Chapter 1

Lost

A Prologue

The devil's voice is sweet to hear: - Stephen King

A/N: One again something I needed to do…..next chapter the fic starts properly….thank you….please R&R

Disclaimer: Criminal Minds is not mine.

As a whole.

The team as a whole.

Working together as always you wouldn't have known.

Yet each had moved on. Each was stuck in the same place.

As a team they were whole.

Individually they were broken. Shattered. Destroyed on the inside.

-o-o-o-

EMILY

I never understood before now exactly what it was like to be, well I suppose you could say 'normal' – and yes I will emphasise that word with my nicotined stained finger, and obviously the one which isn't.

Normal – such an easy word to say and such a difficult thing to be.

It used to come to me naturally. My mother. She showed me normality. She was – still is – the queen of everything perfect. And I probably assumed that perfection – mother's perfection was normal.

But it was false. That was a front. Her form of compartmentalising which may have worked a charm for her and I suspect still does – but for me it was wrong. I guess I must take after my father in that respect.

Once my internal barriers had been ripped apart and destroyed by someone – something – events – I was able to see that little girl again for a while. That one which never could relax around other people because she had to be that perfection my mother insisted upon, but back in the summers when the grass was long and mother was busy or even away and my mind was free – back then I was me. I was able to run and play and climb trees. Hey – I even broke an arm falling from that big old thing way back down the end of the garden. I thought the nanny was going to explode with panic. But it wasn't her fault.

Back on those balmy summer days I would sneak out by crawling through a gap out the back. Under the tree roots and slipping my skinny body under the barriers in my garden and in my head.

I would walk in my now very dirty dress down to the railway. There was a bridge going over the river. A railway bridge, but I would time it right. I knew the times of the trains and when I knew I had a gap of over half an hour I would walk out there and lean over the guard rails at the side and watch the water – wondering what it would be like to be as free as the river.

Excuse me.

I'm rambling on. The thoughts in my head are mixed. Not filed neatly away in special places. Information is there and just as easy to find. It's colour coded. I can't be doing with compartments anymore.

What I am trying to say is though, that I feel like I am that little girl again. I am leaning over the edge once more wondering what it would be like to be as free as a river.

-o-o-o-

AARON

Love comes in many forms. I love my job. I think I probably love my job more than anything which makes me feel bad, but he will understand. Haley never will – she's woman, and they don't understand. Jack will. Maybe not now. Maybe not for a long time, but one day when he is sitting there behind his desk and the work is piling up and his wife has called and asked why he late for dinner – again – I am hoping then that he will realise that this is just what comes of having the fantastic Hotchner genes.

My father.

Not a nice man. A cruel man. He was abusive in so many ways. I would try to protect little Sean, but it didn't always work.

My mother.

A woman. Weak and not to be trusted. Moaning constantly and at the time I didn't realise why. Behind those closed doors late at night when we heard the cries coming from her room – were they cries of love or fear? It really isn't something you are going to ask – now is it?

My brother.

A free spirit. Free of the Hotchner genes somehow, and now I wonder if that is because he never had a chance to have them in the first place. I laugh sometimes at the thought that my mother – gentle mother who would never say 'boo' to a ghost – daring to have an affair – but we all do things we don't expect. It just sort of happens.

Spencer.

It wasn't planned.

I was hot and sweaty after a long case and went down to where we can have a nice cooling off shower. Someone was in there already and so I sat on the bench and waited. I didn't want whoever it was to see the bruises I had on my ribs from the kicking I had managed to get that day. My ribs were sore and I needed to inspect them properly.

And so I sat and waited – and that was the first time. He walked out of the shower block with a towel wrapped loosely around him. He was holding the white fluffy garment with one hand and pushing hair off his face with the other.

I could see the pale – oh so delicately pale flesh – white almost pure white where his hip bone stuck out maybe a bit too far from his skinny frame. I knew Reid was on the slender side, but this was the first time I had seen that line of ribs and that hip bone.

He looked shocked to see me waiting, and I just smiled at him. One of the few people I have ever openly smiled at. Well apart from my family. There was not an exchange of words – there didn't have to be. He turned and opened his locker door. I could see the line of knobbles running down his skinny back and the temptation to get up and run my finger down his spine was almost completely over powering.

