Classified light- a criminal minds fan fiction

Power

"Cam! Look out!" Morgan yelled but it was too late, the fist flew, the knife dug, the blade sliced.

Cameron fell to the floor clutching her stomach that erupted blood, the unsub going to plunge the blade down into her again when a figure launched itself onto him, sending them all flying down into the ditch in a scuffle.

Cameron heard yelling, punches, swearing. She tried to crawl but the pain was too much. She had seen the team been beaten more than this, she had seen them being beaten to a pulp and keep running after an unsub but she couldn't- she felt tears on her cheeks mixing with the rain as her body shook.

'You will die as you lived, Weak,' she mocked herself in someone else's voice- her sister's voice.

She knew the darkness was coming soon. The pain was somehow echoing through her ears, her vision was blurring. Once again she was back down a ditch, once again she was lying in the wet mud staring up at the just out of reach sky as her eyes slowly closed. The voices calling her name started to become distant, the pain began to fade, her eyes closed, the darkness came.

Cameron had always been afraid of the dark ever since she was a child. Although back then she had a good reason to be, the darkness in the winters of Russia were harsh and hid the beasts of the woods that were known to crawl into unguarded cabins and houses.

Her father would spend the majority of the winter evenings and nights on watch, sat by the door with one of his various shot guns just in case. He had set up traps, the perimeter was secure, their wooded area was the safest in the land thanks to his inventions but still he sat there.

"Never doubt the ability of monsters, that will be the downfall of humans- thinking we are better than the animals, thinking that we are the hunters when we have always been the hunted that they let live" he spoke in Russian when Cameron got the courage to ask him why he sat there one night. She was only a small child at the time, her youngest sister wasn't even born yet and yet in that moment she understood. She didn't like violence, she hated the guns and she was used to disappointing her father with how weak and emotional she was especially compared to her older sister but in that moment she understood.

She pulled up a small stool and sat beside her father, he broke his firm gaze at the door momentarily to look down at his small child who was shaking as she stared at the door like he did. She was so scared of the monsters and dark outside, by far the most scared in the whole family even after her little sister was born, of the beasts and the people her father spoke of in his warnings but she sat there as strong as she could be.

He watched her brow furrow with attempted protection, her fists clench into little balls- digging her nails into her palms to stop herself from shaking. He watched his terrified daughter sit with such determination in the dark, the thing she feared most, in an attempt to protect their home. 

She sat silently with tears streaming down her face as the night grew darker, trying not to whimper as the candles slowly burnt out to nothing, the shadows over the room taking over. Her father was not bothered by the dark, he was not bothered by her crying or whimpering, he was too focused on the door, on protecting the family. 

He understood why she was afraid of the dark of course, he had been the one to tell her about it, he had seen the cruelty of the dark with his own two eyes himself. He understood but that did not mean he would coddle her, he would not let her show weakness.

"That is what the darkness, the monsters, feed on" he would say as she cried in bed and begged her mother to leave a candle burning at night. Her mother would hit his arm and tell him to have some empathy before explaining to their sobbing child that they can't leave the candles on or they would all burn out and they simply couldn't afford more. Cameron understood, as much as a child could, but she still begged every night which angered her older sister.