Title: Night
By: Sarie Venea
Pairing: gen
Rating: PG
Note: so, in order to stem of accusations about posting a story similar to the upcoming two-parter, (dude, if you get spoiled by that...) I am posting this today. I like it, it's just a one-shot to keep my fingers flexible while I am working on Painting Shadows.
Summary: Reid hates the dark. Just a smidgen of terror to start your day.

***

"Help! Someone please!" Spencer Reid screamed with everything in him, desperate, ignoring the blood that trickled down his elbows as he screamed, screamed, screamed. His throat scraped and stung and he prayed his voice didn't give out before they found him, heard him, came for him.

"Anyone! Help!" The trees were thick and dark, the night an oppressive, creeping, haunting darkness. He hated it, it was slowly scaring him, deep in the recesses of his soul and mind, torture his captor couldn't have known about and yet couldn't have chosen better.

The zip ties cut into his skin and blood and pain welled and burst across his mind, but he didn't feel it, blind and edging too close to panic to back off now. He pulled and yanked, cutting them deeper and yet the action futile against the tight plastic and the fencepost. Nothing would give, not the U-nail that bit deep into the wood or the twisted rope of six plastic ties, six, he counted and knew it was pointless to try to break them, wrapped around his hands. His ankles were zipped tightly, his feet bare, toes curled into the dirt. He felt like an animal chained and left to be torn apart by a predator.

The unsub was out there, waiting. He didn't care who Reid was, what he was. Reid was just another sacrifice. A sacrifice to himself and the monster that he was.

Reid swallowed the bile and screamed again, praying they'd found his dropped badge, they, his team, his friends, the only ones who even cared he existed. They found it, under the SUV, they had to, they did they did they did.

He swallowed again and tasted blood against his tongue. Breathe, calm down. Take a breath, Spencer, take a breath. It's dark, but you're going to be okay. They are looking and you're going to be fine.

Branches snapped and he started, nearly crying out at the jolt of adrenaline. He was so alone, god there was nothing out there, he couldn't see, he didn't know what, or who, or where... Terrified. Predators can smell fear; he knew he was like a dish on a platter, ready to be served. He had no protection whatsoever. He forcibly removed his mind from that road. He was not helpless, not a defenseless little boy that the others had to continually protect. He was a member of the team, for a purpose and with a specific job. He was valuable.

Wasn't he?

Oh god.

"Help! Someone!" They had no way of knowing where he was. He had to help them out, help them find him. Did they even know he was out here? Did they even know he was missing?

He jerked again, his skin tearing and pain flooding his arms. He swore violently, furious, realizing the damp on his face was tears. That made him angrier, in turn making him cry harder.

"Let me go!" He screamed again, yanking and pulling and panicking even while recognizing it as the wrong thing to do. His chest ached as he gasped for breath, alternating screaming and sucking in air and great rasping sobs. "Get back here! Get back here you son of a bitch! Let me go! Help me, oh god someone please!" His voice cracked and gave out, scratching painfully like a broken vinyl record.

The night grew closer, darker, colder. Later and later, but his watch face was shattered and he had no idea what the time really was. Hours, he could tell, hours crept by. His cries died completely, nothing left but the pain of his torn wrists and thin tracks of dirty tears.

His head rested against his knees, his arms pulled off to the side, muscles strained and abused into position. Something hit the back of his head, a wet leak that snaked down his neck. Another hit his ear – and then it was raining. Pouring, cold and invisible in the inky night and instantly soaking through his thin collared shirt and slacks. He tilted his head back, opening his mouth, the cold water sweet and silky on his tongue and sore throat. The warmth of his blood on his arms washed away, the freezing shivers starting in his legs and arms, his feet and hands too numb to feel the bitter temperature. He curled closer to the post, shaking.

"Please."

"Please."

It was a miserable whimper, the voice trembling and small, but achingly familiar.

