64 minutes by Lexikal

Synopsis: While investigating a potential lead on a serial arson case, Reid is badly injured and Hotch must do what he can for him... a snapshot of one man, terribly injured, and another trying to deal with his friend's injuries and do what he can in a 64 minute span of time when both men know help will eventually come, but possibly too late.

Author's note: Not sure why I wrote this, except that I must have a slightly sadistic streak (or, maybe, just maybe, I like to see people go through Hell and survive). Short, gory and... it is what it is. Wanna know the real reason I wrote this one? I am in a baaaaaad mood right now and decided somebody needs to fictionally be worse off than me. There. I said it. I also can't stop thinking about Bob-the-killer from Twin Peaks, and even though this is a Criminal Minds story, the insane Unsub in this and his oddly planned yet completely over the top impulsive craziness is a homage to the wonderful character of Killer Bob. This is complete, it is a one shot (or at least, one chapter), it is what it is and is not meant to be a Reid-gets-over-physical-trauma story. I made up Landover, Texas, so if you find it on a map... pure coincidence (and possibly psychic awesomeness on my part) Please review.

Things could change so quickly. Things could go from being fairly normal and okay to utter hell in a handful of minutes. The team had split up to go arrest a suspect on a case involving a serial arsonist who was burning young highschool aged men alive in their homes. All young kids, all targeted when they were alone at home. All the victims' homes had been sprayed with accelerants. There had been no survivors. The team was pretty sure they had their UnSub and had gone to arrest him, but Reid... Reid has been quiet for the whole case. Chewing the inside of his cheek. Poor eye contact. Something had been eating at him. Right before they had scrambled to make the arrest, headed en masse to the squad cars to assist the local police, in a span of seconds, Hotch had approached the younger man.

"You don't think Dylan Keegan is our Unsub." Not a question.

"No." Reid's voice, almost breathless, haunted. There was something lost in his eyes, the eyes of someone who has just woken from an atrocity of a nightmare and is shaken, but for whom the nightmare is already fading into non-existence.

"The profile is sound. Keegan fits the profile."

"I know. But I still... I want to speak to Mark Cullen again. Something... I am missing something." Mark Cullen, the twin brother of the first victim. Mark Cullen, the honour student, the young man who had been rocketed into a depression which left two ugly keloid scars on his arms from elbow to wrist like puffed pink leeches. Mark Cullen, with his skittery, uneasy, haunted eyes so much like Reid's. The boy's body had quaked with adrenaline reliving the death of his twin, so much so that he'd been visibly shaking after a handful of gentle, carefully phrased questions.

"We already interviewed him. He's traumatized, and rightly so. But you think... what do you think?"

"I can't explain it Hotch. Something... something is wrong, but the pieces aren't consciously synching up yet. But it is wrong. Keegan is dangerous and possibly should be arrested for some other crime that we will no doubt uncover in time, but... I just want to speak to Mark again." Eyes so remote, looking inward, looking into the realm of the subconscious, where logic moved at a speed beyond light and called itself "hunches".

"If it's okay with you, I want to go back to the Cullen farm. I can have one of the local police officers drive me down." Reid, still lost in thought, his voice distracted.

"I'll go with you." Hotch, ever serious, eyes lambent and alert. When Reid was this preoccupied with something, Aaron Hotchner knew it was for a reason, and usually Reid's gut instincts played out perfectly. From across the squad room Rossi caught Hotch's eye and Hotch shook his head. No, they would not be attending this arrest. They wouldn't be attending this coup. Reid wasn't joining in the fun today, and his S.S.A. was standing down with him. Rossi nodded, a nod full of meaning, a nod that told the other supervisory special agent that he would catch up on Reid's distracted boycott later. Right now they had a psycho firebug to arrest. He would ask his questions later. Reid had been shaky through the whole case. Hotch had said something in passing to Rossi, something about Reid confiding to him in his earliest years at the BAU that fire scared him, that it was nearly a phobia.

