#BUT WAIT AND IF THIS THEORY IS TRUE THEN THAT EXPLAINS WHY DAVY IS SO PROTECTIVE OF CODY

[soul-music-is-life]

Alright, I’m caught up on PLL: OS and I have some...thoughts/theories

First, I should preface this by telling everyone who might be reading (and some of you are aware) that I am a moderator on the Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin reddit and a few weeks ago we had someone aggressively spoiling major plot points that turned out to be confirmed as true. It was unfortunate, but the moderators catch it all in the filters. We worked our asses off to keep the spoilers from reaching the sub.

NONE of what I’m writing about includes anything that I know. I will never disclose that information, as I believe everyone should go unspoiled. So anything that I talk about in PLL: OS has absolutely no correlation to what I know. I won’t bring up those plot points at all. I talk about things I don’t know. So you won’t see anything true here. Only speculation.

Now...so episodes 4 & 5: (spoilers below cut)

A lot happened in episode 4, notably Imogen’s stages of grief. I try to remember that Imogen is grieving the loss of her mother, but if she talked to me the way she talked to Tabby’s mom…ohhhh, chile. Then again, after seeing what horrible people the moms were in the flashbacks...maybe her lil pregnant ass is right.

I love Faran. I love that she takes no bullshit.

The Sheriff is an asshole. Still. And the fact that Noa’s mom had drugs, but WAIT...

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE FACT THAT THE BOTTLE SAID “Rivers, Caleb” ON IT?!?! Is Caleb in Millwood?? Whaaaaaat? It might have just been a callback, but still.

My heart broke for Imogen during the Ouija board scene, because I said the same things to my mom after she died. It hurt. Bailee really nailed that, and so did the others. This is where they are bonded. This is how it happens. This is where their friendship blooms. I don’t think Davie killed herself.

The whole Psycho movie concept is awesome and it answered a ton of questions about Tabby as a character. Her control pinged my radar as someone who has lost control in the past and that ties back to the locker room cams. I had a hunch a while ago that Tabby was date-raped. This episode all but confirmed it for me. Explains why she buries herself in movies. She can’t get away from what happened to her, so she redirects and internalizes and uses movies as a way to cope.

I think Noa is up there as a favorite. She’s scrappy AF and her self-defense moves are on point. I shed a lil tear when she called to turn her mother in after being attacked. She’s got a hard outer-shell, but seems soft inside.

Ep 5:

Holy shit. The mothers were terrible to Angela. JFC. Maybe they deserve what they get. Maybe they deserve the Davie treatment. That’s horrifying. They were worse than Alison in PLL. A little pack of bullies. I would like to side note that I really love that we’re seeing characters we should like (adult moms) and their teen counterparts. Personally I’m conflicted, because I want to like the adults, but their teenage actions were despicable. I like having unlikable characters more than I thought I would.

Fun fact: Mouse wanting to tell someone what’s going on mirrors how Emily felt in the first season of PLL, which is kinda cool since Lea Salonga is related to Shay Mitchell.

“I’ll bring walkie-talkies from my moms’ pawn shop.” Omg, Mouse is such a dork and I love her. But we have got to talk about the old dude she is talking to. I am SOOOO uncomfortable. It’s so dangerous. What is she up to? I have theories.

The Faran/Kelly scene in the diner was really sweet. I like that Faran was 100% open to talking to her about self-harm. Despite her actions in the episode, she really does care.

Umm...so the creepy pedo Wes apologizes and then immediately goes back to “I do care about you” even though he’s sorry? Nah, not buying it. I don’t like that Tabby is back under his authority again. Hate it.

Halloween party when some dude it stalking you? Sure, sounds like a splendid idea.

Shawn is the only good man on this show. Change my mind. Well...okay, I’ll concede and say that Chip seems real sweet and that Mouse’s friend (I’m sorry, I can’t remember his name) is chill, too. But the whole football team (besides Shawn) can get rekt.

Tyler is the worst. He just hangs on to women like slime. My theory is that he sexually assaulted Tabby or Imogen (or both).

JFC, I am cringing so hard at this Mouse dinner roleplay scene. Stop. STAHP!!! This is weird. I don’t like it. I was literally physically uncomfortable watching it.

Faran going off on Kelly (or Karen? IDEK) was epic.

Stoned Mouse rivals Drunk Emily. I can’t choose though.

Noa’s, “Settle down, Tyler or I’ll get Shawn to beat the shit out of you” followed by Mouse’s “Or I’ll just do it.” Damn. Girl went from meek to killer. The girls are really coming into their own. Their friendship is wholesome. I’m here for it.

I am in love with the Faran/Tabby team up against Tyler. Faran’s little laugh after Tabby punched him. I died. “Should have shut your fucking mouth.”

I knew what was coming as soon as Tyler went into that bathroom. I mean…I might have just become a Masked Creeper fan. Cleaning up the town, one asshole at a time. Maybe I’ve just watched too much Dexter. But the thing is he had Imogen alone and didn’t hurt her. He could have gotten to any of the girls to hurt them...but he didn’t. It leads me to believe he only truly wants to punish the guilty.

Theory: Mouse was kidnapped as a child and that’s what’s up with all the missing posters and the survivor’s guilt and wanting to comfort parents who have lost their children.

Another theory: I always had a theory that Imogen’s baby was a product of rape. Though, still not confirmed, I highly suspect so. That’s why I was a little infuriated when she panicked and went to the school counselor to talk about abortion. It’s a hot topic. I won’t say more. But that scene pissed me off. She was a school nurse. She should have referred Imogen to talk to a doctor.

Girl’s secrets/theories:

Mouse- I believe she was kidnapped as a child on Halloween.

Imogen- I believe the baby is a product of date-rape. Explains why she’s detached from the baby and doesn’t seem to care when she puts herself in danger.

Tabby- I believe Tyler (or someone else...God if it was Wes, ugh...) raped her.

Noa- As of now I think her secret is that she was simply protecting her mother and I don’t know where it’s headed going forward.

Faran- Still trying to figure out what she has going on beneath the surface.

Anyway, that’s all I got for now. Here are some highlights I quite enjoyed.

Faran channeling the fandom re: Tabby’s movie references.

Faran basically being awesome in general:

Tabby GOING OFF (rightfully so!) on Tyler:

This duo (Tabby/Faran) @-ing Tyler:

[mando-lore]

The Terror of London: the story of Spring-Heeled Jack

Certainly Strange: A Podcast About The Unexplainable, episode 6

Listen on: YouTube  Spotify  Castbox

The Victorian era was a time of shadows and superstitions. In every corner of London’s dark streets lived a mystery or a monster. One of the most popular and certainly strange urban legends of this time is the story of the leaping devil, Spring-Heeled Jack.

In October, 1837, a young servant girl named Mary Stevens, is walking through Clapham Common to the house that she works at. Suddenly, a figure jumps from one of the shadows, gripping her tightly. The figure starts to kiss her face and tries to rip off her clothes. Mary cries out in alarm, and the figure vanishes. Of course, this just seems like a case where a man tried to molest the young woman. And it could have been exactly that, had the strange figure not ripped at Mary’s clothes with claws instead of hands. Claws, she said, that were “cold and clammy as those of a corpse.”

Mary Stevens was not the first one to see this strange clawed creature jump from the shadows. In September 1837, one month before the attack on Mary Stevens, a man saw a man with horns and red glowing eyes leap over the cemetery fence.

This strange devil-like man did not wait much longer to strike again after attacking Mary Stevens. The very next day, it was reported that a strange figure had jumped out in front of a traveling coach, causing the coachman to lose control and crash. Witnesses reported that the figure escaped by jumping over wall that was nearly 9 feet tall, whilst laughing uncontrollably.

This was also the very first time the police got involved. At the scene of the crime they found a pair of very deep tracks in the mud that could only have been made by jumping from a great height. The tracks also showed that there was some gadgetry on the shoes, and speculated that it might be “some sort of compressed springs”.

And this is how the strange devil-like figure got the name of Spring Heeled Jack.

It was January, 1838. Polly Adams, who worked as a barmaid, was walking across Blackheath in south London when she was suddenly attacked. She was discovered half-naked lying in the gutter. When she came to, she is reported saying that she had been attacked by a man who had ripped open her blouse and had grabbed her breasts with claws that were sharp and cold as a corpse, eventually cutting open her belly.

On January 9th, the Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Cowan, received an anonymous complaint of another servant girl who was attacked by Spring Heeled Jack. Because of this incident, several other people came forward about similar incidents in the Kensington and Hammersmith area, all involving servant girls.

This was the perfect story for the press, and Spring Heeled Jack began to get a lot of publicity. With the increase of publicity, there was also an increase of reports from people who had seen or were attacked by the now famous ‘terror of London’. The police took these reports very seriously, and even the Duke of Wellington, the one who had defeated Napoleon, went out armed on horseback to hunt for the monster that haunted London.

This did not stop Spring Heeled Jack, however, from striking again.

There came a knocking on her door. The police, he claimed. He had found spring heeled jack in an alley outside her home. Jane Alsop opened the door. When she accompanied the policeman to the alleyway, she noticed that he was not wearing a police uniform, but instead a long black cape. She got suspicious, but it was already to late. The cloaked man attacked her, trying to undress her whilst, according to her, spitting blue flames out of his mouth.

Jane Alsop described her attacker later to London magistrates: ”He was wearing a kind of helmet and a tight fitting white costume like an oilskin and he vomited blue and white flames!”

Nine days later, the same fate befell Lucy Scales. Walking home from having visited her brother, she was attacked by a man in the same outfit as Alsop had described. And again, he spitted blue flames out of his mouth, blinding her and even causing a seizure.

Then, after terrorizing London for many months, Spring Heeled Jack disappeared.

There were no more reports of people being attacked by Spring Heeled Jack. In 1855 he was seen in Old Hill, far from London, leaping from the roof of an inn to another roof across the street. Somewhere in the 1880’s, a man and a young girl reported that they had seen Jack with glowing eyes, who had bid them a good evening.

Spring Heeled Jack was also seen in 1872, when he landed amidst a group of soldiers. One of the soldiers claimed to have shot at him, but the bullet reflected off of him with a hollow, metallic sound.

Spring-Heeled Jack was last spotted in 1904, 67 years after he had first appeared out of the shadows, jumping over a building in William Henry Street in Liverpool. And, seemingly, disappearing into the shadows once again.

Although frightening and violent, Spring Heeled Jack never mortally wounded any of the women he attacked. This did not stop locals from suspecting him of murder. In 1845, a 13-year old prostitute called Maria Davis was pushed off a bridge into an open sewer, where she drowned. Although the coroner recorded Maria’s death as ‘Death by Misadventure’, and though an eyewitness had seen that it had not been Jack who pushed her but instead one of her clients, locals still claimed that Spring Heeled Jack was the true murderer of this child.

Many attacks on women were blamed on Spring Heeled Jack. When there came a report that a woman had been murdered in Whitechapel in 1888, with her clothes ripped off her, people automatically assumed it had been good old Spring Heeled Jack, especially since the culprit had seemingly disappeared into the night without being spotted by police.

Spring Heeled Jack immediately became suspect number one in the other murders that followed. So much so, that the killer himself wrote a letter t the Metropolitan police signed Spring Heel Jack: The Whitechapel Murderer. Later, the killer shortened it simply to Jack. Perhaps better known as the real terror of London. Jack the Ripper.

The real Spring Heeled Jack, if he ever existed, was never caught. There was only ever one suspect. Henry Beresford, the eccentric young third Marquis of Waterford, who was known for his misogynist behaviour towards women and for having a bad, often alcohol-fuelled temper.

The Lord Mayor of London also had a theory that Spring Heeled Jack was simply created by a group of elite gentlemen who dressed up and terrorized women as part of a bet.

There is another, somewhat strange theory of how Spring Heeled Jack is actually an alien from a planet with high gravity. This would, according to them, explain his extraordinary jumping abilities. Our thin atmosphere could have made him giddy, which would explain his laughter. He would be a nocturnal alien, with reflective eyes like that of a cat. That would explain his glowing red gaze.

But, before considering the theories about aliens, it is important to understand the historical context in which Spring Heeled Jack was born. Because, how can a creature such as Spring Heeled Jack be born in the minds of people?

The 1830s in England were turbulent times, full of tension and anxiety. It was a time filled with social, economic, political, and cultural changes. King William IV died in 1837, and people were uncertain about the capabilities of the young queen Victoria, since she was only 18 and a woman. In this time period, society became more regulated and disciplined, which characterised the Victorian era.

In a period of increasing and intensified control, the monstrous Spring Heeled Jack represented the appealingly uncontrolled. Like the wicked Mr Hyde compared to the composed Dr Jekyll. That is why he is constantly shifting in eyewitness reports. One time Spring Heeled Jack is a beast, the next time he is a ghost, and yet another time he is a devil.

This tense and potentially volatile context became the perfect ground to build a legend that is build on mass panic and sensationalism from the press.

During the Victorian era, printing technology improved. This gave more people access to education and books, causing illiteracy rates to drop. The increased demand of books combined with the high rates of crime created the perfect environment for people to profit off of sensationalized stories about monsters and criminals, such as Spring Heeled Jack.

So whether Spring Heeled Jack was a man, a monster, a ghost, a devil, an alien, or simply a result of a restrained society looking for sensation, his legacy is very much real. Spring Heeled Jack remains a popular penny dreadful figure from the Victorian era, featuring in games such as Assassins Creed Syndicate or the series Jekyll and Hyde. And whatever Spring Heeled Jack was or is, he is Certainly Strange.

SOURCES

Bell, K. (2012). The legend of spring-heeled Jack: Victorian urban folklore and popular cultures. Boydell Press.

Bellows, J. (2006). Spring Heeled Jack. Retrieved from: https://www.damninteresting.com/spring-heeled-jack/

Castelow, E. (n.d.). Spring Heeled Jack. Retrieved from: https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Spring-Heeled-Jack/

Dunning, B. (2007). The Attack of Spring Heeled Jack. Retrieved from: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4064

Grundhauser, E. (2016). Meet Spring-Heeled Jack, the Leaping Devil That Terrorized Victorian England. Retrieved from: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/meet-springheeled-jack-the-leaping-devil-that-terrorized-victorian-england

Ogden, P. (2020). Spring heeled Jack: The Leaping Devil Who Spread Hysteria in Victorian Britain. Retrieved from: https://oddfeed.net/spring-heeled-jack-the-leaping-devil-who-spread-hysteria-in-victorian-britain/

Origjanska, M. (2017). Spring-Heeled Jack: The Leaping Boogeyman who terrorized Victorian England. Retrieved from: https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/11/26/spring-heeled-jack/

Perry, L. (n.d.). Spring Heeled Jack, Fiction Based On Fact. Retrieved from https://casebook.org/dissertations/ripperoo-spring.html

Sheldon, N. (October 29, 2018). 16 Frightening Details in the Story of Spring Heeled Jack. Retrieved from https://historycollection.com/16-frightening-details-in-the-story-of-spring-heeled-jack/16/

[narrowtriangle33-blog]

Please share this article, it important that you do so. These truths have to be told.

"Bethune’s name appeared in six reports in the House Committee on Un-American Activities and five times in Senate reports on people suspected of communist activity. While she was cleared of any involvement, the message was clear: Confronting racism and white supremacy is un-American."

"This is why white people are my bellwether."

"Whenever I am trying to decide whether or not a particular movement, policy or person benefits Black America, I wait and see what white people think. While that might sound racist, there has never been a movement, policy or person that benefitted Black America who was simultaneously embraced by white America. In this country, a stance against the trauma-inducing brickbat of whiteness is perceived as a stance against America. And anyone who disagrees can feel free to prove me wrong. Name one person who fought for Black liberation who white people agreed with."

"Whenever anyone does anything that includes the word “Black,” it immediately falls under the classification of Marxist and anti-whiteness. White people hate being left out, even though they are acutely aware that there is nothing more valuable in the known universe than a white life. White people will slit a Black baby’s neck for a white woman’s life."

"Let’s just say they will beat a Black baby to a bloody pulp, tie him to an industrial fan with barbed wire and toss his lifeless body off a bridge. Is that better?"

"But I understand why they vilify Black movements with Marxism."

"White people don’t know what Marxism is."

"According to a 1970 Harris Poll, 64 percent of Black Americans had a favorable view of the Panthers, while 92 percent of white Americans had a negative view. It’s probably because a lot of members of the Black Panther were Marxists, which is different from communism. Basically, Marxism is a way to examine history, economics and societies through the lens of class, while communism is actually Marx’s economic and political theory in which...wait. For a second I started to believe that there was some logic to white supremacy."

"White people hated the Panthers because they had guns and pushed for armed self-defense. For some reason, those America-hating negroes believed “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”"

"I have no idea where they got that crazy idea from."

"Black people voting"

"Why white people don’t like it: States’ rights, something something, communism, something something it was a different time."

"When Black people marched on Selma for voting rights, they were called “communists.” The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was called “Un-American.” Of course, the 2020 election was about “socialism” because so many Black people voted."

"Southerners, conservatives and white people, in general, have never pushed for a single law to expand the electorate because they are the only true Americans."

"Critical Race Theory"

"Why white people didn’t like it: Because they don’t know what it is."

"This one is easy."

"The one thing that dumbfounds me about white supremacy is how much white people trust each other. They just trust the explanations for their fellow white people. In all this debate about CRT, I have yet to see one person who opposes CRT who can also explain what CRT is. And many of the legislators who are against funding K-12 teachers who absolutely do not teach CRT are already funding the leaders’ movement, such as Richard Delgado, the professor at state-supported Alabama Law School who wrote a little book called Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. "

"All they know is that it has the word “race” in it, so it must be bad."

"Legislators opposed the Civil Rights Act because it was “Marxist.” The House Committee on Un-American Activities investigated the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for communism. The FBI did, too."

"In a 1964 New York Times survey, a majority of white people said that the “Negro civil rights movement had gone too far,” and a quarter of those people said their resentment was growing. They were right. Two years later, a 1966 Harris Survey, revealed that 85 percent of white respondents thought civil rights demonstrations “hurts the negro.”"

"Apparently, to white people, fighting racism is worse than racism."

"And if you think I’m kidding about white people not thinking Black people were smart, according to the National Opinion Research Center, it was not until 1963 that 50 percent of white people believed “Negroes” were born with the same intelligence as whites."

"History"

"Why white people don’t like it: Because white people might find out about some of the things white people did, which is racist."

"The fight against what politicians have deemed the Marxist, Un-American 1619 Project is actually a fight against teaching the history of slavery more accurately. And it is not new. White people said the same thing about teaching abolition. The United Daughters of the Confederacy said the same thing about the Civil War. White school districts in the North and South said the same thing about Jim Crow. And Black History Month."

"Plus if white kids learn about America’s racist past, they might start saying: “I’m not going to do that again,” and then, what will happen to white people?"

"Martin Luther King Jr."

"Why white people didn’t like him: He was a communist. He was anti-white. He was a Marxist."

"In 1966, a majority of white Americans had a negative opinion of King. When he died in 1968, 75 percent of Americans disapproved of him. Now they love him..."

"Because he’s dead."

"This is why we must never ignore white people."

"While we should never, ever do what white people collectively want, history has shown us that if something is good for Black people, white people will hate it. And if they vilify something as racist, communist or anti-white, you should take a second look because, nine times out of 10, it might be worth considering. When it comes to freedom and equality, the easiest thing to do is to see what white people have to say...

Then do the opposite."

I copied a lot of his article word for word those are Michael Harriot's words not my own.

The word's of people who commented.

"I was asking one of the few people on the Right side of politics I am still in touch with about why he hates CRT, and he sent me a link to a whole essay. It boiled down to a few leaps in logic:"

"1) the USSR used US race relations as a shield to deflect criticism of their own human rights record (“And in the USA, they hang n-words”)"

"2) therefore, any criticism of race relations was caused by Soviet propaganda (not, you know, by actually HANGING BLACK PEOPLE)"

"3) therefore any discussion of race relations was commie propaganda."

"4) therefore, any movement that calls attention to race is communist."

"It’s very similar to how the Communist League fired the original writer of The Communist Manifesto because he brought up ethnic minorities and racism and replaced him with Marx, outright rejecting any factor that so much as complicated their preconceived model. It also shares many of the issues raised in the “grievance studies” affair, being exegesis to elaborate and propound upon a founding scripture."

"That’s the most idiotic line of reasoning I ever heard. It’s so typical of white people as a group in this country that when someone points out some shit they did that’s fucked up that instead of you know, stopping the fucked up thing they basically say that the entity pointing out their fucked up shit is bad therefore bringing up solutions to the fucked up thing they did is wrong."

"Fuck the trolls, but if anyone is actually confused about the likelihood of any white person to trust any other white person over anyone at all who is even POSSIBLY not white, please refresh your memories regarding the multiple instances in the last several years of a Black person being anywhere near a house or building, then being approached by either a white guard, cop, or other self-important deputy of white fragility."

"In these instances, Black people are often believed to be up to no good even after they show ID proving they live in the building some white person has decided they don’t belong in. No amount of proof will have a fragile white self-deputy believing that even state-issued IDs are a real thing and this Black person lives in their own home."

"But when any white person walks by and says “Oh, this is _____, they live here”, immediately, that’s good enough to let this perceived criminal go into their home."

"Because any white stranger vouched in any sort of way."

"Literal evidence of address means nothing, but the word of ANY white person, with no proof of their authority, no hassle about “Well what are YOU doing here?!?”, just...instant belief of any white skin."

"Also, the main difference between Angela Davis and Assata Shakur is that Ms. Davis beat the system at its own game, the “proper” way. Racism couldn’t even beat her at their heavily-rigged game. Ms. Shakur ALSO beat the system, but because she didn’t get to win at a fully-rigged game, she found her own loophole and got out of this racist hellhole."

"Not that it matters, because they’re both the same to any racist. To me, they’re both brilliant heroes."

"If you asked these mouth breathers what they hate about CRT not only could they not tell you, they would call you “the real racist” for asking. There is no winning with these people because they refuse to see themselves as ANYTHING other than the good guys in any situation. It is fucking tiring to deal with this shit and yet they seem to not understand that we are more fucking tired than they are. With each comment, committee and talking point they pretty much prove that no white person could handle being anything other than well, white."

"To admit anything else would result in a reckoning. It will never happen and America will remain a racist society, with white culture pushing back and getting more extreme as each generation of BIPOC become more aware and angry over white supremacy. America will implode and whatever rises from the ashes will either be that reckoning with real change or a third world country."

Again I quoted these people

[agl03]

Finale Predictions

Well guys, it's been quite the ride and here we are ready for the finale.   First and foremost I have to thank you all for sticking with me over the years.  Sending the asks, supporting the theories, dealing with my sometimes crazy metas and predictions, that sometimes hit and sometimes didn’t. And trusting me to be the Fandom Mom. 

As is now an annual tradition I’m putting up my post of Finale Predictions before going dark until after the finale airs.  This is for fun as I always like to see how well I did.    Please no pitchforks if I am wrong on any of these.

