explain something or something strikes them all to the core, he closes himself off and introverts and whips out that little black notebook that, though is part a past Rossi that doesn't quite exist anymore, still resides somewhere deep and far and faintly inside him.

Rossi blows out a noisy gush of air, and checks his watch again.

They wait in silence for a few minutes, and Reid would find the whole situation highly amusing, could he physically smile.

"Um," not the most eloquent beginning but it's a start, "so I don't know if you can hear me or not, but, uh we're here for you, Reid." His voice is sharp, not fiercely, but keenly, dripping with the wisdom that Reid wonders, sometimes—a lot of the times—whether or not is truly worth the price. Rough and sharp and smart and aged with history and life and horror and beauty. "It's been a hell of a four months. We all, ah, miss you." Reid has to pause because, four months? He'd only estimated three. New questions poor in, and he wonders how long it really was he was forced to be without sound.

Even still, hearing a number, a not guess, a real, actual, tangible number—fact—it's like a slap to the face. Because, damn, regardless of what he estimated four months sounds so arbitrary to the fact that it's felt like years and years and decades and centuries and more, longer, worse, and still more.

"I, um—Shit, I don't know whether or not you're alive, let alone can hear me." Sharp and true and refreshing. "But, I, I guess if you can then, the team's really worried about you. About what would happen if... They'd all be devastated. I mean, I know they may treat you like a kid, but it's because they care. They really do. And under all the worrying and fussing, they respect you. Honestly, they think you're an extraordinary agent. But even more—you're an extraordinary human being, an extraordinary man." His words are an invisible, crumbling bridge that's covered in long, thin arms of ivy and decaying brick. Like some imaginary strength, that's incredibly real, but unseen. And only the two of them are standing on the nowhere, on the solid ground, on the air. "They're extremely lucky, and… and completely honored to have worked with you." The ground shakes and the earth tumbles and the bridge stays the same, because they're nowhere with solid ground beneath them. They're with nothing, on everything, together; as an eye catches one's other, and the world moves, they do not move with it.

The troop of sated kids and weary parents march back in. Prentiss follows, and then Morgan. Garcia finally joins once more, proclaiming her new vase is gorgeous, and that she picked muffins up for everyone on the way.

Rossi slinks to the back of the group, sneaking in a snaky retort or witty comment here and there as conversation flows, and chubby fingers make a grab for the chocolate muffins.

Reid realizes that Rossi's silence to him is louder than he first imagined. Chairs squeak, children squeal, and the team feels whole, even though the stitches are temporary and will not hold.

For the wildest, most irrational reason, when Rossi leaves—he's always the first—Reid feels as though he's had the most thorough and satisfying conversation as the door slides and clicks close.

He dreams of a nowhere place becoming a somewhere place and the team meeting each other there, feet planted on solid ground.

(In his dreams, on the times when the team isn't there, and doctors are hustling around, away, from him, and the only thing keeping him company is the metallic beep of his heart monitor, and other dull whooshes of machinery, he remembers. He, unwittingly and unwillingly, gets sucked down deep into his memories that are as fresh and real as if they are happening now, and sometimes, he really wishes he could forget some, lose pieces of that day. But he doesn't. He remembers everything, and it hurts as much as it did then.)

It was Thursday. The day was at the in-between moment, where its too light out to be night but too dark to be morning. The sky painted with a pearly blue, and the horizon just barely touched with the pastels of a Georgia peach. Clouds hung in sparse, pink wisps to the west. Cold, new air burned its way through the team's lungs, sharp and bitter and beautiful. They stood outside a quiet suburban street that resided in a small town just outside of Arlington, VA. It was funny, in a way, just how ordinary the neighborhood was. How completely and beautifully ordinary.

Bernadette Jevtich, with pin straight black hair, hard green eyes, and a slowly deteriorating mental state, was holding a pregnant woman and her three children hostage inside of their home. Bernadette couldn't have children. She lost her husband. She lost her life. So what right did any of those bitches have to have something she couldn't?

"Just got off the phone with Rachelle's husband—said the family was sleeping soundly when he left for work." Captain Lupe said, snapping his cell shut and waddling his way to the group of agents.

Hotch narrowed his eye a fraction of an inch. "Jevtich's holding them in there. If she hasn't killed everyone yet, she will."

"But don't you think she'll have noticed us outside?" He asked, stroking his long, walrus mustache and squinting his piggy eyes.

Hotch shook his head, dark, brooding gaze still trained on the house. "It doesn't matter. This is her end game, right here, right now. She's going to want to take out everyone she can, and then herself."

Lupe blew out a sigh, his hand twitching for a cigarette. "Alright. You've gotten us this far, how do you want to play this?"

"We might be able to talk her down enough to release Rachelle and the children. It depends on how rapidly she's spiraling."