Then the BAU team, sans Reid and Hotch, left the building. Reid's eyes, still lost, still trying to remember the nightmare, cleared for a moment, and he grabbed his canvas courier bag and shrugged into a long sleeved sweater he'd taken off just half an hour ago.

"I'll go get us a car." Hotch said unnecessarily, but Reid was already half out of the door and moving to the parking lot.

The drive out was 50 minutes. The local police couldn't spare any officers, not to play taxi with the weird, pale G-man and his babysitter, but they could spare a ghost car, a crown vic without the black and white bodywork, no mars lights on the roof. Oh, and the CB was busted, but they had their cell phones, right, and besides, hardly like they needed to be able to call in the infantry if they were only going to the Cullen farm. Poor kid. Mark Cullen, the screwed up suicidal doppleganger of victim number 1. A damn shame.

Hotch had ground his teeth listening to the local sheriff wax melodramatically put-out. Despite what the media led many people to believe, most police departments were thrilled to have FBI help on violent crime cases. But not this time. The small town of Landover, Texas was in deep mourning and, true to the cop dramas Hotch had never developed a taste for, had seemed offended by the FBI's presence from day one. They had only cooperated at all because of the negative media attention of the crimes, but now that they were arresting that weirdo emo kid Dylan Keegan, well... the kid gloves could come off. Hotch had a gut feeling that Reid's gawky, inherently pacifist nature also served to make him somewhat of a target.

Hotch had ground his teeth, eyes flashing angrily but Reid had simply muttered "whatever vehicle you have available would be much appreciated, thank you." Polite as a choir boy, and three times as guilty looking. And then they had been on the road, the long expanse of macadam rolling in front of them under the Texas sun, shivering in the heat. Reid, slumped in the passenger seat, eyes sullenly directed out at the rolling nothingness that was the heat-baked landscape he could care less about.

"I know you say you don't know... but you have to have some idea. Some conscious idea why we are going back out to talk to Mark Cullen again?"

A beat. Two. The land ran by like 8 millimeter film through an old projector, ready to bubble and smoke. Hotch fiddled with the AC. Realized it was broken. So much for Texas hospitality.

"Reid?"

"Something in his eyes. Some look on his face, something... when we asked about his brother. His brother's childhood, if he'd ever been bullied, if... just something in his eyes was wrong. His comments didn't make sense."

"How so?"

"He seemed angry at his brother's death."

"Of course."

"That's not what I mean. He seemed angry that his brother was getting so much posthumous attention. And... nothing of his brother out in his aunt's place. We saw his room. No souvenirs. No photographs."

"People grieve in different ways, Reid. You know that."

"I know that. Like I told you, it hasn't consciously synched up yet, but I just know we need to talk to him again."

And then Reid had gone quiet again, brain running through past comments and eye shifts and hand tremors, looking and scanning and putting together the pieces like only he could. Hotch let him do it. Didn't realize that his cell phone stopped getting bars 10 minutes from the Cullen farm. It never occured to him to check, to think they might be out of cell range.

Mark seemed strangely unsurprised to see Reid back on his doorstop. When Reid gently asked if he could come in, the young man simply stared, as if lost for words. Finally nodded. They entered. Hotch, ever stern, kept silent but watchful. This was Reid's deal, Reid's show.

Into the small but cozy living room of dear aunt Martha who had taken the 17 year old in. The parents of the twins apparently couldn't stand to have Mark around anymore, seeing as he was the spitting image of their dear, lost John. Where was aunt Martha? Oh, she was out. Playing Bingo in town. Reid nodded, arranged himself on the couch. Hotch kept standing. Surveilled the room. Tried to figure out what in this place, or in the young man's body language or dress or comments had brought Reid back to requestion him. Hotch couldn't see what Reid could see, though. Not yet.

"Would... would you like some sweet tea? There is some sweet tea in the fridge."

"I'm fine, Mark." Reid said pleasantly.

"Agent Hotchner?"

"No, thank you."

"I think I know why you are here again, agent Reid."

"You do?" Reid asked softly. "Why? Because I am not sure I know."