So here we go:

Everyone’s favorite villains, Nathaniel, Kora, and SIBYL will all make it to the finale while Garrett will be killed or locked up by the end of the first hour (and it will use some of Fitz’s tech).

SIBYL will eventually get herself a new body.

Nathaniel will turn on Kora and try to take her powers and/or kill her.

Kora has already turned on him and he/we just don’t know it yet.  Either betrays him and helps her sister or tries to kill him herself in revenge for her mother.  Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.  

Daisy will be the one to end Nathaniel and it will be oh so satisfying giant fight scene….even if we have to wait until the second hour for it.  Bonus points if Sousa get a hit in first too

Coulson, May, and Elena are able to get to space thanks to Coulson’s new computer Genius Super Power OR Garrett is ordered to bring them so they can lord their victory over them all.

Even though they have pretty much ended Shield and Hydra in the “hot mess” timeline SIBYL and Nathaniel set their sites on the OG Timeline and/or Fitz once they realize he has come into the mix and ruins their plans in the hot mess timeline..   As they are both aware he is the one who ends their little party.

The Chronicoms will not all be super thrilled with what SIBYL has been up too or her methods.   This could be another thing that drives SIBYL into the OG Timeline.   

The battle between SIBYL and Coulson seems to have gotten a bit more personal so my money is on Coulson being the one to take her down.   Close second goes to May and Fitzsimmons. 

Diana didn’t only block Memories of Fitz it took out the memories of people associated with him.  IE she is not going to remember her friends or Deke.

Deke will earn her trust quickly and be an A+ overprotective grandson of his Nana as they are rescued and get back to the team.

The team will rescue Deke and Jemma, take out a few Chronicoms, and Independence Day their way out of there.

While it won’t be the romantic Philinda some fans want we will see some quality Philinda banter over the finale as it seems they’ve settled into a good place between the two.   Coulson has also passed the torch of “team parent” onto her.

Philinda will not end as a couple.

At some point Sousa is really going to question what is going on and his life choices.  AKA He looks around stunned at what is going on.

More quality Dousy flirting and banter….they will kiss again and I do see them being a couple when things end.

Fitzsimmons family feels just a lot of them over the whole finale.  Iain and Elizabeth are going to murder us with feels.  I mean Fitz with his little girl.  I shall perish.

Despite not knowing everyone Jemma is going to be super insistent on building or activating a device (that has been stashed on the Zephyr) that she doesn’t know what it does but just knows she needs to build and activate it.  She will be the only one who can activate it and possibly it will take something very personal of hers to turn it on.  IE how she was hiding Fitz’s ring/necklace in Season 6 she might have the key hiding again.  But lets all freak out that Jemma will literally be the key to getting Fitz.

We won’t see Fitz until near the end of 12 if he is not the cliffhanger.  

That Bar place in the promo pics is either Keonig’s Bar or the Playground of the hot mess Timeline.  Seems to be some sort of secret Shield Base or what is left of them after the big attack as there are some random Shield agents milling/wth/who are these people in the background.  We know The Playground was off the books in the OG Timeline and would make sense it was also in the Hot mess.

Jemma will have her memory resorted relatively quickly after Fitz Kool Aid Man’s in all Star Lord from the portal thing Jemma activates.  And it’ll be the freaking power of her love for Fitz/her Family that overloads her (Gimme my Framework fix here).  Or Fitzsimmons have a fail safe password.  BUT GIMME TRUE LOVE.

CUE THE SECRET CHILD REVEAL!!!!!!!!!!   Yes, I will be screaming.  The team will be stunned.

I’m sticking to my theory that they will give their daughter a “celestial” or astronomical name to pay off “One of these days we’ll find something magnificent out in space,” thing from Season 3 (especially if she was conceived on the way back from Kitson).  Or a name that is very reflective of their Scottish/English roots.  

Everyone needs to hold onto their hats because once Jemma has her memories back it will be because they are gonna want to get home to their Little Girl like yesterday and have one hell of a plan that involves saving the world and taking care of Nathaniel, SIBYL, and the Season 6 Finale attack on the Lighthouse.

This is likely where a ton of the Flashbacks come in.

Where has Fitz been?  He’s been back in our OG Timeline.  The finale confirmation for me came last week when Nathaniel revealed that SIBYL’s time stream couldn’t see him….or their daughter, and that thing sees EVERYTHING in the HOT MESS Timeline.  This would also be why Jemma’s messages didn’t reach him, she couldn’t get them to cross into the OG Timeline and this was something she would have known but Diana blocked as part of hiding where Fitz was.

How has Fitz been watching the Chronicoms?  Insert incredibly complicated timey whimy thing the writers came up with that me and my Marketing degree can not fathom so just go with it okay, via the using the Framework in the OG Timeline to get into the Chronicom’s system.  Little pay back for what SIBYL has been doing in the Hot Mess Timeline.  Him being connected to the Framework explains why he was so exposed.  Because when someone is hooked up to that thing they can get their heads cut off and not know it.

Now reunited and having dropped the baby announcement Fitzsimmons will present the plan for the “Final Mission” the team must embark on to save the world….again.   

And oh baby is it complicated.  

Part of said plan will have them back at the Lighthouse during the Chronicom attack.

The dudes that showed up with Jemma at the Temple will be explained.  IE I think its some of the team and they cleared out of the Zephyr before the time travel party got started.  They also may have grabbed other hunks of the monoliths.

The fight will take place in both the Hot Mess and OG Timelines  

We have not seen the last of the Monoliths.  The fact we are jumping timelines and have Flint in the mix over in the OG timeline makes me think they are gonna need Mr. Swirly’s help in doing said jumping (Mr. Swirly is the Grey Monolith).  Or they really go with the OG and its Harold (Black Space one) that allows for it.  Kind of fitting the Monolith that tore Fitzsimmons apart is now the one that reunites them.  

We will for sure see Enoch (via Flashback), Davis (please not by Flashback #davislivesagain), Piper and Flint as returning Favorites.   

If they have Davis back to life I just gesture exhaustedly at the Monoliths again.  Not even gonna try to explain it.

Small chance we run into the Hot Mess’s Timeline Enoch but he will have no relationship or connection to the team and will make me cry.  

Top Picks for SURPRISE not on the Press Release faces to pop up if we get them:   Ward (I mean really how have we not seen him again yet), Mace, Robbie, Bobbi, Hunter, Koenig (any of them) and Mike.    REALLY WANT IT BUT WON”T GET IT!   Dadcliffe

Who was keeping Fitzsimmons Daughter safe:  

Top Pick:  Piper and Flint:  Given Fitzsimmons would have run into them picking up the Zephyr and they could have been the “we had help” they talked about.

Second Place Because I Badly want him back:  Uncle Enoch 2.0

Left Field Surprise Option:  Huntingbird

LOLA RETURNS

We will get a lot of really fun callbacks to past stories or even lines IE “I’m just the Pilot” For May.

“What We Are Fighting For”:  Family.  The team family….and the Fitzsimmons family.  Also they will have gone 13/13 in that someone will say the titles name at some point in the episode.

We will see old weapons and tech from previous seasons make one last appearance, we’ve seen 2 so far in promos and will see more.

Shotgun Axe gets a proper send off in battle (this one is for Kiddo 3)

Bear will deliver the most amazing soundtrack that we’ll never get to buy.

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story (Sorry Couldn’t Resist)

Nathaniel:  Dies, and we will all cheer.

SIBYL:  Dies, and we will all cheer.

Garrett:  Dies or locked up, won’t make it to the second hour.

Kora:  Toss a coin.  If she dies she killed for trying to take down Nathaniel.  If in her betrayal of Nathaniel she helps Daisy get Jemma and Deke back that could be a good starting place for the sisters to work thing out.   Starting place, she has a long way to go to get in good with Daisy and setting up an 11th hour redemption arc.

Mack:  Still so nervous for him based on how he has been in interviews, especially the SDCC ones last year.  He was so clearly upset by it.  So Mack either falls or does something so out of character (Bails before the finale battle which just is not making sense to me Mack is in such a good place right now) for Mack that Henry was upset by it.  Essentially I am very confused because what I am seeing on screen now isn’t matching with how Henry was talking as Mack has really come around since his Endgame stage.

Elena:   Easily lives.  If Mack doesn’t die, wherever he lands she’ll be with him.  They’ve been a steady ship all season and I see no reason for them to break up outside of death.  And while I have a mountain of concerns for Mack, I have none for Elena..   I also see her still being a presence within Shield, she’s become a good solid agent, and bonus points if she keeps Flint with her….and he gets all the tacos he wants.  

Sousa:   Totally lives (they might give us a good fake out though because he and Daisy are becoming a thing)I can still see him being Director of Shield if Mack falls or steps down.   He’s a good Agent in a new time but he said he is right where he is supposed to be, at Daisy’s side.  Where she goes he goes.  IE he’s not letting her get away and will always be there after she runs into a wall.  So if Daisy leaves Shield, so will he.  If she stays so will he.  If she opens a coffee bar he’ll learn to make an espresso.   

Daisy:   Totally Lives, but there will be something about her ending that some fans won’t like and some fans are going to love.   Staying with Shield or no whatever she does will involve Inhumans be it the Secret Warriors are up and running again, she is mentoring and training new Inhumans coming into Shield, or my favorite option still is she reopens Afterlife.  I’ve been feeling that option for most of the Season and feel like it was really set up with Jaiying as was Daisy looking out for her little sister should the chips fall the right way.     The SS Dousy will be sailing right along.  IF Kora survives I can see her being in Afterlife as well, Daisy taking her mother’s passion that Kora has a good heart to heart herself.  

Deke:   Okay this one is weird because I feel like we are going to lose him somehow, but he won’t die.  I didn’t get the vibe from Jeff, Elizabeth, or Iain that he died and those three are pretty tight.  However,  in that I don’t think I’m going to get my Fitzsimmons Family all settling down in a giant castle in Scotland together.  They set up for him to make a sacrifice, he’s grown, and has something he’s really truly fighting for.   I have loved seeing how close he and Jemma have gotten and how fiercely he’s protected her and her secret.  Even in the face of torture he didn’t betray her.  It will come as no surprise if he doesn’t sacrifice himself somehow.  Either in taking a hit for his family or doing something similar to what he did in Season 5 to make sure they got home.  Bringing things full circle.   He also expressed that he wouldn’t mind being stuck in the hot mess timeline in ‘83.  He built himself a nice life there and Nathaniel did a pretty good job of taking out Hydra...with just a bit of Shield hanging on.  So if it comes down to it I don’t see him minding if he gets stuck there.  Sure him saying goodbye to Nana and Bobo is gonna hurt like Hades but if he ends up alive, I’m good.  

Fitzsimmons:  Both live, yes they will scare the crap out of us more than a few times especially after we know about the daughter, but they will live.  Totally peace out, we’ve done our time, leaving Shield with the adorable daughter and its Perthshire or Bust.   They’ve sacrificed enough and will not be willing to risk it again.

May:   Lives and reminds us all that she is one hell of a pilot.  If Mack decides he wants to step down, dies, whatever I’ll throw her back in contention for Director, especially as I see Sousa Following Daisy if she leaves.  Coulson seemed to have set her on that path and at the very least passed the “Team Parent” torch onto her, that it would be her job to give the Coulson talks to those who needed it.  If she’s not Director, she’ll be whomever is right hand, or I still have that option for the Academy being up and running and she’s running that, training the next generation.

Coulson: Lives.I know SHOCKING.   I think he was very ready to throw in the towel after spending 20 months in the TV but then Enoch’s moving words in his death were what changed his mind about ‘powering down” when this is all over.  Coulson realizes that yes, while it is hard to be the one to leave it is harder for the ones that are left behind but it's also necessary that they move on, and live for those they have lost before.  Like Sousa and Fitzsimmons, he’ll be another that they’ll fake out death a few times.   I see him leaving Shield though, taking Lola and finally just going and seeing the world, watching the history he loves so much happen.  We get to see him driving around or even off in Lola for the last time.   Other options include he does something that will allow him to totally run with his new super computer super power.  The final thing I can see him doing is being the coolest professor at the newly rebooted Academy.  

Flint:  Get’s his tacos.

Piper: Keeps being awesome.

Davis:  Better live dang it.

Kiddos Predictions:

That weird device Jemma makes brings Fitz 

Deke sacrifices himself for Fitz

Fitzsimmons and their kid have to leave Shield

Mack leaves shield

Fitzsimmons, Dousy, Mackelena all stay together

Daisy kills Nathaniel, Daisy needs to quake him up

May or Nathaniel will take out Kora.  But if she survives we want Daisy to take her in.

Fitz takes down SIBYL

Piper is watching the Daughter

The daughters name is Olivia

Robo Coulson will sacrifice himself

GHOST RIDER HAD BETTER BE OUR SURPRISE CHARACTER (this was literally shouted at me).  Kiddo 3 voted for PIkachu (Lincoln)

Have no idea what will happen to May

We will get a “flash forward” ending showing what the team that is still alive is doing

Flint gets his tacos

They save the team and have a full out war at some point in time

The episode is going to be super good

Mom is going to cry

Well there it is.  We’ll check back in on Thursday to see how I did!

[myheartrevealedocs]

Untouchable Ch 9- The Boogeyman (S2E6)

Warnings: murder of young children, swearing, generally just some people dealing with some painful stuff badly

Ch 8 | Ch 10

~ ~ ~

Lydia had been right about one thing: after Strauss cleared her to take Hotch’s job offer, she didn’t end up going on a case for months. She went through what was, essentially, the FBI Academy, making sure she was prepared for any sort of field work that fell upon her while she was on a case.

Upon graduation, she made Hotch promise that she’d never have to go through anything like that again. It was brutal. But on the bright side, by her 23rd birthday, if she so chose, she could become an agent. That was quite the accomplishment for her.

The summer was finishing up and Lydia was preparing for her 3rd semester of her graduate program, with Spencer’s help, of course. He’d been an angel for the past three months. And somehow, no one seemed to have caught on to their secret relationship.

It was so nice. What she felt with Spencer was unlike anything she’d been a part of before. He was sweet and made her laugh and kept her engaged. And he understood her. He allowed her to speak openly about her mother and father, though she hardly did. When she explained to him that her and her sister ended up in a foster care system, he didn’t pressure her to talk about why her father had lost custody. Instead, he asked her about Beck, a topic she was far more comfortable with.

He was her support system. And her best friend.

Which was why he was the first to greet her upon her entrance to the BAU.

“Hey, do we have a case?” he asked bluntly, meeting her halfway to her desk and following her there.

“I wouldn’t be here if we didn’t,” she admitted, setting her go bag down, finally having one to keep in the office. “Gideon?”

“Round table room,” he replied, shortly. Then he leaned in, almost secretively. “Welcome back.”

She opened her mouth to tease him, but was cut off by Morgan.

“Lydia! Bring it in, kiddo!” He entered the bullpen, arms extended for a hug, which she graciously accepted.

“Derek! I’ve missed you guys. How have things been without me?”

“Eh…” he squeeked. “Tense?”

She knew what he was referring to. Apparently, on their last case, Elle had shot an unsub outside of his house with no witnesses around. She was claiming it was self defense, but the circumstances were fishy and Hotch didn’t believe her. Or at least, Spencer thought Hotch didn’t believe her.

“Morgan, Reid, Ambers,” JJ called, sternly. “Let’s go.”

The three of them sheepishly made their way to the conference room, where JJ and Gideon were waiting for them.

“Nicholas Faye, of Ozona, Texas, was beaten to death roughly 13 hours ago” JJ began, a picture of a young kid with a bloody head wound appearing on screen. “Blunt force trauma to the head. He’s the second young boy in Ozona to die the same death in the last 2 months. Local hunters found his body in the woods. The first victim’s name, Robbie Davis.”

Lydia picked up one of the case files and sat down with the team, looking over the crime scene photos. She didn’t want to, but couldn’t help herself from glancing at Nicholas’s file. He was eight. Who took out their psychotic desires on such small children?

“Are these boys connected somehow?” Morgan asked.

“Ozona’s population’s roughly 2,500,” JJ explained. “Everyone has some kind of connection.”

“Well, if they weren’t linked before, they most certainly are now,” he murmured.

~ ~ ~

Lydia didn’t fail to notice the lack of Hotch and Elle as they boarded the jet. No wonder Gideon asked her to come along, they were severely understaffed.

Lydia sat down beside JJ on the flight, the two of them looking over the medical report together.

“Did you guys hear Elle was cleared?” Spencer asked, sitting across from them, with Morgan. He had a fresh cup of coffee in his hands.

JJ nodded, looking to Derek, who simply said, “Self-defense.”

“So it was a good shoot,” Spencer continued.

“She hit what she was aimin’ for,” JJ mumbled, harshly.

“That’s not what I meant,” Spencer tried to defend himself, but the can of worms had been opened.

“I know.”

“If they cleared her, how come she’s not here with us?” Morgan demanded. “Or Hotch?”

Gideon was quick to put an end to the speculating. “Focus on the case.”

They had just started to discuss the chances of these kids being surrogates for a past bully when JJ got a call from the sheriff, letting them know a new victim had just been discovered. An 11-year-old girl.

“Why would the victimology just… suddenly change?” Reid asked.

“Maybe the girl wasn’t the target?” Morgan suggested. “Maybe she just got in the way.”

“Or the sex of his victim isn’t significant,” Gideon reasoned. “The pace he’s killing certainly indicates a velocity of change.”

“We can’t surveil every kid in Ozona,” JJ sighed. “How are we supposed to keep them all safe?”

“Enforce a curfew?” Reid offered.

Morgan didn’t seem to disagree with him, but still shook his head as if frustrated. “Children shouldn’t have to worry about something like that.”

“Tell me about it,” JJ mumbled. “The woods were the only thing I was afraid of when I was a kid.”

“Seriously?” he asked, startled. “I thought you grew up in a small town?”

She chuckled. “Yeah. Surrounded by woods.”

“Bummer for you.”

“Yeah.”

“The only I was afraid of was the dark,” he explained.

Reid raised an eyebrow. “Some of us still are.”

The whole group glanced up questioningly and Lydia was sure Morgan was going to tease him about it, but Gideon was already back on topic.

“When we land, Lydia and Reid, go to the new crime scene. The little girl,” he ordered. “Morgan and I will look at the scene where Nicholas Faye was found.”

They nodded, settling into silence.

~ ~ ~

“This is just a quarter mile from where the two boys were killed,” a deputy told them as Lydia and Reid walked onto the scene. “Bludgeoned to death the same way.”

The medic who was wheeling off her body shook his head. “Not entirely true. I found some markings on her scalp that indicated that that psycho beat her postmortem.”

Lydia raised an eyebrow at Reid, before walking around the scene to look for anything the deputies might have missed. “So much for Morgan’s theory on her getting in the way.”

“Suggests the unsub’s getting more brazen,” he agreed.

“He’s getting brazen all right,” the medic grumbled. “I’ve bagged three children in the last month.”

Lydia glanced at a sign nailed into a nearby tree, which designated the surrounding area as hunting grounds. “Deputy, do you get a lot of hunters around here?”

He shrugged. “There are only a few avid hunters in town. The forest goes on for miles and miles, so despite our patrols it’s possible to miss a few.”

Reid stepped around the stretcher and joined her. “What are you thinking?”

“Just trying to get a feel for who would know these woods. If the unsub kept beating her after death, he had to know he was in a spot no one would pass through accidentally.”

“It doesn’t really fit the MO of a hunter to beat someone to death,” he explained.

“Maybe not, but who else is out here regularly? The patrols?”

He contemplated this for a minute. “I’ll bring it up later. Did you look for evidence?”

“Well, I can’t exactly dust the dirt for fingerprints,” she argued. “And I’m sure he took the weapon with him. He’d want to stash it in a separate sight for his next victim. Since I can’t search the whole woods, I’m pretty much useless.”

“You’re not useless,” he assured her. “Looking into the patrols was a good suggestion. Gideon wouldn’t have brought you along if he didn’t think you could help.”

She gave him a halfhearted smile, before continuing around the closed off area and kicking up leaves. She wanted to believe him, but this was a crime scene for a profiler. And she wasn’t a profiler.

~ ~ ~

Lydia was left to twiddling her thumbs in the station as they gave a profile to the deputies. They’d spent the day telling children and parents alike about how to best take care of themselves and make sure no one else got grabbed. But there really wasn’t anything for her to analyze. She was, frankly, quite bored.

“Excuse me.”

Lydia looked up to find a very pregnant woman walking in, a young boy holding her hand.

“Chief,” the deputy they’d met before said. “You’re gonna want to hear this.”

The entire room went quiet as she spoke. “My son, Matthew, never came home today.”

“When was he last seen?” Gideon started and the rest of the team made their way to the evidence board.

The only things on the board were a map of the town and the pictures of the killed kids, which Lydia was sure wasn’t helping ease the mother.

“His teacher saw him in the parking lot after school.”

“Search team,” the sheriff demanded and everyone began to disperse, talking amongst themselves.

“Ok, Reid,” Morgan said, stepping up to the map. “The school is on Willow Rd.”

Reid began to explain the secluded areas nearby and Morgan reasoned out where the deputies should start their search. Across the room, JJ was helping the mother into a chair and Gideon was joining them to ask more questions.

And Lydia was still… doing nothing. No help at all.

“Honey, is that true?” the mother asked, catching the attention of most of the room. She spoke to her youngest son. “Are you hidin’ something?”

“You want to protect him, right?” Gideon prompted The boy glanced nervously at all the adults now fixed on him. “It’s what a brother’s for.”

“Matty said he was just going to ring the doorbell,” he defended. “At the haunted house… on the hill.”

Lydia’s ears pricked up. Haunted house? That was something to keep her busy.

“The Finnegan’s place,” a man named James Charles answered. He was the guidance counselor at the local school, so he knew the kids well and had been involved in the case since day one.

“Who’s Finnegan?” Gideon demanded.

“This old guy who lives in that house,” the kid responded.

The sheriff was the next to explain. “Kind of a local legend. Ghost story.”

“About?” Reid asked.

“Supposedly he watches the kids from his window. Hunts ‘em. Skins ‘em. Eats ‘em.” He shrugged. “Standard.”

“Folks have been tellin’ that story since I was a kid,” Charles explained.

Morgan was clearly pissed. “Why haven’t we heard about this? Fables are often sparked by an ounce of truth. We should exhaust every possibility.”

“Nevermind that, Morgan,” Gideon told him. “Grab your things. Lydia, too. We’re going on a raid.”

~ ~ ~

After Morgan and the sheriff swept the house and found it to be empty, Lydia went in to look for potential evidence. The power had been cut, which would indicate it had been empty for a few weeks, at least, but inside was a copy of the day’s paper.

Gideon and Spencer searched the shed out back and found the boy, Matthew. Poor kid had run off when he thought he heard Finnegan and hid in the shed for most of the day. While the rest of the team was figuring out how to get him home, Lydia and Spencer began their search of the house.

