Chapter Text
"So tell me, what's your name?"
Spencer looked up from his book, warm mug in his hand. Aurelia had prepared another tea blend for him, this one with heavy orange notes. It was quite delicious. She'd also brought a bookshelf into his room and filled the first shelf with some of his favourites, and some new titles he hadn't yet read. He hadn't touched those because he knew they'd be empty. His mind couldn't conjure what it didn't know, after all.
Aurelia stood by the door now, dressed in tactical gear. He wondered why he hadn't noticed that the tight fitting white shirt she always wore was tactical, but now it was black. As with the rest of her gear. She was slipping on some tactical gloves, her hair tied in a tied braid that further accentuated her sharp features.
"Don't you know it already?" Spencer asked, brows furrowing quizzically.
Aurelia smiled, "How would I know it if you've never told me?" She asked, her voice filled with soft humour. Spencer's lips quirked at the sound, eyes looking back to the pages on his book.
"Because you're me." Spencer answered. Her laugh rang from his words, filling the space as she threw her head back and laughed long and loud. Spencer frowned at her, setting his book and tea down. "What's so funny?"
Aurelia waved him off, holding a hand to her mouth as she tried to press the laughter back in. Her shoulders shook with the effort.
Spencer stood and walked closer to her, his hands burrowed in his pockets, "What's so funny?" He repeated, smiling broadly at her.
"Oh jeez," Aurelia gasped, placing her hands on her hips as she looked up to the ceiling with eyes tightly closed, sucking in long calming breaths. "Okay so . . . I'm you?" She choked the words out, lips quivering as she held in more laughter.
"Well . . . yes. This whole place is just a creation I've conjured up to help me while I'm prison. Which means that you and everything else in here are me, just different parts of me trying to help me survive. It's nothing personal, it's just that you're me." Spencer explained. Aurelia rose a single brow at him, her eyes alight with quiet laughter.
"You think this was all created by you?" She waved at the small room they were in.
Spencer looked around, then back to Aurelia and nodded.
"Tell me, when was the last time you saw a place like this? I mean, in your reality of course." Aurelia gestured towards Spencer before letting her hands fall to her sides.
"Technically, never," Spencer said. "I've never been to Europe. But I’ve read about it. I’ve studied photos of buildings—Germany, France, Austria, maybe Italy. So, I think this is just... a place far removed from my reality. Something my mind stitched together from everything I’ve seen and read." Spencer looked around the room, once again noting the type of wood used, the flowers, the mugs.
"I see," Aurelia nodded with Spencer's words. "So that must mean that everything in here is something you've either seen or read, correct?"
Spencer nodded, and Aurelia's smile turned wolfish. Spencer swallowed nervously, took a slight step back that made her eyes dance.
Aurelia strode around him, towards one of the bookshelves. She hummed as her fingers dragged over each of the spines, her touch barely ghosting over them. Yet with each pass Spencer's spine shivered.
The clicking of her tongue brought Spencer back to . . . this. She drew her fingers behind the book, pushing it out instead of pulling it. It was admirable, she was taking care of her books.
She came strolling back to Spencer and presented him with the book. He frowned, not recognising the cover or the name. Taking it from her hands, he reasoned that it must have been something he briefly saw when in a bookstore.
Kushiel's Dart.
Flipping it over, he looked down and read the blurb. With each word he felt the heat engulf his face, his arms, absolutely everything. His eyes flittered away, barely able to stand the sight of the words.
This was absolutely not something he'd ever read, nor would it be something he'd pick up.
Clearing his throat he held it out to her and smiled sheepishly, barely able to meet her eyes. However, Aurelia only grinned at Spencer and gestured at the book. "Go on. Read some."
Spencer stared at her, his mouth swinging open. "I uh . . . I . . . this isn't . . . I don't know this book." Spencer stuttered, hands shaking.
"I know. But I do." Aurelia winked.
Spencer coughed and straightened himself, seeing no mercy in her golden gaze. He opened the book to a random page, fully believing that all he'd see was either blank pages or the inside of a book that was familiar to him. Instead, it was the pages of a book he'd never read. He blinked at them, expecting them to now transform into familiar ones, but they remained steady.
Spencer's heart fluttered uneasily in his chest, his fingers trembled as they gripped the pages.
This was impossible. This was entirely impossible.
He had never read this book before. He now believed he'd never seen it before. So how could these words be there in front of him? It wasn't even his writing style, it couldn't be something his mind conjured up.
