Hi, BabyGirls!
This is my first fic about Criminal Minds.
Love the show, love the characters (and I may or may not have a profound obsession with criminology)!
I have a very intricate idea in my mind and I'll be giving subtle bits of info, one at a time. If something sounds vague/odd, there is a reason for it and it will be explained later on. Mystery plays a MAJOR role in my story!
Quite the bunch of initial chapters are two storylines, intertwined – contemporary parallels between the FBI Academy and the BAU. It builds my back-story and helps me mix them all together in future chapters.
Features the Season 14 team members, plus an OC main character.
Give it a chance!
Hope you like it!
I reply to every message and I appreciate every review.
I'm a very nice and bubbly girl. If you ever want to chat, inbox me! Please be nice, though. I write for fun. I know I'm not a genius. English is not even my native language. Writing is just a hobby and I've decided to share it with all of you, so please, I beg you to be nice (I accept educated constructive criticism, but keep in mind that rude, unfunded remarks are hurtful and upsetting).
(Story is told using fragmented narrative)
CHAPTER 1
LET ADVENTURES COME TO YOU
"FBI! Drop the gun!"
A tender, silvery, feminine voice shouted out loud in the darkness.
"Danny?" Footsteps could be heard, someone knocked over a vase on their way to their desired destination.
"Danielle?" The second voice nagged, patting someone's shoulder.
"Danny, Jesus, you scared the crap out of me! Is everything okay?"
"Hmm?" Danielle finally responded, slowly resuming a sitting position and rubbing her eyes lazily.
"You had that nightmare again." The second voice said sleepily. It was much more modulated and almost sounded honeyed.
A little night light went on, revealing two profiles: one of a blonde girl with beautiful curly hair and the other one of a brunette with, what seemed like, piercing green eyes and long straight hair, strands of which were stuck to her sweaty forehead.
The blonde was one her knees, next to the brunette's bed.
"I'm fine." The brunette said grumpily. "And it was not a nightmare."
"Well, you were howling like a wild coyote in your sleep. Again." The blonde threw her hands in the air in a quite dramatic way. "If that was not a nightmare, then what was it?"
"A dream…" The brunette used the shade in the room to her advantage, grinning into the darkness while whispering her reply, almost inaudibly.
"Huh?" The blonde girl, now sitting on the edge of the bed, had a confused expression on her face as she did not hear anything other than a mumble.
"Maggie, it's really sweet of you to wake me up and ask me how I am. And now, since we are both awake…" One hand reached out to the nearby chair, pulling a pair of jeans and a tank top towards her. "…How about one last adventure?"
"Danny, It's 2 o'clock at night!" Maggie rolled her eyes, yet, with no sign of disbelief. Danny had the balls to do whatever she pleased, whenever she pleased, and Maggie knew that painfully well.
The boys around them had initially assumed that Maggie would be the ballsy one, fitting into that blonde bombshell stereotype with a YOLO approach to life. However, it had always been Danny who'd push things and stir the pot, while Maggie had simply followed her into countless mischiefs for the past three months.
"Exactly!" Danny smirked again, this time not even trying to hide in the shadows. "We have the whole night ahead of us. The last night! Come on. We have to go out with a bang!"
"Ugh. I'm going to regret this…" Maggie rolled her eyes while crawling back to her own bed, two beds away. She had piled her clothes from yesterday on top of the night stand beside it.
They were in a shared girls' bedroom with three other girls. It had not been perfect, but it had been fun. Three months had gone by so quickly.
Giggling and making shush noises to each other, they managed to dress in the dark and to hop out of the window, as they had done numerous times before.
Soon they found themselves by the calm and perfectly transparent lake. It was beautiful, deep, dark, quiet, mysterious - just like Danielle. Maggie was the one who would always tell stories about her life, while Danielle kept to herself. Mostly. Unless she had to defend herself or someone else, in which case she was quite straight forward with her words. However, she hated telling people anything about herself, her life, her family, her other friends and she never even told them her birthday.
"What do you have in mind?" Maggie asked, throwing a petite pebble in the water and barely managing to see the tiny splash it had created.
"Nothing." Danielle smiled innocently. "If you search for adventures, you will never find them. You have to let adventures come to you."
She inhaled deeply, letting the frisky air invade her lungs. Her eyes shut closed and she smiled.
"Okay, Miss Girliest Girl On Camp!" Maggie nudged her friend and it made both of them laugh.
"Gosh, will you stop with that already? It was just a stupid camp ceremony. You know I don't like labels anyway." Danielle's cheeks were blushing slightly and once again, the darkness was in her favor, covering up her moment of shyness – one of the very few moments of that kind.
"But you don't seem to mind the Most Likely To Succeed In Life label you got as well, do you?" Maggie said challengingly while putting her golden locks in a bun on top of her head.
"No, that label I actually do appreciate. But that was a given anyway." Danielle followed in her friend's footsteps, tying her own hair in a high pony tail. It was so long that it sometimes bothered her, and, at that moment, all she wanted to feel on her face was fresh air, not strands of sweaty hair. "By the way, you look banging hot with your hair up like that. I still can't believe I got the Girliest Girl award. That was clearly yours to grab!"
"How do you do it? How are you always so sure of yourself? You always seem to know what to say. I wish I was as confident as you are." Maggie shrugged, narrowing her eyes and scanning the ground for more pebbles to throw, as if to help release some tension. "Aww, thanks. You are literally the only girl at camp, or ever, actually, who gives other girls compliments. It's refreshing. I was sick of the cattiness and bullying that I've seen growing up. And by the way, you are most definitely the girliest one here. I mean, you have a cute hair accessory every single day, either a headband or a bow. Come on. I'm the blonde, but you're the Barbie!"