"I don't want to send my men in there on a guess, Agent Hotchner. But if you think we can end this peacefully…" Hotch liked the Captain. He was a no nonsense, beer belly, sharp mind, strict but fair kind of guy. He stared at Lupe, and they said nothing. Finally, Lupe gave a slow, but curt nod, and toddled away with determination.

When they finally gave the go order, Prentiss and Morgan took the back, while Reid headed through the front door with JJ. Breathing harshly, and with quick, tense steps they scaled the stairs. SWAT poured in, guns whipping back and forth, scanning every centimeter of the house for anything askew.

Reid's foot creaked on a floorboard, and he turned to glance at JJ, both of them biting down on their lower lips as they continued to squeak into the rooms, clearing them.

"Don't come any closer or I'll blow us all to hell."

Well… crap. That was never a good sign.

Reid froze outside the master bedroom, JJ and a few local LEOs catching themselves behind him, all hidden in the shadows of the hallway. There was a squirming sound, a high-pitched whine, and rustling of clothes.

"Bernadette Jevtich?" Reid called, gun tucked at the door frame. Shallow breathing responded to him. "Bernadette, I'm with the FBI—I just want to talk."

A pause.

"Put your gun down, I know you have one."

"I can't do that, Bernadette, you know that. Please, I just want to—" He was interrupted by a long, monotone beep that made his blood run cold.

"Throw your fucking gun down, or we all die." He complied, but instead of tossing it into the room, he passed it back to JJ. Palms face up, and in the most non-threatening manor, with careful, calculated movements, he headed into the light that spilled from beyond the bedroom. He took a single step into the room, out of the hallway, tousled hair glinting in the orangey glow from a lamp.

"My name is Spencer Reid—"

"They don't deserve to live. She's a horrible mother. Why do horrible mother's get to keep their children when I can't even have any?"

"She's not a horrible mother. Her name is Rachelle and she loves her kids. But, Bernadette, you're scaring them. Look—they're scared. And I know you don't want to do that."

Bernadette turned her neck to glance back at the bound children and pregnant woman. Rachelle's soft ginger locks were sticking to her forehead with fearful sweat, but she had positioned her body in front of the three young kids, her eyes wide and anxious, yet determined. Her duct taped hands even rested on her ever-enlarged belly, silent tears falling down her cheeks. The kids cowered behind her figure, clutching to bits of her shirt like it was made of Kevlar.

Bernadette swung her gaze back to Reid, thin raven hair flicking sharply over her shoulder, as she unsteadily gripped the remote in her hands.

"I love children…"

"I know you do," Reid appeased quickly, sneaking a step closer to her.

Bernadette's eyes snapped to him, accusing. "Then why can't I have any? My husband said I was a worthless whore! He's right! I can't even have kids—I'd be such a good mother." Reid refrained from saying great mothers usually didn't have psychotic breaks and murder seven women.

"I'm sure you would."

She took a jerky step forward, raising the detonator in her hands. "Then why? Why can't I have children? Why should she," Bernadette spat the pronoun like arsenic from her mouth, "get to have children when I can't?"

"She loves—"

"She doesn't know anything about love!" Bernadette shrieked. "Love is an all consuming pain that eats away at your stomach and your heart and burns your entire body from the inside out. Love is the most intense, horrifying agony there is! She does not know love—I know love!"

Reid held his ground. "But if you love children so much, then why would you want to hurt them?"

She faltered.

"They love their mother—you're hurting the one thing you say you love most by killing."

Bernadette wobbled a bit, a teetering queen on a chessboard, clattering down, and so the echo of the mighty being slain was heard for acres. "I…" She gulped, her anger, swoosh, deflated right out of her, only hopelessness left. "I love children." She said in a small voice.

"I know that—but you're sick, Bernadette. And I know you love children. Look at those children Bernadette, look. They're frightened, and I know you don't want to hurt them, I know you don't want to scare them, do you?"

Bernadette hesitated, stumbling back a bit to collapse onto the master bed. Finally, she shook her head.

"See?" Reid creeped closer to her, inching slowly, not wanting her to spook. "I know that you don't want to hurt them—I know that. Let the children go, Bernadette."

She sighed. Her tangled forest eyes traveled to the pinched, small faces of Rachelle's kids. The oldest boy stared her down while the other two pressed their faces into their mother's back.

"I'm going to have my friend take the kids out of here now, okay? But I'll stay we can talk some more, okay?" Bernadette didn't respond, but she also didn't threaten to detonate the bomb sitting on Rachelle's nightstand, so he took her silence as a quiet defeat. "JJ?" He called out, blindly motioning behind him for his friend to come out. "JJ come and take the kids now, okay?"

A blonde ponytail peeked from the hallway as she moved quickly into the room, zoning in on the kids. Rachelle was smushing their faces with wet kisses, smears of lips and salvia and love, urging them to, go, go with the nice lady, she'll keep you safe. Reid and JJ locked eyes for a moment, she sent him the smallest, curtest of nods, her baby blues shifting the device next to Bernadette. After some crying and clinging and promises, the children were pulled from the room, and Reid slowly released a long sigh from barely parted lips.

