mary!

Younger, softer, real.

It was a candid he took before one of your shows, you were looking at your manager with a smile so bright he swears it could replace the sun. You were wearing minimal makeup, just enough to give the illusion that you were outside for some time playing around. You were waving at your manager, practicing the way you would say hi before the performance, the photo was freezing the moment you jumped a little, your hair floated around.

You looked small.

He liked that, even if people around him turned and said he was being weird for his obsession love he had for you. It wasn’t because of the weakness you radiated, it was never like that, even if some part of his brain -the part that even he admitted could be sick and twisted- fantasied about it.

Above everything, you were innocent, untouched by the filth of the world, by the way words punched into open wounds, by fake smiles and even more fake people. You appeared in his life just at the right time.

In a world where everyone was trying to pick him apart, there were you, and god, how could he forget the first time he saw you.

The way you looked at him as you showed him trinkets you collected on your travels, how you confided in him about your sadness and struggles. He understood you, you were a light in his darkness, making him smile for the first time in what felt like forever.

He changed tabs, looking at your old videos, it always made him feel better, it was his safe place, heaven built around zeros and ones, heaven filled with you, stages, broadcasts and interviews around the years.

Your smile greeted him as he clicked play into one of them, always sincere, always there, always happy, just you and him. And if he closed his eyes, he could almost see you above him as a beacon of light and salvation.

He stayed there for several minutes before forcing himself to click the teaser of your upcoming single, the difference hits him like a train, your makeup was bolder, scandalous, your movements were smoother, you controlled your body in a way that he had never seen before. You now knew how to angle your face, how long to hold eye contact with the camera. The smile was still there, but not as how he liked it, it was practiced, not showing much, it was almost a smirk.

They had taught you that. Right?

He leans back into his chair, fingers laced tightly together, head thrown back as he bites back a scream that would undoability bring another complaint from his neighbors.

"They're rushing you," he whines, kicking his legs, the chair rocking back and forth until the movement knocks a frame off his desk. "You don't even know what they're doing to you."

He pulls up photos he had taken over the years, all of them separated by years and single, debut, tour, hotel, late nights, practice.

He looked at them side by side, the way parents flip through old family photos -watching a kid grow into their features, grow confident, bigger, smarter, older- feeling nostalgic, proud of the person their child became. For him it felt like the end of the world.

His heart was breaking into a million pieces, and he was sure he was going to throw up all his dinner as he looked and found out in real time how much you had been giving signals to him that you were ready, how much you began to grow, how much they were pushing you, so fast it was making him feel whiplash.

Pastels gave way to bolder colors, the soft doll like dresses changed into sharper cuts. The skirts sat differently on your hips now; the shirt hugged you in a way that made him feel repulsed, makeup that once blurred your features now defined them, it all was looking to sharpen you into something, someone older.

Too old.

His jaw tightened, his body betrayed him, and he began to cry as one hand went down as the other covered his eyes.

“She doesn’t need that,” he said softly, almost whining. “She was fine before.” He runs his hand over his face, as if he could break the reality that he now existed in, one where his body reacted to your smile, to your winks, to your dance, it felt wrong, it felt disgusting.

He opens another video, one of the older ones, where you were collaborating with other girls, but still… in his eyes you shined the brightest. The audience screams when you smile, when you wink. He always hated it.

They didn’t deserve you. They didn’t know you. They didn't understand you the way he did, they saw the polished version you gave them, they never saw you inside your room, filling the silence with cries about mean people, never saw the way you practiced until bruises filled your legs. They haven’t earned you the way he did.

“You don’t belong to them,” he whispered. “You never did.” he gets closer to the screen, fogging it as his breath became erratic, and if he focused enough, he could pretend that it was your skin instead of the screen the one that he was feeling up.

His eyes flicked to his right, where he set his photographs up, all of them perfectly aligned, not leaving a space behind. All of them representing the phases where you looked your best in his eyes. His pride, his joy.

His girls

The ones who looked right, now forever young, preserved, soft skin, ribbons tied up just right. Makeup carefully blended in the way it used to flatter you, the same way he has seen you do I for him so many times across a screen. He always treated them gently, the same way he hoped he could treat you one day. Always soft hands, pouring all of his love inside them, in the outfits, the hair and poses.