"Reid! Reid! Where are you?" Hotch shouted, squinting in the cloudy pre-dawn light. The rain had destroyed any remnant of a trail, either the kidnapped agent's or the unsub's. They'd been searching blind. He sucked in a deep breath, his flashlight combing the trees. "Derek! Derek, I've got something!" He shouted behind him, the other agent crashing through the brush toward him.

"Reid, it's Hotch, say something!" He stood still, his fist up, the group of searchers spread out behind him. They paused, silent.

"Hotch…over here…"

He spun toward the words, reaching his light in between the trees. Something glinted and moved; a fence of shiny barbed wire and a huddled figure blinking, his eyes wide and face streaked with mud.

"Reid!" Hotch gave a hoarse cry and sprinted forward, Morgan's light dancing with his own.

"Guys…I'm right here…I'm right here."

Hotch slid to his knees in the mud next to the shivering agent, shrugging out of his jacket and wrapping it around his shoulders.

"Get me loose, please…" But, involuntary, Reid jerked and hissed through his teeth when Derek touched his swollen wrists.

"Are you alright? Are you hurt?" Hotch ran his hands across Reid's back, looking for blood, holes, broken bones. JJ appeared out of the trees, her light adding to the pool of flashlights that chased the darkness back. Her hair was wet and stuck to her cheeks, her eyes damp and red from more than the cold and rain. She turned and shouted for a medic, someone talking fast into a crackling radio.

"Reid, this won't feel good, alright? Look at me, Spencer," Morgan ducked and looked up into Reid's face, asking him to focus. The wet head nodded and Hotch's hands tightened into his shoulders. Derek slid his open knife in between the shredded skin and the plastic ties, slicing through them with a quick tug that sent a shudder through all three men. Reid sucked in a breath, releasing it as he yanked one last time and twisted defiantly away from the fencepost, Hotch's arms pulling him closer and his hands grabbing Reid's forearms before anything could touch the wounds.

"Easy there, it's alright, we've gotcha," he murmured as Morgan cut the ties around his feet. Reid flinched again, pressing backward against Hotch.

"I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine…" Reid whispered, "He didn't hurt me, he just tied me up, he didn't hurt me –"

"I called Gideon, he's going to meet us at the hospital." JJ's voice was calm and soothing. She bent over, her hands on her knees, a smile tired and quiet. Reid stared at her, a night of terror and pain and cold finally taking over and closing his eyes for him, Hotch tightening his grip as the youngest went limp and still.

"Reid, you need to stay in bed." JJ was exasperated.

Reid was sitting up, his legs dangling over the side of the gurney. His ankles poked out from the scrub pants, his feet skinny, white bandages wrapped around the reddened skin.

"I am not staying here, JJ, I am fine. I am just fine and I want to go home with you guys." He lifted one hand, rapping his fingertips against the IV pole. His wrists were stitched and wrapped, the needle just below the crook of his elbow. Blankets were pooled around him, tucked over his shoulders and sliding off his lap, JJ trying to keep them over his knees despite his swinging feet and restless arms.

"Reid, listen to me, you are still ice-cold to the touch! You need to be monitored for at least another night and…sit still!" She yanked the blanket closer around his ribs and gave him a look. Reid's head was still damp, a towel over his head making him look like a little boy. He blinked up at her, his wide, bruised eyes and pale skin sending a jolt of something through her chest.

They'd turned around and he wasn't there, a question hanging in the air and no one to answer it. Retracing their steps, ignoring the sinking feeling that said he was gone, they found his bag thrown under the SUV and his gun in a ditch near the woods. She hated the woods, not a fear anymore but it was dark and cold and there was an icy feeling in her stomach.

It hadn't gone away yet.

"I want to go home, please. They caught the unsub, right? Even before you found me?" His voice was just a little bit pleading, his hands twisted in the blankets.

That's where Gideon had been, interrogating, questioning, trying to get anything from the man with the cold blue eyes and nervous hands. He never said where the "boy" was. The "girls" were dead, they found their bodies, their blood, but the boy? Their boy? He refused to say, merely smiled and tightened the knot in Jason's gut.