"You are confident. You just don't know it yet." Danielle pushed a couple of pebbles towards Maggie, making sure her friend would find them herself. It was so typical of her to do things, however little they might be, in order to help someone else in life. "Oh, I love my bows like you love your scrunchies!"
Both girls giggled and made sure that night was one to be remembered.
BAU Headquarters | Quantico, Virginia
"Now?" Emily Prentiss was on the phone and she seemed confused.
"I consider it to be the perfect timing, Agent Prentiss, given the fact that you are still on the premises and I have urgent matters to discuss with you." Meredith Fowler, the new and highly incompetent Section Chief, replied cockily on the other side of the line.
Emily rolled her eyes. "It's 2 o'clock at night, for God's sake!"
"And again – you are still in your office, hence I can talk to you if I want to. And I do." The other woman cleared her throat and Emily was half-hoping she'd choke. "My office in 5 minutes."
With that, the line went dead.
"Oh, this is going to suck!" Emily muttered to herself. She shot a glance at the bullpen – all dark, empty, it seemed almost…mysterious, without her team around.
She forced herself to take the elevator to a higher floor, where someone with a higher position than her was just dying to yell at her and to remind her of the painful existence of hierarchy at the Bureau.
"At your services." Emily said sarcastically, walking in and taking a seat across the table before she would even be invited to do so. By the look she saw on Fowler's face, this was not going to end neither well, nor quickly. So, the least she could do to facilitate this Hell was to make herself comfortable.
"I do not appreciate the irony, Agent Prentiss." Fowler put her reading glasses on as she spoke. "And may I remind you that you are talking to a Senior here?"
"That's Supervisory Special Agent Prentiss…" Emily was usually not one to prance her title around, but it bothered her when people belittled her intentionally. "Uhm, Ma'am." She added lamely when a scolding cold look was shot at her direction.
"I should start by saying that I take no pleasure in breaking this news to you…" The elder woman kept on adjusting her reading glasses and to Emily that screamed insecurity.
"I'm sure you don't." She muttered to herself, trying really hard not to be a bitch. She has had it rough lately and her tolerance to bullshit was quite low. Practically non-existent. Borderline, she had none.
"Now, I am sure you are aware of the Bureau's need to cut down some costs." Fowler pulled out a few folders and let them hit the desk with quite the thud, as if that would give her any kind of authority.
"The budget cuts? Yes. The Academy is getting less recruits this year and less people would be offered jobs after that. We've all heard about it." Emily said calmly.
There had been chatter around the hallways and many agents were bothered by the fact that the Academy had a huge chunk of investments cut off for its next round. A lot of agents were involved in the training process - not just the main staff, but many active agents, or even retired ones, popped by occasionally to offer training support and to give lectures and advice to the new recruits. It was something they all did with pleasure, because, at the end of the day, their contribution allowed for the forming of new government personnel, so in a way they were all a part of something big.
"Yes, precisely. Now, please spare me your undoubtedly sarcastic opinion about it. I already know you are against the financial cuts and I know how much you enjoy your paid guest lectures with the trainees." Fowler touched her glasses once again and Emily could swear that she would stand up and smash them against the floor if the woman didn't stop with that annoying, repetitive gesture. It was distracting, and quite frankly, Emily was pissed way before she was even called in for that conversation.
"Wasn't going to voice my unwanted opinion, Ma'am. I see that you already know where I stand when it comes to the budget cut. However, I do understand your decision." All of what Emily said was legit, except from her last sentence. That was complete nonsense. She neither understood, nor supported it. But, overtime, she had learned when to kiss a superior's ass while biting her tongue.
"Great. This makes it easier for me to break the news that the BAU, along with a few other units, has been chosen to enter the budget cut this year." There it was – rough, quick, uncalled for. The truth. Just like ripping off a band aid - it sucked.
Emily stood still. Was it the fact that every organ inside her body was already sleeping or was it the fact that Fowler was talking in gibberish, but Emily did not seem to comprehend what she had just been hit with.
"Ok, that went well." Fowler did not stand a chance at being a profiler if that was her understanding of Emily's silence. "I will e-mail you all these papers. The cut is effective immediately. You have until the end of the week to present your official written proposal and as of Monday morning we expect your team to function with 45% less funding. You can leave now."
It was then and there when it hit her – this was Hell.
Emily had two options. One – firing the gun that was holstered on her side since 5 o'clock the previous morning, or two – arguing her case. She chose none of those options. She simply stood up and walked out of the office. If it had been Fowlers' own decision, she would have fought. But she had caught a glimpse of the signature on the paper that she had been just showed very briefly and she knew who it belonged to. Not even Fowler could argue the case with the man who gave those orders, so Emily, no matter how tired, decided smartly to just shut up and deal with it somehow.
The next hour was a blur. All she could remember from that night was that she had somehow found her way back to her office and she had finished about a quarter of the pile of paperwork that she had due and then, the next thing she remembered was shedding a lonely tear in her own bed, surrounded once again by darkness and not a single soul by her side. There was no recollection of how she had gotten back to her house either but given the fact that she found her car parked in the driveway the next morning, she was willing to bet that she had driven back home in between anger fits and screams of despair.
Emily Prentiss would be damned if she let another bitch walk all over her!