They were made to look like you, to preserve you, to clean his mind of impurities that plagued it after that teaser. He was correcting it, hoping to send a message, he liked you the way you were before them.

“They changed you,” he said, voice shaking now, anger threading through the tenderness. “But don't worry, I’ll keep you safe,” he promised. “Even if you don’t understand yet.”

Quantico, Virginia.

The conference room hummed with the sound of the lights above them; the place was filled with energy as everyone knew that when Hotch was the one to bring the case to them, usually it was something time sensitive, so urgent that they could afford to skip the line of files on JJ's desk.

Hotch stood at the front, a folder tucked under his arm, the control of the tv in his hand, his expression grimmer and more serious than what they were used to. He waited as everyone took their places on the round table. JJ was sitting with the folder already open, her being the first to be called in by Hotch due to the nature of the news coverage regarding the case, Prentiss was coming in with Reid and Morgan close behind, and not to far back Hotch could hear the sound of Penelope’s high heels coming closer. And at the very last came Rossi, his face already grim, and Hotchner wouldn’t be surprised if he could already see the pattern as he looked at the photos scattered on the table.

“Three victims in the last month”, he began, skipping the pleasantries as he presses the control, the first image being displayed in the monitor; a young woman, she was posed on the edge of a park bench, limbs arranged delicately, her expression eerily peaceful. Looking as if she was asleep. Her clothes were reminiscent of a stage outfit for young celebrities, the type none of them except maybe Garcia had any interaction with.

“This is Lindsey Miller, she was an aspiring model settled in Los Angeles” Hotch presses the control to show the image of a girl, at most nineteen with a big smile as she posed with her parents, she was completely different, her hair was lighter, her frame bigger and with a darker look on her.

 “She was reported her missing seven months, but the case was dropped after three when they declared her dead after they found her clothes outside of a hotel” Hotch finishes and takes a breath “She is the last one the police have found, the other two girls were gone missing around the same time” He presses the button again, now showing all of the victims side by side.

“Each of them was left in different places around Los Angeles, usually parks with no cameras that could leave a trail” He takes a breath and looks around the room. “The autopsy shows malnutrition and dehydration combined with signs of torture dating back up to five months prior to their murders”

“It says there was sexual assault, but no DNA was found in the scene, even if he washes them…” Reid starts going on. “If postmortem sexual assault happened, trace evidence should still exist despite the cleaning. The absence of DNA suggests either exceptional forensic awareness... or prior experience.”

Silence washes over the conference room, nobody liked it when the reported victims and evidence didn’t coincide. It spoke volumes about the type of police force they were going to be dealing with after they began to question if there were other victims they could have missed. But the loudest question going around in all their heads was.

Why was he keeping them so long?

“They all look alike after he is done with them” Prentiss speaks up as she passes the pages of the file. “Maybe he is recreating someone, modeling them to look like his fixation”

“That’s what we are trying to decipher, assuming he's recreating someone, they don’t have much time left, every girl he is leaving behind shows more trails of violence” Hotch’s gaze swept the room, then returned to the images. “Something happened and we don’t know if he has more girls with him”

Morgan rubbed his jaw. “Which means we don’t know if he could leave another body or if he is going to go directly into the original”

Hotch’s gaze hardened. “Wheels up in thirty. We don’t have time to lose.”

In the plane they let themselves have a few minutes to try and organize their ideas and think of what the motivation of the unsub is. All of them kept looking at the file and at how different the victims were before he took them, all varying in hair color and height.

"He's spending too much time with them." Morgan says breaking the silence. “It’s a lot of time to keep someone alive, and look at this, Lindsey was 132 lb when she was taken, after they found her, she was 97 lb”

“Maybe he was starving them” JJ speaks up. “Maintaining 3 or more girls alive must be expensive”

“That’s what I would think, but check this out, second victim was about 86 when she went missing, when they found her, she was 95” Morgan continues, his eyebrows raised up, looking at everyone to see if they could give an explanation to the polar opposites type of care the unsub gave to the victims.

