A/N~ Hey guys, a little late again, I know, but I wanted to at least try to update on my usual Friday... which, probably won't hold perfectly, you've been warned. Wanted to clear up confusion from last week with my rather reckless wording... I didn't mean lack of reviews made me stop writing this story, just that the feedback on the other story outweighed it quite a bit, so I put this on the back burner. It's totally my fault, and I appreciate you guys greatly. Anywho, Enjoy this chapter, I really hope it's adequate. A little longer than the usual. Read on. :)

*Curious as he was, he couldn't bring himself to focus on whatever brilliant plan Reid had hatched, because he knew the end of that story. Instead Morgan looked, really looked at the young man before him. He looked... but he didn't see his friend. He saw an imitation. It killed him that he'd lost that innocence he hoped in vain the kid would cling to for many many years. He couldn't stand the thought that Reid had fought, fought hard- and lost a girl who seemed so special to him. A friend he had vowed to protect, a firecracker of a girl who was murdered viciously within the hellhole they had shared. He couldn't take his eyes off the genius, though he wanted to look away. Just a kid, who had tried and failed to save a life, and was haunted. Somehow the shadows beneath his eyes darkened, his eyes sunken in, and he did, he soldiered on. But without his happy go lucky attitude, it wasn't Spencer Reid who was doing the soldiering. Morgan didn't care for this imitation. Like a train wreck, his eyes were glued to the horror that was this guy, whoever he was, reciting every detail of his near murder with perfect clarity. He was struck with the horrible truth that his friend would never forget...

"She didn't even want to hear my idea, she... guys, she just told me to shut up. And made sure I was okay first." His voice broke.

"But I had to... I swore I'd save her, so I gave her hope." His face crumpled.

"I was such an idiot."*

"No, shh, Willow, I know how to get out of here, I mean... I have a plan!" She watched, fascinated, as his eyes darted back and forth, his face lighting up like the flick of a lighter.

"Willow," He wished more than ever he could pull his hands from behind his back and gesture wildly to help her understand his scattered thoughts -

Footsteps sounded overhead. And just as quickly, his fire was snuffed out.

*"It was like slow motion, you know? Like the whole thing was just a weird joke, or... or a scene from a movie. Like... I could just leave the theatre, and Will, and you guys... you'd all just be there, waiting for me to come back to reality. I wished... I wished so bad that I could walk out of that theatre."

Prentiss noted with concern that there was a hiccup in his grammar. That Spencer Reid's speech was something other than succinct and impeccably proper... was, strangely more scary than his external injuries. Almost like he lost the ability to care.*

He leered at them. There was no other word for it. He leered with all the murderous glee he could muster, and twirled the knife in his hands.

"Oh, I've been waiting a long time for this. A long time. You know I watched you? Every second of every day." He inhaled deeply as he crouched down by the struggling man.

"It was... fun." He chuckled.

"It's always fun. Scouting out a place, seeing her - or him, and thinking to myself... Yes. That's the person. They'll be dead in a month. Do you have any idea the kind of thrill that gives you? Waiting outside your window..." He brushed the knife along his face, lost in a reverie.

"I know my victims. I see them when they die. Their thoughts. Their emotions. Their prayers. Because I'm watching. All the time, I see what they do, how they act, what they really think... like you Dr Reid. Oh... you're a tricky one to decipher, aren't you? You and her. You're not just happy go lucky wittle Spencer, are you?"

He stood.

"You're complex, you people. Your fighters. I really love it when they fight." He shot them a sickening smile.

"But It's time to move on to the next part of the story kids. The really painful bit." He gave Spencer a long, meaningful stare.

"I love this part. I love all the parts."

With a jolt, Reid realized that he wasn't the only one who had a plan...

Without further warning than a barely noticeable twitch in the corners of his mouth, the madman spun and jammed the knife into willow's chest.

The worlds rotatation seemed to slow... as if the loss of such a shining star had prevented it from turning. There was the longest silence. Almost like it hadn't happened at all.

He so wished it hadn't happened at all.

That it didn't have to register. But it did. And he felt it.

"Jesus, no!" His head fell to his chest, dirty locks falling to hide his tortured expression from view

" Will, no willow... NO!" He bellowed to the sky... Lifting his face to question whoever was listening. Empty sobs echoed around the dingy basement, another life claimed, another existence slipping away to join the others snatched within these walls. Pleased with his work, the unsub stooped down beside her, intending to watch the life leave her eyes...

"GET AWAY FROM HER!" He emerged briefly from his agony to save her from this at least... before lapsing into misery once again. The unsub rose. He spun on the spot and stared at him, vaguely annoyance clouding his elation. But Reid only had eyes for her, her frame slumped over in a heartbreakingly unnatural way... a deep crimson stain blossoming on the grimy t-shirt, once a sunny yellow. He imagined her picking it out. Grinning as she did so, so blissfully unaware of what fate it would have. She would have. And it wasn't just her, her strength and her beauty falling to ruin that got to him. It was his promise. His apparent lie. He couldn't take it back now.