Reid was right, the case was closed, but the nightmare wasn't over. Something clattered across the room and he jumped, a fast breath and his hand clutching at her shoulder. She sighed, pulling the slipping blanket closer to his neck and gently rubbing up and down his arms.

"Just…wait until Hotch gets back, 'k?"

He sneezed. She rested her hands on his head, pushing the towel over his hair.

"Reid?" Hotch ducked around the curtain and looked at Reid like he would disappear if they didn't keep him in sight all the time.

"Hey." Reid rubbed his eyes with the non-IV-ed arm, "I'd really like to go with you guys today."

"I know, I spoke to the doctor and as soon as you finish that IV we can take you to the airport. We have been given permission to steal as many blankets as we possibly can." He smiled and rested his hand on JJ's shoulder briefly. "Can you spend a couple of minutes in public in scrubs?"

Reid nodded. Morgan pushed under the curtain with a wheelchair, his grin wide enough to split his face. Spencer glanced at the nearly empty saline bag.

The plane hummed gently around them, Gideon in his place near the window, tapping the file folder against the tabletop. Hotch leaned back in the chair across from him, watching the three team members on the floor of the plane.

Reid was sound asleep. The pile of blankets was a nest around him, several stolen pillows cushioning his head and splayed limbs. Bruises invisible before were now dark splotches on his skin. Morgan and JJ sat near his head, a deck of cards flipping back and forth as they talked quietly. It had taken over an hour for the exhausted young agent to fall asleep, their murmured conversation audible in snatches as Hotch pretended not to listen.

"It was dark." Morgan whispered as he flicked a card at Reid's forehead.

"Yeah." Reid's eyes darkened as he remembered what the oppressive night had felt like.

JJ was in the bathroom, Morgan sitting against the couch..

"You like the dark."

"Shut up." A stifled yawn destroyed the effect of the command.

"Did he make any sense when he –"

"No, I never really understood what he was talking about." Reid shifted, wincing as his wrist bumped a pillow.

Silence filled the plane for a few more minutes, Reid ignoring the gentle slap of cards against his forehead as Morgan continued to flick them at him.

"Morgan?"

"Yeah?"

Reid sucked in a soft breath, his eyes closed and pulled tight with tension.

"It was really dark."

He'd been terrified. That was like a hit to the gut, angering Hotch even more than the fact that he'd been hurt. Fear didn't heal with band-aids and warm blankets. Fear followed you home from the hospital, followed you to your front door, into your bedroom and under your sheets. It sat on your couch and turned the shadows in your living room into demons and the creaks in your floor into ghosts.

He glanced at his watch. Four more hours, four more hours and they'd be home. Reid could have his couch tonight; Haley would probably be furious if he didn't bring the kid home.

Sunlight slanted across the floor, the plane's gentle bank bringing the shaft of light across Reid's buried head. JJ's hands paused in the card game, one slowly reaching out to brush his hair back, resting against his cheek. He frowned, moving restlessly. She pulled her hand away, going back to the card game, unsuccessfully ignoring the smirk on Morgan's face.

"Oh, like you weren't going crazy worried about him," she muttered, shuffling her cards with a bit more force than necessary.

"Worried yes. Crazy, no," he replied, handing her his cards and stretching.

"You shot a bird, Morgan. It didn't steal anyone." Gideon glanced over the top of his glasses, smiling as Morgan huffed a protesting breath.

"Poor bird never saw it coming." Hotch suppressed a grin at the scandalized look on JJ's face.

"A bird?"

Morgan threw out his hands defensively.

"It came out of nowhere! I thought-"

"No more Hitchcock for you."

"Shhh, all of you." JJ rolled her eyes.

Morgan narrowed his eyes at her as he rearranged his cards, muttering even as JJ ignored the look, focusing on her own hand.

Despite his mumblings, Morgan let his eyes wander across the length of his friend, checking, just to be sure, that he was breathing and sleeping and quite safe.

Just to be sure.

***