ALEX | a. hotchner (sequel to BLAKE)

10

A/n: This chapter is a little bit different from what I've written before, but I hope you'll still like it!

In the six hours I had been at Spencer's apartment, I tried to sleep for three of them. I must have woken up seven times. Not for that long each time, but enough to break my sleep into un-refreshing pieces.

With every disturbance there was a new nightmare. Rose was alive and wanted me dead. Spencer was injured because of me. I was fired from the BAU. Aaron was interrogating me, treating me like an unsub. The house was burning and I couldn't put it out. I was running for the bus, but it was pulling away already. The car was sliding on black ice.

Then I was on the floor and my mind was moving faster than Spencer could read, like it was stuck on fast forward. I wanted to wash my brain in cold water, chill the whole thing out, but I couldn't.

My mind kept coming back to the girls at the bar. I had lost control. I was doing the actions, it was my own behaviour, but it was as if the gas pedal got stuck down and in that acceleration, in that momentum, the steering wheel got all jammed up too. It was all fight or flight and it was so disappointingly primitive but I couldn't override it.

My mind became static, thoughts making no sense. They drove me insane, made me into a monster. But I kept them deep inside, close to my heart. I wanted to get rid of every thought, but I also wanted to keep them tucked deep inside. They confused and angered me, yet they were a part of me. They were my worst enemies, yet my closest friends.

I shook my head violently, but my thoughts wouldn't dislodge themselves. I cover my ears with my hands and I pound my head on my bent knees.

Stop. You need to stop.

Pound.

Stop thinking.

Pound.

It's all your fault.

Pound.

Ignore it.

Pound.

Control yourself.

Pound.

All your fault.

Pound.

Stop yourself.

Pound.

Kill yourself.

Pound.

Don't think about it, ignore it.

Pound.

There were times when my thoughts became tormentors, a torture only escapable by sleep. Then the nightmares would come, and I had to decide which was worse. But then I realized that if I stopped myself from thinking about them, if I let them float by like a call unanswered, then in time they would cease. At first they became a little worse, but then they would withdraw.

It was fine when I first came to London, but then it became worse. I spent more time on the internet, more time in bed. My soft middle became softer and then the nightmares would come again. The panic would start as a tightening of the chest, as if the muscles were trying not to let another breath in, but instead wanted to die.

I had wanted to go back to DC, to the BAU, where I had status, where I was someone. Now what was I? I had shattered into a person barely capable of surviving. I had for so long taken the main force of cruel outbursts designed to bring my self esteem to zero, to shatter my sense of self worth. I was broken now, shattered, robbed early of the tape and glue necessary to put my soul back together.

When the thoughts finally withdrew, I was pressed to him, my fingers white-knuckled as I held onto his sweater. I could hear myself asking him if it would all be okay, he told me yes. He told me over and over, stroking my back and planting kisses on my head. And I called out to him, clinging to his name as if it alone could save me from drowning.

"No, Alex," he whispered in my ear, "it's Spencer."

I opened my eyes and I was back on his floor.

"Talk to me, Alex," Spencer pleaded. He was holding me at arms length, drying my tears with his shirt.

"The guilt," I choked out, "it's everywhere." My eyes were wild and I still felt like I was in some sort of trance. "It hides everywhere, in the apartment, at the bureau, here," I took a deep breath, swallowing more tears, "there isn't any getting away from it, and I'm so fucking scared."

"It's happening again, isn't it?" Spencer asked, stroking my back gently.

I glanced upward, my mouth pursed but slightly open and loose. My eyes fixed as if I was looking at something behind his head. He calls my name. I blink, refocus.

"What do you mean?"

"You don't have to hide it," Spencer said. "I saw it at the club after your first case back, I see it when we're talking and you don't hear a word I say, you didn't sleep for a whole week when Garcia was shot."

"It's nothing," I whispered.

"It's not nothing, you're struggling," he said into my hair.

"I'm fine," I muttered and unwrapped his arms from around me.

I dried my face with my hands before standing up. The dizziness hit me like a slap in the face, I probably would have been back on the floor if Spencer hadn't caught me halfway.

"Let's sit down."

He led me to the kitchen and pulled out a chair for me at the kitchen island. I guess Spencer had noticed the weight loss, but I couldn't even recall when it had started. He asked when I last ate and I didn't know. My appetite had just gone, like a switch had been flicked.

He told me to eat, made an overly large sandwich and passed it over. I wanted to eat it, to prove that I could, but it wouldn't go down and no amount of forcing it would help. Then the vomiting started, but just that bite, there wasn't anything else down there.

His hands gently wrapped around my hair as I rinsed my mouth with water and spit it out into the sink. My breaths became shallow, lungs unable to move much against my suddenly heavy ribs, limbs unwilling to work at all.

"You need to talk to me, Alex."

I looked up and I saw his face, panic. The guilt sat on my chest and inside my brain. I didn't feel like I deserved the comfort and love Spencer offered me, but I clung to it and hung the shreds of my sanity on it. I hoped that one day I would come to terms with what had happened to Rose, to Penelope, to be washed clean of it, but the guilt was a stain on me, an ugly scar.

"I don't know what to say, Spencer," I sighed and sat back down on the chair.

"I want to help you," Spencer said.

"I know, but I don't need help."

"I can call Hotch, I can help you talk to someone, or I can-"

"I said I don't need it," I snapped.

He went silent and we stared at each other, both unsure of what to do next. And then the phone rang, and I took the exit.

"Blake," I said into the phone.

"Why are you answering Reid's phone?" Aaron's voice filled my ears and all the blood in my head disappeared.

"Shit.." I mumbled.