She scanned the shelves in his study while Reid went through his desk. They were looking for any indication that he killed kids in his free time, but it looked pretty normal.

“Hm… I’m gonna search the next room. Will you be alright here?” she asked him, turning away from the books and trinkets.

He nodded, still rumbling through drawers. “I’ll call Garcia to see if she found anything on Finnegan.”

Lydia smiled, stepping out the door. “Holler if you hear anything interesting.”

He agreed, watching her walk off, fondly, before a sense of dread overcame him with the realization he was now all alone in the dark. He dialed Garcia as fast as he could, trying to focus on the files in front of him and forget about the ominous room behind him.

Meanwhile, Lydia walked into an open living space with some scary decorations. A full wall was lined with hunting knives and a cabinet of shotguns. Given the creepy stuffed animal heads around the rest of the house, Lydia wasn’t surprised to find that he was a hunter, but even so, the amount of weapons he owned seemed extensive.

A hunter, especially one who lived basically in the woods himself, would know the trails well. But she remembered what Reid had said about how strange it would be for a hunter to kill someone with blunt force trauma. And clearly Finnegan was proud of his kills. Beating up kids and leaving them in the woods didn’t line up with the guy who organized his knives by size and preserved his kills on frames in his house.

But just in time to throw a wrench in her assumption, she came across a few items hastily stuffed underneath the coffee table in the adjacent room. She knelt down and picked up a blue lunchbox and a pink and white backpack.

“Ah!” Reid’s squeal echoed through the house, followed by laughter from Morgan.

Lydia picked up her findings and started to make her way back towards them.

“You really are afraid of the dark,” Morgan teased.

“I’m working on that.”

“You should work a little harder.”

She stepped into the main hallway and almost walked directly into her boyfriend. “Woah. Hey. You alright?” She couldn’t stop herself from smiling at his flustered demeanor.

“What are you holding?” he deflected, noticing her awkward grip on her flashlight with her full hands.

“My deputy got the boy home safe,” the sheriff announced, entering the house with Gideon. “Turns out the poor kid got spooked by a tree branch.”

Morgan sighed. “This whole town’s on edge.”

“And rightfully so,” Lydia argued, holding up the lunchbox for them to see. “Robbie Davis,” she said, pointing to the name in sharpie on the bottom, then doing the same to the backpack. “Sarah Peterson.”

“I guess Finnegan brought the kids back here first before baiting ‘em into the woods,” Morgan reasoned. “But why wouldn’t he get rid of the evidence?”

Gideon looked somewhat baffled.

“He considers them trophies,” Reid offered.

“When this is all said and done I’d like to hang his head on my wall,” Morgan finished, before walking further into the house.

~ ~ ~

The house was huge. It was going to take hours to search, but it was better than the jackshit she’d been doing earlier. The team had spread out pretty evenly across the house, looking for any indication of where Finnegan had run off to.

“Lydia! Morgan!” Gideon called up the stairs.

The two of them met on the stairwell and found Gideon, Reid, and the sheriff all headed out the door.

“One of the search teams just found Finnegan’s body in the woods,” Gideon continued to explain.

“No shit…” Lydia whispered.

“I need you to keep searching the house. And what did I say about looking fascinated?” he warned her, being the last to walk out the door. “It’ll creep the locals out.”

She nodded, though he was already gone, and looked to Morgan for instruction.

“Do you wanna search down here and I’ll go back upstairs?” he asked, not comfortable with ordering Lydia around despite being the superior agent (in fact, the only agent) in the house.

“Sure,” she responded and lifted up her flashlight to navigate the ground floor once more.

She wasn’t sure what Reid and Gideon had gone through before they left, so she headed towards the back end of the house and started there. The bathroom was fairly standard and she moved through it quickly, then wound up in the kitchen.

Across an island in the middle of the room were many empty food containers. They’d been delivered and eaten within the past few days. Lydia continued, thinking nothing of it and searched through some drawers, when her phone went off.

“Lydia? Finnegan’s been dead for two weeks, at least,” Gideon informed her. “Looks like his heart gave out when he was setting an animal trap.”

“Interesting,” she mumbled, turning back on the plastic containers. “It looks like I’ve got some prints to lift, then.”

“His body had been covered up. Someone’s trying to take advantage of the fact that no one knows he’s dead.”

“I noticed. We’ve got food containers here that were delivered today and they’ve been eaten. Someone hasn’t just been bringing in his papers, Gideon. They’ve been basically living here.”

“And leaving trophies from their kills there. We’re on our way back. Dust those containers and look for any other evidence of our unsub. He clearly didn’t think we’d find Finnegan. He didn’t think to hide anything he left in the house.”

“You got it.”

She hung up and went to grab some print dust from her bag. But she held off on using it, searching for anything else she could dust and dropping it on the counter as well.

“What have you got?” Gideon asked as he stormed into the house and all the way back to the kitchen.

“Provisions. The church delivers them to elders in town,” she explained, not looking up from her search through the cabinets. “Unsub has been eating all the ones dropped off in the past few days.”

“Did he eat everything?” Morgan inquired, walking in behind them.

She shook her head and lifted the trash can in the corner of the room, opening it up for the boys to see inside. “He doesn’t like creamed spinach it seems.” Inside there were cups of spinach, all duct taped shut. She dropped the can roughly and knelt down to grab the cups of uneaten food and set them up with the other things she’d collected.

“Grab those prints quickly,” Gideon instructed, his phone going off in his pocket. “Have Garcia run them for a match.” Looking at his screen, he mumbled, “Hotch,” before stepping out of the room.

Reid watched him go, then began talking to Morgan. “It’s about Elle, isn’t it?”

Lydia raised an eyebrow, but went back to work, finding pristine prints almost immediately.

“I don’t know,” the agent replied.

“You know, I- I talked to her in Ohio,” Spencer admitted.

“Reid, we all talked to her.”

“No, I- I- I talked to her before. I went to her room one night, and she was drinking.”

“She almost died. I’d be drinking, too.” Morgan sounded exhausted, leaving the conversation at that.

Lydia waited until she was certain he was gone to look up at Reid. “Don’t worry about Elle, Spencer. Hotch is working on that. When we’ve finished this case, then you can talk to her, call her, whatever you need to do to make sure she’s okay.”

He nodded, his teeth pulling at his lips in concentration. “Thanks, Lydia.”

She shot him a small smile, the dark finally lifting with the morning light. “If you just want to talk, you know I’ll listen.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but Gideon was already on his way back in, not looking too happy.

Text, she mouthed to Spencer, not wanting him to give up so easily on talking to her.

Later, he mouthed back.

~ ~ ~

They got back to the station late that morning and Gideon instructed the three of them to settle down until Garcia got back to them with the prints Lydia had sent her.

That’s how she ended up sitting around with JJ, Reid, and Morgan, clutching her morning coffee like it was her life and vaguely listening to them talk about the case. She didn’t even realize the topic had changed until she was in the middle of it.

“Why the woods, JJ?” Morgan started to her left. Lydia glanced up, curious where the conversation had ended up.

“Hm?”

“Your fear. You said it was of the woods.”

She glanced down, her brow creased in concentration. “Uh, I used to be a camp counselor when I was a teenager in the woods up in Vermont. I had the night shift-- tuck the girls in, turn off the lights, you know, the typical drill. Everything seemed fine, all the kids were asleep. You know… nothing out of the ordinary… Until I noticed that there was some blood on the hallway floor…”

Both the boys’ eyebrows shot up, glancing at each other curiously. Lydia’s face was one more of confusion. The way she set up the story sounded more like a ghost story than a personal tragedy. And it would turn out she was right, because while the boys were distracted, JJ sent Lydia a wink. Oh… she was totally playing them.

“...so I followed the blood trail out to the camp director’s cabin, walked up to his bed, and he was just lying there underneath his covers… Dead. Someone stabbed him. I ran out of there so fast. Out the door, down the hall. I just remember it being really dark. Once I got to the door, there was another counselor there. I guess she heard me scream.

“They caught the caretaker on his way to town. Guess he had still had the knife on him. Anyway, I guess that’s probably when I decided I didn’t like the woods.”

She took a long sip from her coffee and Lydia could tell almost immediately that she was trying to hide her smile at the dumbstruck faces the boys were making.

“You’re serious?” Morgan asked, glancing at Lydia who was holding a hand over her mouth to also mask her smile, though it wasn’t very convincing.

JJ gave Morgan a long look, before finally saying, “No.”

Lydia snickered at their change in posture. “Come on guys, that was total bullshit.”

“You fell for that?” JJ teased. “Come on. I don’t know why I’m afraid of the woods. I just… I am. Why is he still afraid of the dark?” she demanded, turning on Spencer.

“Yeah, Reid,” Morgan joined. “Why are you still afraid of the dark?”

“Because of the inherent absence of light,” he replied.

“Oh,” JJ said, sarcastically.

“JJ, that was pretty good,” Morgan complimented. “I can’t believe you were in on it, Lydia. Just know that paybacks are a bitch.”

“I’m shaking,” JJ mocked.

Suddenly, Morgan flipped onto Lydia. “So, out with it. What was your childhood fear?”

Lydia stammered for a moment. “Oh! I hadn’t even thought about it. I guess… getting kicked out of school was one of the big ones for me.”

“You getting kicked out?” he laughed. “Come on, kiddo. You can do better.”

“I got into a couple of fights,” she defended and he shook his head.

“No way. You can’t play me like JJ did.”

“I’m not!” She was laughing now, too. “I was an angry child until I went away to college! But I knew how difficult it would be for my family if I got expelled so every time I got sent to the principal I was terrified of getting kicked out.”

“I don’t believe you!” he argued, leaning forward to grab his ringing phone. “You’re a total liar!”

Lydia rolled her eyes dramatically at the other two. She knew Spencer believed her, but she wasn’t sure with JJ. She couldn’t blame Morgan for dismissing it. She had changed a lot since then. Even when they first met, when she was still grieving Jenna, she hadn’t been as physical or offstandish as she’d been in high school, so he really hadn’t seen her in action.

“Yeah… Hey girl, you got something good for me?... Two?... Okay, but which one of the victims? Why don’t you coordinate with the Ozona coroner’s office for a match?...” Morgan’s eyebrows knit together as he listened to Garcia. “Yeah, he’s a local guidance counselor helping us on this case… I know exactly how to find him, Garcia. Thanks.”

“Don’t tell me-,” Lydia began, but Morgan was already hopping up and ready to go.

“James Charles’s fingerprints were on those food containers.”

~ ~ ~

They drove out, leaving Lydia to search his house while they brought him into custody. She did a glancing sweep of all the rooms but nothing stood out to her. The profile claimed the guy was meticulous. And the Charles household did not reflect that.

She found the cleanest room was his son’s bedroom. Jeffrey Charles. His mom had left him and his dad 6 months ago. And now all his classmates were dying horribly. That must be scary.

Oh no… and JJ had to pull him out of school now that his dad was in custody. Even scarier.

She wandered a moment more, building herself up to inevitably tear this house apart. And then, Spencer called her.

“What’s up?”

“Is Jeffrey there? At the house?”

“What?” she exclaimed. “No. I would have called you if I was babysitting a child.”

“He’s not at school either.”

“You guys thinking Charles killed his own kid?”

“It’s suspect. JJ and I are going to meet up with you.”

“Got it.”

And after a few minutes they did. JJ looked around upstairs and Lydia started a more thorough search around the kitchen. Turns out, there was a lot to learn from kitchens on this case. She opened the fridge and was very startled to find many of the products inside sealed with duct tape. Similar to the duct tape on all the creamed spinach at the Finnegan place.

“Weird,” Spencer mumbled behind her.

“What is it?” she asked, not even turning around. “I bet mine’s weirder.”

“Epi pen,” he muttered, walking into the kitchen and looking over her shoulder. He stared at the fridge for a moment, eyebrows scrunching together. “I… guess I’ll call Gideon.”

Lydia shut the refrigerator door, listening to him explain to Gideon what they’d found.

“Do you think the kid could have done this?” she asked, quietly. It was a protective measure. No adult would cover things they were allergic to. The duct tape was to stop a kid from doing something harmful. And if Jeffrey was the one with the allergy, he’s the one who’s been hiding in the Finnegan house.

“Gideon will figure it out,” Spencer assured her, putting his phone back in his pocket. “Let’s just keep searching.”

~ ~ ~

Little Jeffrey Charles was bitter that his dad could help all these kids at school with their problems and couldn’t sit down and talk to him about his mom. So, once the baseball season was up and he was still craving the physical release, he walked into the woods with his friend Robbie Davis and beat him to death.

Maybe Robbie was teasing him or making him angry. Maybe he hadn’t meant to hit him the first time. Maybe there was more to it that they didn’t understand…

But Lydia had to go home knowing that she’d never get more answers for that. Little Jeffrey Charles was going to be sent away for a long time. That was it.

The jet was silent, JJ sleeping across the couch, Gideon looking over one file or another, and Morgan listening to something in earbuds. Lydia and Spencer were sitting beside one another, looking off distantly, lost in their own heads. That was until Lydia’s phone buzzed in her pocket and she saw Spencer glancing at her in her peripheral vision.

Spencer: You said I could text?

It took her a moment to remember what he was talking about. When Gideon had interrupted them earlier, she told him to text her if he wanted to talk about Elle. She smiled slightly and nodded at him, knowing no one would notice the strange interaction between the two.

Spencer: I should have said something.

Spencer: I talked to Elle that night, and I knew she wasn’t right, but I didn’t tell anyone.

He thought he hadn’t been enough of a friend. He was the only person to notice that Elle was unhappy and to talk to her about it and he’s putting her reaction on himself. Because he didn’t tell anyone. Lydia was quick to respond before he could continue to beat himself up about it.

Don’t do that to yourself. You were helping a friend. Elle’s decisions, whether justified or not, are on her.

Spencer: Maybe Hotch could have talked to her.

Maybe she could have talked to Hotch, she fired back. Maybe I’m not the best person to tell you this, but when someone’s standing on a ledge, your ability to talk them down depends on them, not you. Sometimes people make themselves so closed off, that not even holding them up yourself can save them.

Spencer: Elle wasn’t unreachable.

She still isn’t. But perhaps one day she will be. I’m not saying don’t keep reaching. I’m telling you that if she gets to that point, she made the step. You didn’t push her.

Lydia hadn’t expected a response to that. Especially not a real one. Spencer was so careful about their relationship. Months later, and he was still scared of the team being a part of it.

She could respect that, of course. Although this had been their first case together as a couple, she was relieved to find it completely professional. No weird teasing from the team. No worried eyes from Hotch and Gideon. They were perfectly normal.

But a couple beats after sending that message, Spencer’s eyes scanned the room to make sure no one was looking, then reached out and squeezed her hand appreciatively.

And she really wished they could stay like that for the rest of the flight.

~ ~ ~

Tags: @kris-stuff​ @wooya1224

[flowerslut]

DAY SEVEN: WESTERN Rating: T for suggestive themes. Words: 5,271

WHUMPTOBER CROSSOVER—No. 5: FAILED ESCAPE

There isn’t much he can do behind his bar. Even with the shotgun he always keeps in arms reach, it never appears to make a difference to the monsters that slink through the shadows, snatching up men and women from their beds as often as they go missing from the streets,

It isn’t until a tiny girl appears, telling him that they need to run (away, together, quickly, now) that he realizes a gang of criminals or a pack of wild animals is the least of his worries.

ANOTHER NIGHT

There is no safety here.

It’s a hard fact—an unforgiving truth—that the townspeople have come to acknowledge over the past several months.

It started off with a group of missing kids. Boys that strayed too far to the edge of town. The last anyone saw of them they were chasing down a stray cat, tossing rocks at the animal as they laughed and ran towards the acres of nothing that surrounded their little municipality, miles of dry earth separating them from the next closest town.

Days later the cat returned, but the boys never did. A search party had been conducted, and all seven men had vanished, too. 

At first, leaving town had been advised against. There was something out there, the sheriff explained to Jasper, sitting across from him at his bar as he poured the tired, old man a drink. Something was out there, taking anyone who walked too far off into the plains. Their only choice, until they figured out what was happening, was to stay put.

Jasper watched him leave that night, patting that same cat on the head on his way out of the bar. Jasper had glared at the animal before picking up a broom and chasing it out the door.

Two days later the sheriff was also missing.

Now, every time he saw that cat he reached for his gun. He hadn’t grown up with an ounce of superstition in his body. His uncle had been a wise man; someone who had implored Jasper to think realistically, and with sense. He’d been a man of little faith, earning himself more than his fair share of disapproval, but he was the smartest man Jasper knew.

“There is always a reason for things,” he explained to Jasper on more than one occasion when he’d been a boy, “don’t ever let someone tell you something is unexplainable.”

And though there was no sense in ghost stories, Jasper knew from his days in the war that different things could haunt you in different ways.

For a few weeks, the people of his tiny town stayed within the confines of the area. Mothers and wives fretted fiercely, wanting to desperately send letters to their sons and husbands working and traveling, imploring them to stay away while it wasn’t safe.

But the postman hadn’t been seen since the week the sheriff vanished, leaving the town disconnected from the rest of the world. And now, no visitors had arrived in months.

But when staying in town stopped being enough, people began to panic.

Little Lisa Davis had been snatched from her bed the same night that the Miller men vanished. There’d been theories that floated around then, that perhaps they were behind the disappearances. No one would’ve dared hurt a hair on James Davis’ little girl.

But then the disappearances began to turn into deaths.

The first discovery was gruesome. Davey Clark’s body had been found in the cellar of his home, his neck twisted and opened, his blood cool beneath his mangled body.

Jasper had been one of the men who had volunteered to go help clean up the scene. After all, he’d seen sights just as gory during the war. He could at least stomach the evidence of the monstrous violence, unlike some of the younger fellows.

His only takeaway from that day was that whatever was killing these people—because Davey’s body had been confirmation enough for Jasper that these missing people would not be returning— was absolutely not human.

He had sense, he had to remind himself at night when he cleaned glass pints with a rag, his shotgun never more than arm’s length away from him. He had plenty of sense. But the evidence pointed to something that he couldn’t quite explain yet, and Jasper was no fool. Ghost or monster, it didn’t matter. What mattered now was something Jasper had always been good at: survival.

So, he stopped sleeping at home. Instead he slept in the cellar of the bar in a room behind a room where he could adequately barricade the door, only a lantern to keep him company, as well as his guns as he struggled to sleep.

The disappearances (murders, he eventually had to correct himself) only happened at night, so Jasper stayed alert as much as he could.

When a newcomer came to town, nearly four months after the madness began, people ran from her. Mothers dragged their children into their homes, men grabbed their guns and waited by the windows, and even Jasper locked the doors of his bar, telling his patrons of the afternoon to stay back and shut up.

When a knock at the door broke the silence, Jasper gripped the gun tighter.

“Please let me in,” a woman’s voice implored. And Jasper was so thrown off by how young she sounded that he almost opened the door immediately. “I don’t want them to get me.”

“Don’t you dare, Whitlock,” George Hicks whispered roughly, his own pistol pointed toward the door they both were staring at. “You let that beast in and we’re all dead.”

“Please,” she begged, “It’ll be sundown soon. I’ve been walking all day.”

“You and Len get out through the back and get to Tippy’s,” Jasper eventually commanded of the other men. And when the woman on the other side of the door began to weep, he gestured toward the men with his gun. “Hurry up.”

“That thing’ll kill you, boy.” George shook his head, spitting on the floor as he and the other two men quickly scurried to the back of the bar where they’d find their escape.

Jasper cocked the gun and counted to ten. On eleven he swung the door open, pointing the gun at the woman who stood on the porch, crying heavy, relentless tears.

To her credit she didn’t jump or run away at the sight of a gun being pointed at her face. If anything, she looked relieved. “Thank you,” she shuddered, her dirty dress lying in tatters around her bare feet.

“What do you want?” Jasper commanded, trying to ignore the horrible guilt that kept working it’s way to the surface. She’s just a woman, his mind screamed at him as he held his shotgun steady, she’s harmless. But Jasper knew better than to trust a newcomer during this terrifying summer. “Where did you come from?”

“I travelled here from the East,” she spoke her explanation hurriedly. “It’s been about a week now—straight from Mississippi, sir.” Her accented words appeared to back up the claim, but her state of dress kept his suspicions burning like new. “A friend helped me but they got him. Or well,” she sighed, tears springing down her face like new, “he ran off to distract them so I could get through. I’ve been running all night and all day, sir.”

“And why did you come here?” He asked, peering at her with hard eyes over the gun. In his peripheral he could see the neighbors peeking through the window at the scene. Jasper Whitlock pointing his gun at the strange newcomer, surely wondering if he was the next to go.

“I can’t explain yet, sir. I apologize. And I reckon you won’t believe me.” Despite her tiny stature she stood straight, her face proud and unflinching as she stared back up at him, ignoring the gun’s presence completely. “By all means if you intend on firing that thing go on ahead, but I’m here to help you. Unless you want to be eaten, too.”

Jasper lowered the gun slightly at that. Whether she was calling his bluff or not, Jasper wasn’t sure. (There was no way he’d actually be able to pull the trigger.) Her words confused him. “Eaten?”

“Yes sir. There’s blood drinkers not far. They’re the ones hanging around these parts.”

“I—how do you know this?”

“My friend is one,” she provided without a flinch. Then, her face crumbled as her tears sprung forth like new. “Or, he was one. I fear he’s dead and gone now.”

“And you’re here to help us?”

“To help you,” she emphasized with a pointed look, and when she took a step closer he stepped back. She smiled then, looking ridiculous with her dirty, tear-stained face. “You won’t hurt me.” And then when she stepped around him, walking into the bar with peculiar confidence, he finally lowered the gun.

Gazing across the street he made eye contact with a man watching through his cracked front door and shook his head. If this girl was a threat, Jasper would soon find out. But something in his mind told him that she wasn’t the one causing the chaos that had struck their town.

He closed and locked the door behind him, turning back toward the woman. She’d made her way over to his bar and was perched up on it, already having helped herself to a glass of water. Using his old dish rag she dipped it into the glass and began to clean at her face and hands.

“I’m sorry to frighten you so,” she commented as she worked to clean herself from the desert’s grime. “There isn’t much time, I’m afraid.”

“Before what, precisely?”

“Before they’re back again.”

“The vampires?” He spoke, feeling foolish at the use of the word.

She nodded, and his chest felt tight with the confirmation. Somewhere in his mind he could hear his dead uncle protest, claiming that no such monsters existed. But whether a storybook creation or a thing of true nightmares, Jasper wasn’t about to doubt this strange newcomer.

“You don’t have anything to fear from me,” she spoke after a long pause, as if knowing his train of thought. She glanced up at him through long, dark eyelashes and sighed. “I’m as human as you.” Then, she re-wetted the rag and began to clean her dirty, bare feet.

“Why don’t you have shoes?” He demanded.