Bernadette was sniffling on the bed.

"It's just not fair. I loved Robert so much. And we tried so hard. But the miscarriages, it just—I just wanted a baby. That's all I wanted. And now I'm forty and I've lost so many kids without ever even having them, and the adoption agencies wouldn't even—they didn't—I just…"

Reid felt a strange, twisted sort of tug of sympathy for the woman.

"I know you never wanted to hurt anyone, Bernadette. I know it's not fair that your babies didn't survive, but look at Rachelle. She's pregnant, Bernadette, all she wants is to give that baby life, which is exactly what you've always wanted. I know it isn't fair, but killing her, killing her unborn child, it won't make anything better."

Bernadette floated her watery eyes to Rachelle, and then, to the surprise of Reid, the mother actually stood up from her spot, keeping her eyes on Bernadette.

"Peter, my husband, and I miscarried once." Damn, Reid did have to hand it to her, she had balls. Rachelle moved forward, and Bernadette's finger hovered over the trigger, hands tense. "I'm so sorry for your loss. It's very painful, I know. I wish there was something to say to make it better, trust me, as one mother to another, I really do."

That seemed to be it. Bernadette looked into Rachelle's arctic blue eyes, meeting them with her own mossy ones, and some secret, ancient acknowledgment passed between them.

"Go." The word was so quite, so little, so soft, a falling rose petal brushing earth's surface, part of Reid wondered if she had spoken at all. But he didn't waste anytime waiting around to ask. He immediately reached forward, hands finding Rachelle's shoulders as he led her from the room. He met JJ at the door, who took the shaken woman into her arms.

"Take her out of here—"

"What about you?" JJ questioned, as the local LEOs began pulling Rachelle down the hall, trying to sate her frantic inquires about her kids.

"JJ, she has a bomb."

"But—"

"Bomb squad is coming right? They know what's going on up here?" He stared, deep and serious at her. She stared back, pleading.

"Yeah. Be careful. I'm right behind you." He flashed her a grin.

He walked back to the room where Bernadette sat on the bed, tinkering with the remote.

"I wonder what my kids would have been like." She said absently.

"Bernadette, you need to come with us. We can get you help—"

"I wonder if… I wonder if I'll get to meet them, you know? If I'll get to see what they would have been. Sounds like the perfect hell for me, don't you agree?" She glanced over at him, smile too wide, and too serene, and hands too calm, too comfortable on the detonator. He met her eyes. There was no question in them.

Reid sprinted from the room, ramming into JJ and the few SWAT agents waiting for their move. He shouted at them to run, which they did not take lightly, shooting off down the hallway and the stairs and—

BOOM!

Reid leapt, pushing JJ a final distance, as suddenly fire and smoke and brightness became the only thing they knew.

(While Reid does not know the exact telling of events, he's spent many a night, in-between rock outs to 'It's A Wild World' and Morgan's visits, when he remembers and replays the nights, he conjures his own scenarios of the proceeding, hypothetical events. Though surely not completely accurate, from what he can piece together from snippets of random mentioning of the night, this is what he can gather from the night. He makes a promise to himself to ask the team what truly happened if, when, he can.)

Moments later, as his team was pulled and coughed from the smoking building, Hotch knew something was amiss.

Apparently, so did Morgan.

"Where's Reid?"

"I don't know." The bomb was more flash than bang, taking out Bernadette as she had planned, and the master bedroom she was in, but other than that the bomb hadn't reached far. It was the fire that was starting to consume the walls and crumble the house from within that made it dangerous. Hotch's stomach clenched. Reid was talking down the unsub. They all knew it. And he was paired with JJ. And neither of them had been found because the firefighters hadn't arrived and it was too dangerous for anyone to try and go upstairs. The kids, Rachelle, all of the other agents and officers had been accounted for and were being checked out by stretched thin EMTs. They knew to have an ambulance waiting, but they never thought, the profile never considered, they didn't…

"I'm fine." The younger man insisted, hopping from the stretcher and pulling off the oxygen mask, much to the chagrin of a young, brunette paramedic.

"Sir," she growled, but Morgan strode on, ignoring her calls.

"Hotch, why isn't anyone looking for them?"

"Morgan the fire department hasn't—"

"No! If you won't, I will." He muscled his way past Hotch, ducking under the crime scene tape.

"Morgan!" Hotch bit, balling his hands to fists, and stopping in front of his subordinate.

"Those are my friend's Hotch—they need our help."

"Morgan we don't know what's going on in there. I can't risk more lives—"

"More lives, you—"

(Reid here believes this whole exchange quite illogical, but finds both of his teammates' alpha male personalities clashing to be exceedingly humorous. He also likes to imagine the men growing a comical cherry red in the face, with unrealistic bulging veins and shaking fists.)

