a/n: I don't own Criminal Minds – and I don't much think I want to take responsibility for this one shot either. Pb xox

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. ~E.L. Doctorow

It just went from bad to worse.

They were driving to a new case and Hotch was driving. His dark hair was cut short but still he managed to have a bit of hair which was continuously falling onto his forehead. The other team members in the car were Reid and Morgan. The others were visiting a crime scene somewhere else. JJ was on leave yet again as Henry was feeling unwell.

As they drove down the very rutted track through the woods the storm suddenly hit. The rain came down in such torrents that it was hard to see through the window.

'Whoah man.' Derek yelped from the back of the car.

Reid held tightly onto the door handle and Hotch wiped the hair off his forehead once more and the knuckles on his other hand turned white with the effort of seeing where he was going.

It was around about now that the realisation that they were actually driving down a dry river bed hit them. The waves of water smacked against the front of the car and the wheel Hotch had been holding so tightly onto was torn from his manly hands and the car slew sideways. Over and onto its side and then the roof.

'Whoah man!' Derek exclaimed.

'Eeeeep!' Reid gasped in horror.

But still Hotch remained silent. It wasn't until the car finally stopped moving that Reid realised why Hotch was still so quiet. One of Hotch's hands was at his neck as a thick torrent of ghastly red blood squirted from between his fingers. A tree branch had penetrated the side window on Hotch's side and sliced though his neck and pierced his side effectively pinning him to the car seat.

'Oh!' Said Reid.

'Son of a bitch!' Exclaimed Morgan who was now trying to get his door open.

Reid sat for a while looking at Hotch and then reached for his cell phone 'No signal!' he cried in anguish.

Hotch twitched a bit and tears of pain ran down the side of his face. 'I'll be alight.' He gasped.

Morgan by now was crawling out of the door and moving around to Hotch. 'Whoah man!' he said when he saw the huge branch poking through the door and into Hotch. It had virtually sliced him in half. 'Stay with us boss. I'll go and get help. Reid stay here. Stay with him!' and Morgan was running back up towards the river which strangely seemed to be on a higher elevation than the tangle of metal and blood he was leaving Hotch and Reid in.

Reid slid his muddy way around the side of the car and looked at the branch. 'OH!' he said. Then as the gunshot sounded Reid flailed backwards and fell into the soggy ground with blood coming from somewhere.

Hotch remained quiet in the car. Blood was now squirting over the windows and dripping Aaron's life force down the windows. If he wasn't so tough then he would have fainted at the sight.

Reid said 'ouch' and poked at the hole in his chest.

Morgan came running back again now very wet. 'Did I hear a gun shot?' he asked Reid. Who nodded in return.

Just as Morgan was about to see if Hotch was dead yet Reid called out. 'Look behind you!' but it was too late and the baseball bat smacked into the back of Morgan's skull knocking him out without a sound.

The UnSub walked over to Reid and laughed heartily and then tortured him for a while. Reid cried.

Hotch had by now managed to stop the blood from gushing by removing his blue silk tie and wrapping it tightly around his neck. After a short while he noticed that he was finding it hard to breath and so he loosened it again quickly. The UnSub left Reid and went and pulled out the tree branch from Hotch and dragged him from the car.

'My team!' He exclaimed in a bubbly bloody voice but even though he had splash back from his own blood running in ruby rivers down his face he managed to keep up his stoic appearance.

'Get up and get over here!' The tall overly muscular UnSub shouted over to Reid; who got up quickly and brushed the mud and leaves away from his sweater vest and pulled up his trousers.

'Hotch!' he gasped when he saw the state of the boss. He looked over at the car and then at Hotch again and estimated that Aaron – his hero – had lost about seven quarts of blood. 'How does he do that?!' he thought to himself. He moved quickly over to where the UnSub had a tight hold on Hotchner and was told to keep walking.

'What about him?' Aaron asked looking over at Derek who still had the axe embedded in his back.

'Muahahahahaha.' Was his reply and the three of them began to walk away from the SUV which was somehow now back the right way up.

Reid was in totally awe of Hotch. He could see the blood still oozing from the wounds and was sure that Hotch should be dead by now.

Tears of pain were beginning to prickle at the back of Aaron's eyes. He had failed his team. He wasn't going to let his beast of a man get away with this. His thoughts drifted to Jack and Haley and all he had lost by putting his job before his family and now he was going to miss his weekend appointment to see his son. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a photograph of his innocent darling son and as he did the UnSub punched him hard in the side of the face. It was a hard punch from this much larger man and Aaron had to take a step to the side to stop himself from falling into the dirt. The picture dropped from his stunned fingers and blew away in the wind which had picked up somewhat now and was also blowing the hair onto his forehead again.