“I told you my friend took me out west,” she acted as if this was information he was supposed to have figure out already. “I wasn’t running. He was.”

“But you didn’t think to grab shoes before leaving?”

“It was a matter of urgency.” She turned her nose up and Jasper nearly laughed. As if she had any business pretending to be prim when she was cleaning her dirty feet with his good rag, her skinny legs exposed to a man she’d only known for a handful of minutes. “I can make you believe me, but I’m afraid it’ll frighten you more.”

“I’m a hard man to shake, ma’am.”

“Please, call me Alice.”

“Alice,” he stepped closer to her, his hands still firmly gripping his gun, although he relaxed slightly. “Help me to believe you then.”

“Okay, Jasper,” she looked pointedly up at him. “Tonight your friend with the beard is next and tomorrow no one will go missing. And two nights from now if we aren’t on the road by then I won’t be able to protect you anymore.”

“How do you know my name?” Did she have family here? No. If that were the case people wouldn’t have treated her like she was the monster when she appeared in town. His mouth felt dry as he replayed her words. How was this tiny girl supposed to protect him? It was as laughable as it was absurd.

“I’m afraid I’m a bit touched,” she confessed, finally directing her attention to the mess of hair that lung limply around her face. Meticulously, she began to slowly work her fingers through the strands, untangling it slowly. “I’ve seen things I can’t explain since I was a girl. It’s how I made my friend. And it’s how I led him out here. To you.”

“Why me?”

She hummed, as if amused by his insisting. “How much do you believe so far?”

“None of it.”

“Shame.”

“You want me to leave with you?” She nodded, looking back up at him. He took a few steps closer, finally resting the gun down on the bar. Close enough that he could still grab it, but far enough away that it was out of Alice’s reach. “And how will the… vampires not get us?”

“If we leave the day after tomorrow.”

“How are you so certain of things you can’t even prove to me.”

“Because I don’t need to,” she smiled again, and Jasper had to agree. She was a bit touched in the head. “It is the way it is. And if you don’t believe me we’ll both die.”

“Why you, too?”

“Because I’m not leaving without you.”

He laughed then, picking his gun back up and walking around the bar. “You’re not staying here.”

“So you’d send me back onto the streets? I’d die for sure tonight.”

He sighed loudly, putting the gun back down before uncapping the gin behind the bar. Taking a swig he closed his eyes. When he opened them, Alice had swung her feet around so that she was facing him once more, holding her arm out expectantly.

He placed the bottle in her palm and watched curiously as she took a sip and then sputtered and coughed.

He laughed again. “How old are you?”

She glared at him, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. Not much of a lady, this one. Then, she tipped the bottle again, clenching her eyes shut tight as she took another swig. This one she held down. With a gasp, she shook her head, handing back the bottle. “I’m nineteen, thank you.”

Then, her eyes shot toward the door, and Jasper immediately acted, grabbing the gun and pointing it toward the door.

“Let’s go,” she was at his side instantly, tugging at his elbow, pulling him toward where he knew the cellar door was located. It was impossible that this girl knew where to go, but when she led him down the stairs, into the cellar, and then through the doors that hid his private, secret room, he was stunned.

He slept little that night. After locking them both in he’d watched in shock as Alice made herself entirely too comfortable, curling up in the linens that he usually slept on, and falling into her dreams easily.

It would be a strange thing to have to explain to the patrons he’d evacuated today why this girl had been allowed to stay and why she would still be there when he opened up shop in the morning.

But morning came. And George didn’t.

Miriam delivered the teary news herself, her young grandson clinging to her leg on the porch of the bar, his eyes blown wide as he jumped at anything that moved.

“It got him last night,” the woman explained as calmly as she could. “Ripped him right out of my arms before I could shout or do anything. I didn’t even see the thing but it was there. It was in my home, and now my Georgie is gone.” 

The mourning widow left, off to deliver the news to more of George’s acquaintances, and Alice’s words from the night before felt heavy in his head.

“Tonight your friend with the beard is next.”

When he closed the door back up, locking up before noontime rolled around, he turned to find Alice sitting at one of the barstools, looking toward him with sad eyes. “I don’t want to be right all the time,” she spoke quietly. “I don’t like knowing these things.”

“How do you know them?” He asked, feeling a bit lightheaded as he stumbled his way toward the bar and sat himself heavily in the stool besides hers.

“I can’t explain it. I get feelings. I see pictures. And then things happen.” When she reached over and grabbed his hand, he didn’t even fight her. He didn’t want to fight her. He was too tired to fight anything anymore. Especially these phantoms that stole and took no matter what they did. Alice lifted his hand, pressing his palm against her cheek and holding it there. “I can’t change the things that happen. But this time I’m going to try.”

“You said I die?” Her skin was soft under his hand, and as he spoke he found himself studying this little witch’s solemn expression.

“Not if I can help it.”

“You said no one dies tonight.” She nodded in confirmation. “And that you want to leave by tomorrow night.”

“If we don’t, we die.”

He brushed his thumb over her cheek, watching as she closed her eyes and sighed at the touch. He frowned then, pulling his hand out of her grip and back into his lap. The noise she made wasn’t quite helping him interact with his guest in an appropriate manner. He shifted on the stool and looked out to his empty bar.

“If no one vanishes tonight, I’ll believe you. And then I’ll come along.”

Alice, who had frowned as he pulled himself away from her, smiled then. Her relief was so palpable that he found himself relaxing.

He spent the day out on the town after that. Alice had advised him that if she went with him people would talk and it wouldn’t bode well for her, so she was forced to stay behind while he walked around town, gathering provisions and looking for a pair of shoes for the girl.

He bought some from George’s niece, Frances, who regarded him coolly but sold him the shoes anyways. Alice had tiny feet, she explained to him before he left for his errands. To try and get her point across she’d boldly grabbed his hand again before pressing it flat against the sole of her foot, showing him that her toes barely reached his middle finger.

He’d pulled his hand away from the improper girl swiftly, neck blood-red as he’d muttered under his breath before gathering his hat and leaving her behind. Her cheeky grin that he caught proved to him that the little woman knew she was being lewd.

It annoyed him to no end that the shoes he bought—that he very stealthily measured against his open palm—fit Alice perfectly. When she slipped them on she smirked up at him, a mischievous glint in her eye.

She advised him to gather some of his belongings—“I can’t see how long they’ll be in this area; it could be years”—but he shook his head. He’d only been in the small town for a couple of years now. He’d looked for somewhere quiet to live after the war but despite his residence and relative success in this small town, he knew it wasn’t a place he’d stay for too long.

His belongings, or at least the ones he cared about, were meager. As long as he had a canteen of water, a fresh set of clothes, and his guns in his knapsack, he’d be content. He packed a second bag, at Alice’s request. One that she would carry as they ran back east. This one with only threadbare blankets and food that wouldn’t spoil.

Alice appeared to have no idea how long it would take them to travel a safe enough distance, so that night he packed extra food and spent an hour digging through crates for another canteen.

If death was certain when they stayed, he wanted to be sure it wouldn’t claim them on the run, as well.

They bunkered down before sunset that night. Jasper felt almost calm, for the first time in months. He wasn’t sure if it was Alice’s presence that calmed him, or his quick trust in her ability that she was so confident in, but after he barricaded the door, he felt at peace almost.

“It will be okay,” she whispered, and when she grabbed his hand and pulled him after her, he didn’t resist. But when she laid him down and simply rested herself beside him, lacing her fingers with his, he found himself relieved. She was asleep minutes later, the glow of the lantern illuminating the angles of her face in the darkness.

Lifting his other hand he hesitated before reaching over and brushing the back of his knuckles lightly across her cheek. Her appearance in this town still made little sense to him, but it was hard to force himself to understand when she clearly operated in a different state of mind than he.

Still, when he woke early the following morning—a little disoriented and almost stunned he’d slept so soundly—to Alice pulling a blanket overtop of the both of them, he couldn’t help it when he rolled toward her, pulling her against him. And when he lazily kissed her, hardly thinking about what he was doing, she sighed against him as if she’d been waiting for it.

They rolled around the sheets, learning each other’s bodies until mid-morning when she froze, breaking a heated kiss as her eyes glassed over. Jasper called her name multiple times, but the only physical sign that she was hearing him at all came when she reached out for him blindly, her hands only stilling when they grasped his face between them.

He waited what felt like an eternity before she blinked again, and suddenly she was sitting up. The abrupt motion would’ve forced her forehead to smack into his face if he hadn’t shifted out of the way in time. Then, she was panting, clutching her hands to her naked chest as she pulled her knees up.

“No,” she whispered, the word catching on a sob. “No, no, it can’t be…”

“What’s happening?” Jasper reached out for her quickly, brushing strands of hair out of her face only to reveal wide, terrified eyes. “Alice, what… what did you see?”

“I was wrong,” she whispered as the tears pooled over. Then, her eyes locked onto his. “We don’t have another night.”

“What… how… but you said—”

“They caught my scent. They know I was with my friend—he was covered in my scent, too. They know I’m out here. It’s,” a realization struck her so abruptly that she flinched, her head falling into her hands, “oh god. Oh, my god.”

“Alice,” he reached forward and gripped her shoulders, giving her a firm shake, “Alice, look at me. What happened?”

“It’s all my fault!” Then she let out a shriek that almost made Jasper smack his hands over his ears. “Oh, my god. Oh, my god.” When she started rocking back and forth Jasper didn’t know what to do. “It’s me. I’m the reason they come for you. I’m the reason we die. It all makes sense now. It’s my fault.”

“I can’t change the things that happen,” she had told him confidently. The words of a woman with nothing to lose. “But this time I’m going to try.”

And she’d tried. And, according to herself, she’d failed. And now there was nothing to be done.

Jasper had thought enough about his own fate in the past few months. Every night that passed was another night in which he may die, and every morning that greeted him had begun one more day that he didn’t expect to be gifted.

Since the end of the war, Jasper had realized he’d been living on borrowed time. He’d dodged death too often, in ways that made little sense. But he’d made it home, unlike so many of his brothers in arms.

He’d been prepared to die since he was a sixteen-year-old kid, lying to an army recruiter and getting away with it because he was tall.

Now that he stood on death’s front porch, he couldn’t even find the fear within himself. It was Alice’s fear that made him act. “Is there nothing I can do?” He asked pitifully, hands still resting helplessly on her shoulders as the girl shook and sobbed. “Tell me how I can get you out of here. Tell me how I can save at least you.” He was ready to die. This girl, not so much.

“It’s pointless,” she cried, tears and snot and spit falling from her face. “I doomed you. I’m sorry Jasper. I’m so, so sorry.”

He gathered her up in his arms then, feeling hollow as he listened to her sob noisily.

He didn’t bother opening up the bar that day. Nor did he want to walk around town and hear any new news. He already knew that what Alice had told him—about there being no disappearances last night—was true. He could feel it firmly in his bones.

They eventually dressed themselves and left the small hideout, wandering back up to the main level to lounge around the bar. Alice’s face was red, swollen with tears, her dress hastily fastened and tied without care. 

He didn’t go far that day. Just down the street to trade some liquor for a couple of hot meals. It felt strange, to know that he would be dead by the time the sun rose the following morning. Even as he bid Miss Tassie a farewell it felt strange. Like it wasn’t enough to simply say goodbye and walk back to his sanctuary.

But that’s just what he did. He didn’t walk around and bid farewell to his regulars. He didn’t stop by Mick’s place and tell him that he’d have to take over the bar again. He didn’t even take a good look at the sun—he knew the sky would stay blue and the sun would stay bright without him committing it to memory.

He and Alice ate their fill quietly. After their meal Alice curled up right there on the floor and slept. Jasper nearly joined her before he realized he wanted to tidy things up for Mick. Make it easier for them to reopen the bar once he was gone.

As he cleaned he let his mind wander. He hoped that the monsters that came for them would at least have the decency of whisking them away to kill them. He didn’t want these poor people to have to clean up another gory mess. As he packed away spirits and ales he wondered if they would maybe kill them first, then take their bodies elsewhere to feed.

He supposed he should’ve felt more uneasy at the idea, but the thoughts were something to pass the time.

Eventually Alice woke and they sat up, passing a bottle between them.

After a few hours Alice decided to tell him exactly what they would be missing out on. About the life they would’ve had ahead of them, had their future not changed course. They would’ve ran back to Mississippi, she claimed, but they wouldn’t have stayed long. Then, they would’ve travelled north. Jasper scoffed at the idea of willingly mingling with the yankees, to which Alice had smacked his shoulder firmly, shushing him.

“After a few years we’d get married, of course.”

Jasper made another offended noise. “Years? Why years?” 

“Because our cover story would include already being married. But we’d get married for real up north. We would have to anyways, I’d get pregnant once we settled into the city.”

“Hm,” he hummed as she spoke, pulling her close to him and pressing his nose into her hair. She smelled like wet dirt and liquor, but Jasper didn’t mind. Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to picture the future they’d never have, wishing he could see it the same way she could. “Then what?”

“You’d get a job working at the harbor as a deckhand. We’d have a little house with a view of the water where the kids and I could look out and see where you were. You’d have lots of friends,” she looked up at him, “you’re very personable, you know. Then, I’d make you quit and get a job somewhere else, because I can see instances where you hurt yourself on a few occasions. After that…”

The spent their day like this. Alice was a never-ending supply of what-ifs as he supplied ideas and alternatives for the future they’d never have. The more intoxicated they became the more elaborate the stories grew, and eventually as he turned and looked down at Alice, tucked in the crook of his arm and laughing herself silly, he realized how easy it would have been to fall in love with the psychic girl.

Too bad they were doomed.

The had sex a few more times after that as they continued to get progressively drunker until eventually they both passed out, fully naked and wrapped up in one another on the floor of the bar.

Jasper came to hours later. When he sat up he realized he was still drunk, and it took him several minutes to realize what time it was. He rushed over toward the window, stumbling the entire way. When he noticed the moon high in the sky he felt all the blood rush out of his body.

Turning back toward Alice, who was still unconscious on the floor where he’d left her, he left his heart clench and his stomach drop. He couldn’t wake her. It would be cruel to have her wait up alongside him before their death.

Instead, he approached quietly, and as carefully as he was able to, lifted the skinny girl into his arms. Alice barely shifted as he carried her across the bar and down the stairs, but when he tried to lower her onto the rickety mattress of his hideout, her arms weakly reached out to him.

“Stay,” she mumbled in her sleep, her arms lacing behind his neck as she sighed.

Jasper leaned forward and kissed her softly before laying beside her. With one hand he brushed his fingers through her hair, and within a minute she was back asleep.

He covered her in every blanket he could find, before he took one final look at her and left the room.

They came for him eventually.

It wasn’t noiseless, the way he thought it would be. No stealth was attempted as the creatures of the night pushed his door open, breaking the lock and sending wood chips flying. Jasper didn’t even have time to fire his gun before something was gripping his throat fiercely. 

“Do not crush that one yet,” a heavily accented voice spoke, and suddenly there was a group of what looked like people standing around his bar. Their eyes all glowing red. “Find the girl first.”

“NO,” Jasper kicked his feet at the red-eyed monster who held his life in their hands.

After a long peal of laughter, the voice chimed in again. “I like him. Him, we will use.” Jasper watched as a small dark-haired woman strode up to him slow enough that she looked almost human. Then, she turned toward the man who held him and said, “if you keep him alive long enough for me to change him, you can have the girl.”

When the creature holding onto him let out a hiss, Jasper flinched, his hands tugging and pulling at the stone-cold wrist gripping him.

“Hello soldier,” the woman spoke to him directly now, eyeing his military uniform with amusement (he’d decided to die wearing what he thought he would have, years ago). “Welcome to a different kind of war.”

The next several minutes were a blur of pain and movement and screaming. His final thoughts were focused solely on his lovely little Alice, dread weighing down his every thought as he imagined all the ways they would kill her. She hadn’t been ready to die, but she’d risked her life to save him anyways.

Unfortunately, she’d played right into fate’s hand.

And when the fire started, Jasper knew it was over.

[fortunatelylori]

Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love now and then

Thoughts on Sanditon finale

It is a truth universally acknowledged that you should never blog in anger. Last night’s Sanditon episode left the entire fandom in a state of uproar. Cancelations have been issued. Curses have been cast and tears have been shed … those were mostly mine, to be fair.

For once I decided not to start furiously typing just as the episode ended but wait out the inevitable momentary fury and return to the episode tonight for a second viewing. I have to thank @and-holly-goes-lightly and @kitten1618x for putting up with my temper tantrums late last night on private chat so all of you nice people wouldn’t have to endure my more volcanic outbursts. Being far more reasonable people than I, they pointed out the grayness in a sea of black and white and made me reconsider the episode.

In addition I would advise anyone to do a second viewing of the episode if you haven’t done so yet. Reason being that your first viewing of something that you are so deeply invested in will always be heated. I could hardly pay attention last night to the scenes I was watching because I was so desperate to get to the ending. On top of that, the reality of what you see on screen will fight with the theory you’ve already made in your head and more often than not you end up disliking canon not because it’s bad but because it’s not what you thought you were going to see.

That being said, after a thorough rewatch, I have to declare this episode as one of the finest finales to a season I’ve seen. I say finale to the season, not the series because as a series finale it would be more than a little disappointing. But if there is one silver lining to take from this episode is that we are getting a season 2. I just can’t see how we wouldn’t.

Now, nothing in life, has any business being perfect and this episode wasn’t either. So I will quickly list what I felt were the major flaws so we can proceed to the good stuff of which there is plenty.

Not sparkers of joy

The pacing and structure

It was somewhat rushed. Scenes jumped from one to the other without much preparation (particularly in the first half) and several things were not addressed. People have pointed to the fact that they did not include a Charlotte/Georgiana good-bye scene which I agree was a mistake. In addition, we were presented with a Georgiana and Arthur that were the best of friends even though in episode 7, Georgiana couldn’t stand him. That’s not to say they couldn’t reach this point but I expected to see that journey, not skip it.

Georgiana, on the whole, was odd. Aside from her rebuke of Sidney and conversation with Charlotte which were keeping in line with what she did in episode 7, the rest of her time on screen was perplexing. She was lively, dancing with everyone, huge smile on her face … this being the girl that refused to leave her bedroom a few days before. Again, not saying she couldn’t get to this stage but where did I see how she did that?!?

The whole Sidney/Eliza situation was resolved off screen which … why?!? First we weren’t given the scene of him sending her packing in ep 7 and now we have no idea how he turned that around to the extent that he got himself engaged to her and with the money to save Sanditon, all in a week.

I mean ok, I get that he’s got but ... OK, OK! He’s THAT hot!

There were other examples of shoddy storytelling but those stick out in my mind the most.

The sudden tone shift

The reason why I reacted so badly to the episode to start with was because for 7 hours I was led to believe this was a fluffy, cozy regency romance in the vein of Northanger Abbey or Emma. Sure, things happen to cause momentary sadness but it all gets resolved in the best way by the end of the episode.

Instead the Sanditon finale marked the tone shift from the fluffy to the angst. We are now firmly in Persuasion/Sense&Sensibility territory. It’s still Austen as I will explain below in more detail but I would have appreciated some warning that this is where we were heading.

The specifics of the cliffhanger

Now this is obviously personal preferences but I do have some issues with the manner in which they chose to separate Sidney and Charlotte. Having Sidney propose to Eliza in order to get the money to save Tom from prison does resolve several issues in a very expedient way: it forces the two young lovers apart; it creates angst and anticipation for the next season; it also allows for Charlotte and Sidney to both be victims of the separation and still desperately in love with each other and wanting to get married.

However, the cost is that Sidney is now in the position of doing to Charlotte exactly what Willoughby did to Marianne in Sense and Sensibility. Sidney is obviously not Willoughby and his motives are selfless. But his actions are a play by play of Willoughby’s betrayal: he pursues Charlotte, kisses her on the cliffs (substitute that for Willoughby taking a lock of Marianne’s hair), means to propose to her and then disappears, only to return engaged when a lack of money force him to choose between love and a fortune. 

He even makes a “I don’t love her” confession, similar to Willoughby’s scene with Eleanor. Of course, Sidney tells Charlotte that not to victimize himself like Willoughby but rather because he can’t bare the thought that Charlotte might think he’s done this because he doesn’t love her. But you can see how this kind of narrative choice can really negatively impact Sidney’s character. 

It’s sad that they chose this cliffhanger, particularly since they didn’t need to. I firmly believe that had they ended on a more hopefully note for Charlotte and Sidney we would have tuned in anyway for season 2. I wish they had had more confidence in their story and in their viewers.

But enough of the negative!

Sparks joy

Theme

I have to say that thematically, they hit this finale out of the park. The most important piece of dialogue in this whole episode occurs between Esther and Lady Denham:

Lady Denham: It is infinitely better to be loved than to love. Especially in a marriage.

Esther: You’re speaking from your own experience or someone else’s?

Lady Denham: My own. Not with my husband, of course. It was long before that. A man called Rowley. Some people said he was the handsomest man in all of Somerset. But to me he was the handsomest in the world. And he knew it!

Esther: What happened?

Lady Denham: He kept me dangling for a while. Trembling. Waiting for a look, for a smile, for a tender word … like one of his dogs. And then he up and married a girl from Gloucestershire, with 50.000. He had debts, of course. Couldn’t have afforded to marry me. Should have been obvious to me at the time but … you know what girls are.

May I just say that Anne Ried’s performance in this scene is a treasure trove of skill and emotion? You can just feel the longing and the sadness this story can still elicit from this seemingly cold matriarch. Lady Denham, like all our characters, is more than she seems. She starts off as a Lady Catherine de Bourgh clone and develops into one of the wisest, mot rational people in the show.

She gives Esther excellent advice and is compassionate when she realizes what Edward has been doing to her.

She also gives us our theme for the finale of Sanditon and perhaps of the whole show. Because her speech doesn’t just apply to Esther and her relationship to Edward. It applies to Georgiana’s heartbreak over Otis and Charlotte’s impeding heartbreak at the hands of Sidney. In even more general terms, it speaks to the heartbreak most Austen heroines experience at some point during her novels: 

Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then. It is something to think of, and gives her a sort of distinction among her companions - Pride and Prejudice

Her whole speech reminded me of what my mother told me the first time I broke up with someone I loved. She said: “No girl can pass through life without having her heart broken”.

The show telegraphs this home by having the Sidney/Charlotte cliff walk follow immediately after this scene.

We are so distracted by the innocent beauty of Sidney and Charlotte being in love and so mesmerized by their first kiss:

That we fail to take Lady Denham’s warning seriously. And, just like Charlotte, we end up paying the price for it

The Austenverse

Lady Denham also clues us in to where exactly we are within the Austenverse. Many people have claimed that episode 8 marked the moment this stopped being an Austen story because Austen novels always have happy endings:

My characters shall have, after a little trouble, all that they desire.

