Title: Pain
Person Responsible: Jodie
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Self-mutilation; cutting
Summery: Still reeling from his kidnapping, Reid trades drug addiction for a different kind of habit. Based on Three Days Grace "Pain".
Disclaimer: Don't own em, wish I did. Fanfiction is an infringement of copyright, but I don't make money off of this so don't sue me.

***

"Pain, without love

Pain, I cannot enough

Pain, I like it rough

Cause I'd rather feel pain then nothing at all

You're sick of feeling numb

You're not the only one

I'll take you by the hand

And I'll show you a world that you can understand

This life is filled with hurt

When happiness doesn't work

Trust me and take my hand

When the lights go out you will understand" – Three Days Grace "Pain"

It had all started with a little pinprick.

The first weeks had been the hardest. He was still reeling from not just the physical blows, but from the memories he had kept buried for so long that came back to haunt him. He was dealing with it, but in getting over he'd begun to program his emotions out and was left feeling nothing, and that felt worse then being pain or being angry. He wasn't sure why he'd taken the two little vials with him; it was a moment of weakness, like it had been a little while ago.

Around 3 A.M., an hour where if someone hasn't slept all night they wonder if they have gone completely insane, he'd sat on his bed tapping and fingering a syringe, contemplating. Then in a jolt, his senses came back to him and in fright and disgust with himself he was flinging the syringe away from him when the needle grazed his wrist. It was a simple scratch, the abrasion only deep enough to raise a red mark and only a tiny drop of blood bubbled up.

But for some reason that tiny drop of blood seemed for intriguing then anything else in the world. It had brought a spark of ... something in the void that had begun to replace his emotions

And that's all it was in the beginning. Just little scrapes with the open blade of a pair of nearly dull scissors. Just enough scrape the top layer of skin off, and leave angry red welts across the pale flesh of his stomach. He didn't notice when the cuts began to go deeper and fill with blood till it ran in rivulets down his skin and stained his clothes.

No one knew, and he was going to keep it that way. He'd been able now to control the moody shifts he'd been going through, something the team saw as positive and why shouldn't they see it that way. He was dealing with the emotional trials that Tobias (or rather Charles) Hankel had put him through in inadvertently choosing (causing) a young couple to be murdered, the beatings he'd suffered, the drugging, and remembering the anger of when his father had walked out and the pain of slowly seeing his mother succumb to severe mental illness. He soaked the red stains from his clothes, bandaged and hid the scars.

He'd seen his share of hardship and pain in his life, but never been self-destructive before. But this wasn't self-destruction, was it? He had no plans to kill himself, and even if programmed the physical pain out (which he wasn't going to) he always cut somewhere that wasn't vital; his shoulders or abdomen, never his wrists or the inside curve of his elbow where the all veins were. The cuts never went too deep either, just enough to see the blood, feel the pain.

It was better then feeling nothing at all.

"Anger and agony

Are better the misery

Trust me I've got a plan

When the lights go off you will understand"