"Where are they?" Prentiss asked, stumbling onto Rachelle and Peter's lawn, a small cut on her forehead from knocking her head on a table as she hit the floor when the bomb went off taped in white gauze. Rossi trailed not far behind her, wearing his worry well.

"They can't—"

And then something even more frightening, even more breath stealing, and pulse racing, and life shaving than the explosion sent an icy trickle down their spines.

Over the roaring fire and cracking structure of the house, was the desperate, unmistakable sound of a scream from within.

JJ's head hurt. Bad.

She moaned, lifting herself to her knees with a difficult push of elbows, and painfully tearing her eyes open to a very bleak picture.

She was sprawled awkwardly on the stairs, her body lying against uncomfortable, harsh angles of the steps. She coughed on the thick air, and looked up to the hallway where Reid—

Reid!

Attempting to ignore her body's protests, she scrambled from the stairs up into the hallway. Her palms splayed on the walls, which steadied her unstable legs. Everything felt hot, and bright, and she didn't like it in the slightest.

"Oh God." The words were lost in the swirling black smoke and roaring flames, but she said it. There, pinned beneath what looked like a ceiling beam, or entire headboard, or, Christ, even a whole damned wall, was Reid. She could only see about three quarters of his upper body, the rest of him lost under the rubble.

She fell to her knees, sharp debris slicing into the tender flesh and she couldn't stand to care, her hands floating over Reid's face.

"Reid, Reid wake up, Reid you need to get up we have to get out of here." Tears streamed down her face from the heavy smoke as it burned her sight and smothered her lungs. She tried to give Reid a slight shake to wake him.

"Unnnmgfh…" He muttered, flinching in pain. She lifted her hands from his body, biting down on her lip in guilt.

"Reid, I'm sorry but you need to get up."

His eyes fluttered up, and for slit second, he wondered if he had died, and were staring up at an angel.

But then, in an instant, everything snapped back, and he could see the blood and grime marring JJ's beautiful face as she urged him to get up. He looked down as much as he could and… and he couldn't be sure whether or not he was moving his legs. And not just because he couldn't see them.

"JJ, JJ I can't move. I'm pinned, JJ, you need to go and get help."

She looked appalled by the suggestion.

"No, I'll get you out, hold on." His protests drowned away as she began flinging small bits of wreckage behind her. Her hands wrapped under a heavy beam of… well, something. It was so charred and splintered, she couldn't be sure. She tried to lift it from him, but her skin sizzled, and she yelped, yanking her hands away. Her palms began to bleed. She shot Reid a desperate look.

"JJ, you need to go get help."

"No, you, you…" She scrunched her brows together. "You pushed me down the stairs."

Reid looked aghast, mouth dropping open. "Oh, God, JJ, I am so sorry. I swear I nev—"

"No, no, no." She shushed him. "I mean—You pushed me down the stairs, before the explosion, you pushed me out of the way. You… you saved me."

"Did I?" He smiled faintly. "Probably just tripped."

Her gentle, mothering blue eyes welled up again, and a breathy laugh escaped her. "You saved me Reid. I'm not leaving you. I'm going to wait here for them to come get us. We'll be okay." She shifted a bit, more ruins digging into her thigh, as she placed a jaggedly cut open hand to Reid's shoulder, squeezing as lightly as she could.

Reid's smile dissipated. "JJ… the fire station is approximately five point three minutes from here, and that's best case scenario. Nobody else is going to enter the house because considering that its already starting to collapse, they won't risk anyone else for two agents who are already very likely dead."

JJ's eyes turned hard. "Then we'll just have to let them know we're here. Heeeeeeelp! We're in heeeerrrre! Someone heeeeeeelp!" Her voice was hoarse and masked by the crackling fire and the loud snaps of the house as more things crashed from the deteriorating home.

He winced. "JJ, you need to save yourself and get help."

"No. Help! Somebody! Agent down!"

"JJ they probably can't even hear you."

She looked at him strangely, and then she released the loudest, most bloodcurdling scream he'd ever heard.

Morgan tried to take off the second he heard the screech. But Hotch's hands like stop signs raises, and he held off his subordinate.

"Morgan—"

"Don't, Hotch. Don't tell me you can't hear that."

"Mor—"

"I didn't leave you in New York, and I'm sure as hell am not going to leave them now." With that, he sprinted off on the crunching grass, small bits of loose soil spitting back at his boss.

(Or so Reid imagines. He also imagines Prentiss racing close after Morgan. They are partners after all. He likes to think that partners stick together. It's a comforting sort of thought.)

Prentiss coughed at the thick smoke, weighing heavily at the bottom of her lungs as she stuck close to Morgan's side. JJ's screams were increasingly loud and hoarse as they inched through the ground floor.

They inched to the stairs, and peered through the thick smoke, unable to hear the thudding footsteps behind them.

"Damnit."

"You did the right thing. They shouldn't have gone in there."

"Fuck, Dave, did you hear JJ?"

"Of course I did, that doesn't mean they did the right thing."