Did you think we were just going to skip the “little trouble”part? Sweet summer children! We’re at the moment where Elizabeth finds out Lydia has run off with Wickham and thinks she’s lost Darcy for good. We’re at the moment where Knightly reprimands Emma for treating Miss Bates poorly and leaves for London. We’re at the moment where Anne is forced to join her father in Bath and believes Fredrick will soon marry Louisa Musgrove.

And finally, and most pertinently since this is what Sanditon is trying to emulate, we’re at the moment where Edward’s engagement to Lucy Steele is made public and he and Eleanor say their final good-byes (supposedly).

Austen heroines are never spared heartache. But it is a depiction of heartache that is not gratuitous. It allows the characters to grow, to understand the true depth of their feelings and eventually to value the good fortune they have when it all turns out for the best in the end.

And no novel drives that point home more than Sense and Sensibility and Austen’s Eleanor character, the suffer in silence heroine who pretends she is fine, all the meanwhile dying on the inside. Kind of like this:

Honestly it shouldn’t surprise me that we’ve ended the season on this somber note. Sanditon visually owes a great deal to Davies’ Sense and Sensibility 2008 adaptation. That mini-series had a somewhat different feel to usual Austen productions, particularly in comparison to the 1995 Ang Lee film. It was darker, grittier and had a bit of a western feel to it than Sanditon reproduces to great effect, I think.

So it’s quite understandable, in retrospect, that Charlotte’s character arc would see her start off as a Marianne type character (open, romantic and impulsive) and slowly turn her into Eleanor by the end of the season.

In order to make that transition complete, a lot was asked of Rose Williams and she manages to convey the transformation in one breathtaking shot:

I am deeply, deeply impressed with her acting in this episode, and particularly in this scene. You can literally feel her heart breaking and see the mask that will dominate in the church scene fall into place.

Which brings us to Sidney …

I’ve said it a million times and I can’t help but say it again: Theo James OWNS this character. I don’t know if he simply hasn’t gotten the proper material in his career until now or if there’s something special about Sidney that resonates with him but his acting is so spot on that even when Sidney breaks Charlotte’s heart, behaving like Willoughby as I’ve said, you can’t hate him.

Not when he is the same man who gets chocked up as he tries to propose to Charlotte:

Not when he’s the man who tells her this:

Sidney: I have never wanted to put myself in someone else’s power before. I never wanted to care for anyone but myself.

And not when, with just one look, Theo James is able to convey Sidney’s despair and pain. How can you hate him when he’s clearly breaking himself into tiny pieces over giving Charlotte up?

And how the hell can you hate him when you can hate … this clown instead?

Oh, sorry I meant …

Words cannot describe how much I loathe Tom Parker. Well actually, my new fictional mum comes close to enunciating our common and general distaste:

Lady Denham: I will see you in the debtors prison! I will see you in the poor house! Where are your promises now? Dust and ashes! You might as well have lost my money at the gaming tables! You despicable man!

If only Lady D would have been allowed to go forth with her threat and hand Tom over to the debt collectors. How much happier everyone would be right now!

Unfortunately the Parkers are far too nice for their own good. They all jump in head first, trying to save this sorry excuse for a man. Arthur even offers up his entire inheritance. Tom refuses … Not because he thinks it’s not right for his youngest brother to risk his entire life’s comfort for his unworthy clown’s ass but because … IT’S NOT ENOUGH MONEY!

Tom Parker has amassed 80.000 pounds worth of debts. Luckily Google allows me to illustrate to you exactly what 80.000 pounds meant in 1820s era England:

80.000 pounds could have paid the wages of an immortal skilled worker in perpetuity!!!! And this MORON decided not to ensure it … Apparently, Kris Marshall has said that Tom is the Regency’s version of Steve Jobs … I assume Steve Jobs too let his younger brother prostitute himself for his benefit, after already taking a 3000 pounds “loan” from him and thinking up ways of spending his baby  brother’s inheritance on top of that … Oh, wait! Steve Jobs was a visionary who died a billionaire. Take several sits, Kris!

What really irritates me is that everyone is very quick to absolve Tom of any blame, jump to his defense and in due course Tom, himself, decides he should not be so hard on himself, which is why he is ecstatic when Sidney returns to Sanditon, with the news of his engagement. This is what comes out of Tom Parker’s mouth:

Tom Parker: This is excellent news! Oh, Charlotte, glorious news! Sanditon is saved!

So he knows full well that Sidney has asked Mrs. Campion to marry him in order to save him and he is perfectly willing to let him go through with ruining his life. The saddest part is that the rest of the Parker family goes along with this lunacy.

That includes Mary who already knows that Sidney and Charlotte are in love. Kind and sensible as she might be, Mary decides to turn a blind eye to Sidney’s sacrifice and Charlotte’s pain in order to have her husband safe. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise since she’s the one that told Sidney this back in episode 1:

Sidney: And tomorrow is the famous ball, is it not?

Mary: Tom has been in such a state about it! You will do all you can to help him, won’t you?

I thought I’d mention this since everyone seems to be under the impression that Sidney sacrificing himself for Tom now is a sign of the growth of character Charlotte inspired in him. But it actually isn’t.

Both Tom and Mary make it very clear early on that they relay on Sidney’s help. He’s sort of the third member of their marriage (they do have a painting of him in their entryway) who is there to ensure Tom’s ass is saved from the fire of his own making. And both Tom and Mary are complacent in this.

Sidney choosing to marry Mrs. Campion over Charlotte isn’t a new development in his dedication to his family. It is the end result of years of emotional blackmail and dependency Tom has dished out, and Mary has, most likely unconsciously, supported.

And all of that spells disaster for Sidney who is left closing the door to the coach that will take the love of his life away from him:

I know we are all commiserating with Charlotte over what happened. But I think we should spare Sidney a thought as well. He is ruining his life, his integrity and his happiness for someone who will most likely waste his sacrifice in a matter of months. Add to that Eliza’s behavior at the wedding and it’s pretty safe to say Sidney will pay for the money he will give Tom in every which way possible.

The only glimmer of light in all this unbearable darkness is that Lord Babington (he still doesn’t have a first name … :( ) and Esther are now married. Their wedding is actually very much a visual representation of Austen type country weddings, down to everyone smiling and throwing petals at them:

However even in their case, there are still clouds on the horizon since Esther was pretty clear about not being in love with her husband. She took Lady D’s advice that “ being loved is better than loving: and season 2 will show us if that is enough for her or indeed her husband.

Unfortunately, our two protagonists weren’t as lucky as Lord and Lady Babington. The road ahead for them is hard and filled with angst. There’s bound to be a lot of darkness before the dawn. However, do not despair and listen to the only voice that matters:

Lady Denham: Well, Miss Heywood? You’re still proclaiming your independence? Or is it that none of our young men have taken your fancy? I’ll wager we’ll see you walk down the aisle very soon. What do you say, Mr. Parker?

My fictional mummy is never wrong!

[a-v-e-z-a]

Fanfic of Fanfic, or Fanfic Squared

So... y’all know that @ahiddenpath is my fellow Digimon fanfic writing ladybro. 

She’s been exceptionally critical in why I’ve written as much Digimon fanfiction as I have, because a) she has always been supportive and encouraging when it comes to my writing and b) she sets an inspiring example for the craft of writing itself. 

Moreover, the plots and settings and characterizations that she develops are SO GOOD. They have--and continue--to influence my own writing, so much to the point where I found myself writing fanfiction of HER FANFICTION. 

YES. YOU READ THAT RIGHT. 

So, in honor of Fanfic Author Appreciation Day, I thought I’d share a snippet from my fanfic of her fanfic Four Years. 

Scenario is simple: Tai has a harebrained scheme involving getting the Chosen to run an obstacle race (think Spartan or Tough Mudder sort of of thing). Chaos ensues. 

I may or may not eventually post this on FF.net. Part of me is too embarrassed (like, really? Fanfiction of fanfiction?) But, honestly, why the hell not? 

But for now, here’s a tidbit. 

And if you read this, Hidden, I hope you’re not abashed or angry. I just love that story too much. I can’t help it. lol. 

More below:

King of the Mountain 

(Excerpt)

Izzy followed Amy unwillingly down the creaky staircase, each step dropping onto the next with a plodding thud. Tai had called a general house meeting, the nature of which happened to be important enough to merit an emailed invitation—which didn’t make sense. He, Tai, Amy, Sora, Matt, Mimi, Joe, and Hana all lived in the same house, rented from Mimi’s father. If Tai wanted a meeting, all he had to do was yodel, “Asses in the living room! Now!”

“You know that was probably Hana’s idea,” remarked Amy, seemingly able to peer into his thoughts. Izzy glanced up from his feet and looked at her as they reached the first floor.

“The email invitation?” he asked, wondering if he had, in fact, been muttering his musings aloud.

“Tai is not a planner, Izzy.” She passed him into the living room. “It was definitely Hana.”

Her lack of suspicion over the meeting had Izzy pursuing her with a wrinkling brow. True, Tai was the innovative one, chockfull of ideas—crazy and some, surprisingly, astute—but Hana was the orchestrator, the executor, the (perhaps less endearingly) conniver. She was the Loki to Tai’s Thor. Izzy would never admit fear, but the two of them together did present a certain force majeure.

Everyone else was already in the room, situated in various (or favorite) spots. Izzy was surprised to find Ken and Davis sitting on the floor, in front of the couch Matt, Sora, Joe, and Mimi occupied. Kari and TK were also, oddly, present. They shared half of a mismatched loveseat, the latter sitting on the armrest rather than on the cushions. Kari must have spotted them both. She gestured at the empty spot beside her.

Amy sat, and Izzy, mimicking TK, parked his bony rump on the opposing arm rest. He crossed his arms.

Hana sat in a folding chair by the front of the room, adjacent to the TV. Her laptop rested flat on her thighs, Tai leaning over behind her, pointing at the screen at things the rest of them couldn’t see. Despite sending the invitation, the appointed start time was not respected.

Izzy rolled his eyes, annoyed with the needless tax on his time.

“So, guys…” TK pitched his body towards them, nearly falling over Kari before she extended a hand and corrected his balance. Stable, TK continued, his voice dropping low. “What do you think’s going on? I thought this was a house meeting, but we don’t even live here and we got invited. Davis and Ken, too.”

“You seem to have ideas already, comrade,” Amy replied, supplying the prompt TK didn’t need to share his theories. “Let’s hear them.”

The smile he cracked split open too readily, white teeth gleaming, blue eyes shining with light.

“You don’t think they are going to announce they’re getting married, right?” he conjectured. Izzy sputtered an unpleasant sound, as if he were being throttled, rudely depleted of oxygen.

Amy set a hand on his shoulder and patted, gently. She gave TK a knowing look.

“You did that on purpose.”

The freshman did nothing to conceal his shame. He grinned widely.

“Sorry. Had to do something to wake up the senses. Everyone’s been complaining when they enter the room. That’s no fun.”

Amy tipped her head, unknowingly (or knowingly) leaning into Izzy as she considered the observation.

“Have they?” she asked.

“Yeah,” TK reaffirmed. “No one is even contemplating the possibilities of such a meeting. I mean, what if they are planning a trip?”

“In the middle of the school year?” questioned Izzy, insulted by the sheer inconsideration of such a proposal. “That smacks of massive irresponsibility. And even if they were, it doesn’t merit a scheduled, one-hour meeting on a Sunday.” He continued to rant. “Any trip information could be shared and coordinated via email. That is why cloud-based share drives exist.”

A testy silence followed. Izzy returned his glance to the others in the room, how they were preoccupied with side conversations with their neighbors, apparently not as concerned about the now late meeting the two people at the front of the room had arranged. He felt Amy shift behind him, her body peeling away, and he peeked over his shoulder to see what had caught her attentions.

She faced TK, who had tipped forward himself, the edge of his hand pressed to his cheek.

“Did you give him his vitamins this morning?” he heard him ask. “Because yikes.”  

Izzy snorted.

Both Kari and Amy admonished TK in their flippant, doting way. Amy shook a finger at him and Kari poked a dimple.

As tempted (or provoked) as Izzy was to rebut, he never received the opportunity. Tai clapped his hands, once and loudly, and the room quieted.

“You’re probably wondering why I’ve called this meeting…”

Izzy tried to soften his glare to a stare of mild disgruntlement, going so far as to rub his forehead to smooth away any furrows—if only for politeness. If Tai could read on anyone’s faces a hint of displeasure or a roll of the eyes, his enthusiasm was no less incandescent. His hands were fused at the palms, suggesting he’d start rubbing them together maniacally like Dr. Frankenstein’s mad lab assistant.

“I’ll get right to it.”

He turned sharply and volleyed finger guns at Hana, who, playing along, saluted him with a wink. Laptop keys were pressed, and in a second, the blank TV screen behind Tai lit up to show the black and orange vector graphic of what looked like the silhouettes of a man and a craggy, forested horizon.

Tai stepped aside and gestured at the image like a magician completing his trick—proudly, and with a dash of flair.

“Anyone know what this is the logo of?” he asked.

Izzy’s poor posture worsened. He slumped, planting elbow on knee and chin on raised fist like an emaciated version of Rodin’s The Thinker. Tai’s prompt had all about it the beginnings of an infomercial. He was the smooth-talking spokesperson and marketeer, shouting questions at an audience cued to reply monosyllabic answers in loud and spiritless unison.

True to his metaphor, his group of friends began offering their thoughts.

“The Bionic Man?”

“Daniel Boone.”

“Forrest Gump?”

“Sasquatch.”

With the quality of educated guesses deteriorating (if any were educated to begin with), Tai closed the call for suggestions.

“What the hell, TK?” he yipped. He didn’t so much point at the screen as he poked it. “You think that’s fucking Bigfoot?”

“Brawny guy in the woods, my dude,” TK replied, calmly. “It practically wrote itself.”

With a snort, Tai again tapped the screen with his finger.

“This,” he explained, “is the logo for the race ‘King of the Mountain.’”

Despite the regal name, it inspired no immediate curiosity or interest. The room simmered in silence, all of them collectively trying to find the significance in Tai’s words. No one even asked the obvious. “What is ‘King of the Mountain,’ Tai?” Instead, Mimi used the time to express her displeasure with the gendered name.

“Why not ‘Queen’? Better yet—royalty.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tai muttered. “It’s a name. Girls can be kings and vice versa. Anyway, it’s a race, all right? Held on a local and national level.”

“Oh, like a marathon?” piped Davis.

“Yeah!” Tai jumped, perhaps overjoyed someone had finally shown intrigue. “Well… sort of. Marathons are 26.2 miles, Davis. King of the Mountain—max—doesn’t even reach half.”

Davis scratched his collarbone, prompting a slight puff of the chest.

“Walk in the park if you ask me,” he boasted, glimpsing at Ken.

“Dude, you didn’t let me finish. King of the Mountain goes anywhere from ten to twelve miles, but along those miles will be a series of up to twenty-five obstacles you’ll need to get through to reach the finish line.”

“Obstacles?”

“Twenty-five?”

Tai looked at Hana, and the screen blipped to its next slide, which listed all twenty-five potential obstacles. In skimming the list, Izzy found events colorfully and deceptively named “Ice fishing,” “The Matterhorn,” “Lightning Rod,” “Mudskipper,” and “Krakatoa!” Whoever named the events might as well have been captioning images in a history textbook.

“And there you have them,” said Tai. “Next slide.”

It surprised Izzy little that Tai forewent any explanation whatsoever into the particulars of the dubiously named events. Luckily, hands rose and interjections voiced the instant the slides changed.

“What in God’s name is the Executioner?”

“That doesn’t sound ominous at all.”

“Or life threatening.”

“The hell kind of race is this?”

Exasperated, Tai shut the disturbed and muttering public with a sharp “Just hold it! Jesus!”

Outburst released, he turned, more calmly, to his girlfriend. “Han, can you go back to the previous slide?”

“Firstly,” Tai resumed, “the race, as I’ve said, is only a maximum of twelve miles.”

Only? Izzy retorted. He could barely run a mile, let alone eleven more, with God knows what booby traps lie in wait. Did he also really intend for Amy to run the same race?

“Secondly, the race isn’t tomorrow, or next week, or in three weeks. It’s in three months. We have plenty of time to train and prepare. Speaking of—Han, skip ahead a bit, please.”

Izzy’s brain still buzzed from Tai’s unexpected foresight. He shared Amy’s opinion that Tai rarely planned for anything, but to plan for something three months ahead of schedule qualified as a miracle. Though, all it took was for Izzy to peek in Hana’s direction, and there was his answer. She regarded her boyfriend with an affectionate, engaged attention, nodding subtly in agreement with his points, one crossed leg swinging idly in his direction.

“Now, there’s a prize for the team that completes the race first—along with individual winners—but I thought this would be a great thing to do as a group.”

Never one to avoid publicly contesting Tai’s harebrained schemes, Matt raised a hand, though he was already speaking before Tai acknowledged him.

“Tai, not all of us are athletes.”

About half of the heads in the room nodded, encouraged by the challenge. Izzy nodded so vehemently his chin nearly hit his clavicle.

“The hell did I just say, guys?” Tai answered, exasperated. “This is three months away. If you aren’t an athlete now, you will be by then.”

Izzy raised his eyebrows, momentarily distracted by the mechanics Tai hoped to employ to reach such an end. But the curiosity was short lived when he realized he would be subject to those designs.

TK raised a hand, pointing a pen at Tai like a reporter at a press conference.

“I noticed you are using the general, pluralized ‘you,’” he began, “is it your intention to involve all persons present in this athletic endeavor?”

Tai shrugged, crossing his arms.

“Well, not all,” he admitted, a tad too readily, a natural at the hypothetical pulpit.

“What do you mean?” Matt demanded.

“Could you elaborate?”

TK’s softer, more professional question was overwhelmed by Matt’s complaint, and Tai answered the former.

“It means not everyone will participate in the race.”

“So, what?” Matt countered. Sora laid a hand on his shoulder, ever sensitive to her beau’s warning signs. “You going to run a lottery to see which of us has to do this with you?”

As acidly as the question was given, Tai was impervious to its sting, as if he were forcefielded against negative feedback—or cobra spit. Their fearless leader even smirked.

“If you’re not up to task, Matt,” he said. “Just admit it. No shame.”

The instant Matt stood, Hana rose as well, all five or so feet of her. Carefully, she set down her laptop and stepped in front of her boyfriend, though not without shooting him a pointed look.

She opened her twiggy arms the way actresses on stage performing Shakespeare did, like they were swans unfurling their wings, placating the tense air.

“Everyone can calm the fuck down,” she said, in contrast to her soothing movements. “This isn’t the Hunger Games, okay? We understand that not everybody here is an athlete, but we have arranged a regimen that includes diet and training, each generally accommodated to everyone’s schedules. We also looked at everyone’s strengths and weaknesses and took that into consideration, too.”

Matt sat back down, but his anger was replaced with indigestion.

“Holy shit,” he breathed. “You’re not giving us the option to say no, are you?”

“It’s called the power of preparation, Matt,” replied Hana, all smiles, evidently pleased with herself.  

“Yeah, and anyway,” Tai interjected, with a shrug, “I already bought us the tickets and ordered team shirts, so… it’s a done deal.”

The blond musician’s well-coiffed head sprang up.

“You inconsiderate son of a bitch,” he growled. “You stinking little—”

[slothgiirl]

blinding part 3 (a theo raeken story)

mariella gallagher, lydia’s younger cousin, has always had a soft spot for theo raeken, and now that they’ve brought him back to help, she can’t seem to help herself when it comes to him. it also doesn’t help that she’s slowly losing her grip on whatever powers she has as an empath. 

ao3 // part 1 // part 2  // part 4 // part 5

My eyes closed and I felt the pain of scalpels slicing into my chest, over and over until the times bled together, until the pain bled together. Pins holding my flesh open as I struggled to heal around it.

Bones breaking as I tried to transform into a wolf. Endlessly breaking until the pain was so internalized it became bearable, manageable, a welcome hello into my second skin.

Tara’s hand reaching into my chest and pulling my heart out.

Tara’s hand reaching into my chest-

Tara’s hand reaching-

Tara.

I wanted to scream but no sound came out. I wanted to cry but no tears came.

Blood in my mouth. Blood on my hands.

So much mercury on so many different faces.

The pain receded, boiled down into anger.

*

“El, you’ve got to wake up” Theo murmured, “El, if you don’t wake up they’re going to think I hurt you. They only just let me out.”

Theo’s face came into view as my eyes fluttered open, blood still covering his mouth. His hand brushed my hair back, out of my eyes, as I laid on his lap.

“Are you alright,” I whispered, my head feeling silent for the first time in years. I couldn’t feel anything. Radio silence, as my head rested on Theo, a far more comfortable pillow than all my aunts decorative ones.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that,” he said, raising an eyebrow, before he broke into a coughing fit, more blood welling up in his mouth. “I’ll be fine. I heal.”

The rest of them finally ran in, too late to do anything, I thought bitterly. More preoccupied with the corpse of the ghost rider than us.

Hayden ran over, pulling me out and away from him, supporting most of my weight, my legs unsteady under him.

I had been Theo, seen everything through his eyes, felt everything he’d associated with pain over the years and it had knocked me out. Scars and wounds running so deep I don’t even think he noticed anymore. The pain having become as much a part of him as Tara’s heart.

What did you do,” Hayden yelled at him.

“It was Mr. Douglas,” Theo and I both said.

“He ate his brain,” Theo shuddered.

I tried to calm Hayden, make her feel the same odd calm after the storm I was, but as I brushed her arm all I felt was her love and worry for her sister all tangled up, a rock threatening to drown her the longer she stayed in place, stayed in Beacon Hills.

I pulled my hand back, pulling away from Hayden, cradling my hands to my chest. It had just gotten more complicated. I needed to talk with Morell if she was still here. If the ghost riders hadn’t gotten to her yet.

Liam looks over at me, “is it true?”

“Yes,” I confirm.

“It wasn’t his brain,” Scott said, looking over at the body, “Mr. Douglas ate his pineal gland.”

No. Not Mr. Douglas.  

Theo had called him something else but I couldn’t think of what. Screw him and his habit of playing his cards close to his chest.

“Mason,” I say, as I run my hand over the wall, seeing and feeling too much. The dread doctors coming and going, conducting their experiments over the years. The details are hazy, but I can feel their constant disappointment, the moments of glee.

“Yeah,” he says looking over at me.

“Is it possible to tape into an object? Into the lingering emotions and memories around it?” I pull my hands in close to me, careful not to touch anything around me, afraid that I might, afraid of what I might feel or see.

“I might have seen that in a movie,” Mason admits, “and this is the supernatural we’re talking about so I don’t see why not. Why?”

“No reason.”

“You’re doing it right now aren’t you,” he says, mind already firing off into theories. “That’s so interesting, I mean not for you but it just raises more questions as to what you are and what you could do. Track someone based on a favorite sweater?”

“Mason,” I snap, not wanting to think about what this means. About how I didn’t even know what I was. Lydia had got over all the notes she’d found while looking for what Parrish is, over the Argent’s bestiary with no results.