He looked back to Aurelia, she was watching him, head slightly lifted as she gazed unflinchingly at him. As if waiting for him to come to a conclusion, an impossible one.
"Go on," Aurelia's voice drawled. "Read something."
Swallowing the lump in his throat, Spencer looked back down to the page. The words were blurring at the edges, but he gritted his teeth as he looked for something to anchor himself in the pages. He found it, and read aloud, letting the words seep into his bones, "It is in times of greatest darkness that the light shines brightest." He swallowed.
"It's a good one. My favourite is 'That which yields is not always weak', it's kept me going through some lonely nights." Aurelia mused, reaching out for the book. Spencer's hand was limp, he barely registered the feeling of the book leaving his grip. She returned it to the bookshelf with a solid thunk.
"How is that possible?" Spencer whispered, still staring at his empty hand.
Aurelia turned around, eyes soft and kind, "You reached out, and found something. That's all."
"That's all?" Spencer felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up in his throat, unable to keep it contained. "That's all? What do you mean I found something? What did I find? What is this place? Who are you? Why . . . you've been helping me. Why?" The words were manic and wild. He was nearly shrieking at the end, but each syllable dripped with accusation.
Aurelia didn't flinch. Not as his pitch rose, not as his finger jabbed her direction. She simply let him yell, let him gesture wildly around him, let him run his hands through his hair until it was entirely mussed. When he was done, panting like he'd run a marathon, she only raised a brow.
"Are you done?"
"Hardly." He spat.
There was a stillness between them. It lasted only for the single beat of Spencer's heart, but it was felt by both. Aurelia's eyes darkened in that space and Spencer felt like he was seeing a ghost. He thought he'd known exactly who she was: a bit of Morgan when he needed a push, a bit of Garcia when he needed some light, JJ when he needed a soft hand, Emily and Hotch when he needed someone to lead. Now all he saw was his projections, his expectations, everything that she was not.
And she knew it.
Her sadness dimmed her eyes.
Aurelia slid into a seat on the table and folded her arms on the table in front of her. Spencer watched her tap her fingers rhythmically against the wood. He used to think that was a habit of JJ or Garcia's, but now he wasn't sure.
She was nervous. That's usually what tapping meant. If this wasn't JJ or Garcia, if Aurelia wasn't someone he'd conjured up but . . . impossibly . . . if she was a person . . . then he'd have to look at her differently.
"You asked me too many questions before. Try asking just one." Aurelia's voice was familiar. He remembered it from all the times she'd played chess with him, from when she'd come to his room when he was injured. It was so achingly familiar and yet, he didn't know it at all. He wondered about the inflections that he'd ignored, the lilting tone, how she sometimes drifted off mid-sentence, how she always hummed when she was alone, the sudden softness in her voice when she cooed at her cats. He wondered about it all, wondered what he'd missed when he was thinking that it was all made from people he knew and loved.
Then he caught himself. How could he be thinking any of this? It was an impossibility for this space and this girl to be anything but his imagination, his mind protecting him. Anything else, if he were to even try and believe anything else, it would mean that he was going insane. And he couldn't do that to his team.
But here she sat, telling him to ask the questions that were roaring through his mind and making his ears ring. Here she sat, staring expectantly at him. And all he wanted to do was sit with her and learn.
So he did just that. He slid into the seat opposite her and folded his arms in front of himself. He opened his mouth to ask a question, but no words came out. Somehow his mind had gone completely blank.
Aurelia stared at him, expectant and waiting. But he saw something else in the way she held her shoulders. She was stiff. It was incredibly subtle, it was in how her lips were barely parted and in how her knees were barely pressing against each other. But he saw it like someone had hit him over the head with a book.
"Let's start with the easiest question," Aurelia's voice brought Spencer back to the table and the smell of tea growing cold. "I'm Aurelia."
Spencer waited a beat, then two. When nothing else came, his lips curled into a grimace, "That's not what I meant."
"I know." Aurelia answered immediately, like she had known it was coming.
Spencer waited a beat, then two. She gave nothing else and he saw in her eyes that whatever answers she gave, they would be exactly what he asked. She would not be looking into the meaning of his words, oh no. He'd have to be precise and exact.
Lucky for him, that was his job.
His mind burst with questions, each one forming a thread—what to ask, what to build on, where to begin. He breathed a small sigh of relief. His mind hadn't given up on him.
