When you’re forgiving but you can't forget ,It feels like you’re drowning but you've still got breath, And we've been tryin’ to leave this ghost to rest, But there ain't no getting out of this mess.
-The Script's ‘Bullet From A Gun.’
A skinny man with dark hair looked around, lifting the Ray-Bans from his face to get a clear view of the abandoned graveyard he was in. His expression was sheepish, like a child who had been caught red handed. His black Converse crushed the dead leaves under his feet as he walked down the slope that led to the place of his nightmares. It hadn't changed; even though in daylight it didn't look as bad as he imagined it, it still had the same musty smell that seemed to have lingered for a lifetime.
After a while of just looking around, he bent down onto his knees, touched the mossy, damp floor and sighed.
"I'm sorry."
__________________________________________________________
"Pretty boy! Oi, Reid!"
Spencer Reid looked at his friend Derek Morgan approaching him and sighed; he had forgotten that they had made plans for this weekend.
"And why did you not show up?"
Spencer looked at the ground, “Sorry, I...uh, I had to go out of town."
Derek raised a dark eyebrow and looked at his friend who looked guilty as hell, “Your Mom?"
Spencer shrugged and took a sip of his coffee as he walked over to his desk in the bullpen. Just as he was leaving, Derek grabbed his arm.
"Are you okay?"
Spencer pulled his arm away, wanting to scream at him: "Am I okay? No, Derek I am not okay! It has almost been six years since the worst day of my life, my headaches are still here and I'm still so confused over the whole Emily thing, so no, I am not okay!"
Of course he didn't; he just nodded and walked away from his best friend, who knew he was lying.
_______________________________________________________________
It was a slow day at the BAU office in Quantico; it was so slow that Derek Morgan finished all of his paperwork and Spencer Reid had drunk five cups of coffee. When it was nearly the end of their shift, Derek looked over at Reid who had drifted off to sleep on his desk.
Sighing, he watched as Jennifer Jereau - or JJ as she preferred to be called - shook him awake, and he watched Reid jump about a mile in the air. Taking a deep breath after his little panic, he and JJ engaged in a deep conversation, whispered so Derek couldn't hear.
When they had done, JJ looked worried; her eyebrows were furrowed as she made eye contact with Morgan, who got up and following her to her office. She closed the door behind him.
"What's wrong?"
JJ sighed, “It’s Reid; there's something wrong. He wouldn't tell me but he told me his nightmares are back."
"The nightmares or just nightmares?"
"The one and only Tobias nightmares."
Morgan sighed; he remembered the phone calls he used to get for about six months after Reid quit using. He shuddered remembering his best friend’s voice break over the phone in a distressed panic that Tobias' alter ego of his father was coming to get him. But he's grown since then; lost so much of his child-like innocence.
"Is he okay?"
JJ shrugged, “I’m worried; after Emily and then he told me about...thinking about taking Dilaudid again… I don't want to lose him to that."
"He wouldn't slip to that again. He just wouldn't."