“Sorry.”

“Guys,” Liam calls out, “his whips missing.”

“Oh god,” Hayden mutters.

Scott looks over at me, “could you?”

I shake my head vigorously, “you don’t know how awful it felt and I don’t even know how it works.” My hands remain clutched to my chest.

“It’s okays,” Hayden says soothingly, careful not to come too close.

Theo rolls his eyes, “Just get her some gloves.”

“Shut up,” Hayden snaps.

“No,” Liam says, “that might actually work.”

“Can we just get out of here and regroup,” I tell Scott. He is after all the alpha, and what he decides goes, even when it’s usually someone else plan that he’s just approving off. But when Scott does make a plan, its not half bad.

I guess a couple years of dealing with everything that goes on in Beacon Hills will do that to you.

“Yeah,” he nods, “there’s nothing more to do here.”

*

The walk back to the cars is shorter and anticlimactic compared to the walk to the transformer. Scott hangs back, talking to Liam and occasionally throwing glances at Theo who is now reshackled.

And now Corey was missing which had freaked us all out. Mason especially, “but we’ll get him back,” Liam tells Mason again, “we’ll get them all back.” Say it enough times and it make it true.

Scott had defeated others that had seemed impossible to take down before, why wouldn’t he do it again?

The leaves crunched up under my dirt covered shoes as I slid into Kira’s car. “Are you okay,” she asked, her hand freezing before she touched me, hovering in midair for a second before she placed it on the wheel.

“Yeah,” I tell her, not feeling even close to fine. This had never happened before and I didn’t know what to do. Was I going to be like Rouge from x-men? Unable to touch anything? God, that would suck.

“I can hear when you’re lying,” Kira smiled, doing her best to smother her giggles.

“You could pretend not to,” I reply, arching my eyebrow, “stupid supernatural senses.”

“Hey,” she protests, “you’ve made me stress out over a test I didn’t even have before! Remember?”

I groan, covering my face with my hand, “don’t remind me. I didn’t mean to.”

“I know,” she says, giggling this time, the setting sun catching on her shiny dark hair which she has somehow figured out how to style.

Frizzy hair was the worst because no matter what I do to it, it just looks messy.

I laugh, shaking my head, “I did get an eighty six percent on the test though so clearly it worked.”

“You’re going to need an A to get into the pack’s school of choices.”

“What Miss Berkeley,” I ask, “Stanford, Berkeley, or Davis?”

“Pretty much, I mean if Scott saved his grades then Liam probably can,” she smiles as she drives, pulling into my neighborhood, “I’ll be able to visit Lydia and my parents on the weekends. It’s perfect. And there’s a Shinto priestess working at one of the museum’s in San Fransisco that’s going to help me work on control.”

“Well see you,” I tell her pulling my sleeve down so I don’t have to touch the handle to open it.”

Kira stops me, “wait, Mari.”

“Yeah.”

“Be careful with Theo.”

My heart skips a beat. “What are you talking about,” I ask her carefully, playing it off.

She rolls her eyes, “You know what I mean.”

*

Lydia wakes me up by throwing a pair of gloves at my face. I yelp, “Hey, what are you-,”

She cuts me off, direct and polished as always, an arrow sinking into the bullseye, “We’re meeting the others at the Sheriff’s office. Stiles was his son, so even with no Stiles he wants to help us which is good seeing as we’re probably the only ones who can help. Mason texted me about you needing gloves,” she paused for effect, lips pursed, “why?”

I rub the sleep from my eyes, getting out of bed reluctantly, “it’s gotten. . .complicated.” Looking for the first pair of jeans I find on my chair of clothes I pull them on, looking for a top and sweater.

“Explain.” My cousin takes a seat on my bed, but only after smoothing out her area.

“I don’t know, I’m pulling emotions and . . .I guess memories linked to those emotions from things,” I tell her, putting back the pink t shirt and opting for the ratty one I’d thrifted that I had to wear a bra with or I’d flash someone, but it was so soft. “From anything I touch and I can’t control it and I can’t block it out.”

I took a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down.

“Since when,” she asked.

The gloves went on last, the nicest part of my outfit, their checkered red print and warm brown leather soft against my skin. I could still feel the tingly joy from the last person that had worn them, but no memories.

“I don’t know,” I shrug, not feeling like sharing Theo’s memories. They were too private, too personal. I doubted he’d want any of it getting around. I wasn’t even sure he knew what I’d done, what I had seen. “Sometime after trying to communicate with the ghost riders.” I didn’t even know how to begin to explain all my messed up complicated feelings about Theo.

Lydia nods, “the gloves are mine but I haven’t worn them since before freshman year so they should be fine.”

“Guess I’ll just spend the rest of my life wearing gloves,” I say bitterly.

“We’ll figure this out,” she says softly, wapping an arm around me, drawing me into a hug. “I mean look how long it took to figure out what Parrish was. Or hell, how long it took me to figure out just what I could really do apart from finding dead bodies.”

“But for now gloves,” I said dejectedly, already missing being able to actually touch things with my hands.

“We can go see Morell after this is all over.”

*

“You’re going to bite Stiles,” Lydia said almost as soon as she saw Scott, standing while the rest of the pack sat around in the station. The sheriff was there as well, standing to one side and looking like he’d rather be anywhere then here.

But it was Lydia and she had always been able to talk to people until they saw things her way, or else she figured out how to go around them.

“I’m going to bite Stiles,” Scott said, his desperation make him look years older than he was. He was in the senior year, his college applications were in, he should just be worried about hearing back from colleges not this. “To get him through the rift.”

“This is the only way.” He led us both over to the table where Liam and Malia had drawn out the plan.  Hayden and Mason sat on a bench, Mason still looking as lost as he had last night when we couldn’t find Corey. When they had taken Corey. Eyes red from having spent the night crying.

“Just to clarify,” Peter Hale, very much alive and escaped from Eichen house where he’d been left to rot after stabbing us all in the back at every chance he’d gotten since ripping his niece’s throat out, “are you planning on biting everyone in the train station?”

“With Stiles back he’ll be able to help us figure out a plan,” Scott explained, which didn’t sound much like a plan at all.

I went to sit down next to Hayden and Mason, itching to know where they had stuffed Theo today.

“He’s good at that,” Malia added.

Kira sighed, “why did we bother inviting Peter if he’s not going to help.”

Peter grinned, teeth sharp. “So the plan is to get Stiles to come up with a plan,” he said mockingly.

“You can shut up now,” his daughter bit out, probably regretting asking her father for help right about now.

“Malia, look around. We’re the only ones left in Beacon Hills. If they take us, Lydia will be the only one left to haunt the place.”

Malia growled, eyes glowing as her claws slid out. Lydia only rolled her eyes, unhappy about giving Peter any sort of attention.

“That’s why I’m the only person that’s going in,” Scott said, happy to take all of the risk to keep us all safe. Liam and Hayden will stay here with Mason and Mariella. As long as somebody is left in Beacon Hills, the wild hunt can’t move on.”

“I like your plan Scott, I really do,” Peter continued, ready as always to act as affably as he could to get his way. We were all just pieces for Peter to play of on. “-especially the part about turning Stiles. But it can’t work,” he said more dramatically then was  necessary.

“How do you know,” Malia said, playing right into him, because no matter what she might know, he was still her dad and she still hoped he might change one day.

“Logic. Life experience. What are the odds that he’ll get taken? What if Stiles sin’t there? What if there’s no Beacon Hills for you to come back to?” He was on a roll and ready to monologue.

“You got a better idea,” Liam asked, just daring Peter to fight him.

“Yeah. It’s called run like hell. So leave in five?”

We all rolled our eyes. We were all in this pack. And we weren’t leaving anyone behind.

“You promised you’d help us,” Malia reminds him, her eyes ernest as she turns to him. “We still need to find the rift.”

“I didn’t promise I’d help you commit suicide.”

Sighing Scott cuts them off, “if you can’t help, we can find it ourselves.”

“Scott, I admit that you have a flair for beating the odds. But this,” he said pausing for drama, “You don’t walk away from. You run.” And just like that he turned heel to save his own skin.

I wanted to comfort Malia, who was still looking at the door, having expected more from Peter, but she would probably take my sympathy as pity and hate it. Sometimes it was kinder to pretend not to see.

“Stay here, and be careful,” Lydia told me.

“Yes, mom,” I said rolling my eyes, having gotten over my lack of a mother years ago. I’d accepted that I would never know the woman who’d given birth to me.

*

Kira left her sword with Liam just in case Theo tried anything. Like we didn’t have enough to worry about already with the wild hunt. I couldn’t take them seriously when we called them ghost riders, I just couldn’t.

It was the stupid dread doctors all over again.

And that basically left him in charge by default. In charge while the adults handled everything. Sorry, I meant slightly older teens.

“-So we should stay here. Is that what you’re thinking,” Haden asked Liam, Mason quiet for once. Both Liam and Scott had their human best friend who actually came up with the plans and now they were both down.

We all turn to Liam.

“It doesn’t matter where we are. We still need to figure out how to fight them.”

“No one can fight them,” Hayden replies,  looking down at her hands. All that power and she was still powerless.

“Douglas can,” Theo said interrupting us all. Owning every bit of being behind bars, looking less imprisoned than merely about to offer us all some awful deal like fairies did in fairy tales, the ones that always led to death and destruction, like he still had any power here.

“Does he have to stay in there,” I ask Liam, forcing myself not to look at Theo. I couldn’t, not after last night. It still felt too raw. My arms wrapped around my sides. I could feel the fear and pain, the phantom sting of flesh being sliced open.

Again.

And again.

“He’s still Theo,” Hayden says,  glancing at me like I’ve grown a second head.

“Theo saved Scott remember. And El,” he says glancing at me, taking in the sight of my gloved hands.

I shove them in my pockets, suddenly self conscious of my inability to even touch things. “I’d hardly call that saving,” I respond, meeting his smug gaze, “if you’d just have stepped into the mountain ash barrier like I did, he’d never have gotten in.” He wouldn’t have hurt you.

“Who was it that broke the barrier again,” his eyes burning, lips twitching into a smirk knowingly. Useless. I’m the empath and yet he’s the one who can see right through me.

I open my mouth to respond again but Mason shakes his head, bumping my leg in small comfort, before talking to Hayden, “he can still hear you.”

“Then he can hear me say he needs to shut up,” Hayden says, turning to glare at Theo, “so we can figure out how to fight the ghost riders.”

Wisely, I don’t mention how both she and Corey were at one point doing Theo’s bidding. It was still a sore spot for Liam and Mason both, especially between them since Liam defended Hayden but not Corey in the days after to the pack.  

“You don’t need to figure it out.”

“-because Douglas already did,” Liam finishes.

“If he knew how to fight them, he might know everything about them,” Hayden says, determination setting in.

“And guess who knows all about Mr. Douglas,” Theo says, smiling smugly as he pulls away from the bars to go sit down. He’d played us, given us just enough information to follow. A trail of breadcrumbs leading to the witch’s cottage.

It’s impressive, I have to admit, biting my lip so I don’t smile as everyone groans.

“Here we go again,” Liam groans.

“Let’s hear him out,” Mason says, standing up to go ask Theo what he wants now, “you’ve got Kira’s sword just in case.”

“And he’s in a cell,” I say, following after Mason as I fiddle with my hands, still unused to the feeling of leather between me and the world.  

Hayden trails reluctantly behind Liam as we crowd around the holding cell, Theo sitting and looking more self satisfied than he should after everything. It just makes me want to laugh again.

“What do you want,” Liam finally asks.

For once he doesn’t smirk, doesn’t look up, expression solemn as he utters, “Break Kira’s sword and I’ll tell you everything I know about Mr. Douglas.” A practiced calculated look, the last push to make you willingly step into a trap.

He’s good, calm as ever without even a trace of panic and desperation that I was sure he must be feeling at finally getting rid of Kira’s sword. Save from the possibility of being ripped open by Tara.

Being haunted by the dead sister he killed.

I shudder, looking up.

Liam looks over at Mason who responds, “That’s never going to happen. We’re not making that deal.”

“I hold all the cards.”

Mason scoffs, “You’re locked in a jail cell. You have no cards.”

“And yet who’s cell are we crowded around,” I mutter.

“Who’s side are you on,” Hayden snaps, eyes narrowing.

“Just pointing out the obvious.”

“You want me to tell you about Douglas,” Theo states like he hadn’t planted the entire idea of Mr. Douglas in our heads not five minutes ago.

“Break the sword,” he says, finally looking up, self satisfaction evident.

Mason looks back at Liam, “Does anyone else want to do the negotiating? Liam? Mariella?”

“Yeah Mari,” Hayden mocks. Theo had sent her after Tracy under the guise of keeping Tracy from clawing anyone’s face out in public but she had soon learned he didn’t care about collateral damage, he just didn’t want that collateral damage to be Mari. “Why don’t you?”

I roll my eyes.

“Break the sword,” Theo Reaken repeats, having turned the tables on us.

Liam sighs, his emotions turbulent, fear and desperation stained with the clammy grip of uncertainty. He was going to do it. And he was already regretting it.

Theo must have sensed Liam had been swayed because he reiterated, “you break, I talk.” Anticipation grew hot under his skin.

The first break I’d seen from him.

“Come on guys,” he continued, coming back up to the bars, dealing sole with Liam now, “look, I don’t want to be in anyone’s pack. I don’t want anyone’s power. I just want to stay alive.” His confession was accompanied by an ernest look to his features, voice soft. It was a practiced vulnerability from someone who hated to be vulnerable in front of anyone.

“Mariella,” Mason asks, turning all eyes towards me.

Guess I was making the final call on this. “I don’t know,” I admit. Usually there was something in a person’s emotions, an artificial quality when they were lying if not the outright wrong emotion.

But this was Theo and he hadn’t wavered from his calm demeanor once. I had overlooked everything before, but not this time.

He had put my cousin in the horror that was Eichen house because of course Beacon Hills had a psychiatric facility populated by mad doctors hell bent on hurting the very patients they were meant to help. “I can’t tell,” I finally admitted.

“How do we know if we let you out you won’t run,” asks Hayden, knowing its inevitable now that Liam’s decided that Theo will get what he wants.

Wisely, I didn’t mention that Kira could put her sword back together. It took time and effort, but it could be done.

“Cause we’re not letting him out,” Liam says gravely, the weight that Scott always carries baring down on him, the weight of all the choices and their consequences. “He’s going to tell us from in here.”

“I’m still going to need some incentive,” Theo states, expression devoid of any emotion he had played at just moments ago.

Liam turns around, hands on the handle and blade just like Kira had shown him. She had meant it at the time to be used, not broken, teaching Liam what he needed to be in charge of her sword while she searched for the passage way.

The sword breaks with a sickening crack, before falling into symmetrical pieces on the floor. Their glow denoting their imbued mystic powers fading before my eyes until the fragments were nothing more than ordinary steel.

“He’s a lowenmensch.”

@josie605

[khstoryanalysis]

Mini Analysis: What is Inside the Black Box?

Since the release of Kingdom Hearts X Back Cover, we wonder what is inside the Black Box, and our interest of it peaks when it is mentioned in the Kingdom Hearts 3 trailers. There are many theories regarding to the Black Box, aside from people joking that the Box contains Sora’s dinner, sea salt ice cream recipe, or a character’s (mostly Aqua) nude photos. The most famous speculations regarding to the Box’s content are the 13 Darkness of the X-Blade and the Heart of the Master of Masters.

Through analysis, I theorize that the Black Box contains the 13 Darkness from the X-Blade and later the Heart of the Master of Masters.

Although the X-Blade is not present in the actual Keyblade War, it is true that it is already shattered. The 7 Lights from the X-Blade become the Princesses of Heart, but it is unknown where the 13 Darkness have gone to or what they have become.

Darkness has the tendency to gain physical being similar to Maleficent, Vanitas and Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, so the 13 Darkness from the X-Blade should have taken form, but it seems that they have not. So what happened to them?

In Kingdom Hearts X Back Cover, Gula wants to summon Kingdom Hearts to force the Master of Masters to come back so he can question him the identity of the traitor. Ava tells him that summoning Kingdom Hearts is forbidden because nobody knows how summoning Kingdom Hearts will affect the rest of the world. She also adds that the Master of Masters forbids it for a reason.

What reason is that? It is never specified, and it seems only the Master of Masters knows about it. This leads me to a possible scenario: could the Master of Masters have broken the X-Blade when attempting to summon Kingdom Hearts?

Similar to Ansem the Wise and Xehanort, the Master of Masters is a scientist and will have wanted to know more about Kingdom Hearts. Somehow, he is able to obtain enough Lux to summon Kingdom Hearts, and then he uses the X-Blade to try to open the Door to Kingdom Hearts.

However, his plan backfires when the X-Blade shatters into 20 pieces, possibly being the Keyblade of Kingdom Hearts, it is not supposed to be used against its wielder. Without the X-Blade, Light and Darkness become imbalanced. Since there is more Darkness than Light, Light will surely expire. The Master of Masters may have attempted to change that by collecting the 13 Darkness. Then, he stores them in the Black Box and locks it up.

The Black Box may be similar to Pandora’s Box. If the Black Box is opened, the 13 Darkness will be unleashed and the world will be in danger of being plunged into darkness. That explains why the Master of Masters tells Luxu to never, ever open the Black Box.

The Black Box has 7 locks in its length and 3 locks in its width. In total, there are 20 locks, which may refer to the 20 pieces of the X-Blade. Moreover, the sigil on top of the Box has somehow depicted the numbers 7 and 13, possibly referring to the 7 Lights and 13 Darkness. The sigil also has a word “X-super” engraved on it. The word may refer to the X-Blade.

Though, the Black Box later contains the Heart of the Master of Masters. Although he is certain that Luxu will hide the Box well, he cannot allow the possibility of anyone in the future to find it and open it, dooming the world. So, he decides to possess the Box with his Heart. So, if anyone opens the Box, he will return to physical form to help the future Keyblade wielders in dealing the 13 Darkness, as he is the only person who knows their true nature.

Ansem the Wise states that everything has Hearts, including objects. This is proven that characters made out of Data (Tron and Data-Sora) can grow Hearts. Xehanort’s Report IX states that Keyblade Masters can extract a heart to be it their own or that of another, and by doing so, it is possible to live forever. The Master of Masters probably does the same, except that his Heart is released naturally when his physical body fades away.

When the Master of Masters shares the Box’s content with Luxu, he is shocked and asks why. In response, the Master only replies “You’ll see.” If the Box only contains the 13 Darkness, Luxu would not have been taken by such a huge shock. In fact, the Foretellers all protect the Light from Darkness, and Luxu will have known about it as well. All he needs to do is to hide the Box and never open it. That will ensure the Darkness will not overpower Light.

So why is Luxu so shocked about its content? The Master of Masters may have told him that he will later possess the Box with his Heart. Luxu is not informed of the possible disappearance of the Master in the future. He will have wondered why the Master would do such a thing. The Master’s reply is to tell Luxu to wait and see how things will unfold. Since Luxu is not given the Book of Prophecies to avoid causing temporal paradox, he will not have known that the Master will soon disappear and have his Heart being released.

Thanks to the Kingdom Hearts Timeline project done by Everglow, it is shown that Luxu goes to hide the Black Box when the Master of Masters is assigning roles to the Foretellers. According to Kingdom Hearts X [Chi], Gula states that Luxu is last seen going after the Master’s direction after he has disappeared. Luxu may have returned to Daybreak Town after hiding the Black Box. When he returned, the Master’s physical body had just faded, releasing his Heart. Luxu then uses the No Name Keyblade, which was originally the Master’s, to guide his Heart into the Black Box. This is similar to Ventus using his Keyblade to return Aurora’s Heart in Birth by Sleep.

Furthermore, in an interview, Nomura states that the Dead Man’s Chest from the Pirates of the Caribbean has a connection to the Box that Maleficent and the True Organization XIII are after. From the previous trailers, we know that Maleficent is searching for a “distinctive black box”, perhaps referring to the one seen in Kingdom Hearts X Back Cover. Since the Dead Man’s Chest contains the Heart of Davy Jones, perhaps the Black Box contains a Heart too.

It is confirmed that the Black Box will be opened in the end of Kingdom Hearts 3. If this theory is true, the 13 Darkness will be unleashed, making them new enemies for Sora and the gang to face. Besides that, the Master of Masters will return and give further insights and connections with Kingdom Hearts X [Chi] and Kingdom Hearts Union X [Cross].

[fandompitfalls]

The Road This Far

Originally posted 1/13/2021

I think we can all agree, 2020 sucked. While individual things happened to brighten our days, as a whole, the entire year beginning in March all around was horrible.

One of the things that sucked was the sudden lack of new media content.  Movies were pushed back, television shows stopped production, Podcast formats changed a little.  2020 impacted a lot of things.  And one of those things was the final half of the final season of the 15-year long cult classic television show Supernatural.

The show, which should have ended with a bang in May of 2020, halted production with seven episodes to go.  The once all-star cast that was supposed to return for the Series Finale was scrapped due to the global pandemic and instead concessions needed to be made and the final episodes were scaled down for safety reasons.

I’ll give a brief rundown of the final two episodes.  While the final three were the ones that raised a whole heap of controversy, I’m not going to bother with episode 15x18 for the moment, because while I think it was poorly done, my reasoning is different from others and honestly, that could be a blog post all its own.

Warning:  Below this (for the 5 people on the planet who haven’t either watched it or heard about it somewhere) will be spoilers for the final two episodes.

Episodes 15x19 “Inherit the Earth” and 15x20 “Carry On” were the quintessential Series finale and epilogue a show this long running needed.

The opening of “Inherit the Earth” finds everyone on Earth Prime (inside joke) gone, disappeared.  The Rapture has come, and it seems that only Sam, Dean and Jack are the only ones alive.  And a dog named Miracle (who I feel was the shows rally cry and the one I was invested in.  I mean dammit Chuck, you Thanos-ed the world but then you took that adorable dog away from Dean.  I hope you go DOWN!)

Jack feels a presence and is led to a church.  Inside they find Michael. Archangel Michael, still in the body of Adam.  He’s hidden out from God’s wrath and wants to help the Winchesters take down God.  In the previous episode, the brothers get Death’s book, but only Death can open it.  They’re hoping that Michael can override the lock, but it doesn’t work.   Dean gets a call from Cas asking for help and to open the bunker door (obvious red flag because…Cas is gone, but okay…)  Outside is not Cas but Lucifer with a reaper.  Lucifer wants to help get rid of God.  To do that, he kills the reaper he has hostage thereby making her the next Death.  Death opens the book and begins to read.

Meanwhile, Lucifer and Michaels big show down seems to be just smack talking back and forth.  When Death comes back and begins to read the passage of the book that tells how to stop God, Lucifer stabs Death, killing her and takes the book.  Surprise, it seems he was playing for both sides of the team.  Who didn’t see that coming? Lucifer pulls a “join me” speech to Jack giving Michael the opportunity to kill Lucifer by metaphorically stabbing him in the back.