"And what about me? They're trapped in there and I turned my back on them."

"You going in?"

"Stay out here, I have to have someone I trust coordinating things when everything goes to hell."

"Be careful."

"You too."

"I'm so sorry."

The fire burned so impossibly hot in front of her, and uncontrollable tears rolled, fat and heavy from her glassy blue eyes. The smoke was terribly thick and oppressive, a horrible weight crushing on them.

"'S not your fault," Reid said, the words falling mushily from his mouth. Dear God, he hurt. So bad. The fire was growing closer, practically tickling his toes and JJ continued her futile attempts at digging him out of the debris.

"No I—I'm sorry. I'm sorry for lying. I never wanted to lie to you Spence, but Emily's life was in danger, and I had, I had to…"

Reid frowned. "Ah, JJ, I don't know if now is really the best time for—"

"No! I-I have to get this out. Because you have to know that I love you, and that I'm sorry. I know that you haven't forgiven me. Not all the way." A stray piece of blonde hair wafted into her eye line, and she splayed her fingers on Reid's grime-streaked face, caressing the sooty skin gently. "I know we've lost… a lot of our closeness. I know you confide in Emily more. I know that we've drifted and that… that it's my fault. But, Christ, Reid I never—I love you. You are my child's godfather and you are my best friend and I don't give a damn about the rest, okay?"

It was latched to his legs. Or at least the outer side of his right calf, as he was awkwardly sprawled at an angle that the fire began licking at that part first. He bit so hard down on his lip his mouth flooded with warm, liquid pennies and, though it was what pinned him, he thanked the rubble that was obstructing his lower half from JJ's sight, so that she wouldn't know. So that he might still have time to convince her to save herself.

He met her shinning eyes with his equally wet ones, and blinked, taking in her not forced but forceful sincerity and frazzled blonde hair like a halo and her beautiful smile, and he couldn't help but think:

If he were to die, right then, it would be the most beautiful thing he could ever think of dying to.

"Okay." He coughed the word harshly, but it was there. "I forgive you, JJ. I'll always forgive you."

Overcome with a surge of emotion, she leaned down and kissed him right on the lips. The contact was brief and unromantic. Simply a needed closeness between two human beings in a dire situation. Reid felt himself pushing into the touch, though, amazed at how distracting the soft smoothness of her raspberry lips could be.

"Don't you dare die on me, Spencer Reid." She demanded, hovering her face just above his, silky strands of gold tickling his chin. Her eyes blazed with blue fire, and she stroked dirt from his cheek with her thumb, trailing her own blood on his skin.

Reid, even with the ever increasing fury gnawing at his leg and the tears of them both and the grimy kiss and the fear permeating the air almost as thick as the smoke, grinned wryly, "Who am I to defy a lady's request?"

Through the impossibly thick air of gray, they saw JJ's blonde hair first. Then, slowly, an outline of her crouched body. Then, as they get closer, the fluttering lids and grimacing face of Reid.

"Jaje!" Morgan called out as he and Prentiss made it to their injured friends.

"Oh, God! Derek—Emily—you-you have to get Spencer! G-Get Spencer, he's stuck, he's…" She whipped around to face them but her pleas died as they tried to assess the situation.

Prentiss was first to get her bearings.

"… Shit."

Morgan couldn't disagree. There was no way they'd be able to get Reid out. They needed… well they needed a team of firemen. Which they didn't have.

"Shit." Morgan parroted Prentiss' review of their current predicament.

"Get JJ out." Reid said.

"Shut up, Spencer. Come on—Derek grab that end and we'll—"

"Stop." The word was so forcefully spoken almost everyone was forced to do a double take at Reid's strained face. There was a pause. Reid swallowed, winced, and said, "You all need to leave. I know you want to argue. I know you want to help. But you will not be able to get be out of here. You all know it's true. Please. Just… Please go. Please save yourselves. I'm… there's nothing that you can do but leave. Please."

The three other agents fell to a stupefied silence. They all knew he was right. But… it just wasn't quite a possibility they were willing to accept. Like that moment where you're stuck in a fantastic dream, and something jerks you awake, something pulls you from the your deep subconscious, and you teeter on the edge of reality and sleep, desperately clinging to the remnants of your dream, knowing it was not real, but not quite yet willing to let it go.

JJ reached forward and took a hold of Reid's hand. It was bleeding from hundreds of tiny splinters of shrapnel that had tore through the flesh. She thread their fingers together, as incredibly gentle as someone trying to blow out a candle without disturbing the hot wax, and didn't care about the blood that was seeping out to her own marred skin. A part of her was screaming how dangerous the contact was. Another part of her was telling the first part to shut the hell up.

"I am not leaving you, Spencer." She vowed. The smoke made her tears fall even faster than before.

Reid looked past her, eyes locking on Morgan and Prentiss. "Get her out of here."

JJ looked appalled, and very closing to slapping him.

