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It was so stupid in retrospect.
The team had gone out to eat after a fruitless day of working the latest case. It had reached the point where all they could really do was wait for more evidence – meaning another body – before any more headway could be made.
So they, hungry and exhausted, had all agreed to get some food and some sleep.
Thankfully, a local diner was open late and sat them quickly. A few other parties were there, so the team weren't the only people awkwardly eating in an empty restaurant as the staff cleaned tables and mopped floors.
Their food had been ordered, and they were talking and sipping on their drinks when it happened.
The food belonging to the table next to them came out. One of the patrons had ordered the trout. And the waitress passed by Spencer while heading to deliver the food, leaving a trail of the scent of fish behind her.
And Reid lost the ability to breathe.
They're burning fish hearts and livers. Keeps away the devil.
Tears burned behind his eyes, and he was staring down at the table, but he wasn't actually seeing it because all he could see was Raphael standing over him, a revolver in his head. Opening the action to pull out a bullet and holding it up.
It's God's will.
A strangled noise left his lips as he fell further into the flashback.
“You don't have to do this,” Spencer pleads, his voice rough from just waking up and terror.
Raphael slips the bullet back into the action and spins it before slamming it shut. “I'm just an instrument of God.”
There's something so unnerving about his delivery. Flat and monotone and unfeeling as Reid's life hangs in his hands.
The revolver raises, glinting in the soft light of the fire that is heating the cabin and cooking those burning fish guts. The hammer pulls back as the trigger presses down, and Reid pulls his hands to his chest protectively – as if it would keep him safe from a bullet lodging in his brain – but the cuffs have been attached to a leather strap that disappears beneath the chair, and all he can do his hold his hands up in front of him awkwardly, and shrug back and wince in anticipation of his death.
The action rotates and the hammer falls and Reid is alive because the bullet wasn't in that chamber after all.
“–eid! You're okay, man! You're safe here–”
“–Keeping us safe,” Spencer is saying to the man in front of him.
The answer is lost as time blurs and skips, but the glare given remains with him.
And then his foot is suspended in the air, bare and gripped by Hankel. Hankel who holds a log in his other hand. “Time to confess, Spencer Reid.”
He hesitates, and Hankel takes it as a refusal, the log coming down hard against the sole of his foot.
Reid yelps, his eyes clenching shut as pain races from his foot up his leg and all the way to his brain.
“Confess.”
“I don't have anything to confess,” Reid chokes out.
The log hits him again, and again he screams.
“–eid!”
“Choose one to die; I'll let you choose one to live.”
Reid shakes his head, a tired ‘no’ falling from his lips.
“I thought you wanted to be some kind of saviour.”
Brief frustration. “You're a sadist in a psychotic break. You won't stop killing. Your word's not true.”
Charles looks to the camera set up on a tripod facing him. “The other heathens are watching.”
Reid's eyes flick to the camera as well, but Charles is talking again, drawing his attention back to him. “Pick a sinner to die, and I'll state the name and address of the person to be saved.”
Reid shakes his head again. “I won't choose who dies and have you leave their remains behind like a poacher.” He looks back at the camera for that last part, hoping that his hidden clue would be picked up.
Charles rushes him, and Reid flinches. Rough hands grab his arms and haul him as far out of his chair as his restraints will allow. “Can you really see inside my mind, boy? Can you see I'm not a liar?” He yells that last part, and Reid flinches again, terrified that he's about to be killed in a fit of rage.
And then he's back in the seat, and he's being forced to choose between who lives and dies, but he's too scared of dying to try and protest again.
He watches as a married couple are slaughtered in front of his eyes, knowing that if he'd only picked them, they'd be alive right now.
“–eep breath for me, okay?”
He can't breathe. His face throbs from the punches, and the back of his head aches from the impact to the floor, but none of that matters because he can't breathe. He's having a fucking seizure on the floor because he can't breathe.
Something gives way, and the next thing he knows, he's surrounded by bright lights and shadowy figures, and he's so relieved to be out of that cabin.