He looked like a skinny high school kid. And this man was their genius profiler. I would have to say something to Gideon the next day. I would have to say something like 'good job on finding the kid' Just something. It was a good job - I showered down there often after that and so did Spencer. I never once joined him. It didn't feel right. I was afraid my body would betray how I was feeling, but a few times, times when we had been having a very bad day…sometimes that towel slipped a bit too low and on those days all my hours of listening to his hands moving over his body were worth it.

Jack.

A tiny bit of me.

Hopefully he won't have the same childhood experiences I was put through. An only child. For now.

Someone I need to protect and love, but my job? Can I do both? Can I love him more? I don't know – I don't know – maybe that faulty gene again. I can love my family and I can love them so much it hurts and yet I will continue to neglect them because my other half – this driven motivated person will insist on neglecting those I love.

Or putting them in danger.

Or refusing to hear their cries for help.

Maybe I am better off with nothing outside my job.

Maybe I'm better off without Jack being close to me in my life.

And Spencer.

-o-o-o-

SPENCER

I really would rather be dead than living this false existence.

There is nothing of me left anymore. The Spencer I had known all my life seems to have gone. I passed my psych eval and it was laughable at how easy it was. Almost as though they knew I would cheat and so didn't even try.

I don't cheat on purpose. But it's hard you know – for me – when you are asked a question and you know the real answer, not to just say it. It's so much easier than the truth. How do I tell them that I want to die – and expect to keep my job?

Every night is the same. I get home from work and I will sit or curl up somewhere dark and I will wish that there was a way that I could stop living like this. A half existence.

I want to take it out on someone. I want to hurt someone the way I am hurting, but only once have I raised my fist to Ardal, and though I personally felt nothing at the time and though the sight of his blood didn't alarm me I could see the pain on his face. The emotional pain.

I still go to see him, but not as often as I did.

But when this feeling inside of me gets too great I will call him and drive over there. I will park my car in the side street and walk in through the big doors at the bottom of his apartment block and I will take the elevator up to his floor and usually I will stand out side his room and lean my forehead on the door and place my sweaty palms on the wood next to my head and wish that one day – maybe today it will turn out differently.

Here's the crazy thing.

I take drugs.

I'm not addicted to them because they absolutely nothing to me. I can snort cocaine until my nose falls off, and maybe it will, but it has not effect, it might as well be talcum powder for all the effect it has on me.

I inject heroin into my arms, and between my toes. Huge vile obscene amounts at first to try to kill myself and now just to be able to feel something. I have considered behind the eye. Closer to the brain. Maybe today? I have regular blood tests done at work. They saw little marks on my skin. Hardly anything. Old track marks – except they to me were new. There is always nothing….I am always clean.

I cut.

Not like that once when I wanted to take my arm off, but small nicks along my arms with anything I can get my hands on. Nothing. Sometimes a tiny amount of blood but otherwise nothing.

I need a stake through the heart or a silver bullet.

I used to wonder why Floyd was so embittered with the world and now I know. To know that this is it. There is nothing else. And there is nothing I can do about it, and no one would understand.

The nose bleeds.

The excruciatingly bad headaches.

They are the only way I know I still exist.

It's late now.

I need to get ready.

I don't sleep anymore. Those days are gone too. I don't know when I last tucked myself up in bed and slept. Though this means no night mares which is the only – the real one and only thing I find which is good.

Time. I know…It's time.

I will kneel on the floor and wait until the alarm goes off. I will attempt to close my mind down and hope that tomorrow I will be able to kill myself.

-o-o-o-

PENELOPE

Life is too short to sit on my butt all day waiting for it to come to me.

I've gone out and grabbed the bull by the horns, metaphorically speaking – and yes I've changed. Life was good…but now it's better.

Kevin.

As sweet as he was. A darling. A completely wonderful person.

Well…after watching those tapes for days on end – you know it kind of does something to a girl. A girl who was a bit of a swinger in the first place and if I never see another male body part again in my life it will be too soon – if you get my drift here.

Nor am I the cute stay at home type with a pinny and baking cookies for the girl scouts. So my best friend – she and I we party.

Spencer. I can hardly look at him. This seems to have changed him in such a deep unsettling way. On the surface he is still the same. Same funny clothes and same face and eyes – but his soul has gone. He knows what I saw and though he has never said anything I know he hates me for it. He avoids me. That's OK I wouldn't know what to say to him anyway. I don't know how to pull him back to the fold. I wish I did, but I'm gone too.

