genre: angst
pairing: season 13 spencer reid x oc
warning: drugs, restraints, hallucinations, childhood abuse, murder, implied sexual assault
summary: amelia discovers what lies ahead of her.
word count: 3.3k
AMELIA
I can't remember the last time my body hurt this badly. I think the last time I felt this level of pain was when I got into a car accident in college and got a concussion, but even still, the pain I'm feeling now is so much worse than that. I can't even move at all and every time I try, I'm held back.
I try to lift my arm but it's stuck in its spot. I try to move the other, but the same thing happens. I start to panic now, tugging on my arms as hard as I can to try and free them of the binds they're confined to. I open my mouth to scream for help but I quickly realize there's a mask over my face, dispelling a white gas with that familiar bubblegum scent that clouds my vision.
A cold sweat pours over my body and I start pulling at my restraints as hard as I can, not even able to see whatever might be in front of me. Where am I? Why am I tied down? Why is my head pounding? Why am I in so much pain? Where is Spencer? I know I'm not home. I want to go home. I want to get out of wherever I am. I want my boyfriend. I want to go home.
The more I kick and pull, the faster I lose my energy. My adrenaline is failing me and it feels like sleep is pulling me in, but I do everything I can to fight it. Every time my eyes close, I jerk my eyelids back open and keep trying to reach for the mask over my face. The only sound I can force out is a pitiful whimper, my efforts at trying to free myself getting more and more useless.
"Amelia?"
The word sounds so far away and it sounds so distorted that I doubt what was spoken was my name. I take in a long breath and the mysterious gas fills my lungs. It stings my chest and floods my senses, and as soon as I breathe it in, it makes my head dizzy.
Every bit of strength I have in my body floats away and it feels as though I become completely paralyzed. I will my limbs to keep pulling at my restraints and get free, but I just can't. I won't. My body won't let me.
"Amelia!"
Another cry escapes my lips but that is all I can force out. My eyes start to roll back. My body feels impossibly light. Lighter than air. The gas I'm breathing in is sweet. It smells good and it tastes good. I want more. As much as I want to keep pulling at the restraints, I let myself give in and just breathe in the white gas in front of my face.
My whole body jerks as I feel some sort of contact on my leg. A hand, maybe? There are some words spoken but I can't tell exactly what they are. Everything is distorted in my ears. It sounds like I'm underwater. Am I underwater? Am I drowning?
The mask slowly starts to slide away, leaving a puff of smoke in its wake. I try to speak yet again, but the only thing I can put together is incoherent mumbles. The sweet gas is gone but I find myself chasing the taste, arching my back to reach the mask.
But then a figure comes into my view, looming over me and pressing their fingertips into my cheeks. I focus my tiny amount of energy on trying to distinguish the identity of the figure in front of me, but it just looks like a black blob. I've gone from staring at a white cloud to a black blob.
"Amelia."
My body jerks as the figure swerves in front of me, a face coming far too close to mine. My name echoes from their lips a few times and I have to will my eyes to focus in order to determine just who is this close to me.
My face softens and tears start to well up in my eyes. His hair looks longer and his beard is more grown out. It looks scraggly, just like when he got out of prison. His eyes look completely dull. There's no beautiful sparkle in them that had captivated me years ago. I start to pull at my restraints again in an attempt to reach for his face.
"Spencer," I whimper as I start to hear my heart pound in my chest. His face disappears again and I cry out for what seems like the millionth time. "Spencer!"
Now that the mask is gone, I take a look at my surroundings. It's dark, nearly pitch black so I can't see if there is really anything around me. I'm freezing cold and every inch of my body is covered in goosebumps. And whatever it is I'm laying on is rock hard and must be metal because every time my hand grazes it, it sends a chill up my arm. My back is already stiff and my head is pounding.
I feel the restraints start to come off of my legs and then my wrists, and then Spencer's cold hands on my skin. He pulls at my arms to get me to sit up but I have no control over my limbs, becoming a rag doll in his arms.
"Come on, babe. Let's go," he states, dragging me off the metal slab. I collapse to the floor, blindly reaching for Spencer's oddly rough hands. I get dragged along the freezing concrete, cutting up my knees. I'm sputtering Spencer's name, pleading for him to slow down. My legs are bleeding and my head is pounding and I can barely even see straight.
But then there's another figure in the room, lurking in the shadows. I call out Spencer's name for what seems like the millionth time, but he doesn't look at me. He keeps his head forward and his arms around me as he drags me along. I do what I can to get his attention, to tug on his arm and shout his name, but I'm so weak that I'm just touching his sleeve and whimpering.
Suddenly, there are hands around Spencer's neck. I go tumbling to the floor as he tries to fight off his offender, but he's too weak already. Spencer chokes and gags as he gets short on air, reaching behind him. I cry out his name, trying to reach for him to help, but his face goes blue and his eyes roll back and he collapses to the floor.