He curled his fingers together and leaned forwards, gazing at Aurelia. Really looking for the first time at her, and not who he'd made her out to be. She was beautiful in a sharp, angular way. But she was also inhuman. The absolute stillness with which she held herself, how the air around her seemed to hold its breath when she moved through, how the light danced over her skin and how her eyes glowed faintly, illuminating the space around her.
While he studied her, her gaze didn’t return the same weight. Where he was going under the surface, she was staying in the present and watching Spencer. Her gaze moved like a breeze—soft, but enough to raise every hair it touched.
She was waiting.
"So you're Aurelia, and I'm Spencer. And you are claiming that this place isn't inside of my mind and that you are a real person."
"I am." Aurelia nodded when Spencer stilled. He nodded confirmation of this.
"In that case, either I'm insane or this is some form of experiment that I'm not consenting to." Spencer leaned forwards as he said this, voice dropping an octave.
Aurelia only raised an eyebrow at his deduction and smiled gently, "Or it's neither." She whispered.
Spencer leaned back quickly, mouth finding that familiar grimace, "Impossible."
"So were vaccines before they were invented, or light bulbs or even the internet."
"They have logic and scientific backing behind them making them plausible," Spencer snapped. "What you're claiming contradicts every documented neurological, psychological, and physical principle we understand about consciousness. It is not possible for a dream world to exist in a space that allows for multiple separate people to enter and communicate with each other. It is not possible." He had leaned back in, planted his hands flat on the table surface.
Aurelia hummed noncommittally. It was like nails down a chalkboard, Spencer pressed his teeth together and curled his fingers ever so slightly.
"You know better than most that the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Are you certain . . . or are you just scared to find out you're wrong?" Her eyes flicked up to Spencer's and held him rooted in place.
Spencer didn't shift, he didn't wiggle, he held her as clearly as she did him, "Then explain the mechanism," He demanded. "How are we communicating across shared consciousness? What process enables it? If this isn't a construct of my mind, where exactly are we right now?"
"You're in my mind."
Spencer stilled.
The breath caught in his throat didn’t release. He didn’t blink. Didn’t move. It was the stillness of someone rebooting a system that had just crashed.
'You’re in my mind.'
He replayed the words. Once. Twice. Then again, like they might change if he just looped them hard enough.
Finally, he spoke.
“Prove it.”
As if the words released her, Aurelia smiled. It was a slow, lazy crawl but she smiled with all her teeth and blinked languidly, "That's a tad difficult. You see, I've created this space exactly like how I want it and I've given the people who live here freedom and a form of consciousness. If I were to change even a tree, it would have consequences."
Spencer leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed on Aurelia. Somewhere, he was vaguely aware of a heavy wooden clock ticking, "Sounds awfully convenient."
"It is, isn't it," Aurelia hummed as she twirled a finger over the table grains. "But here's something I can do. Listen closely, and don't miss a word. Your team is looking for Trey . . . Gordon. Not two killers, one," Aurelia held up two fingers then dropped one, leaning over the table to stare closely at Spencer. "He was raised by an abusive father who let him be molested by prostitutes. He's currently taking multiple medications for conditions that are preconditions to sleepwalking. After his father died, Trey started killing men that reminded him of his dad. But when he sleeps he sleepwalks to the places his old man went to a lot and kills whoever he finds."
When she was finished she rose fluidly from the table and smiled at him, eyes shining darkly, "This information isn't something you'd know, so when you find out I'm right you'll know that, at the very least, I'm real. Come find me when that's the case."
With that, she walked out the front door. But not before grabbing two long lines of rope.
Spencer swallowed down the growing lump in his throat. He curled his hands into fists to stop the trembling, but it was useless. He was terrified. If she was right, if this Trey Gordon was actually the unsub his team was currently chasing, then there was no way that Spencer would have known that information. Even if the name had been passed around the yard, the rest of the information was too detailed to be simple yard chatter. So if Trey Gordon was real, along with the rest of the information, then that meant that this was real.
Which was impossible. But somehow would have to be possible. Which meant everything Spencer believed . . .
He switched off that train of thought.
If she was wrong, it meant that this was all a construct in his head. And that is was beginning to affect him this severely could only mean his sanity was running out of time.
Either option wasn't very good for him.
Opposite him, his tea had cooled completely and his book sat forgotten.