"[B]eautiful women don't need to know about men. It's the men who have to know about beautiful women." – Katherine Hepburn
"I'm going to call someone in on this one," said Hotch as the team filed out of the conference room.
They nodded. They knew they needed the input of someone who was, or had been, a sniper to be able to catch this UNSUB. They didn't have time to research the procedure surrounding sniping nor did they have the expertise to accurately understand how the UNSUB planned the path of the shot whilst remaining unseen. Brining in a consultant was just easier.
"What about that girl who came with us last year?" suggested Prentiss, thinking of the only sniper she had ever worked closely with.
Morgan grinned. "Oh, yeah, that was one fine, scary lady," he said, remembering the beautiful, but frightening woman that had shot the UNSUB on that case. "What was her name?"
"Supervisory Special Agent Ondine Gabor, New York field office," replied Reid as if he was reading from a transcript.
Morgan stared blankly at him. "You weren't there. How do you know that?"
Reid stared blankly back. "I read your paperwork."
On the BAU's private jet, Spencer found himself seated across from SSA Gabor. Simply put, she was intimidating. When she'd met them at the airport (where they'd picked her up), she'd made eye contact and then held it for too long as if issuing a challenge. It had made even Morgan uncomfortable. She was not verbose, but her body language, not to mention her profession, spoke to her being an alpha female. When Hotch had introduced him, Spencer had received the full force of her rare, pine green eyes (a trait she shared with only two percent of the rest of the world) boring into him and sizing him up in a matter of seconds. They'd grown cold when, instead of shaking her outstretched hand, he waved at her as he did all new acquaintances. He'd had to forcibly suppress the involuntary shiver that had wracked his body.
Sitting opposite him, Spencer noted that she wore a neat grey blouse and a black pencil skirt that, had she been standing, would have made her look even taller than she already was; something like six feet, he estimated. Most of her hair was pulled back into a practical bun, but he guessed that it wasn't all cut to the same length, because several strands had fallen out around her face. It had a very pleasing effect, throwing the natural symmetry of her face just off balance enough to make her physical appearance strikingly appealing.
Along with her go-bag, she had a hard, black plastic case that was 42 inches long that made Spencer a little uncomfortable: her rifle case. It was impeccably clean and undamaged; it looked as though it was in the same condition she had bought it in.
Type A personality with a possible touch of OCD or mild mysophobia, thought Spencer.
She was currently looking over crime-scene photos in the file they had given her, a little frown puckering the space between her eyebrows.
"See anything useful yet?" asked Morgan, who had been eyeing Agent Gabor since her arrival. For some reason Spencer didn't like that, though he couldn't quite pinpoint why.
"No," she replied, still frowning, "And I'm not going to. These are all photos of the victims and the areas directly around them," she shuffled through the pictures, emphasizing her point, "I'm going to need to physically see each location to figure out where he might have been and how he planned the trajectory of the shot."
Hotch, who had been listening in, took the opportunity to delegate tasks. "All right, once we get there, I want you," he looked at Prentiss, "and Rossi to go to the police station and start re-interviewing witnesses. Reid, you, Morgan and Gabor will go to the most recent scene and see if you can find anything that might point to who this guy is or add to his MO. I'm going to accompany Prentiss and Rossi. Try to get some rest before we get there. We don't have much time, so I need everyone at their best."
Spencer nodded along with the rest of the team. What Hotch hadn't said was that there was, if the UNSUB stuck to the pattern, going to be another murder by the time they arrived. The thought weighed on Spencer; he was going to be one of the first people to see the new victim. Even after eight years in the BAU, he hadn't figured out how to deal with what he saw on the job every day. He didn't think anyone had.
The team drifted off to separate corners of the aircraft, leaving him and Agent Gabor as close to alone as was possible. He immediately felt awkward. He had been planning to take a nap as Hotch had suggested, but Gabor didn't look like she was at all tired and Spencer didn't like the idea of her watching him sleep.
She was looking out the window, the frown still set firmly in place. He wondered if he should start a conversation, and, if so, how. She didn't look like the most easy person to talk to, glaring out at the darkened sky like that. What did normal people talk about, anyway? Spencer knew how to talk to the team; he'd just say something about the victim or UNSUB and someone would segue from there, but he didn't think that would work with this woman. He rapidly thought of all the interesting things he knew, and discovered most of them that weren't directly work-related, revolved around Star Wars or Star Trek. He wondered if Gabor would be interested in knowing that light sabers were really just fiberglass rods coated in a highly reflective paint (later computer enhanced, of course) or that Vulcans only mate every seven years during a ritual known as "Pon Farr" and, if it was not observed, could result in death.