"I do—"

"Reid, we—"

They both began, but were interrupted by a sudden extra presence.

"Is everyone okay?" Hotch asked through a cough, lifting his arm up to cover his mouth.

"No!" JJ exclaimed suddenly. "Reid is stuck, he's—We need to get him out, Hotch, come here and help." Her grip was death defying, but Reid didn't notice the extra pressure. He was very much too concerned with the lack of pain in his legs.

Hotch's jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed a fraction of an inch at the sight of Reid.

Reid swept his honey gaze to his boss. "You need to get them out." They continued in the small staring match for a few more beats as JJ rattled on, her voice growing louder, and Prentiss and Morgan attempted to calm her. Hotch tilted his chin up slightly. Reid turned down the corner of his lips to a thin line, his head gave the most imperceptible of shakes, and a tear shook loose from his eyes, trailing cold down his cheek.

Hotch took a deep breath of the smoke filled air. The scent of flesh was beginning to get more prominent. "We need to go."

Morgan whirled on his superior. "What? You-you're just going to leave him? Leave Reid?"

"The building is becoming increasingly more unstable. We need to wait for the firemen to get here. We called for backup on them, and they're the only ones with the right equipment to get Reid out, you know that."

"We can't just—" Prentiss tried to argue.

"Go. All of you need to go. Staying here out of some kind of perverted sense of honor isn't going to help anyone." Reid was met with three blank stares. He gritted his teeth, and mustered up as much venom in his voice as he could. "Get out of here! All right? Go, right now! Fucking go. Get the fuck out of here. I don't fucking want to fucking see you! Are you all fucking deaf, you fucking morons? I said get the fuck out!" There it was—the utter hopelessness of the situation. Reid, resorted to try and piss off his closest friends in the world to leave him to essentially burn to death.

"Reid, you don't mean that man—"

"Leave, Morgan. Don't you fucking dare come back for me." His tone held a dangerous, almost deadly, quality. "Hotch, get them out of here." He muttered that more quietly, casting his eyes down to stare at the ferocious flames instead of his teammates' faces.

It was an excruciatingly pregnant few moments before Hotch cleared his throat. "Let's go."

"I don't give a damn what he says, I'm not leaving him, Hotch." Prentiss spat, her dark eyes leveling to Hotch's.

He sighed. And then he flashed them all his death glare. "Fine. You don't have to listen to him, but as your agent in charge, you do have to listen to me. Consider this officially an order." Morgan looked at his partner, who was seething equal parts fury.

JJ had become hysterical.

Reid really, really wished they'd all just leave.

There were a few choice words shared that should definitely not be shared to your boss. Then, Prentiss made a reach for JJ.

"We have to go, but we'll come back for Reid. We'll make sure that he's okay."

They were lies, but JJ was acting eerily similar to a feral cat.

She began to scream. And then cry. She clutched Reid's shirt and begged him to get up. She started screaming again.

It was all a flash of red, orange, yellow, and black. Of oppressive gray smoke crushing their lungs. Of wild tears and powerful pulls and clawing at the empty air as their fallen teammate became smaller and smaller in the distance.

Reid waited until he was sure JJ was far enough away and Hotch was just close enough to call out, "Hotch, wait."

His looming figure stilled, and he turned to his youngest agent from across the quickly disintegrating hall. He said nothing.

"Not matter what," Reid wheezed, "don't let them come back for me."

Hotch nodded curtly, and turned again, completely unsure if the 'thank you' that floated to his back was a trick of the howling fire or Reid's actual whisper. Then again, he never asked.

Reid watched the ceiling.

He watched the way the crack in it grew, ever so slightly, ever so blissfully, like a tree branch growing. He watched the way the plaster was being eaten away by the fire. The way it was being killed.

He couldn't feel his legs. This frightened him more than the pain he felt. The fire was growing (like the crack and the tree and the blackness shrouding his vision). He didn't feel for a long while, for what felt like centuries.

But the fire grew.

And then it grew some more, like a mold, and suddenly it was breaching territory that he could feel. Suddenly, the numbness in his legs was bliss and he an idiot to ever think it was worse than the agony gorging itself on his skin, his flesh, his bones, his body.

Fire was everywhere, everywhere was fire. It was hot and sharp and warm and tingling and horrifying. It ripped into his skin, chewing through he paper-thin protection like a first course. It bubbled his flesh into a liquid mess, spilling over like blood but thicker and pinker. It reached down with its wretched hands and dug around into the marrow of his bones, settling in the anguish like a dog curling up in its bed. It consumed his entire being with icy hot rage and even then it didn't stop.

He tried to stop it. He tried to swallow it down. He bit down on his lip so hard his teeth cut right through the flesh like butter, filling his mouth with a gushing, metallic taste, a complete opposite to the thick smoke his senses were smothered with. He gave small whimpers and begged, pleaded, implored, bargained and everything else he could think of, with his body not to betray him.

It didn't work.