“-eid, please breathe. Come back to–”
But it's a short lived relief because he opens his eyes and he's back in the cabin.
And he's forced to pick a team member to die or die himself, and he desperately tries one last clue.
Time blurs again until he's holding a shovel and digging his own grave under the threat of a knife glinting in the moonlight.
It's cold and he's tired and he doesn't want to die like this.
“–’mon, Pretty Bo–”
He shoots Charles and watches him fall to the ground.
There's a shout in the distance.
“Reid!”
Tobias is dying, and Spencer feels like a failure, and then the team is there.
Emily is on one side and Hotch on the other, both helping him to his feet.
He barely processes Hotch's concerned question of, “Are you alright?”
Instead he throws his arms around him in an uncharacteristic show of physical touch, his voice nearly breaking with tears as he says, “I knew you'd understand.”
Strong arms wrap around him and–
“–u're okay, Reid. Just breathe.”
Reid blinked, and tears were streaming down his face, and his breaths were too fast and not nearly deep enough, but there were arms around him, pulling back down to Earth from where he felt like he was floating away.
He was light-headed, and there was a vise around his chest and a rope around his neck, and he still couldn't breathe. What little air he could suck in through the tightness of his throat was lost in panicked sobs.
Terror had his fingers gripping into some sort of fabric, and he couldn't see through the wall of tears.
But strong arms were around him, pulling him from the terrible past and into the unstable present.
A voice murmuring in his hair, right beside his ear, cut through the pounding of his pulse in his head. “Just breathe, Reid. You're okay. You're right here with me. You're safe. Just breathe.”
It's Hotch, Reid thought. But he couldn't be sure, couldn't trust that anything around him was actually real.
But strong arms were around him, and slowly, his breaths slowed down. Slowly they deepened, and Reid sucked in much needed oxygen.
His eyes had fallen shut at some point, and he opened them again, reaching a trembling hand up to wipe away tears. His vision cleared, revealing that it was, in fact, Hotch holding him.
He pulled away, his face flaming and his breath still hitching unsteadily in his throat. Hotch's arms fell away, letting him go.
Reid wanted to hide his face in his hands, but he refused to do something so childish in front of his boss, so instead he looked around his surroundings and avoided the man next to him.
They were outside, sitting on the curb. A single street lamp a few feet away provided some light against the murky blackness of the night, but it was aided by the light pouring from the diner behind them.
“You alright, kid?” Morgan's voice startled him, and he whipped around, making himself dizzy in the process.
Reid didn't know how to respond, so he just shrugged.
“Reid,” Hotch's gentle tone drew his attention back to him. “You just had a pretty bad panic attack. Are you okay?”
His knee-jerk instant was to agree that he's fine. But the words evaporated into thin air, and wasn't that an unfamiliar feeling? Usually he couldn't stop talking and now he couldn't start.
When he could finally make his voice work, he said instead, “Not really.”
Hotch didn't look disappointed or angry or anything else Reid was always afraid of people being as soon as he revealed any sort of weakness. In fact, his voice and face were still gentle when he asked, “How can I help?”
“I–” Reid hesitated, but the encouraging look from Hotch – and Morgan, when he looked back at him – bolstered his confidence enough to say, if a bit timidly because he wasn't used to asking for things, “I want to go back to the hotel and sleep.”
Hotch was nodding, and Morgan said. “I'll drive you back.”
And that was that.
Noticeably, neither of them asked what had happened. They didn't force him to open up, like he was terrified of. He didn't know how to tell someone else about what happened at that moment. Just the thought of talking about it threatened to send him spiralling again.
Hotch helped him to his feet as Morgan walked off to get the car.
Reid, in a moment of gratitude and fragile vulnerability leftover from the attack, wrapped his arms around Hotch in a hug he knew he would be embarrassed about in the morning. “Thank you,” he whispered.
Strong arms wrapped around him, and that was response enough.