“He wants them looking a certain way.” Rossi speaks up. “If he can’t get to his original fixation, he loves them as if they were them, but why the sudden escalation?”

Morgan cuts him up, looking as he had tasted something sour “What love, there's nothing loving about this, if anything it looks like he's punishing them.”

“Those aren't mutually exclusive.” JJ speaks up from her seat in the back, already on her phone texting the local news asking them not to publish anything else related to the case.

Rossi ignores her as he looks at Morgan “You’re assuming the murders are the goal.”

“Then what is? Hotch interrupts the conversation, looking at them. And just in time Garcia’s face shows up in the laptop.

“What you got for us Babygirl” Morgan looks at the screen just before rubbing his face with his hands, trying to calm himself.

“I hate being the bearer of bad news...” She starts, wincing as she pulls up the report that got onto her computer. “Another body has been discovered, Camila Smith was found two hours ago in a park two miles away from the last dump site” She then shows the pictures in the screen, her face was covered in bruises the unsub hadn’t bothered to cover up this time, she was wearing a white dress that didn’t have a single stain in it, one with ruffles along the hem, and a diadem that seemed to be sewn into her head. And as always, a single tooth sitting in her hands.

“Well, he definitely has a type” Prentiss says as she squints her eyes trying to find something that can give her a clue. Everything on the scene looks like the other ones, a girl sitting on a bench, looking like she belonged in a fairytale. “She looks younger than the others” She murmurs

“Why the tooth?” Morgan questions. “I get it’s a wisdom tooth, but they're too young for them to erupt naturally.”

“Wisdom teeth have been associated with maturity in several cultures. In some traditions they're called 'teeth of judgment.” Reid speaks up for the first time in the plane. His voice silencing them “If that's the symbolism he's drawing from, it's possible the unsub believes the victims failed some kind of moral test.” And with that the movement seems to stop, the severity of his claim setting a heavy weight in the place.

Prentiss seems to understand his train of thought. "If he's punishing them, maybe the makeover happens first. He recreates them... and when they fail to live up to whoever he's projecting onto them, he kills them." She finishes for Reid.

“Reid and Rossi go to the morgue with the last bod, see if the local ME missed anything” Hotch begins to give orders, separating them to cover the greatest amount of ground. “Prentiss and Morgan go to the scene and look around for some type of mistake the unsub could have missed, JJ and I will see you in the commissary” Everyone looks at him a nod, the plan not sounding too far off from the other cases they’ve had.

“García, can you look up if the victims could have interacted before they went missing?”

And with that everyone kept bouncing ideas until they reached their destination, not knowing the unsub was sitting in his room, the news pulled up in his computer, a reportage from the local news sitting in the background, the voice of the anchor filling the silence.

His leg was bouncing up and down as he kept selecting which parts of his browser history to delete, thinking that even if the police could come close to his place a normal looking browser history would look less suspicious than an empty one. He looks up at the mention of his name being said in the news, well, the one they’ve given him.

“Dollmaker, fucking stupid” He snickers, the absurdity of their claims almost making laugh out loud. He covers his mouth, as if it could hide the smile that he couldn’t control "Dollmaker," he repeated, snorting. "They really don't understand” He glances behind him, where the rest of them are resting on the floor.

He looks back at his wallpaper, still you, still young, still his. “I know you understand” he comes closer to the screen, hand touching your smile. “I just know you don’t want this, don’t worry. I’ll fix it”

Somewhere far away, you practiced choreography under white lights in a bathroom of a hotel, you were counting under your breath, eyes fixed on the mirror. Just focusing in fixing mistakes, growing into a version of yourself you were proud of, someone who could be better.

You didn’t feel the moment his fantasy cracked. How could you? Being stalked wasn't scandalous in the industry, not the way it used to be. The euphoria and magnetism around public figures were real -sometimes encouraged- occupational hazards.

Parasocial relationships were cultivated: fan meetings, reality segments, cameras that followed you to rehearsal, the little midnight vlogs where you cooked and complained into a lens. And at first, you liked it, the cute routines, easy laughs, the way it made you feel accompanied.