A scream, so much more than any scream he had ever heard or sounded. A noise equivalent to how pain felt. He would flinched at the scathing sound had he not been in such a torturous of situation.

And once the dam broke, he was powerless to stop the flood. The screams tore through his throat by their own accord, tearing from his body and to the coal atmosphere, tinted only by the color of the flames.

"No! Damnit, let me go! Lemego, lemego, lemego, lemego!" JJ cried as both Morgan and Prentiss restrained her. She kicked and bit and fought as hard as she could to get to Spencer. Couldn't they hear him? Couldn't they hear what pain he was in?

Morgan closed his eyes, trying to block out the sound of Reid, the sound of his friend. But the action only served to heighten his senses, pinpoint the frequency of the kid's howl, and focus solely on the sound. He tightened his grip around JJ's waist, partly because she had a crazy good right hook, and mostly because in that moment, he desperately needed someone to hold.

JJ. Think about JJ. Hold JJ. JJ is what is important right now. JJ is who needs your help. Stop thinking of Reid. JJ needs your help, Prentiss told herself. JJ needs you. You need JJ. Help her. Help JJ. Help JJ forget. Help everyone forget. Just forget and it won't hurt. It never does.

Hotch watched as the fire team raced through the doors. JJ was curled in on herself, hyperventilating on the ground as Morgan kept her close and Prentiss crouched down, trying to console her. He watched as they pulled Reid down in a stretcher, and thanked whatever God there may be that JJ and the team were being given oxygen in the back of one ambulance so that they couldn't see Reid. Because he didn't look like Reid, he looked like…

He looked like the victim of an explosion, Hotch thought to himself with an inward sardonic snort.

Rossi clapped Hotch on the back and they both watched the fading red and blue lights. The house fire was brought down to nothing more than a smoldering ember. It was funny in a sick sort of way how something that harmless could bring so much destruction.

JJ was acting catatonic with the oxygen mask placed over her head, the paramedics telling her teammates she was going into shock. She sat on the back of the ambulance, her legs dangling above the ground, like she was sitting on a dock in the summertime, her toes skimming the surface of the lake. She looked at the way the sun shimmered on the water, like a sea sparkling diamonds, and did not seem to notice the tears tracking down her ashen face.

Morgan held JJ's hand the whole way to the hospital. Things were blurry and wrong. He stayed with her even when they got there. He shoved people off of him who tried to pry them away. JJ's fingers were turning a pretty shade of violet. He'd never leave anyone ever again.

Prentiss jumped from the ambulance and threw up on the asphalt, but nobody seemed to notice. She stumbled from the street and fell to her knees on the front lawn of the house directly across from Rachelle's home. Or, at least what was left of it. She put her head between her knees, and took in long, deep gulps of the morning's cool air. The sun was coming up to the east. But it still felt dark outside.

Hotch wondered if Reid was dead. If he would die. If the prolonged smoke inhalation would cause permanent brain damage. If his skin that was burned could ever be repaired. He wondered if any of that mattered. He wondered if Reid would hate him. He wondered if he wouldn't. He wondered if one day he wouldn't hate himself as much as he did then.

Rossi drove Prentiss to the hospital, and put a cup of coffee in her shaking hands. They sat across from each other on the hard plastic seats. They were a particularly ugly shade of blue. He sat vigil as she nodded off in the chair, a cramp beginning to form in his ass. He downed the rest of the crap hospital coffee, and looked to the small tray of cups he'd gotten for the rest of the team when they showed. It was several minutes of staring at the stark Styrofoam cups until he realized he'd gotten six. Six. He'd subconsciously grabbed a cup for Reid, who certainly wouldn't have any use for it at the moment. Six. He'd only needed five. But he'd gotten six. He pulled out his cell phone, and dialed Garcia. After the hysterical wailing and sobs and promises and threats, he'd told her about the coffee slip up. She was quiet for several years, and then she sighed. She told him she would be there as soon as humanly possible with muffins and real coffee. Then she hung up. He listened to the dial tone until it disappeared all together.

Six.

Spencer Reid is afraid of the dark.

When he first woke, it was to nothing but darkness.

He thought he'd finally lost it. Gone insane. It was horrid.

He just sat in his own thoughts, drowning in the blackness of the world, unsure of anything. It was like that moment when you have a name on the tip of your tongue, but can't remember it for the life of you, but with everything.

But, as such with life, things evolved. He began to remember and he caught glimpses of sound and he was able to piece together his life, able to make it whole—or at least not so broken.

Now, he lies in the dark, in his fear, and he waits. For what, he's not sure, but still—he waits.

There is an unpleasantness to being in a coma for eight months. A loneliness.

He loves his team, he does, but even with his self-made timetable and semi-reliable schedules, he is still alone in the dark. And so, he must deal with everything alone in the dark.