A gut-wrenching cry escapes my lips as I drag myself closer to my lifeless love, grabbing onto his cheeks. My tears fall onto his face as the sobs take control of my body. "Wake up," I weep, shaking his head in my hands. "Please! Spencer!"
The next thing I feel is my body being dragged away from Spencer's dead body, back the way we just came, back to the metal slab. I'm thrown back up and strapped back down but I'm kicking and screaming with all my might, shrieking Spencer's name and calling for help.
"Shut up!" The voice is venomous, and the hands on my skin are freezing cold, only sharpening my goosebumps.
"Spencer!" I cry out, and when I reach my arm out, it's harshly pulled back down to the table and strapped down. "Let me go! Spencer! Spencer!"
A hand comes over my mouth, muffling my screams and cries. My chest is tightening in the frightening way that I know so well and not being able to breathe properly isn't helping at all.
Then the owner of the hand leans over me, a smirk comes to his face, his very lean face. "Hi there, Amelia," he draws out, eyes glistening with a certain level of crazy that I recognize all too well. I jerk my head to the side to escape the grasp of his huge hand, but his grip is too tight. He tuts at my reaction, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Oh, what's wrong? You don't recognize me, Amelia?"
For the first time since I opened my eyes, I stop squirming, I stop fighting my many restraints. I look up at the too-familiar man above me and study his face, trying to place what is so recognizable about him. Did I go to school with him? Is he friends with Spencer? Is this that creepy man that lived down the hall from Spencer? Did he ever buy art from me?
But then my eyes widen because as soon as I place his face, I can't unsee it. And he knows right away too because his smirk grows into the creepiest smirk I've ever seen and he removes his hand. "Nice to see you again, Miss Kelsey."
"Peter Lewis?" I squeak out. "You– what–"
"I thought I heard the sweet sounds of screaming!" There's another voice from a little further away but it gets closer as he speaks, footsteps heavy. They don't sound anything like Spencer's. Spencer's footsteps make my heart soar and they make me want to jump out of bed and into his arms. But these footsteps make me want to shrivel up and disappear into another dimension. I used to lay awake and memorize the sound of these footsteps. I used to listen to the footsteps above me and use all my energy to distinguish whose footsteps were whose. And when I heard those haunting boots, I would tip-toe down the hallway and sneak into Cody's room, sitting with my back against the door as I watched him sleep, ready to jump into action in the case of those boots nearing. I would recognize those footsteps anywhere.
"Ah!" Another man comes around the corner, his smirk somehow eviler than Peter's. And the moment I lay eyes on him, I try to cower away, forgetting about my restraints.
After all these years, my father makes a reappearance. My father kills the two people in my life that I love more than anything, gets arrested, and then apparently escapes from prison and spends his whole life on the run just to kidnap me? I never thought I'd have to see him again. I thought he would rot away in prison and die in a lonely cell like he deserves. I never thought that he would team up with an asshole like Peter Lewis, the man who abused me when I was in foster care, and kidnap me.
"It's so wonderful to see you again, sweetheart," Dad quips in the fakest voice, coming to one side of the metal slab so I'm surrounded by the two men. They're looking down at me like I'm a piece of meat, but I suppose that's all I am to them.
I shake my head, squeezing my eyes shut. "Please let me go. I–I– just– please–"
"You know," Dad cuts me off, crossing his arms over his chest, "you're one tough cookie. Did you know that? You just had to start fucking an FBI agent, didn't you? You had to make the three of our lives that much harder? And," he chuckles humorlessly, shaking his head the way I had a few moments ago, "a BAU agent, nonetheless? Come on, Amelia. Have some decency."
My mouth falls open, eyes glancing between the two men. "W–What? P–P–"
The two of them laugh again, their voices echoing off the stale walls. Dad reaches over me to fix my hair, pushing it behind my ear. I grimace as he touches me, his fingertips calloused and tough. "You don't know who Peter is, do you? He's Mr. Scratch."
Mr. Scratch and Damian Kelsey.
Dad sits on the edge of the metal slab, almost on top of my bound leg, smirking down at me. Scratch just stands at the other side of me, his eyes periodically darting between me and the tank of gas a few feet away. "We," Dad drops his voice so he's quieter, "have been following you for years, did you know that?"
Swallowing the colossal lump in my throat, I decide to respond. "What does that mean?"
"You–" Dad exhales dramatically, "you were always a little brat." His fists clenched and unclench as he speaks. "You were supposed to be home when I killed Mariposa and Cody, but you weren't. I went looking for you but you went and called the police on me. And from the moment I went to prison, I knew I had to get my revenge on you."