He stopped walking and looked at the UnSub who was laughing again.

'I'm going to kill you both slowly and you are going to have to watch while I kill your friend first!' He bellowed at Hotch.

Aaron looked over at Reid and now the tears were falling. He had failed Reid and now he was going to have to watch him die! How could all this have happened so quickly?

'Keep walking.' The stranger called to Reid.

'Are you alright Spencer?!' Hotch asked him gently. He could see Reid had a finger pressed over a hole in his chest.

'I'm fine Hotch. It was a through and through and missed all my vital organs. The chances of that happening are so slim that I don't even have a statistic for it. I just need to plug the hole.'

How long did they walk for? I have no idea, but the wind was still howling, but the rain had stopped. It was dark and creepy and spooky and the blood loss was beginning to get to Hotch now. He used tree branches to help himself walk and left bloody finger marks on everything he touched. His heart was thumping hard in his chest. Had Derek woken up yet from his bashing? Did he manage to get a signal on his cell? He didn't know. He just knew that he may never see Jack again. The sudden thought of this brought him down to his knees with a swift smack.

'Get up or I'll shoot him again!' The UnSub shouted. Reid turned to look at Hotch willing him to get up, but Hotch was too weak now. He must have lost about nine quarts of blood now and so the UnSub shot Reid again.

'Ouch!' Reid exclaimed.

Hotch put his hands down into the wet ground under him and noticed that he was kneeling in a puddle of his own blood. He watched Reid flail back again and fall down and knew it was all over.

'Kill me.' Hotch said imploringly. 'Leave him alone. It's me you want, not him.'

The UnSub gave Hotch a dirty look and grabbed him by his thick dark hair and pulled him back to his feet. 'You keep walking.' He snarled angrily. Hotch could feel his tears falling easily now cutting through the blood on his face and forming white shining pathways down his handsome cheeks.

Reid stood up again. 'I'm OK.' He called over to Hotch. 'Just a flesh wound.'

With a gun trained on Reid the UnSub now pulled Aaron over to a tree and chained him with his hands high above his blood and tear covered face. The strain on his arms was unbearable with his feet hardly touching the ground. All he could do was stand there now with a look of sadness upon his face and watch what the UnSub had planned. Hotch whimpered.

The UnSub tortured Reid some more and prodded him with a knife in various places. Reid cried again.

Meanwhile Morgan was dragging himself to his feet. His bullet wound was just above is pelvis and was hurting like a sonofabitch, but Morgan wasn't going to let a little thing like that stop him. He pulled a tree branch up off the floor and used it to support himself.

'Damn you!' He shouted in the direction Hotch had been taken. The blood trail was easy to follow but his movements were slow. Small drops of rain which had gathered on the tree leaves dropped down and splattered onto Morgan's bald head.

Back at the tree the UnSub had finished with Reid who was lying still next to a bush and was now looking at Hotch with an evil glint in his eye.

'I am going to break you.' He told Hotch and then started to smack at Aaron's legs with a tree branch. Still some how Hotch managed not to cry out in pain.

He felt the bones snapping in his legs. He could feel how the bone had broken through the skin now and was pressing against the fabric of his suit trousers.

'Arg!' Hotch exclaimed suddenly. More tears now crawling down his stricken face and gathering ready to drop from his dark eyelashes. His eyes still handsome tried to look beyond the UnSub and see what Reid was doing but he was standing at the wrong angle to see anything now.

'HAHA!' Said the UnSub.

'You've not broken me yet!' Hotch said back to him spitting his words with venom.

The UnSub wiped Hotch's spit from his face and slapped him hard across the face. Hotch felt his neck crack with the force. Now unable to stand on his shattered legs he was just hanging from the chains. They cut into his pale flesh and blood was running down his arms and soaking into his shirt and other bits of clothing. The UnSub laughed and then tortured Reid for a bit longer with a stick.

Suddenly Morgan appeared.

'You sonofabitch!' He exclaimed.

The UnSub turned to look at Morgan who still had the knife protruding from his chest.

'How the hell?' Said the much bigger and more muscley than Morgan bloke. They both pointed guns at each other but only one of them fired.

He fell to the ground with an 'Erg' sound.

All that could be heard now was the sound of blood dripping from Hotch forming a sticky pool under his broken form and some muttering from Reid.

'He must have lost about fifteen point six five three quarts by now.'

Hotch slid his arms out from the chains holding him to the tree and walked over to Morgan.

'Whoah man!' Morgan said. 'How do you do that?!'

The end.

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top. ~English Professor (Name Unknown), Ohio University