Twisted Vengeance

If I Could

TW: Mentions of Rape

Elle’s voice was quiet. She was upset. Spencer had no gun, though this was despite his better judgment. He knew that having a gun in this situation would be more dangerous. There were a number of ways Elle could get angry and take the shot. It was best is he just let Elle say what she needed.

“Spencer, I don’t really know why I did this. Do you have any idea why I don’t feel better after I killed all these people? Because it’s just made my life more shitty than it already is.”

Elle was basically impossible to profile. Her crazy mood swings made everything vastly more complicated and made her anger very unpredicted. It meant that Elle could spiral out of control and kill Spencer and they would have no idea that that was what was about to happen. Even when they thought Elle may be showing remorse she just turned around and killed someone else. The best couldn’t catch on of their own.

“Elle, you probably didn’t want to kill anyone. It’s a combination of reasons. Gideon leaving, struggling with Prentiss being a new team member, coping with the fact that I got kidnapped and you weren’t there. Just know that she never really replaced you. You just weren’t there and she was.” Spencer made sure to be careful about what he said. He didn’t want to rationalize her being homicidal, but he wanted to give her a reason. Because if she didn’t know that, then she didn’t know the severity of what she had done.

“Yeah, I guess. I just think maybe I did it because I missed everyone. I missed being a team. And it hurt to see that everyone was capable of being happy without me. It hurt to see that when I left no one really gave a second thought or even said my name. No one cared that I was fired because I didn’t want to let that man hurt anyone. I’ve become the person that I hate most.”

Spencer was quiet for a minute, and then he got a confused look. “You think no one cared? You really think no one said your name when you were gone? We all did, though. You just probably didn’t see. We only stopped talking because Prentiss came along. We didn’t want her to feel bad knowing that you were gone.”

He hoped she wouldn’t see his bluff. In actuality, he was the only one who still thought about Elle. No one had mentioned her in a long time. It was complicated. It was more than complicated. It was a mess. So no one had said anything. And Elle kind of left the other team member’s minds after a little while. That’s just how it all played out.

Elle examined his face, trying to catch him in a lie. She surveyed him carefully, but eventually moved her eyes to meet his. “I hope you know that you’ll get nothing from lying. This only works if you play my game and answer truthfully.”

Elle picked up her gun and twirled it in her hands, the safety still on. “I want to shoot the gun to make a point, but I know that they are waiting outside and you won’t trust me enough to shoot it. So just pretend that I shot into the wall over there.” Elle pointed the gun and pretended to shoot.

“Why do you want to shoot the wall?”

“I don’t know, it just gives what I’m saying more emphasis. I want to shoot the wall so it goes bang and illustrates my priorities. God, you need to be more open about other people’s ideas.” Elle pointed to the wall again with the gun. “Bang,” she said, very unenthusiastically.

“I want to ask you another question. Give me a little bit of advice here. So, imagine that multiple girls get raped. And the FBI comes to the scene, promising to catch the man who raped her, who ruined her life. But then, he gets away. And so you have to make a choice. You either get to catch that rapist and make him pay, or you let him go. You let him walk the earth, knowing that you let him go. What would you do? Would you let him go?”

Spencer didn’t know how to respond. “Elle, we were close to exposing him. You would have just had to wait. It’s impossible to say what I would have done in the situation. I probably would have shot him, too, but I don’t really know-“

“It was a yes or no question. And it seems like the answer is no. So maybe you aren’t as good of a person as you’d like to think, now are you? Because real life savers don’t let the rapists get away. Real lifesavers make them suffer the way the girls did. So, Spencer, you’re not any better than me. I may be a killer, but I killed the person who deserved it most.”

Spencer was now as angry as Elle. But she had a point. She wasn’t wrong to shoot the rapist. “Yeah. But then you turned around and ruined some more lives. Did you not ruin their lives just as much?”

“I ended their lives. But they weren’t ruined. I spared them the trauma that becomes life. The fact that I ever loved you is kind of sad. Can I take it back? Because I saved those women from men, Spencer. So fuck you.”

Elle’s voice shifted lower, faint, like a whisper. She seemed slightly sad, but determined with the words. She looked down, then up, and gave him a faint smile. “I think I’ve won. Because there’s only one more person I have left to kill.”

Authors Note:

My apologies, again. I think this might be the worst possible cliffhanger I could have given you. We only have three more chapters left in this story. Thank you for staying with me through the plot. I’m so excited to write the next chapter, so I hope that you enjoy it!