Give You Hell (Criminal Minds)

1.08 - Game Night

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist" ~ Oscar Wilde

I was sleeping soundly in bed when I hear the door creak open slowly, "Mom?" A small voice calls out, peering into the room.

"What's wrong, baby?" I ask with a groggy voice, opening one eye to look at her.

"I heard a noise in my room. Can you come and see what it is?" Alex asks.

"Of course baby" I slowly drag myself out of bed and she grips onto my hand as she leads me to her room.

"It came from in there" She pouts, pointing to her closet door as I sigh with a small smile,

"Alex, baby, you're 15, you should know by now that there's nothing in your closet"

"But I heard it. Please" She pleads, tears welling in her eyes. The fearful look on her face scared me so I turned to the closet.

"Okay, but if the closet is empty, you don't come to the office tomorrow okay?"

She nods quickly as I turn back to face the closet, taking in a deep breath, "Okay, here we go" I know, I know, I'm an FBI agent and scared to open the closet in case something jumps out. But when you've seen what I've seen, you'd be scared to.

I turn the handle, slowly pulling the door open after hearing the click. I couldn't take the anticipation anymore so I yanked it open, revealing that it was empty, "See. It's empty. Now you can't come to the office tomorrow, and you need to stay with dad" 

"Mom?" She asks, in a shaky voice.

I turn around slowly and see a shadowy figure holding her back. I try to scream, but nothing comes out as I watch the figure plunge the knife into her stomach before she falls to the floor.

The man moves into the light and I see a familiar face that I longed to forget, "Jordan?"

He takes one more look at me before smirking. And as he lowers the knife, my eyes burst open, my breathing heavy as I sit up quickly.

My rapid movements cause Matteo to jump up too, holding me as I try to catch my breath. "Hey. Hey, it's okay. It's okay. I'm here. I'm here. You're safe"

Nightmares weren't an uncommon occurrence in this house anymore. Since we adopted Alex and Josh, I've been having this dream. It's always the same dream, every night. And, somehow, I always manage to wake up from it at the same time, every night. "1:20am" I whisper, glancing at the clock once I caught my breath

"Again? Zig, that's the third time this week" Matteo tells me, still drawing patterns on my back to keep me calm.

"I need to check on her" I say, getting up from the bed.

"Baby, she's okay. Just come back to bed" He tries but I shake my head.

"No, it's okay. I won't be able to sleep anyway. I'm gonna take a shower and then get ready for work" I smile before slowly and quietly making my way to Alex's room. I slowly creak open the door, smiling at her sleeping figure before closing the door and retreating to the bathroom. I turn on the shower and leave it running for a while as I strip off and look at my face in the mirror. 

The evident bags under my eyes make it seem like I haven't slept in days, which could possibly be true. I found that if I didn't sleep during a case, then I wouldn't have the dream, but I can't keep living like this. It'll only be a matter of time before people at work start to notice. It'll probably be Spencer, he's very observant like that. Then he will tell Hotch who will then call me into his office and tell me to take some time off. I'll refuse and then Hotch will tell my dad who will eventually convince me to go home. I know how they do it, they've done it before.