He must deal with the doctors saying things like 'severe burning', 'scar tissue', and 'skin grafts'. He must lie, and wonder what he looks like. How badly the fire mangled his body. How well the plastic surgeons were. He has to worry alone, about whether or not he will ever walk again. About whether or not he'll have legs to walk on. Feet. Toes.

A face.

Everything is different, and worse, and he doesn't like it. He screams, wretched, soul destroying screams, and yet no sound ever passes his lips.

He is afraid of the dark, and is forced to live in it. When you are thrust into that world of terror, alone and powerless, like a baby being born, you scream and you cry and you wail and you beg for help from others. He has been stripped of such luxuries.

The funny thing, though, is that he learns. Through the horror, he learns more about himself and his family than he ever thought.

He learns that JJ blames herself for what happened. He learns that he wishes he'd been more easily forgiving before, so that she'd know he loves her too.

He learns that Morgan, perhaps the most outgoing of them all, is the one with the deepest buried secrets. He learns some of those secrets, but not all of them, and decides that he will not ever let his friend be alone with those demons again—he learns all too well how dreadfully painful being alone can be.

He learns Prentiss is too wise for her own good. He learns she is also amazing at deluding herself, and thinks she shouldn't have to, and hopes he can help her change that.

He learns Garcia, the brightly colored, eccentric, beautiful woman, is easily the strongest of them all. He learns that she has yet to realize this, and that someone, one day, will have to tell her.

He learns Hotch harbors much guilt. He learns not all of it is about him, but thinks he will tell him that is wasn't his fault anyway.

He learns Rossi, the loner of their merry band of misfits, is the one who latches onto the team as his family the most. He learns that he doesn't always need words to tell someone how much they mean.

He learns that while he is afraid of the dark, he is significantly less afraid with his family around. He learns that yes, they are his family, and this fact is indisputable and lovely.

Spencer Reid is afraid of the dark, and he is so cursed as to be forced to live in it. But there is something most do not know about the dark, that he has come to learn.

The dark heals people. The dark lets you face yourself and always offers protection from the truth. This is a horrible thing. But in our most shattered of times, it is also a necessity. Not one we like. Not one we take lightly. But one we must all the same.

He has been in a coma for eight months. He is unsure what it is will face him in the world. But Reid thinks that it's time he figure it out.

And so one morning, not one very particular, or very significant, he draws all of his memories. The good, the bad, the worse, the beautiful. He pools them together and watches them play out with kaleidoscope colors and scents crisp and feelings tingling his body and tastes sharp and sounds as clear as cold, rushing water—

On no particular morning, in the stark white bed of a hospital, Spencer Reid embraces the darkness for a final time, and does something that he has not done for the past eight months.

He opens his eyes.

There is a budding morrow in midnight.

John Keats

Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds, and I am in no way profiting from this or any stories that I ever post here. Nor do I own or am profiting from the novel Eugene Onegin (the book Prentiss read to Reid) or the poem Little Blue Pigeon (A Japanese Lullaby - the last line that Prentiss says to Reid). I just quoted them. Gosh. STOP YELLING!

A/N: Ahem. So, yeah. Remember four thousand years ago when I started this, lol?

Anyway, I'm not going to try and make excuses. I mean, I suck, I know. But between finals and my depression and the holidays and getting sick and getting better and then having a near emotional breakdown at the series finale of Chuck (WHICH WAS SO FUCKING AMAZING! LONG LIVE CHUCK! *spazzes out from love of Chuck*) then getting Bronchitis and and then watching the entire really incredible series that is Dollhouse and then getting better and then wanting to go hide under the table with my thoughts but I couldn't because my cat would be all, "Dude. Feeeeeed meeeeee." I just. . . yeah. Blarrrrrg.

I will have you know, though, that I actually worked on this for all the months I was incognito. Like, it was ridiculous, and the story just kept growing. When I first started it, I was all, "Oh! I know! I'll write a cool twoshot, sort of character study on the team, about Reid getting blown up and put in a coma! Won't that be fun?"

Answer: No.

Well, actually - Answer: Sort of.

But as much as a monster this fic is, I'm actually super proud of it. But I'm also reaaallllly glad it's finished. It was like. . . emotionally exhausting to write. Which is crazy, cause I've never had that happen before.

Also, for the bits with the flashback to the explosion, I know it seems like the team would never actually abandon Reid, but remember that he was stuck, they were not going to get him out ever without the jaws of life, and they all knew that it was basically one of those we all die together, or we save ourselves, kinda deals. Reid knew that they knew that the situation was hopeless, and even though we all want to think that the BAU team is awesome and unstoppable, some times things are just impossible, and that was one of those times.

As per usual, this is unbeta'd, so any and all mistakes are mine. I apologize in advance, I edit as much as I can, but often silly little mistakes can slip through.

Thanks so much for reading! Drop me a review and tell me what you thought of the story - also huge thanks to all of those who have reviewed already! I appreciate each and every one. : D

Thanks again for reading, you sexily crafted biped, you!

-Yellow