Mark Cullens mumbled something Hotch couldn't hear. Reid, however, seemed to hear and straightened up ever so slightly.

"I... can I show you something agent Reid?"

"What do you want to show me?"

"Some old journals of Johnny's. Diaries, I guess you might call 'em. We keep 'em in the barn, because Martha doesn't like them in the house. Says it's like having bad hoodoo in the house, having his crazy old diaries in the house, the crazy thoughts of a dead boy in the house with her doilies and watercolours is just too creepy for her. She could never stand Johnny, though. Said he was bad news. But she feels badly he is dead, so it's a mix."

"Hoodoo?" Reid said, in a tone of voice that was piqued but not unduly uneasy.

"Aunt Martha believes in all that crap. She grew up in Louisiana, had a black nanny that taught her about the dark arts back in the seventies, something like that. Anyway. There are boxes of junk out there, you can look at whatever you want. Might help you figure him out. Johnny. You know. For your victimology?"

"Yes. Thank you." Reid stood. Glanced over at Hotch. A look was being aimed at him like high beams on a car. Stay here, Hotch, and look around the house. Just... look around. For... whatever. Anything. Everything.

"You want to come out too, agent Hotchner? More the merrier."

"I think I might stay here, Mark. I've been in the sun all day and am enjoying the air conditioning."

"Suit yourself." The boy said, and smiled pleasantly. "Feel free to have some of that sweet tea if you change your mind. Tumblers are in the cupboard over the sink. Nothing like sweet tea on a hot day, my ma always says."

"Maybe I will. Thank you." Hotch's profiler tendrils were now picking up on whatever uneasy vibes Reid had caught the first time around, but, like Reid, he had no idea why he suddenly felt cold to the marrow, he just knew something was wrong here. Very wrong. Yet on the surface? On the surface everything was blue skies and apple pie a-okay.

Mark Cullen smiled again, the gentle polite grin of a little country scamp being polite for the grown ups, and then led the way through the living room for Reid, chattering about his antidepressants, how he still was dreaming about Johnny but it was getting better, day by day. He was now glad he hadn't bled out on the bathroom floor, sure God was watching over him. One day at a time, right, agent Reid?

And the back door shut with a subdued bang.

Hotch scanned the living room, took in the doilies, the smell of lemon pledge, the rattan bookshelf (the top shelf was covered with dusty ceramic knick-knacks of various little dogs and cats and one lonely mallard duck, the 3 lower shelves reserved for Christian self help and inspirational books with titles like: "Christ can lead you out of your depression!" and "When you see only one pair of footprints, it was then that I carried you: surviving a murder in the family") photos of Aunt Martha and her late husband (what had his name been? Peter?), a taxidermied yellow bullhead catfish of impressive size starring grumpily at him with dull, button-like eyes. There was a ceramic crucifix on the wall featuring a rather emaciated looking Jesus, and about a foot to the left hung a taxidermied bird, some type of woodpecker posed for eternity on what looked like a hunk of driftwood. Hotch inspected the bird, remembered a scout troop he had been in as a prepubescent kid, found the name of the bird hovering on the end of his tongue. Red flicker? Northern red flicker? Something like bird had bright red stripes on its cheeks like native warpaint, black, beady little eyes. Shiny bead eyes. Unnatural and wrong.

The agent swept his gaze through the living room again, found he could not shake the incipient but growing sense that something was wrong here. The room was cloyingly small town Texas bible-belter middle class, and nothing on the surface was really wrong (although Hotch had always found taxidermied animals more than a little bit creepy, the way they stared at you with their dead, marble eyes as if imparting dark wisdom no sane person really wanted to know or guess at) but if that was true, if everything was fine, then why was the hair on the back of his neck at strict attention? Hotch walked out of the living room, peeked inside the fridge. A half opened package of baloney turning crusty and hard, french's mustard, a jar of pickles, a jar of sauerkraut, a pad of butter in a small blue bowl, a plate of what looked like sugar cookies under saran wrap and the jug of the famous sweet tea filled with lemon slices. Hotch let the door glide shut, took in the crucifix (another one, this one some fancy wood deal that looked expensive) and the vintage cuckoo clock, the pea green cupboards, the large homemade chalkboard flanked by the title "The Cullen In-box" hanging on the stucco wall, shouting a cursive directive in pink chalk: Aunt Martha, phone Lucy at the Hospice! She says Mr. Herbert is worse! 210-555-1600