Derek – the games we play. We still play them. We are still friends, but we both know it will never go further. It's just to give him a bit of light relief doing the shitty job he does, because it is crap talking to victims and trying to be sympathetic to the parents of a serial killer or child rapist. He manages it. He is a fantastic person and my support, but will never be my lover.

I sit and stare blankly at my screens and dread the day I am told. 'Garcia look through these.'

A girl can only cope with so much death and destruction. Look at Prentiss. Look at Elle. It gets us all in the end. It just took me longer because I have the shield of the computer. I can say to myself. 'It's just pictures' I don't have to smell it or touch it or inspect it too closely.

Time to go. I have a date.

Take care.

-o-o-o-

DAVE

Obviously things changed. You can't go through that amount of trauma and come out the other side unchanged. My fear with the team was that they seemed to be living in their own heads too much. Too often I see them just standing or sitting as though some dreadful thought or image had locked them into place. I've known Aaron a long time and I can see that knock after knock is slowly changing him. Life does that. But he is different. I would like to say that he has closed down and become cold – but he was never one to give off the warm vibes to his team anyway. Loved as he is.

Me though – how has this effected me?

I know – I think I know what some of these people are going through. All of us victims. I tried to get my head around the cause of it all.

It wasn't Floyd. It wasn't Taki – I don't know what it was. An explosive mixture. Seeing the ones we love/rely upon crumble before our eyes. Emily smiles more now. I've notice that. It's almost as though this whole situation did her good. Except for the smoking. Odd that she didn't look the type and yet now I can't imagine her not being a smoker.

Derek Morgan. He was saved from a lot of what happened and I suppose I was too until recently but that changed. You hear things you know which change how you look at someone. I listened to closely and I heard too much but that's not really the point is it? I spend as much time out with my dogs – out hunting – and sometimes I take someone with me, but that is rare. I like the seclusion of me and my dogs and whatever we catch. A symbiosis and it holds me together. Like Rosie is holding Aaron together – like the smoking is holding Prentiss together. At least we have something. I don't think we all have that.

I guess I got off lightly.

I guess I wasn't a victim.

Not this time anyway.

-o-o-o-

FLOYD

I really don't know what it is you want me to admit to….

This is a confession isn't it?

Somewhere to release our inner most thoughts and let rip?

I have no innermost thoughts anymore….it's all out here on the surface for all to see. I do love him. I think that is what this feeling inside of me is. Much like how I feel on the rare occasion I get to see my Rosa – which has been too long. Far too long.

Crap parent.

Crap lover.

Crap at my job.

Crap all round really, but I haven't taken it back yet. I need to talk to him and explain what I did and I know he will hate me for it, and in a way I don't want it back. I am enjoying this new sensation. Vulnerability – is that the correct word? I'm not sure that I am really enjoying that part of it but to know that I could if I wanted - end.

Stop.

Go back to the river….but then I don't know if I could cross it. She would tell me to climb back and be the good guy and that's just not what I am. I tried. For a whole day I tried. I even washed – but it didn't last, cos the good guy washed off in the shower. I flushed him away and all that is left is this raw thing under the surface slowly trying to get out.

Nothing is as easy now. My left hand doesn't work properly. I have a slight limp from the damage Pa gave me – but I am still the same person/being whatever it is I am now. My 'superpowers' gone… well not all of them, but some – and I will get it back.

I feel that knotting in my stomach when I think of the look on his face when I tell him. I gave him immortality. How will he feel when I take it away? Should I just rip it from him like I did before in my stupid panic or should I gradually remove it? Should I tell him what I am doing? I haven't seen him. I've tried calling but when he picks up I find I have nothing to say.

Rossi.

He is a strange one. I don't know what he wants from me. He asks me constant questions. We meet up for drinks occasionally. He even took me hunting a few times, and I don't know why.

I know I've changed.

I know I don't like what I am now.

I know I am just as good in that dark alley way as I ever was, and I know I give better than I've ever got.

Ardal.

I have him regularly. I take him hard and want to say to him. 'Tell Spence that I miss him.' but I can't.

And so I am sitting here thinking now. Is it time to take back what I gave? Should I go and see Spence and explain to him what I did for him? Will he listen to me?

I think I'll go and do that now.

18x