AN: Alright, here's a crossover! It will eventually be a Bella/Spencer pairing. So, yeah, here you go. I hope you like it! Sorry I didn't check it over—I simply don't have time. Maybe you can tell me any mistakes? It is my first story after all! Thanks so much for reading! :)
She walked down the wet cement, sighing and running a hand through her brown ringlets, bouncing in the cool air. It was in the middle of her first year here at college, and she was still so unsure of what she wanted to major in. She was currently just wavering around in a few places, staying grounded with her main, required courses. She had no idea what to do, but, of course, dither.
It was all still a haze to her, anyway. A blurry nothingness—void of emotion. She was better, but nowhere near healed. She simply floated and dreamed through her life, wishing that any moments of unoccupied time didn't come to her. Moments like now, when she couldn't help but think of steely golden eyes killing her with harsh words. His looks were sharp, his mind even sharper, but his tongue had cut her the deepest.
She licked her lips, brown eyes scanning the empty campus. It was too early in the morning, an hour no one was willing to venture out at, what with the recent killings. But she found that she didn't care—she'd rather the murderer find her and end it. She wouldn't protest.
And then, suddenly, her books, seemingly of their own accord, tumbled to the ground with thwacks and thumps and plops. She sighed and blushed, looking around to see no one had witnessed her loss of balance. Gravity hated her.
She bent and didn't feel the dampness seep into her pants and onto her knees, gathering them slowly and reading the titles, checking the spines and dusting the pages. If it kept her busy, she would do it.
She looked behind her as she rose to her feet again, stumbling once before regaining her original pace. She focused on her feet. Step. Step. Step.
She made it to her class on time, barely. She managed to snag a seat in the back, even. But the moment her things were down and organized, her professor called her to the front of the room. The class fell silent like kindergarteners, watching her every move as she slithered forward, trying to somehow fall into the floor. Her cheeks were burning. Her eyes were downcast.
She hated attention.
She reached the podium and her instructor leaned over, his spicy cologne making her hold in a sharp breath. "Miss Swan, you will be switching classes. Follow these directions."
She nodded, accepting the information easily. She didn't have to question anything.
"Okay. Thank you, sir," she said. Turning on her heel, she walked up the aisle and grabbed her books, hugging them to her chest with one arm and holding the directions in the other. She stared down at them as she made her way away from the class and toward her new one. She was slightly curious as to why she was being moved—she didn't even know they could do that to you in college—but she didn't complain. She didn't need to.
She stared at the paper until she looked up and saw the door to her next class. It was absolutely silent within. Nervously, she opened the door and peeked inside, to see a few people glance up at her, but most continued to take notes on the quiet movie rolling on the screen. She darted to the desk where a younger man sat—maybe his late twenties, early thirties—scribbling a grade in red pen on a paper.
She cleared her throat lightly, sticking out the sheet of paper as he looked up through his glasses. His brow furrowed as he slowly took them off and set them to the side, reading the small note and setting it down. He looked in his drawer for a clipboard, finding it and slipping it to her with a pen. A seating chart.
She sighed in an almost dejected way, scribbling her name in a back seat that was empty and also surrounded by two other empty seats. She handed the pen and the board to him, and attempted a smile as he said, "Thank you." It turned more into a grimace.
Surprisingly, he winced slightly.
"Bad break up?" he asked, seeming sympathetic. She looked at him, slight surprise showing in her empty brown eyes. He could see the obvious void—the scar left there. She stared at him for a moment, her eyes widened, before they darkened.
"You have no idea," she sighed, adjusting her books and breaking their eye contact. The video droned behind her. His eyes looked pitying, and she found a twinge of anger within her. She disliked pity so much—she had been smothered with it after they had left.
"I understand," he said. "Been rejected…a lot. I'm here for ya." She nodded, looked up once, and looked away, walking back to her seat. The video finished behind her, something akin to elevator music playing as the credits rolled. She sat in the back as the professor got up and flipped on a light. He paced in front of the room, looking at her.
"Well class, I'd like to welcome a Miss Isabella Swan. And I'll sum it up—we just watched a video detailing different religions. I'd like you to write me a four page report, no more no less, of your religion, opinion on other religions, and mindset. You know, the works. Remember debate class? Basically the same thing—I'll read them over and give you a grade, and then you'll be matched with someone who shares the opposite opinion, and duke it out right here." He motioned to two podiums set up in the front of the room, before wheeling the projector away.
"Dismissed," he said from within the closet where she could hear things clanking around.
She slowly gathered her things together and began to head for her professor. He came out of the closet, wiping his hands on his pants, and looked up at her. "Yes, Isabella?"
"I…" she hadn't the heart anymore to correct anyone on her name. "How did you know? Just now?"