Hotch wandered into the hall, peeked back out the bay window in the living room at the tall, grassy plot of land that was the Cullen farm (apparently these people farmed tumbleweeds). Nothing to see. He walked out of the living room and through the narrow, dim hallway, took the stairs two at a time and scanned the upper level, eyes darting from open door to open door. He found a pale green room littered with funky smelling football gear, a crucifix over the single bed, a desk with the lamp on burning away angrily at 60 watts. On the otherwise empty desk was a hobby knife. The hobby knife blade was limned with what looked like purple-black paint but was actually dried, flaking blood. Hotch pulled the desk drawer open, eyes immediately seizing on the small, strange bundle. He pulled out out what looked like a dried furball or a surreal bezoar. A bundle of hair tied together with red embroidery thread and sticks, a piece of plaid fleece interwoven through the bundle.

It was that strange little bundle of hair and fabric that sent Hotch down the stairs at a decent clip. His profiling spidey sense suddenly was screaming at him: FIND REID AND GET BACK UP, and the compulsion was so strong, so laden with adrenaline and an immediate, screaming tinnitus that the agent didn't for a second consider that he was over-reacting. Whatever hunches had driven Reid back here to speak to the disturbed young man were now awakened in him, and in his head, glaring neon and flashing danger like a red light district light: DANGER, DANGER, REAL DANGER! XXX! DANGER!

His feet landed on the hardwood floor and propelled him into the living room, and in the span of a few seconds, a few short seconds, his growing unease had morphed into utter terror. Black roiling smoke was gusting out of the farm, bright yellow and orange flames leaping and licking the twilit sky.

Hotch was out into the kitchen and out through the back door, racing towards the barn and his mind was telling him The barn is screaming the barn is screaming! before reality got through and he knew, knew in every sense, that those horrible soul-in-hell screams were Reid's.

Out of the corner of his eye was Mark Cullen, naked save for his jockeys, running away and into the field with his arms outstretched like a 5 year old pretending to be an aeroplane, but the only concern in Hotch's mind was getting to Reid, getting to Reid and stopping that endless, horrible screaming.

He was opening the barn door and staggering in. Fire everywhere. Reid had staggered to his feet, his face twisted in mortal torment, blood guttering out of the back of his split head and down his grey cardigan, legs lit up like torches out of a Heironymous Bosch painting. Hotch grabbed the younger man forcefully by the shoulders and threw him onto the ground, rolled him. Reid kept right on screaming, and in what could have been no more than 4 seconds Reid was out, his pant legs blackened and smoking, the smell of burnt flesh and hair and coppery blood sickeningly strong. Hotch, not thinking, running on adrenaline and instinct, pulled Reid somewhat vertical, grabbed him under the armpits and pulled him out of the barn like a sack of smoking, screaming potatoes. Pulled him a good 40 feet away, mind distantly telling him that he had made it just in time, that another 10 seconds, maybe 5, and Reid would have been gone, gone, GONE and already, already the door was on fire...

Reid was still screaming, still moaning, whites of his eyes flashing terrified and horrified agony. Things were moving far too fast. Stay with Reid? Go after Mark Cullen? It didn't matter because Reid's screams were already tappering off, into low, weak moans, eyes fluttering. Hotch pulled off his trench coat, distantly grateful he had chosen to wear it out today despite the heat, and covered Reid's smoking, tar-black legs (but for the split second it took to get the trench coat over those blackened, bleeding, smoking legs... god... those horrible burns... skin blackened)... and Reid's eyes were fluttering like flames dancing in a strong breeze, flames ready to go out, the screams dying into moans...