Spencer was soon caught up in debating the merits of Star Trek: The Original Series versus Star Trek: The Next Generation, quickly forgetting his determination to start a conversation with the auxiliary agent. He decided, for the hundredth time, that The Original Series was more effective in commenting on then-current societal issues, while The Next Generation excelled at exploring the human condition. He was interrupted before he could begin ruminating on the amusing parallel between Spock and Data and their shared affinity for cats, not the mention the fact that Data's cat, Spot, switched both colours and genders during the course of the show, and the android never seemed to notice.
"Are you alright?" asked Gabor, looking up at Spencer from under her dark eyelashes.
It took him a moment to register her voice. "Mmh?" he said, cleverly.
"Are you okay?" she repeated, "You look like you're concentrating really hard on something that bothers you…"
"Uh… No, no, I was just… Uh, wondering if you were born in France," babbled Spencer, blurting out the first thing that he thought of that didn't concern Star Trek. "'Gabor.' It's French, isn't it?"
She looked mildly amused, and raised an eyebrow. "Romanian, actually," she said, "I was born in Germany, though," one side of her mouth quirked upwards slightly, "I can't read my birth certificate."
"Because it's in German?"
"Because it's written in German, yes."
He gave her a quizzical look.
"I can speak German fluently," she explained, "I can't read it, though. All those silent letters…"
Spencer nodded, missing her weak attempt at humour. "Do you speak Romanian, too?"
"Yes, along with a Roma dialect of Romani. Romanian, I can write. My father taught me," she paused for a moment, considering, then added, "My name means 'gypsy.'"
By this point, Spencer was feeling pretty good about where his inadvertent conversation starter had taken them. She was telling him the etymology of her name, and therefore about herself, and wasn't giving him dirty looks about it. "We had a case involving Romani gypsies, once. They were families finding child-brides for their sons. They followed little girls home, murdered their families and kidnapped the girls. It was pretty traumatizing for those kids. Worst case of Stockholm Syndrome I've ever seen, too." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Spencer knew he'd blown it. The dark look was back, and she violently blew air out of her nose.
"My mother spent the first two years after I was born trying to convince my father to leave Europe to escape the racism. She didn't want me to have to grow up being tormented for being half Roma. We immigrated to the U.S. when I was two and a half. My parents decided it wasn't much better here, so they moved us to Canada soon after."
Spencer looked at his hands, which were fidgeting with his pen. "Sorry," he mumbled, before trying to change the subject. "Your given name isn't Romanian…"
She allowed herself to be guided away from the touchy subject, but her mood didn't lighten. "German. Means 'wave' or 'she came from the water.' Based on a folktale."
Something piqued Spencer's memory and he forgot the uncomfortable situation. "Yeah, yeah, my mother read something like that to me when I was five…" he thought for a moment, trying to remember, "Ondines, or Undines, are soulless water nymphs. They gain souls by marrying a man and having his child, but if he's unfaithful, she punishes him by cursing him with the 'Ondine's curse'; a curse that would make him stop breathing as soon as he fell asleep. The medieval Europeans blamed Ondines for congenital central hypoventilation syndrome or CCHS, an extremely rare-"
"Respiratory disorder," finished Gabor, still looking irritated, "I know. It's a form of sleep apnea wherein suffers lose autonomic control of breathing while sleeping. They die if it goes untreated."
Spencer returned to examining his pen. He knew he was making her feel uncomfortable and ashamed of her past, but he didn't know how to stop it. In turn, it was making him feel bad about his social inabilities.
She huffed heavily, like she was not only annoyed, but sad, too. "I know what I am, Dr. Reid," she whispered, "I'm going to get some sleep. …Over there." She grabbed her rifle case, and moved to the other side of the plane.
Spencer nodded, too embarrassed and afraid of shoving his foot farther down his throat to speak. Once she was safely away from him, he leaned his head against the side of plane and stared vacantly out the window until he fell asleep.
A/N: I'd just like to mention that I was not impressed with season 4, episode 13, "Bloodline" because of the way it portrayed the Romani people. The Romani do, in fact, face enormous discrimination based on racial lines in Europe (though I do realize that not everyone in Europe feels this way), and that episode portrayed them in a very biased and unkind light. Contrary to whatever the writers of that episode may think, Criminal Minds is not only aired in the U.S., and it disgusts me that they would write such horrible things about such strongly misunderstood people. I simply don't understand how such an intelligent show can perpetuate misunderstandings and hatred.
And, once again, thank you to everyone who reviewed. You're all lovely people!