The four then make plans to stop God.  Going out to a particular spot, Sam begins to cast a spell he says he found from the book.  Chuck appears, having been warned by Michael (remember that stab to the back?).  Michael’s reward for serving his Father is death.  Chuck snaps him out of existence and then turns his sights on the Winchesters.  In true final Big Bad mode, instead of snapping them out of existence, he decides to beat them both into submission.  But the Winchesters will. Not. Stay. Down.

In the plot twist that Chuck did not write, when Death made Jack into a bomb and sent him to the Empty, the explosion had a different sort of effect.  Basically, he’s become a metaphysical power vacuum.  When Lucifer and Michael were fighting in the Bunker, Jack was absorbing their power.  Each time Chuck punched one of the Winchesters, Jack absorbed the power until finally Jack was powerful enough to confront Chuck.  With one hand to the face, the power transfer was complete and hosannah on the highest, Jack becomes God, leaving the now very much human Chuck to fend for himself.

Raised by the Winchesters and having Castiel as his surrogate father figure makes Jack the chilliest supernatural being ever.  He snaps back everyone (including Miracle) and tells the brothers that he is keeping a hands-off approach.  He’ll be there but humans are responsible for their own outcomes from now on.  He disappears and the episode ends with the Winchesters riding off into the sunset.

Episode 15x20 “Carry On” picks up five years after.  Miracle is living with the Winchesters at the Bunker and they’re just going around living their lives. Still hunting monsters, saving lives.   Dean even gets to a pie festival, a nice nod to Dean’s love of pie. Everything looks like it’s back to normal.

They come across a suspicious death and kidnapping of two children, one that Dean recognizes from their father’s journal.  They find it and discover that it’s a nest of vampires that only hunt once every couple of years, keeping their victims alive to drain them dry.

The Winchesters go to where the nest is and find the vampires and the kids.  Sam gets the kids to safety while Dean starts taking on the nest.  During the fight, already there’s hints that this is not going to be a normal battle.  The Winchesters are down more than they’re up and not fighting as a unit.  Sam is knocked down several times and while they managed to kill the nest, the final vampire grapples with Dean and slams him up against a post, where there was a piece of reverb sticking out.  Sam cuts the head off the final vampire.  That’s when he realizes Dean had been stabbed and moving him off the spike would do more damage.  Dean asks Sam to stay with him, knowing his journey is over.

With the exchange of power form Chuck to Jack, the Winchesters are no longer God’s “Chosen Ones” anymore, meaning they are just like all the other Hunters who have come before them.  Their lucky charm is gone.  In what is arguably the most emotional scene in the series, Sam stays with Dean until he dies.

Sam returns to the Bunker and gives Dean a Hunter’s funeral. He only remains at the Bunker for a bit longer until he gets called to a job and leaves (with Miracle) the bunker forever.

Dean wakes up in Heaven and has a talk with Bobby on the porch of Harvelle’s Roadhouse.  This, I think was part of the things they had to work around.  As much as I would have loved to see Ellen and Jo greet Dean (I think it would’ve been extremely emotional), I also understand why it wasn’t done.  Bobby explains Heaven.  Where it was once a line of doors where souls were destined to relive one memory over and over, it is now the Paradise it was promised to be.  The woods and open country are host to (almost)everyone Dean knows and loves; His parents, Rufus, Ellen and Jo, other Hunters who have been his “family” along the way.  It’s almost perfect.  Dean tells Bobby he’s going for a drive and climbs into Baby.  The song, poetically, on the radio is “Carry On” by Kansas and Dean drives.

The montage bounces then between Dean driving and Sam living his life.  You find he was married and became a father to a son he named Dean.  The years fly by as Dean drives and it is understood that Sam finally had the life he wanted from the start, the family, the son he plays ball with and help with homework.

The final scene is an older Sam on his deathbed His son comes to him, holds his hand, tells him he loves him and it’s okay to go. The scene changes to Dean stopping on a bridge overlooking a river.  He gets out of the car and hears a noise behind him.  It’s Sam.  The two brother’s hug and then go to stand by the railing of the bridge and look out…together.

The End.

Even knowing that this was the pandemic ending and not the ending they planned, I enjoyed these final two episodes.  Like I said, episodes 19 and 20 played like a finale and the epilogue.

The story of Supernatural has always been about the Winchester brothers.  From the beginning, during the middle and at the end, the story was always going to begin and end with Sam and Dean. Everyone else in the story were just side characters.

It was not surprising to me that the very vocal majority hated it.  I had a “been there, done that, bought the tee-shirt” moment when I began to scroll social media and watched post by post of people who shouted that they felt cheated and that this was not the ending they were promised.  Even people who never watched the show and should’ve known better where shouting for something that was, quite obviously, never going to happen.

I waited this long because, I was busy with something else and I wanted to wait until I thought through everything before I put down my thoughts.  So a month later, I watched two videos on You Tube, from Destiel shippers discussing their thoughts on the final season.  I won’t name names.

The first video was almost two hours long and was from a person who admits they left the fandom for a while.  While a lot of things I could sympathize with, they brought up the term queer bating multiple times (I am not going to get into the criticism of queer baiting because, this post is already too long, and I plan on writing a blog about that later) as well as the dangers of bringing fandom theory into creator spaces.

I am of the firm belief that fandom content should not be brought into creator spaces. Not only do most showrunners have their own ideas for the shows, but there is also the inherent risk of ego stepping which could lead to drastic changes being made to shows in ways fans weren’t expecting and don’t like (I see you Jeff Davis).  It can also lead to legal issues, especially if during one of these and idea coming from fandom space nudges it’s way into the creators’ mind and there is unintentional plagiarism.  It can happen and is a reason that most creators do not read fanfiction or discuss fan theory until after the show is over.

The other reaction video mentioned they were disappointed (and I saw this in other spaces as well) of Castiel being in Heaven but not seeing Dean.  I have a theory about that.  In Episode 19 at the end, Jack states that unlike Chuck, he has faith in the humans, and he plans on being strictly “hands off”. Our fate is in our own hands now and we can do what we want.  Where Chuck liked the accolades and often sent angels to do his dirty work on Earth, especially when the Winchesters weren’t doing what he wanted, if Jack is implementing a “Hands off” approach, this could also mean that the remainder of the angels (old and new) were given instructions to remain “Hands off” as well.  They have their side of Heaven which they are rebuilding and reorganizing, but they are to stay on their side and never the twain shall meet.  Angels were never meant to walk among the human races.  This is maintaining the status quo.  Dean knows that Castiel is in Heaven once more but is content with that knowledge.  Once Sam appears to him on the bridge, Dean has everything he wants; his brother, his family, and a quiet life in which to settle. At last, Sam and especially Dean have found their reward.

As the song goes, there is peace when they are done.

[unlessimwrongwhichyouknowimnot]

The Miraculous Discovery of Captain America

Happy New Year, @jemmahearteyessimmons!!! For a second year in a row, I am your FitzSimmons Secret Santa!! I’m sorry I didn’t get this posted when I said I would, but I hope you enjoy it!!

Prompt: Fitzsimmons Buzzfeed Unsolved AU

Summary: Fitz and Jemma record an episode and then go out to celebrate Fitz's birthday with their friends.

Read on AO3

Jemma entered the studio and smiled at the sight of her best friend sitting at their desk reviewing his script. “Fitz!” she cried cheerfully, “happy birthday!”

Fitz looked up and smiled at her. “Thanks! You’re coming to Hawkins’ Pub with the group tonight, right?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jemma told him.

She sat down next to him and a comfortable silence fell as Fitz went back to reviewing his notes and Wendy came over to apply make-up. There was a map of Greenland and the Arctic on the desk in front of them. Jemma pulled out her own copy of the script and reviewed it quickly.

“Okay, are we ready?” the director asked, coming over to stand in front of the desk. Jemma and Fitz nodded and put their scripts away. The director moved behind the camera. “Three, two, one, action.”

“Today on Buzzfeed Unsolved,” Fitz began, “we’re looking into the miraculous discovery of Captain America. Captain America, also known as Steve Rogers, was born on the 4th of July, 1918-”

“Very patriotic,” Jemma commented.

“Very patriotic, indeed, Simmons,” Fitz said. “When World War II began, Steve Rogers joined the army as soon as he was able, serving first as an actor promoting war bonds, before finally joining the famous Howling Commandos, where he got to see a bit of action. Steve Rogers’ plane went down in the Arctic Ocean in 1945 and he was assumed dead. However, in July 2011, Steve Rogers was found, still alive. Now, we know the story we’ve been told, that Steve Rogers was given a super serum that made him into a real life superhero and that serum allowed him to survive in ice for nearly seventy years, but what exactly that serum was, was never released to the public. If there actually was some kind of magic potion that could change people the way it allegedly changed Steve Rogers, why haven’t more people recreated it and used it for themselves?”

“Others have tried,” Jemma said. “Bruce Banner, for one. And Peggy Carter wrote in her autobiography that the serum was deemed too dangerous to keep.”

“That’s assuming the serum is in fact the truth,” Fitz said.

“You have other theories?” Jemma asked.

“I do have other theories,” Fitz confirmed. “Three, to be exact.”

Jemma sighed. “All right, let’s hear them.”

“Theory one: This man claiming to be Steve Rogers, is not, in fact, the real Steve Rogers.”

“So, he’s like the Dread Pirate Roberts?”

“Yes,” Fitz agreed, “or maybe Anastasia.”

“So, you’re saying the real Steve Rogers is actually dead, and this man is an imposter.”

“Yes.”

“That’s depressing. And how is he faking the super strength? That’s not really something you can fake.”

“Maybe he has a punishing exercise routine?” Fitz suggested.

“I don’t buy this theory,” Jemma told him.

“Okay, then theory two: Cloning.”

“Like Dolly the sheep?”

“Yeah, like Dolly the sheep. What if Captain America did crash in the Arctic, but was rescued before he died? He knew the world would continue to need superheroes, so he had his rescuers take DNA samples, in order to be used for cloning purposes.”

“But why wait until 2011 to reveal this cloned Captain America?”

“Maybe the first attempts at cloning didn’t work out?” Fitz suggested. “Plus, they would have had to wait until the clone grew up and was the same age as the original.”

“Well, this theory is a bit more likely than the super serum, but I’m still not fully buying it.”

“Well, wait until you hear my third and final theory,” Fitz told her. He paused for dramatic effect. “Aliens!”

Jemma rolled her eyes. “Ugh, Fitz!”

“What if, when Captain America’s plane went down, aliens happened to be passing by Earth and decided they needed a superhero of their own?”

“Some kind of guardian of the galaxy?” Jemma asked sarcastically.

“Exactly! Captain America helped the aliens fight their battles, and then requested that they drop him off exactly where they found him.”

“Then how do you explain him not aging?”

Fitz shrugged. “Erm, they kept him in cryo-freeze when they didn’t need him?”

Jemma rolled her eyes again. “Look, as improbable as it sounds, I believe the initial theory that we were told about Captain America.”

“But you only believe it because Peggy Carter says it’s true.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Because what if she only says it’s true because she was forced to say it’s true?”

“What?”

“I dunno, some Men in Black type agency feeds her this lie in order to cover up the alien abduction.”

“Ugh, Fitz!”

Fitz smiled at the camera. “You know what I believe; you know what Jemma believes; now, you lot will have to decide for yourselves about the truth behind Captain America’s miraculous discovery.”

“Cut!” the director called out. “That was good, guys. Jemma, maybe you could add a little more eye rolling? And Fitz, a bit of a longer pause before the alien theory. Okay, let’s go again, guys.”

They spent the next few hours re-shooting with different camera angles, new line additions, and various reactions. When they were finally done, Jemma was more than ready to relax at the pub with Fitz and their friends.

Some would call Hawkins’ Pub--with its 80’s theme--hipster, but Jemma preferred to think of it as charming. She and Fitz entered and immediately spotted their friend, Daisy Johnson, at the bar, flirting with the young, 20-something bartender who had a glorious mane of hair.

“Hey, guys,” Daisy said cheerfully when they approached her. “I was just telling Steve here all about your birthday, Fitz. He’s promised us some free drinks.”

“Happy birthday, dude,” Steve said, handing over a tray of shots.

“Cheers, mate,” Fitz told him as he picked up the tray.

Daisy led them to a large, round booth where Mack, Elena, Piper, and Prince were waiting. There was a chorus of greetings and “happy birthday”s as Fitz and Jemma slid in.

“Davis texted,” Piper announced. “Their babysitter fell through, so his wife is gonna stay home while he comes to celebrate.”

“They could’ve just brought the baby,” Hunter commented as he and Bobbi approached the booth. “That’s what we did.”

“We didn’t really have a choice,” Bobbi said, one hand rubbing her rather large, pregnant belly. “Get me a chair, Hunter; I won’t be able to fit in the booth.”

“Yes, dear,” Hunter said.

“So, what crazy theories did you record today?” Piper asked Fitz and Jemma once everyone had settled into the booth.

“Captain America was abducted by aliens to be a guardian of the galaxy,” Fitz told her and everyone at the table began to laugh.

“What if he’s some sort of programmable robot?” Elena suggested.

“Oh, that’s a good one!” Fitz said. “Maybe we could do another quick reshoot tomorrow?” he suggested to Jemma.

“Maybe,” Jemma said, “but we’re supposed to be filming about that little girl from Indiana that people claimed was telekinetic.”

“Telekinetic, that would be a cool superpower,” Hunter commented.

“Oooh, let’s go around and name your ideal superpower,” Daisy suggested. “I’ll go first! Um, well, telekinesis would be nice, or maybe super strength. What about you, Fitz?”

“Erm, the ability to talk to animals?” he suggested.

“Animals, or just monkeys?” Mack asked.

“Well, I’d mainly use it to talk to monkeys,” Fitz admitted.

“You could have a monkey sidekick!” Daisy suggested.

“Yeah!” Fitz grinned at the idea. “He could help me get through laser fences with his adorable little hands.” He turned to Jemma. “What superpower do you want, Simmons?”

Jemma thought, one hand tapping her chin. “Oh, I know! The ability to breathe in places where humans typically can’t, such as underwater, or in outer space.”

Mack chose the ability to know if someone was a robot or not, Elena chose super speed, Hunter chose X-ray vision or invisibility, Bobbi chose healing powers, Prince chose teleportation, Piper chose flight, and Davis, when he arrived, chose the ability to see the future. Fitz and Davis then got into a discussion/argument over the possibility of being able to change the future.

Jemma smiled as she listened to their friendly bickering, chiming in occasionally to help Fitz prove his point about spacetime. She really did have the best friends. Her mind drifted toward Steve Rogers. If he really was a man out of time, like they’d all been told, and not some sort of clone or alien, then all of his friends were dead. How sad.

She was quiet as she and Fitz walked back to her apartment, her mind still on Captain America and everything he had lost. They stopped outside her door, and Jemma fidgeted with her key.

“Fitz,” she said, and he turned to look at her with an expectant smile. “I’ve been thinking a lot about how much Steve Rogers lost, being frozen for nearly 70 years, and I just want you to know--you’re my best friend in the world, Fitz.”

Fitz smiled. “I love you, too, Jemma.”

Jemma kissed his cheek. “Happy birthday, Fitz.”

[agl03]

Final Predictions:  How did I do?

What I got will be in BOLD and if I feel I need to add notes they will be in italics.  Might have to toss in a keep reading line because it is long.

Everyone’s favorite villains, Nathaniel, Kora, and SIBYL will all make it to the finale while Garrett will be killed or locked up by the end of the first hour (and it will use some of Fitz’s tech).

SIBYL will eventually get herself a new body.

Nathaniel will turn on Kora and try to take her powers and/or kill her.

Kora has already turned on him and he/we just don’t know it yet.  Either betrays him and helps her sister or tries to kill him herself in revenge for her mother.  Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.  

Daisy will be the one to end Nathaniel and it will be oh so satisfying giant fight scene….even if we have to wait until the second hour for it.  Bonus points if Sousa get a hit in first too

Coulson, May, and Elena are able to get to space thanks to Coulson’s new computer Genius Super Power OR Garrett is ordered to bring them so they can lord their victory over them all.  

Even though they have pretty much ended Shield and Hydra in the “hot mess” timeline SIBYL and Nathaniel set their sites on the OG Timeline and/or Fitz once they realize he has come into the mix and ruins their plans in the hot mess timeline..   As they are both aware he is the one who ends their little party.

The Chronicoms will not all be super thrilled with what SIBYL has been up too or her methods.   This could be another thing that drives SIBYL into the OG Timeline.  

The battle between SIBYL and Coulson seems to have gotten a bit more personal so my money is on Coulson being the one to take her down.   Close second goes to May and Fitzsimmons.

Diana didn’t only block Memories of Fitz it took out the memories of people associated with him.  IE she is not going to remember her friends or Deke.

Deke will earn her trust quickly and be an A+ overprotective grandson of his Nana as they are rescued and get back to the team.

The team will rescue Deke and Jemma, take out a few Chronicoms, and Independence Day their way out of there.

While it won’t be the romantic Philinda some fans want we will see some quality Philinda banter over the finale as it seems they’ve settled into a good place between the two.   Coulson has also passed the torch of “team parent” onto her.

Philinda will not end as a couple.

At some point Sousa is really going to question what is going on and his life choices.  AKA He looks around stunned at what is going on.

More quality Dousy flirting and banter….they will kiss again and I do see them being a couple when things end.

Fitzsimmons family feels just a lot of them over the whole finale.  Iain and Elizabeth are going to murder us with feels.  I mean Fitz with his little girl.  I shall perish.

Despite not knowing everyone Jemma is going to be super insistent on building or activating a device (that has been stashed on the Zephyr) that she doesn’t know what it does but just knows she needs to build and activate it.  She will be the only one who can activate it and possibly it will take something very personal of hers to turn it on.  IE how she was hiding Fitz’s ring/necklace in Season 6 she might have the key hiding again.  But lets all freak out that Jemma will literally be the key to getting Fitz.

We won’t see Fitz until near the end of 12 if he is not the cliffhanger.  

That Bar place in the promo pics is either Keonig’s Bar or the Playground of the hot mess Timeline.  Seems to be some sort of secret Shield Base or what is left of them after the big attack as there are some random Shield agents milling/wth/who are these people in the background.  We know The Playground was off the books in the OG Timeline and would make sense it was also in the Hot mess.

Jemma will have her memory resorted relatively quickly after Fitz Kool Aid Man’s in all Star Lord from the portal thing Jemma activates.  And it’ll be the freaking power of her love for Fitz/her Family that overloads her (Gimme my Framework fix here).  Or Fitzsimmons have a fail safe password.  BUT GIMME TRUE LOVE.  Okay I’m calling this one close enough!

CUE THE SECRET CHILD REVEAL!!!!!!!!!!   Yes, I will be screaming.  The team will be stunned.

I’m sticking to my theory that they will give their daughter a “celestial” or astronomical name to pay off “One of these days we’ll find something magnificent out in space,” thing from Season 3 (especially if she was conceived on the way back from Kitson).  Or a name that is very reflective of their Scottish/English roots.  

Everyone needs to hold onto their hats because once Jemma has her memories back it will be because they are gonna want to get home to their Little Girl like yesterday and have one hell of a plan that involves saving the world and taking care of Nathaniel, SIBYL, and the Season 6 Finale attack on the Lighthouse.

This is likely where a ton of the Flashbacks come in.

Where has Fitz been?  He’s been back in our OG Timeline.  The finale confirmation for me came last week when Nathaniel revealed that SIBYL’s time stream couldn’t see him….or their daughter, and that thing sees EVERYTHING in the HOT MESS Timeline.  This would also be why Jemma’s messages didn’t reach him, she couldn’t get them to cross into the OG Timeline and this was something she would have known but Diana blocked as part of hiding where Fitz was.

How has Fitz been watching the Chronicoms?  Insert incredibly complicated timey whimy thing the writers came up with that me and my Marketing degree can not fathom so just go with it okay, via the using the Framework in the OG Timeline to get into the Chronicom’s system.  Little pay back for what SIBYL has been doing in the Hot Mess Timeline.  Him being connected to the Framework explains why he was so exposed.  Because when someone is hooked up to that thing they can get their heads cut off and not know it.

Now reunited and having dropped the baby announcement Fitzsimmons will present the plan for the “Final Mission” the team must embark on to save the world….again.  

And oh baby is it complicated.  

Part of said plan will have them back at the Lighthouse during the Chronicom attack.

The dudes that showed up with Jemma at the Temple will be explained.  IE I think its some of the team and they cleared out of the Zephyr before the time travel party got started.  They also may have grabbed other hunks of the monoliths.

The fight will take place in both the Hot Mess and OG Timelines  

We have not seen the last of the Monoliths.  The fact we are jumping timelines and have Flint in the mix over in the OG timeline makes me think they are gonna need Mr. Swirly’s help in doing said jumping (Mr. Swirly is the Grey Monolith).  Or they really go with the OG and its Harold (Black Space one) that allows for it.  Kind of fitting the Monolith that tore Fitzsimmons apart is now the one that reunites them.  

We will for sure see Enoch (via Flashback), Davis (please not by Flashback #davislivesagain), Piper and Flint as returning Favorites.  

If they have Davis back to life I just gesture exhaustedly at the Monoliths again.  Not even gonna try to explain it.

Small chance we run into the Hot Mess’s Timeline Enoch but he will have no relationship or connection to the team and will make me cry.  

Top Picks for SURPRISE not on the Press Release faces to pop up if we get them:   Ward (I mean really how have we not seen him again yet), Mace, Robbie, Bobbi, Hunter, Koenig (any of them) and Mike.    REALLY WANT IT BUT WON”T GET IT!   Dadcliffe  But YOUNG VICTORIA HAND HECK YES!

Who was keeping Fitzsimmons Daughter safe:  

Top Pick:  Piper and Flint:  Given Fitzsimmons would have run into them picking up the Zephyr and they could have been the “we had help” they talked about.

Second Place Because I Badly want him back:  Uncle Enoch 2.0

Left Field Surprise Option:  Huntingbird

LOLA RETURNS

We will get a lot of really fun callbacks to past stories or even lines IE “I’m just the Pilot” For May.

“What We Are Fighting For”:  Family.  The team family….and the Fitzsimmons family.  Also they will have gone 13/13 in that someone will say the titles name at some point in the episode.

We will see old weapons and tech from previous seasons make one last appearance, we’ve seen 2 so far in promos and will see more.

Shotgun Axe gets a proper send off in battle (this one is for Kiddo 3)

Bear will deliver the most amazing soundtrack that we’ll never get to buy.

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story (Sorry Couldn’t Resist)

Nathaniel:  Dies, and we will all cheer.

SIBYL:  Dies, and we will all cheer.

Garrett:  Dies or locked up, won’t make it to the second hour.