"Reid!" Hotch yelled, fingers scanning over the younger man's throat, over his adam's apple, ghosting for a pulse. He found it, crazily fast and irregular and light. Reid moaned something and a shiver ran through his body despite the heat. Hotch's brain, the part of his brain that worked for the Flight or Fight Agency (how can we help you during your life-threatening crisis? TM) told him to get the cell phone out of his trench, phone for help, and before the thought had completed itself Hotch was scrambling for the phone, wincing in sympathy at the slightly louder moans Reid made as the older man dug through the coat over his injuries.

"I'm getting us help, Reid, I'm getting us help, you just stay with me, okay." Not a question, just talking, pre-planned talking, the type of rambling spiel everyone said when the shit hit the fan much too severely and much too quickly.

Hotch flipped the cell phone open and stared in horror. No bars. No bars meant no help.

"There are no bars, Reid, I'm sorry, but I have to move you, I have to get you to a hospital-"

Before Hotch could finish his sentence there was the sound of splintering glass and a surreal, nauseating "whoosh" noise. He turned his head and stared in horror. The crown vic loaner car from the sheriiff's station was going up in flames (and aren't they just going to love that?!), as was the ford pickup truck in the gravel driveway. There was a gibbering, screeching noise that was only vaguely human (more chimpanzee than human, all truth be told) and Mark Cullen disappeared from sight, hooting insanely.

Hotch's brain, or rather, some evil, devilish part of it spat out "Bad Mark, no sweet tea for you!" into the stream of his conscious thoughts. Hotch blinked, blinked again, but the cars were still on fire. Blinking didn't change that.

Their car was on fire. No bars on the phone. His brain, for a second (just a second) told him there was a phone in the Cullen house, but that was no good. Hotch knew he would never leave that house if he stepped foot inside, and they were alone... Reid, severly burned and only semi-conscious could not be left alone in the tall grasses with his injuries and no way to move or get away if... if someone came back. If Cullen came back. Reid was a sitting duck and more than that, Hotch felt superstitiously certain that if he left Reid's side for any reason, he would come back to find that the younger man had passed on. (Dead, that is the word you are looking for, Aaron, dead, D-E-A-D, dead. Reid will not "pass on", but he might very well die, he might very well croak, he might very well take a premature dirt nap, he might... -SHUT UP!-)

God. God. How had everything gone so wrong, so quickly? How come nobody else had sensed what Reid had sensed about Mark Cullen, the growing madness (or, rather, the madness that had been there all along, only thinly hidden?) and how had this little excursion to reinterview him gone so badly? This felt like a nightmare, surreal but at the same time, cruelly cogent. Hotch licked his lips nervously, kept his fingers pressed to the pulse point in Reid's neck as if doing so would mean that pulse would contine, would have to continue, would be politely obligated to continue. Reid's heart was going way too fast and was much too light.

He couldn't carry Reid any great distance, couldn't go in the house, and there were no bars on his cell. Their vehicle was coughing billows of black smoke and the sun was going down. The local sheriff and his men knew they were out here, but Hotch realized in horror that nobody else on his team knew where they had gone, just that they had skipped out on the arrest of Dylan Keegan.

Which meant they would have to wait here until someone, probably Rossi, felt that Hotch and Reid should have phoned "by now" or been back "by now" and inquired into their whereabouts. Even then, help wouldn't be immediate, even if Rossi somehow jumped the gun and sensed danger and deployed the troops. No. They had to wait until someone realized they had been gone far too long, or until someone (probably a distant neighbour) noticed all the smoke (they would notice the smoke from a distance, but not the flames) and phoned the fire department, phoned 911. Hotch thought of carrying Reid to the highway, sitting with him on the shoulder of the highway, and maybe that was the best idea, because a car was sure to come along within a few minutes at the very most, but Reid's eyes were dazed and unfocused and how much of that was the head injury, how much of that was a sign of an injury that would be made worse if Hotchner dared move him?