I'm distracted from my dad's story when Scratch starts moving around. He fiddles around with the gas tank and with some things out of my line of view. I almost whine out, wishing he would put that stupid mask on me again just so I can disappear into the scent of bubblegum and not have to live through this torture.
"I organized a prison break and immediately got to work in the free world. I joined a group of hitmen and kept killing and that's how I made my money."
Why is he telling me this? I couldn't care less. Spencer is dead. I just saw him choked out right in front of me, and if Spencer is dead, I have nothing and no one to live for. I wish they would just kill me right now. I'm sure they're armed somehow. Just shoot me, just strangle me, just keep the gas up for too long. Just kill me already.
"And," Dad keeps talking, but his fingers start to trail up my leg. I want so badly to shake him off. I want to swat his hand away. I want to save what little innocence I have left. "When I was working with those hitmen, I met a wonderful woman named Catherine Adams. Does that name ring a bell? Surely you remember Cat. She remembers you."
Of course I remember the name Catherine Adams. I remember her name for the same reason I remember Peter Lewis. In two separate foster homes, they made my life a living hell. They were the reason I ran away from those homes. They tortured me. Peter would dress up in the scariest costumes and give me nightmares and laugh when I woke up screaming and would tell everyone at school the next day, and even our foster parents, his biological parents, would tell me to suck it up.
Then I ran away from the Lewis house to hopefully get CPS to realize that I needed a better home. But they placed me in a new house with an even worse family. Cat would beat me up, give me black eyes and sprained wrists and ankles and busted lips and things much worse than that and our foster parents would look the other way. She was horrible to me, even worse than Peter was. But the two of them were the absolute worst people I came across in foster care. How do they think I wronged them? What did I ever do to them but try to find a good home?
Dad chuckles and keeps his hand at my knee, squeezing tightly. "Good. I'm glad you remember her. She told me all about you and your time in foster care together, and then she told me about how she met Peter, over there, and how I needed meet him, how we would get along so well. And so I did, and we devised a plan. This plan, right here," he taps his finger against the metal I'm laying on. "We followed you through college and we watched you from far too close. We even bought two apartments right across from yours. Peter," Scratch perks up at the sound of his name, "the pictures."
Scratch picks up a stack of papers from a table nearby and hands them to my dad, then starts fiddling with the gas again. Dad turns the papers around, showing me pictures taken of me walking around campus with Jenna. Then as he goes along, it's pictures of me in my apartment and me walking around the city. It's absolutely horrifying. My whole life has been under a lens and my serial killer father has been watching me.
"And then," he throws all the pictures onto the floor, causing them to scatter, "you went ahead and fell in love with an FBI agent. How ridiculous. How stupid. How irresponsible. Once, you even dropped everything and flew here to see him when he was shot. You were blinded by love. How," Dad's face screws into an expression of disgust, "repulsive."
"Please," I beg, "just kill me. I know that's what you want. Just kill me."
"No, no, not yet," Dad shakes his head. "I'm not done with the story!" He's smiling like an absolute madman. He's enjoying this, of course, he is. "We knew that if we wanted to get you, we had to take out the agent first, so we set a new plan in motion. Cat went in first and turned herself in, sending herself to prison. We waited a while and when the opportunity was right, your dumbass boyfriend got even dumber and went to Mexico for illegal drugs and we got him arrested."
"Th–That was you?"
"Don't interrupt me!" He screams, grabbing ahold of my hair and slamming my head into the metal. The pain that surfaces in my head is astronomical and I can barely even see straight. When I try to focus on my dad again, I see three of him. No, wait, there's four of him. Which one is the actual one? I can't tell.
I hear him inhale and exhale, and his hands rest on my knee again. "Yes, Amelia, that was us. We sent him to prison so we could snatch you up, nice and easy without a federal agent getting in the way. But then you started spending all your time in a federal building or at your dumb friends' house and we couldn't grab you then either. Then the stupid BAU found the evidence they needed and he was exonerated."
Scratch swoops in, leaning over me with his wicked smile and his crooked, yellow teeth. "Ever wonder why your doors are unlocked? Why your balcony and your windows are open? Ever stopped to wonder who could've possibly made extra keys to your locks when you weren't around?" He holds up a key ring filled with keys on them, and Dad snatches them out of his hand.
"Your whole life has been under my eye, Amelia," Dad stands and crosses his arms, his eyes darting over to Scratch. "And now the end of your life will be too. Go ahead."
Before I can even say anything else, the mask is forced over my head as I am flooded with the white gas again, filling my senses. But it feels like just a millisecond later that it's being ripped off of me, and the BAU is standing there in their kevlars with Scratch and my father on their side of them. Even Spencer is there, his hand poised on his gun.
"What?" I sputter out, feeling my restraints being pulled off again. "Is this– is this real?"
"I don't know," Dad chuckles. "Is it?"
"Come on, babe." Spencer says again. "Let's go."