𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐧 || 𝙘𝙧𝙞𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙨

1. gallery of shadows

(takes place after season 7, episode 2.)

Taylor Swift wrote, "I once believed love would be burning red, but it's golden. Golden, like daylight."

~

At this hour, around one in the morning, The Radiant gallery on 77th and Murdock is completely dark, empty, and alone.

You can't see how beautiful something is if there isn't any light to show for it—the fluorescent overheads are off, an attempt to ward off passerbys and anyone who might've an eye for something other than art: Money.

Of course, this meant that after she had gone home, realized her keys were missing, and drove back, she'd have to wander around the gallery with only her father's dimmed emergency flashlight to guide her.

She didn't notice it at first. If she had turned right down the hall, she could have gotten her keys, called it a night.

She turns left, and there it is.

Laid on the once gray—now crimson—stone bench, draped just so. Romantically lifeless. Utterly horrifying.

Her flashlight drops, and her view of the body vanishes completely.

~

Spencer yawns as Emily passes him his copy of the case file, a tight, apologetic smile on her face. He often struggles to read rooms, social cues, but even he could tell it was still tender between them. He doesn't mean to further all of the tension, but it's incredibly difficult not to—he'd thought she was dead. And JJ and Hotch just...watched as the rest of them buried her—or whatever was in that coffin—and now she's...What? Just back like it all hadn't happened?

No. That was unfair to say. Emily had apologized to him, and she meant it. They all had logical reasons for doing what they did.

That doesn't mean he isn't allowed to feel it all. Whatever he's supposed to feel.

It isn't often that they're called straight to the jet to be briefed, but Hotch made it clear—this case was high profile.

Still. Everything in his go-bag he's already read at least twice, and he's itching to get his hands on the newly translated version of one of his favorite classics. He'll have to make do with Dante again on the flight back from New York.

For now, though, he's giving the case his undivided attention:

"Go ahead, Garcia." Hotch nods towards the screen.

"Alrighty, buckle up your hypothetical and your actual seat belts, because this one is a doozy and there's a draft over the East Coast today—"

Morgan smiles, rubbing his temple. "Baby girl, I do not wanna hear about the wind pattern as I am actively flying through it."

"Yes, sorry, my bad. Our victim is a Jane Doe found in The Radiant, one of the biggest art galleries in Harlem, staged to look like the painting hanging on the wall above it."

Spencer's brain immediately lights up. He'd seen it September 1999, the bottom right page of a Barron's textbook he'd been browsing in the MIT library. "It looks like an exact replica of Langour in Repose by Stephen Ameretta. The original is kept locked down in MACRO in Rome, so the UnSub must have had to go out of his way to either recreate it himself or go through the motions of getting a replica and then hanging it in the Gallery."

"So the guy's methodical. He planned all this out way in advance," Rossi comments, flipping through his file.

Morgan's brows furrow. "This dude had plenty of paintings to choose from in the Gallery. Why go through the trouble of bringing his own?"