Dear God, please let someone know they were in need, sooner, rather than later. Reid was making a strange, gaspy noise that almost sounded like asthma now. His eyelids were at half mast, and even though he was still moaning, it was lighter, with less force behind it. Hotch had no doubt the young man was "in shock" and quite possibly circling the drain as his grandfather used to say. He let his fingers relax from monitoring the pulse in Reid's throat and stroked his cheek. It felt clammy, cold. Not a good sign. He'd have to move him. Pick him up and fireman carry him to the highway. He'd have to.

"Reid? Reid- I need to move you? It is going to hurt, but I need to move you, okay?"

Somehow, it felt better to include the injured man in his decision making process. If he included Reid, Reid might not die. Reid made a gaspy noise and his eyes fluttered. Hotch held his breath, felt Reid's pulse again. Gently slapped his cheek. Reid was going. He had to move him.

Hotch pulled the trench off Reid's legs, hissing in sympathy at the pain such a move might make, but Reid wasn't with it enough to even respond except for a low moaning cough which sounded decidely weak and wrong. Wrong was the only word available to describe that sound. Hotch grabbed him under the armpits again and hoisted him over his shoulder in what amounted to a fireman's carry, tried not to consider how much additional pain he was causing Reid by moving him, moving his burned, blackened legs and hurried the injuried man towards the road.

Hotch was breathing hard by the time they reached the shoulder. Reid made an agonized moan as his SSA lowered him to the ground, to the silt. Hotch rearranged the trench coat over Reid's burned lower half, pulled off his suit jacket and balled it up, placed it under Reid's bloody head as a pillow. Scanned the highway. Nothing. He felt Reid's pulse again (for some reason, monitoring the younger man's pulse was reassuring, even if it didn't actually change anything or help Reid). Reid made a slurred, grumbly noise at Hotch's ministrations and then coughed what looked like vomit all over the front of himself.

Hotch blinked and immediately turned Reid onto his side, wincing once more at the movement, hands trembling as Reid coughed up more bile and vomit.

People often threw up after head injuries. If the head injury was bad enough. It was important to make sure they didn't asphyxiate the vomit. Hotch let out a shaky breath, and checked the jacket under Reid's head, was horrified by the glut of blood that had already soaked into the expensive jacket fabric. Hotch pressed the jacket harder to the back of Reid's head (head injuries can bleed a lot, Aaron, you know that, and pain and shock can also cause vomiting, not just traumatic brain injuries- it looks bad and it is bad, but it might not be as a bad as it looks), could feel Reid's slippery cooling blood on his hands, could smell his blackened limbs. With one hand keeping the expensive padding forcibly pressed to the back of the gash in Reid's head, Hotch rearranged himself over his young charge. Tapped him lightly on the cheek again.

"Reid? Spencer?" His voice firm but gentle, the voice he had used on Jack after Hayley had been murdered and Jack had awoken crying and dazed from nightmares several times a week, wanting his Mommy with a shrill, hysterical insistance that was half true grief, half semi-conscious dream state. "Spencer, I need you to look at me. I need to see your eyes." His voice, firmer and more controlled than he felt by a mile. He had to be strong for Reid. He could be weak later.

Reid's eyes fluttered, but some part of him heard the command.

"Ho'ch?"

"Yes, that's right. It's me, Reid. It's Hotch. Keep your eyes open for me. That's right, Spencer. Look at me."

"Wha' happen-ent?"

"You were hurt, Reid. You are badly hurt. I need you to stay awake for me. I need you to look at me." Firm but gentle commands, capped with "for me". Reid was a naturally agreeable human being, liked to make others happy, liked to help others. The "for me" was as important as the commands themselves. Simple and to the point. Hotch kept rigid pressure on the bleeding back of Reid's head, kept the young man's head supported as best he could, but he couldn't sit next to Reid, he had to remain stooped in a crouch over Reid, ready to flag down a car lest he hear any approach.

"Hawwwch?" Reid drawled and his eyes rolled like pinballs, but Hotch could see Reid's eyes were trying very hard to stay open and to keep locked on his S.S.A's.

"Yes, it's me, Reid. It's Aaron. That's right. Keep looking at me. You are doing good."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Hotch knew that Reid, if he hadn't been so seriously wounded, would have corrected him on his grammar. (You are doing well, you meant to say, not you are doing good.)