"PLEASE, God, please, bring her back. Bring her back - help me!" Messy tears streamed down his face - now twisted with the worst kind of pain. He let out an agonized sob. She would never know his plan.

"You son of a bitch. You son of a BITCH. You took her! And I... I promised her." He cried with all the emotion of a man who had known her since birth.

And the murderer laughed. He cackled really... probably an effort to block out the duet of noises behind him, Reid yelling profanities, and the redhead... making the most heartbreaking sound. A whimper, a tiny, terrified, wisp of a noise. The last thing she'd ever do, he was sure.

He reveled in it. And when he had his fill... he continued.

"I love dessert, don't you? The entree was good, don't get me wrong... but this is the part - when you develop all your little feelings." A smirk in the face of a crying man... a failed saviour.

"And you cry and you moan, but you just know you can't save the girl."

"So here we are! She's a breath away from death Mr Reid. And you? Let me tell you about you..."

"No you help her! You save her. You stupid bastard, she is... she was... she..."

"You are an idiot of a genius, a cocaine addict, a failed son, a failed surrogate son, a failed FBI agent... and a failed hero."

"You made your pointless promises, you delivered your little parcels of hope to a marked woman, and now she's rotting on the ground..."

"Don't talk about her like that!"

"You've never been popular have you Spencer? Hopeless when it came to human contact, hopeless in any relationship you tried to embark upon. You failed your father, he knew how worthless you were, and he couldn't take it anymore, so he scurried off as fast as he could, glad to be free of you and your nut job mother-"

"Stop."

"And even she knew... she could see you degrade into the same madness that had taken her, and she was secretly relieved to be rid of your second rate care, even a crazy felt safer in an asylum than in your incompetent arms."

"It's not-"

"What happened next, oh yes, Mr Gideon, he made his greatest mistake when he saw such a pathetic creature in you, took you to the FBI, thought he could make use of your brains at least, but of course you failed him when you drove him near the brink of another meltdown..."

"Stop it."

"After that there was no one to love you, no one to make excuses for your pointless life, for you useless contribution to the field where real agents played, and the team is so, so glad to see you gone now. A child, incapable of control and growth, unable to use his potential, unable to break free of his own mind and become a person, so he turned to the nearest exit, a crapload of dilaudid, that was sure to help him."

"Stop... please..."

"So he shot up to forget that not a soul in the world cared... tried to escape to a world where he wasn't the failure. Where he had control. But you didn't did you? It muddled your useless existence further. And one day... a particular unsub comes around that shatters your world once and for all, sends you a pretty young thing, only to snatch her away like a shiny plaything, and she was pretty, don't you think? I gave you a taste of what a good person, who had yet to be tainted by you, could be. And you failed her too-"

"THAT'S ENOUGH." His jaw clenched, and he hissed his retaliation at her killer.

"You'd like to think you've shattered me. You'd like to think you've rattled me now, or that you will be the one to end me. My team is obviously beyond your reckoning. As is Willow. As is my mother. And you're right."

He panted.

"I failed them. But your mistake is simple. They never failed me."

"They were my solace. They are a power you can't understand, because you can never love, you know well that you're incapable. You don't know me, or those people. You know what you've heard. And I know, that my mother cares deeply for me. That Willow would never want me to give in to you." He choked.

"And I know that they're coming. Rant all you want. They'll always get to me." He breathed shakily and lifted a heart wrenching glare to his captors face.

"You will lose."

*Word for word. He had described the entire encounter... every hateful syllable, word for word. They stared. Unashamed. Unable to feel anything really. They were silent in their tears. Crying for a life that was never truly lived... for a girl they had never known. For a person so bright, and so honest, that it shined through a simple recollection of her short time on this Earth. It was astonishing how much Willow had affected the people who never had a chance to meet her. Morgan had silently wished for a face off with that girl. For a chance to meet her quips, and her sass, with a tease or a good comeback. He got the feeling she would've fit in with this team. Joking along side them... it was a shock to realize she never would. Penelope stared out the window. Imagining a friendship that would never be... tears streaming. Her baby boy had lost a friend. She would have loved to meet the girl who made him speak of her so fondly, who had opened him up... before he was smashed back down. The silence was deafening as the team came to terms with the losses. Innocence so rarely lives in this world of ours.

And two souls had lost it that day.

And finally... Reid broke his unfaltering gaze. He broke down. And he cried.*

A/N~ Finally! I made sure to never have him breaking contact, looking anywhere other than at a team member, or crying. I had him looking heartbroken, and choking, but never crying. I knew he needed to come to terms with her death and lose his composure at a specific moment. So, I really I hope I did dear Willow justice in death as I hope I did in life. Grief, especially for a person the main characters didn't know well... is hard to write. Please drop in a review and tell me your thoughts... on the "flash forwards", on her demise, anything you please. I love feedback!