Undecided

"Please. Please... don't hurt me. I'll give you whatever you want!" Christin pleaded, though she knew it would do no use. Her bloodied hands reached out uselessly in the darkness towards her nameless, faceless captor. The rope that tied her ankle to a pipe jutting out of the earthen wall bit into her skin. She knew it had to be bleeding, but there was no light, so she couldn’t be sure.

“Shut up,” her kidnapper growled, his fist, covered in black leather, coming into contact with the side of Christin’s face with a sharp sound.

She gasped in pain, the shockwaves from his unexpected outburst rippling through her body, causing her head to fly back into the wall behind her. A few clods of dirt fell off all around her in the action. They littered her grimy dress. It had been her favorite before she’d been taken – a pretty green and white thing with the pattern of ivy all around it, simply perfect for the hot summer nights in her hometown of Garland, Texas.

Soundless tears leaked from Christin’s eyes. He best friend, Shelbi, had been with her the night she had been taken. In fact, Shelbi had been taken, too. But Shelbi…

Christin swallowed heavily. Shelbi hadn’t made it. Her body was still in the room somewhere. She could smell it decomposing.

The captor was still in the room, still touching her face. He had been talking the whole time, but Christin hadn’t been paying any attention.

“… don’t know why I’ve waited this long. But you’re special, aren’t you? Not like the extra you had with you. I can tell you’re special. And you can never leave. I’ll never let you go. We can be together even after I…”

Christin squeezed her eyes shut tightly, just wanting him to go away and leave her in this cellar with the corpse.

A crashing sound above her head brought her back out of her abstraction. She took a deep breath to scream for help, but the kidnapper’s hand wound almost reflexively around her mouth before she got the opportunity. Her eyes narrowing, she shook her head obstinately, trying to cause his grip to slip. She only needed a second to scream for help.

Something hard and cold thwacked her in the head, causing her to go limp and numb. She vaguely recognized the sound of a gun being cocked from her years of gun-safety classes as a small girl.

She moaned into her captor’s hand. He shushed her softly, gently stroking her hair with the butt of his gun, and then pressing the barrel firmly against her temple.

“They can’t take you away from me. Not now, not ever. You’ll always be mine, even if I have to…”

He trailed off, but the gun on Christin’s head made the rest of his sentence pretty clear, even to her pain-clouded mind. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, and the man holding her, pinning her to the ground and to himself, shushed her once more, kissing the top of her head tenderly.

A pinprick of bright light began to make itself known in the dirt above their heads. There was the sound of boards being ripped up, one by one, and dirt began to fell into the earthen cavern. For the first time in a week of sitting in the dark, Christin could see light. Her spirits rose ever so slightly, as she knew that her rescuers were close.

“Let her go, Jacob!” a strong male voice boomed through the small hole created by the people working to save her.

Without thinking, Christin gasped. It was the first voice she’d heard other than hers and her captor’s in a week. She began to struggle again.

“STOP IT!” her captor – that is, Jacob – shouted, shaking her and momentarily releasing his iron grip on her face.

“Help,” she called, and her own weak voice was enough to stop all the other noises for a split second.

Then a higher, younger male voice replaced the strong one. He was talking quickly, like his mouth was having to work extra hard to keep up with his brain. He had one of those really familiar voices, like she had known him before.

“We have to come get her from you because we need to make sure she’s ok. We understand that you two are inseparable, and we don’t mind that. You can have her back as soon as we make sure she’s not hurt,” he explained, trying to sound entirely non-threatening, as the hole in the ceiling got bigger and bigger. Soon, it was big enough for a man to fit through. “We’re going to come down now, ok? We don’t want to hurt you.”

“O… ok. But no SWAT guys.” Jacob said, tightening his grip on Christin and pressing his gun into her temple with more strength. There was a moment of quiet and calm, and then a man’s feet dangled into the little cavern.

He dropped into the room stealthily, his heavily muscled arms assisting in the process. He was tall, and mildly attractive, with dark skin and a little not-a-beard on his chin. But Christin hardly noticed that. He couldn’t have looked more gorgeous to her than he did. He was her savior, the one who was going to save her from the crazy Jacob guy who looked to be getting more nervous by the second.

Then another pair of feet appeared in the hole, followed by another pair of legs, torso, and a head. It was another guy. He was slighter than the first, with longish brown hair. He looked like the school nerd, and she almost giggled at his slightly disheveled appearance. But again, Christin couldn’t notice anything other than the fact that he was here to save her, to rid her of the evil monster called Jacob.

Jacob jumped, whacking Christin’s head on the wall again. Her vision went fuzzy, then black. The next thing she knew, she was lying on the ground, and Jacob and the boy with brown hair were yelling at each other.

“I’m going to shoot her! I’ll kill us both!” Jacob raved. He raised the gun from his side and pointed it at Christin.

“It’s ok. You don’t have to do that-,” the boy explained, taking a cautious step forward.

But Jacob fired his gun. Christin gasped, then screamed, pain invading her chest. She shut her eyes, and heard another gunshot.

The blackness consumed her once more.

“No!” Dr. Spencer Reid shouted, rushing to her side as soon as he’d seen Jacob take his own life. She was still breathing, but shallowly.

“Christin, wake up,” he muttered, shaking her shoulder lightly. Morgan was taking care of the unsub, and calling the paramedics, as well.

He took out his pocketknife and cut the rope attaching her leg to a rusty pipe coming from a wall. Above all the relief of catching the unsub and getting the victim back, he felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. Guilt that he was the cause of the gunshot wound in Christin’s chest. Guilt that he had taken the step that had caused it. Guilt that he might have been too late.

Abruptly, Christin’s heart stopped. It took maybe three seconds for Reid to process enough information to start CPR.

By the time the paramedics arrived, he had started her heartbeat again. Tears flowed down his face as he realized that she really might not make it. When they loaded her into the back of the ambulance, he had to follow. The guilt was eating him from the inside out. He could have stopped this from happening. He should have been able to stop this from happening. He analyzed every move he had made in his head, automatically correcting his mistakes. Statistically, the percentage of the number of times he should have been able to get the gun away from the unsub without harming the hostage was approximately…

“Sir, you can’t come with us,” the paramedic loading Christin into the back of the van cautioned.

Spencer was about to object, but Morgan’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. “Let her go, man. We’ll catch up with her later, after Hotch talks to us.”

Spencer turned around to face Morgan. “This is my fault,” he said simply, the corners of his mouth drawn down in anxious worry. He let his gaze drop, suddenly too ashamed to meet Morgan’s eyes.

“No, Reid. Don’t even say that. Don’t even think it. What happened in there is no more your fault than it is the victim’s. Don’t blame yourself,” Derek Morgan insisted, trying to meet Reid’s gaze.

“This isn’t your fault.”