Reid's eyes fluttered drowsily again and he moaned, but this moan was a sound that denoted fatigue and nausea and confusion more than pain. Hotch knew that severe burns often ceased to hurt, if the burns were deep enough. If the nerves were damaged. Or if shock was severe enough. All ugly possibilities, for as much as Aaron Hotchner hated the idea of Reid being in physical agony, it seemed somehow safer for him than the alternative. He had seen those burns, just for a second, but still he had seen them: seen the fabric of Reid's pants charred and eaten away, the flesh blackened and smoking, bloody but even the blood was cooked and smoking. Reid's spindly legs looking like images of burn victims Hotch had seen in glossy detail in advanced first aid hand outs, and the sight of them was nasty but mixed with the cooked meat smell? The cooked meat smell, the burnt hair smell... that brought all of this home and made it real. Reid's legs had been barbecued, as surely as a chicken leg thrust into a fire pit. The smell was revolting, but under the sickening charred meat smell was the smell of gasoline. Hotch's mind had pieced together what had happened. Reid had been led out to the barn and knocked on the back of the head (maybe when he was bending down to look through the boxes of the late John Cullen's possessions?) with a shovel, then doused in gasoline (thankfully, oddly, just his legs... from shoes up to mid thighs, but miraculously not his chest and arms and head like the others) and then lit on fire. He'd been unconscious when the fire started, but quickly come to... maybe one second later, maybe 3 seconds later, each passing second sinking the young man into a deeper hell and a more serious emergency.

He'd screamed neon screams of agony and Hotch had raced to him, put him out. How long had Reid's legs been lit up like hellacious torches, all told? 7 seconds? 10 seconds? Hotch wasn't sure, wasn't sure he wanted to know. A horrible thought had leapt into his head and was ripping apart the other thoughts that were huddling there like scared, orphaned children, and the thought was: what if Reid's injuries don't kill him, but he loses his legs? What if the burns are so bad that his legs have to be amputated? Or his feet, his toes? What happens to Reid, what happens if that is what has to happen from this point forward, what is certain to happen? If he can't walk? If he lives, but is not only permanently disfigured but loses his ability to walk? What then? He won't be able to be on the team anymore, won't be able to be in the field, not if he loses his ability to walk, and what happens then, Aaron, if that happens? Will he even want to live if that is his fate?

This thought was a beast; a deranged. rabid hyena-thing that was ripping apart each spark of hope, pulling and shaking and ripping the throats out of each glimmer of hope.

As if Reid was reading his mind, the younger man moaned and mumbled something that sounded a lot like "hurts".

"I know it hurts, Reid, I know. We're going to get you help, okay? You are going to be okay. I need you to stay awake, though. I need you to stay awake. Look at me." Hotch hated the pleading in his voice, the sad pity he was sure was already there, hated how scared and helpless he felt and hated most of all the fact that his words were helping diddly squat.

Reid wheezed out a laboured breath. His eyes were scanning the darkening sky above him as if looking for clues to his fate; eyes somehow both unfocused and utterly intent, as if he seeing a world previously unknown, previously invisible, a reality reawakened by the licking, horrendous flames. Then the lids of his eyes begin to droop, then slid gently closed, and Reid stopped making eye contact altogether. In response, Hotch pressed the jacket harder against the young man's bleeding head and said, none too gently, "Reid?! Reid, come on, wake up!"

No gentle tone this time, but rather an angry command laced with steel.

"Reid, wake up now. Look at me." And he tapped Reid on the cheek, not liking the cool temperature of that cheek one bit. Hotch felt Reid's neck again for a pulse, felt a burst of extra adrenaline shoot into his veins when he realized that he couldn't feel that fast, light stammer of a heart beat. He couldn't find the pulse.

His hands searched under Reid's armpits, pressing firmly, searching for any beat.