He smiled gently, walking past her to his desk, grabbing a suitcase and his coat. "I could see it in your eyes. Like I said—and this is embarrassing—but I've got my fair share of experience in that field. But look, it's high time I got to lunch and you did your…student things." He smiled and slipped his coat on, coming back over and shutting the closet door. She followed him out the building, and he waved, getting into a rather nice car and pulling out, driving down the road and away.
She shook her head, still wondering how he had had an inkling of what she had felt—what she had been thinking. It was the strangest.
She sighed again and set off toward her dorm.
He leaned over and passed out the different coffees. "Thanks, Spence," each person would say as they received theirs. He only nodded and smiled slightly, bringing the remaining one to himself and sitting back as Gideon stood up at the front of the small table they had all gathered around. He took a sip and squinted at the various pictures lined up behind him—young, brunette females, bruised, battered, and naked, all in some open, field-like area.
"Well, team; we've got a bit of a problem down in Hanover, New Hampshire." Spencer processed this quickly, taking a sharp look back at the girls. They were all around eighteen to twenty. Did it have anything to do with the local Ivy League college, Dartmouth?
"At Dartmouth," so he was right, "there have been recent, brutal killings. All young, rather attractive females, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. They all have the same M.O. They've been raped, murdered, and…strangely, their left ring finger has been cut off, and not found." He pointed to each picture, and Spencer just noticed the gap on each left hand. He nodded, looking down at the empty folder he had in his hand.
"Do you think it was a wife, then?" Elle asked, looking at the pictures of the women intently.
"Most likely some kind of relationship," Gideon decided after a moment. "The local PD has decided that, since there have been eight and no leads, they'd bring in the BAU. But this guy's clean—no fingerprints, DNA of any kind, murder weapon, nothing. So I'm thinking we'll have to get a guy inside and watch the students themselves. I've taken a look at this case, and given the brutality of each kill and the looks of each victim—"
"Revenge," Spencer didn't mean to interrupt, but he did. Everyone nodded, glancing back at him for a moment before returning their attention to Gideon.
"Correct," Gideon paced, putting a finger in the air. "And the rape suggests that, besides our unsub being male, it was a woman he had sexual relations with, and now, she's done something to…anger him. So," he made a gesture to the pictures behind him, pausing with a far off look in his eye, "he takes it out on these girls," he finished.
Spencer furrowed his brow, leaning forward in his chair with his hand under his chin. "But if he rapes them, and there's been eight victims, how has there been no DNA found, whatsoever?"
"I thought that too," Gideon said, "but turns out…" He paused and turned around, rifling through a folder near him before pulling out a small piece of paper. "Condoms, paper bags, and knives can go a long way. There's some residue from the condoms, pieces of plastic from bags, and he actually carved out the delicate tissue within each woman, disposing of it and leaving us with nothing." Gideon closed the folder quickly, setting it aside.
"This guy knows what he's doing," Morgan commented. The team murmured an agreement.
"Sicko," Garcia said with a disgusted look on her face. She was looking at each woman in slight sympathy, before she turned to Gideon. "How do we catch the bastard?"
"Well," Gideon said, looking back at the pictures behind him, "there's a few things we've got to think about first. As always, what would the unsub gain from doing all this?" He looked at the team in silence, as he often did, expecting an answer. Spencer guessed that this was his way of teaching them—letting them solve the case. Guiding them.
What could the unsub gain from these acts? Most likely it was some form of sadistic, sexual pleasure. But it could be anything—he had learned that in his time here. It could be a religious cult, or maybe…something else. He couldn't think right now. He sighed and took a large drink of his coffee, hoping to restart his mind.
"Most likely some form of sexual pleasure—from the actual rape, I suppose," he offered after a while of silence.
"Yes," Gideon said, nodding, "But why would he derive sexual pleasure from this?"
"Maybe he's just sadistic," Morgan said, making vague gesture to indicate he was lost. Spencer thought hard, but didn't have much to go on. He looked down at the desk, where there was already a file sitting under where he had rested his coffee. He moved the cup and grabbed the folder, opening it and reading the information at an absurdly fast rate. He looked up at the team.
"It says here that…the victims were reported missing five days before their body was found." He looked up to see Morgan reading something with a confused look on his face.
"That's weird. The forensics say that the time of death was quite close to the time the body was found. That means there was…ah…around four to five days between the actual death and kidnapping." He looked up.
"Time to torture them?" Gideon looked out at the team, as if asking if he was right. Spencer looked down at his sheet.
"But based on the coloring of the bruises," Hotch began, flipping through his folder, "they were relatively new. As in, mere hours old. What would he be doing in all that time?" Everyone shook their heads.
A few moments of silence passed as everyone receded into their own thoughts. Gideon broke it, "Alright team. Well, I need you all to go pack. Garcia, be ready for us—we're gonna leave and get everything figured out on the jet. Sound good?" They nodded almost in unison, before going their separate ways. Spencer was the last out. He looked back at the now clear whiteboard, before shutting off the light and closing the door, heading home to pack.