Hotch ground his teeth so hard he was sure he might crack his fillings and flung the trench off Reid's legs, found the zipper of Reid's pants and unzipped it, searched underneath for the pulse in the young man's groin, in the upper thigh. He, like every other agent in the BAU, took comprehensive first aid classes and took them often enough that the information was second nature, but Hotch could not find a pulse. He couldn't feel anything, applied a bit more pressure and moved his fingers, felt the fast and light glub glub glub of Reid's femoral artery hammering shockily along. Reid's heart was still trucking along. Reid was still alive.

Hotch removed his hand, trying not to think of the burns just below this part of the body, the scorched and peeling flesh, forced himself to take a deep breath (sparks of light were dancing in front of his eyes and he would be of no help to Reid if he fainted on top of him) and heard, through the rushing, heavy thrumming of blood in his own ears, the sound of a truck pulling over onto the shoulder. Heard the doors open and someone say "Dear, God..." and looked up, dazed, to see two middle aged men approaching with rigid, shocked faces.

"We're FBI agents and were attacked, my friend has been badly injured, he's been burned-" Hotch's words came out in a tumble he didn't care for before stumbling to an abrupt halt. He tried again, but the men were already moving in with careful, controlled expressions and slow movements.

"How do we move him?"

"You... someone hold his legs, his feet and I'll carry him under the arms," Hotch said, scooping Reid under the armpits again. The driver had run back to the truck and opened the bed at the back. Reid stirred with a low shout at the movement and his eyes flashed in pain and what might have been horror. His eyes were the eyes of someone in the midst of a particularly evil night terror. Hotch gritted his teeth and forced himself to stay focused, willed the sharp black specks dancing in his vision to ebb away. They loaded Reid into the truck bed (the cab of the truck was too small, even with a quick glance Hotch could see this to be fact), Hotch sitting with Reid's head (the bleeding had thankfully trickled off and was stopping) cradled in his lap.

"I'll call on my cell for an ambulance when we get into range," one of the men said in a voice that sounded as if it were coming over a tinny radio. Hotch nodded, kept his eyes focused on Reid. His own chest felt tight, almost painful and his arm was screaming at him now, where he had been burned himself and not felt it right away.

The truck moved carefully off the shoulder and onto the macadam, began to speed up.

"Ho'ch?" Reid said about a minute after they had begun to move.

"Yes, Reid. It's me. We're going to the hospital. You just hold on, okay?"

"Wha' happenent?" That damned question again. Hotch breathed out a long breath. No doubt Reid had a concussion. This wasn't permanent. He would be okay. Wasn't Reid always okay? Of course he was.

"You were hurt. Try not to talk too much right now, okay?"

Reid frowned at this, eyes lost and confused as if Hotch had said something in a language the young genius had never heard before. The sun was low on the horizon now, glistening in the distance like the cherry end of a cigarette. The sky above it was gun metal prussian blue. This day was ending.

This day was ending and anything could await them in the night. Hotch glanced back down at Reid, was mildly grateful that the young man's eyes were at least open and that there was some awareness in them. This hellish day was at an end, but night was here.

Above them was the endless sea of prussian blue. Anything could live or die in that dark, gunmetal ocean.

Only time would tell if the nightmare ended, or if a new one began.

Okay, that's it. Please review. Yup, it's short, it is sort of insane and seems to have a lot of pain for little comfort (yeah, I don't give much comfort in my stories, it is not my style, I feel that real comfort in life comes only in the most ephemeral, gossamer strands but it is precisely that fact that makes true comfort all the more potent and meaningful) but I hope you caught the mystical edge to it, the sense of us being these tiny little cogs in a much greater machine, with the suffering we experience on Earth being both meaningful and yet, at the same time, oddly superficial. (Heh, somebody is on a spiritualism kick, heh heh...). Oh yeah, reviews are always nice (they help me grow as a writer, and the flat out compliments are good morale boosters), as I am gearing up to start work (in theory) on a Mentalist fan fic, and I am also considering laying down a Twin Peaks story which takes place after Cooper smashes his head at the end of season 2 (I still believe Twin Peaks will return, I believe Lynch is going to bring it back to us and I can't wait).