Kora:  Toss a coin.  If she dies she killed for trying to take down Nathaniel.  If in her betrayal of Nathaniel she helps Daisy get Jemma and Deke back that could be a good starting place for the sisters to work thing out.   Starting place, she has a long way to go to get in good with Daisy and setting up an 11th hour redemption arc.

Mack:  Still so nervous for him based on how he has been in interviews, especially the SDCC ones last year.  He was so clearly upset by it.  So Mack either falls or does something so out of character (Bails before the finale battle which just is not making sense to me Mack is in such a good place right now) for Mack that Henry was upset by it.  Essentially I am very confused because what I am seeing on screen now isn’t matching with how Henry was talking as Mack has really come around since his Endgame stage.   Henry really I have no idea why you were so upset!

Elena:   Easily lives.  If Mack doesn’t die, wherever he lands she’ll be with him.  They’ve been a steady ship all season and I see no reason for them to break up outside of death.  And while I have a mountain of concerns for Mack, I have none for Elena..   I also see her still being a presence within Shield, she’s become a good solid agent, and bonus points if she keeps Flint with her….and he gets all the tacos he wants.  

Sousa:   Totally lives (they might give us a good fake out though because he and Daisy are becoming a thing)I can still see him being Director of Shield if Mack falls or steps down.   He’s a good Agent in a new time but he said he is right where he is supposed to be, at Daisy’s side.  Where she goes he goes.  IE he’s not letting her get away and will always be there after she runs into a wall.  So if Daisy leaves Shield, so will he.  If she stays so will he.  If she opens a coffee bar he’ll learn to make an espresso.  

Daisy:   Totally Lives, but there will be something about her ending that some fans won’t like and some fans are going to love.   Staying with Shield or no whatever she does will involve Inhumans be it the Secret Warriors are up and running again, she is mentoring and training new Inhumans coming into Shield, or my favorite option still is she reopens Afterlife.  I’ve been feeling that option for most of the Season and feel like it was really set up with Jaiying as was Daisy looking out for her little sister should the chips fall the right way.     The SS Dousy will be sailing right along.  IF Kora survives I can see her being in Afterlife as well, Daisy taking her mother’s passion that Kora has a good heart to heart herself.  

Deke:   Okay this one is weird because I feel like we are going to lose him somehow, but he won’t die.  I didn’t get the vibe from Jeff, Elizabeth, or Iain that he died and those three are pretty tight.  However,  in that I don’t think I’m going to get my Fitzsimmons Family all settling down in a giant castle in Scotland together.  They set up for him to make a sacrifice, he’s grown, and has something he’s really truly fighting for.   I have loved seeing how close he and Jemma have gotten and how fiercely he’s protected her and her secret.  Even in the face of torture he didn’t betray her.  It will come as no surprise if he doesn’t sacrifice himself somehow.  Either in taking a hit for his family or doing something similar to what he did in Season 5 to make sure they got home.  Bringing things full circle.   He also expressed that he wouldn’t mind being stuck in the hot mess timeline in ‘83.  He built himself a nice life there and Nathaniel did a pretty good job of taking out Hydra…with just a bit of Shield hanging on.  So if it comes down to it I don’t see him minding if he gets stuck there.  Sure him saying goodbye to Nana and Bobo is gonna hurt like Hades but if he ends up alive, I’m good.  

Fitzsimmons:  Both live, yes they will scare the crap out of us more than a few times especially after we know about the daughter, but they will live.  Totally peace out, we’ve done our time, leaving Shield with the adorable daughter and its Perthshire or Bust.   They’ve sacrificed enough and will not be willing to risk it again.

May:   Lives and reminds us all that she is one hell of a pilot.  If Mack decides he wants to step down, dies, whatever I’ll throw her back in contention for Director, especially as I see Sousa Following Daisy if she leaves.  Coulson seemed to have set her on that path and at the very least passed the “Team Parent” torch onto her, that it would be her job to give the Coulson talks to those who needed it.  If she’s not Director, she’ll be whomever is right hand, or I still have that option for the Academy being up and running and she’s running that, training the next generation.

Coulson: Lives.I know SHOCKING.   I think he was very ready to throw in the towel after spending 20 months in the TV but then Enoch’s moving words in his death were what changed his mind about ‘powering down” when this is all over.  Coulson realizes that yes, while it is hard to be the one to leave it is harder for the ones that are left behind but it’s also necessary that they move on, and live for those they have lost before.  Like Sousa and Fitzsimmons, he’ll be another that they’ll fake out death a few times.   I see him leaving Shield though, taking Lola and finally just going and seeing the world, watching the history he loves so much happen.  We get to see him driving around or even off in Lola for the last time.   Other options include he does something that will allow him to totally run with his new super computer super power.  The final thing I can see him doing is being the coolest professor at the newly rebooted Academy.  

[junker-town]

The Denver Nuggets have the NBA’s most disappointing player. What can they do?

What’s wrong with Gary Harris?

The Nuggets can’t be champions without Gary Harris.

There are two questions worth asking about Gary Harris right now. Both are critical for the Denver Nuggets, and their climb towards the NBA title: “What happened?” and “What if he turns it around?”

Two years ago, when Harris was 23, only two players his age averaged more than his 17.5 points per game: Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo. The bubbling optimism that surrounded Denver’s young core was amplified by Harris’ breakout campaign, how he so perfectly complemented Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray in a league increasingly infatuated with athletic three-point shooters who could not be bullied on the other end.

Denver appeared to have one franchise center (to say the absolute least), one franchise point guard, and one complementary franchise do-it-all on the wing. The Nuggets lost their last game and barely missed the playoffs, as a sprained right knee kept Harris out for 11 of the season’s final 13 games.

That year only 24 players had a usage rate above 20 and a true shooting percentage higher than 59. Of them, six averaged more minutes than Harris: LeBron James, Antetokounmpo, James Harden, Karl-Anthony Towns, Anthony Davis, and Damian Lillard. Not the worst company!

Even as he battled injuries last season, Harris’ future was bright. He was ascendent, graceful, and, in theory, exactly what every good team in the league wishes it had. He acquitted himself and advanced expectations in his first taste of the playoffs. But today, with Harris as arguably the most disappointing player in the league, his play may be a requiem for their own championship aspirations.

Development is not linear and there are myriad ways to describe any one player’s unforeseeable stagnation, but the reality is Harris went from doubling as an integral present-day contributor and precious trade asset, to a big reason why his team can’t scratch the ceiling they otherwise could. The past few weeks have been a particularly dark nadir. In his last 20 games Harris is averaging 8.7 points, shooting 35.2 percent from the floor and 23.9 percent behind the three-point line. Over his last 15, the Nuggets have been outscored by three points with Harris on the court.

His usage rate is a career-low 15.3. His PER is 9.0. Only three players are afforded at least 30 minutes per game despite a True Shooting percentage that’s below 0.50: Harris, Darius Garland, and R.J. Barrett. This is an epic fall. Two years ago, Harris shot 69 percent at the rim and 40 percent beyond the arc. This season he’s down to 58 and 30 percent, respectively. In last year’s 14-game playoff run he only scored in the single digits one time. This year he’s crossed the 20-point barrier once, and finished with nine or fewer points in 24 of the 42 games he’s appeared in.

Harris is 25 years old, guaranteed $39 million over the next two seasons, and has the ninth-highest usage out of everyone who’s played at least 500 minutes on his own team. That is bad. It’s easy to say if his struggles continue and Denver still wishes to meet the championship goals they’re young enough to reach for, Harris should be exchanged for a different puzzle piece. But how many teams will look at his decline and believe it’s salvageable enough to fork over something the Nuggets believe can help them?

When players fall off, usually there are hints that allow us to draw rational conclusions. Mike Conley’s decline can superficially be blamed on age and his entrance into a new system. The same can be said about Al Horford, who’s also confronting a positional overlap with Embiid. Jokic’s early-season slump was thanks to his bloated waistline.

Harris is harder to decode. What’s happening to him may be explained away by health issues he’s battled over the past two years, including the tight adductor he’s currently playing through that also bothered him last season. Hips, thighs, groins, and hamstrings are delicate parts of the body for a player in Harris’ role, be it on hard cuts into the paint off Jokic’s high-post orchestration or how he needs to fight through screens and lock down his assignment on the other end. But if health were the only reason for a slide this extraordinary it’s worth wondering if Denver’s medical staff would even let Harris play. And he probably wouldn’t be able to do stuff like this:

Then again, later in the same game, this probably wouldn’t happen either:

The Nuggets have a closer eye on this than anybody else, and maybe they have an educated guess or verifiable way to explain Harris’ plummeting impact on offense. (He was indirectly picked to over Malik Beasley, which isn’t the wrong choice, but a decision with an uncertain outcome nonetheless.) Recent comments by Nuggets head coach Mike Malone didn’t divulge any definitive answers to a worrisome curiosity:

“When you watch Gary in practice, when you watch him work out in his (player development) sessions, he’s been shooting the ball lights out,” Malone said. “So now hopefully, after some time off, going back, spending some time with his son, his family and just relaxing ... hopefully he can just go out there and play and not put whatever pressure he’s putting on himself. Just relax and play.”

If nothing else, Harris’ season is a reminder that sports will forever traffic in the unexplainable and random. Nothing is guaranteed and many statistics aren’t predictive.

Projecting out where he was two years ago with where he should be today, the contextual comparisons make his play even more disheartening. During the 2017-18 season, Harris had to navigate lineups that had Jokic and Mason Plumlee in the same frontcourt. Murray wasn’t the playmaker he is now, Jokic wasn’t the singular attention-grabbing force, and thousands of additional possessions that have transpired since with Paul Millsap, Murray, Jokic, and either Will Barton or Torrey Craig by his side should bolster the long-standing chemistry that gives Denver an advantage over most of its opponents

This naturally leads us to wonder how the Nuggets would look if Harris returns to his old form and makes defeating the Nuggets four times in seven tries the Himalayan hike it should be. Harris averaging, say, 20 points per game — one-third of of them thanks to 40 percent shooting beyond the arc — and then paring it with elite on-ball defense, would help slice the margins that currently sit between Denver and the LA teams. Their offense would sparkle more vividly than it currently can in tight spots — meaningful, considering the Nuggets already have the sixth-highest offensive rating in the league.

Right now 76 percent of Harris’ two-point field goals are assisted. Two years ago that number was 18 percent lower. That helpful offensive fragmentation would allow Malone to utilize Harris in different ways, perhaps commandeering his own bench unit, flashing some of the playmaking chops that have otherwise been static. (Harris plus bench groups have been successful in a small sample size.) What about in ways that unlock a more lissome side altogether, with Jerami Grant and Michael Porter, Jr. turbo-energizing the frontcourt? With more dependable offense, Harris’ defensive versatility would permit some creativity.

(“I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a better perimeter defender in the league,” Nuggets general manager Tim Connelly told me earlier this season, during a conversation about the positive impact continuity had on their defense.)

Instead, Harris has traded a sharp blade for a blunted fencer’s foil. His drives to the basket have dropped. He’s finishing fewer possessions as a pick-and-roll ball handler. He’s averaging nearly 10 fewer frontcourt touches than he did in 2018.

His evolving surroundings might help clarify some of the remaining question marks, but as an excuse that’s nothing more than speculation, and one that conflicts with common sense: The lower your usage rate, the more efficient you should be. Since his third season, Harris has had to adjust to the addition of Millsap, Barton’s development, and, more recently, Porter’s very existence. These players deserve the ball, and it’s not like Denver’s making a mistake when it chooses to run offense through them.

Sacrifice is usually a good thing, but if Harris can’t use it to his advantage a world where he gets the sunshine he needs to blossom might be one where the Nuggets find their best self. All that might mean is more opportunities to sprint out of the corner for his signature dribble hand-off with Jokic, an action that hums to a melody only their ears can hear. It’s a devil to deal with, especially when the opponent sticks a smaller defender on him:

What’s happened to Harris, for whatever reason, is a pothole the Nuggets couldn’t see on their 100 mile-per-hour drive towards the NBA’s upper echelon. Porter is the core-elevating supplement who may one day be their second-best player, but while they wait for that to happen (while keeping in mind that there are no guarantees) consistency from Harris is what can take them from boutique to high fashion.

Sometimes Harris still moves like he used to. Sometimes he’ll rip through a closeout, rumble towards the paint, and finish strong through or over the rim protection. Sometimes he’ll go off the bounce with his arms low to bait the defense. Sometimes he’ll epitomize the ideal role player.

The Nuggets would not be a favorite to win the championship even if Harris followed his old trajectory, but sometimes is a word for dreamers. And unless he fixes his shot, stays healthy, and regularly exudes the same confidence that once made Denver’s ceiling feel limitless, becoming anything more will be much harder than the Nuggets ever thought it’d be.

[amaizemag]

The Dyatlov Pass Incident

By Holly Davies.

What’s up spooky friends!! Today we’re going to learn about the mystery of the Dyatlov Pass Incident. I’m super interested in true crime and normally I don’t prefer unsolved cases because it makes me sad that these people don’t get the justice that they deserve. HOWEVER, in cases like these where there are extraordinary circumstances and so many different theories I can’t help but be intrigued, and I hope you will be too! There is SO MUCH to unpack in this story so here we go…

So, in 1959 10 skiers decided to hike near a mountain in Russia known as Kholat Syakhl (which apparently translates to ‘Dead Mountain’ or simply ‘Don’t go there’ so let’s just say I’m not going on vacation there anytime soon) One of the group members, Yuri Uden, upon falling ill before the hike had to stay behind in a nearby village and he was the only one who lived to tell the tale…

On February 26th, 1959, 2 bodies were found by a volunteer rescue team, next to a tree line about a mile away from the group’s campsite. Despite the -29 degree temperatures, they were completely bare except for their underwear, having apparently died of hypothermia. They also had burns on their palms and heads, which could be connected to the remnants of a fire that were found. The theory that the boys at LPOTL came up with is that this was the result of a run in with a young Kevin McCallister but for some reason I don’t think that’s legit. Stranger still is what they found in the trees above them; broken branches and even shreds of their skin left on the bark (!!!) led them to believe that the hikers had tried to climb the trees in a state of sheer terror and panic – but from what?!

Later, 3 more bodies were found a little bit closer to the original campsite, including the body of Rustim Slobadim. He had the most unusual injuries of this group consisting of: possible evidence of a nosebleed; the skin on his arms was torn and there were many bruises near the joints of his hands (suggesting a possible physical struggle); inflammations to his face; AND a fractured skull, possibly caused by a ‘foreign blunt object’. Yet despite all this his cause of death, like the others, was hypothermia.

The rest of the bodies were not found until spring, once the 12 FEET of snow had melted. They were found a short while away from the tree line and by the looks of things, these hikers had buried themselves in the snow creating small dugouts to protect them from the cold. One man had a fractured skull, the other crushed ribs, but the third body, a woman named Lyudmila Dubinina had suffered much more. They found she had not only cracked ribs but also a MISSING TONGUE and MISSING EYES. She also did not die from hypothermia but due to her extensive injuries because unlike the other victims, this group were wearing plenty of clothing, including that of their fellow hikers. The last man, Simon Zolotarev also he had many random items on his person, including a camera which the others in the group were not aware that he had – the film from which was never able to be developed due to water damage…

So what are the theories that might help explain this mystery?

1. An avalanche

Considering they were on a dangerous mountain, it makes sense that an avalanche might have occurred. Perhaps the snow buried their tents, which would explain why they were cut from the inside in a desperate attempt to dig themselves out of the snow. It would also in this case make sense for hypothermia to be the cause of death for the team. However, reports of the area showed no trace of an avalanche having occurred, and this explanation certainly does not account for the stranger injuries that the victims suffered.

2. Missile Test

Some believe that what in fact happened was that a military missile hit the area and that the impact caused the deaths of the campers. This explanation WOULD account for the inhuman injuries (except the missing tongue which I’m sorry to say does not really get addressed in any of the possible solutions), as the impact of the collision could have had a strong enough effect on them. It might also account for the fact that there was RADIATION found in the area and traces of it on their clothes.

3. Yeti

Now if you thought those explanations were bizarre, wait until you get a load of this. Some believe that it was in fact a yeti that caused the deaths of the skiers; so much so that there was a documentary released, by the Discovery Channel no less, called Russian Yeti: The Killer Lives (Leon Rawlski, 2014). In regards to the injuries that the group suffered, examiners said that because of the similarities in wounds on the bodies, despite them all being of different stature, it could not have been one uniform incident that killed them; a yeti attack might solve this part of the mystery and the indications of hand-to-hand combat. As a matter of fact, in a newspaper the group produced for the trip, there was a headline reading “From now on we know that the snowmen exist” which in hindsight is very ominous – was this a yeti warning?!

4. Aliens

As is almost always the case with unsolved mysteries like these, one of the possible explanations does involve aliens. In March of 1959, there were multiple reports of bright spheres and lights in the sky around the Ural Mountains area. The involvement of aliens could provide explanations for the radioactivity and inhuman trauma caused to the bodies. Not only this but much like the yeti, a UFO sighting could have been the reason that Zolotarev made sure to bring his camera with him as they fled the campsite.

So as you can tell there is a lot of information on this case, but not a lot of answers. I guess at this point we’ll never know what really happened all those years ago, but the fear of the unknown is still enough for hiking parties in the area to hold major superstitions about it. Thanks for bearing with me while I went all Pepe Silvia on you guys!

The truth is out there,

Holly <3 xxx

[barcaavengers]

Out in the Open pt. 6 || Neymar Jr Imagine

Note: Finally is out! I'm so sorry this took ages but its finally here! I hope you all like it! This might be the end of the series. Left it pretty open so if you guys want to see something else or want another part just let me know! I feel like this was rushed, but I wanted some jealousy soooo here ya go! A friend of Ney and Rafinha had picked you up from the Barcelona airport to take you to the training session where you were going to surprise Neymar. You didn't show it, but you were still mad over the fact that he and Bruna arrived together and that he didn't tell you anything when he called. It was getting on your last nerve as much as you tried not to think about it.   You are dropped off at Camp Nou and you can't help but grin excitedly at it. It was the first time you were there, and it looked so much bigger than it looks on tv. It was like a dream come true to be there and see it up close and personal. You are being waited for by one of the staff members that would take you to the field. At first, you thought why that would be since you were sure you could find the pitch rather easily, but then you noticed the several stairs and hallways and tunnels that the stadium had on the inside, you were grateful that he waited for you. Rafinha must've told him about your surprise arrival.   Once on the pitch, you sit on the benches as the players practiced their shooting on the far goal. You easily spotted Messi and you almost squealed too loudly at the sight. Your favorite club, your favorite players, right before your eyes. You spot Iniesta, chuckling at a side while Neymar jumped on Pique's back. Suarez and Messi talking to each other, Marc grinning while Rafinha pushed Sergi for some reason.   Rafinha spots you after a few minutes and he goes and slaps the back of Neymar's head before he points at you. You see your boyfriend's face turn from confused to grinning like a little kid. You grinned back, waving at him, but it didn't mean you had forgotten. It was...It was just that you couldn't really stay mad at someone like Neymar when his smile turned bigger and he looked at you the way he did.   He jogs towards you and you stand up. His hands quickly cup your face and he presses his lips against yours softly to greet you. "Hey..." he breathes once he pulls away, thumbs rubbing your cheeks, "I thought you'd let me know when you got here..." "I was...but Rafinha said he'd send someone to pick me up and take me here to surprise you..." You admit to him. "Rafa? You two are talking?"   "He called me yesterday because he didn't saw me around and wondered why" you say. You could sense Ney tensing, probably because he thought there could be something going on between Rafinha and you besides a good friendship, but you saw it as a brother and sister thing since he cared for you like if he were your big brother.   "Oh..." he says and nods his head before wrapping his arms around your waist.   "We need to talk" you say, patting his chest as he looks at you.   "I know, and we will. Let me just introduce you to everyone, they have been asking about you" he said with a grin before taking your hand and leading you to the pitch. "Guys" Ney called out and they turned to look at you both. Rafinha smiled at you, giving you a nod which she returned. "This is Y/N, my girlfriend" he said happily. "Finally we get to know who was crazy enough to date this idiot" Suarez says with a chuckle, holding a hand out to you which you take, "Nice to meet you" he says with a grin.   "It's my pleasure" you say, holding your fangirling on the inside.   "We've heard great things about you" Messi says and holds his hand out. For a moment you freeze, because you were face to face with the best player in the world and he was greeting you.   Your heart was beating loudly and you almost didn't know what to say because you were speechless. "She is a big fan of you, she won't talk for one more minute" Neymar says and you shake your head and slap his arm before you take Leo's and shook it lightly.   "He is right, but not that right" you say and nervously give a chuckle. "Big fan. You are awesome. I can't believe I am meeting you...personally" you say and you notice you are fangirling and at the edge of squealing. "Well, let's hope its not the last time we meet. Next time I can sign your jersey" he says with a shrug and smiling, and you grin.   "I'd love that a lot actually. I'd want everyone's if that's okay" she grins as she looks at the others. "Was about to say you forgot about the rest" you heard Rafael say and you giggle.   You talk with the other players as they approach to meet you. Marc was adorable and so was Denis. Jordi and Arda didn't spoke much to you but they were looking forward to seeing you again. Samuel joked with you for a few minutes while Neymar went to get ready and Lucas was around as well. Iniesta was a gentleman and was very nice, not like you expected anything less. He was just like the rest but a bit more mature, but he was definitely happier, and friendlier than what he appeared to be. Pique and Gomes came out to the field after changing and greeted you. Pique messing and joking about Neymar with Samuel while Gomes only chuckled. It was a good day. Too good. You were looking forward to the other training days to come. Neymar finally came out of the tunnels and took your luggage from the room the staff had stored them in and placed them in his Ferrari. "I can't believe I met the whole team. They were so nice and so...real" You rant as you both head to his house.   "Thought I played with a bunch of robots?" Neymar teased with a small chuckle before taking your hand in his. "No...but I just thought I'd never meet them. I did missed Dani and Marc, I had the feeling I'd see them and then I remembered they left...Just like Xavi" you frown.   "We all miss them, we miss the goof, we miss the team pet, we miss our captain" he admits, "but, we can always see them. We just need to plan things with time" he says and you smile.   "I hope I can get to meet them, or at least see them. They were my favorites...then again, they are all my favorites" you admit with a giggle and Neymar chuckles.   "But I'm your favorite favorite, right?"   "Not now. No. We need to talk about her..." you say, all happiness from your body slowly faded and even you noticed it happened the same to Neymar.   "I know..." he says quietly and nods before you two arrive at his house.   His house was huge, too huge for someone like him who spent most of his time alone or with Davi. This would be your home from now on, or so you thought of it as such. You had to think things through, finish your studies, get a job, not be a burden for Neymar.   "Do you like it?" He asks as he unloads the luggage and gets them on the floor, noticing your eyes wondering around the house.   "I do" you admit with a grin before your eyes land on a distant room, where the first thing you see, is a picture of Bruna. Its like your veins, instead of running blood, runs fire. You feel yourself tense and heat up, and just as you catch Neymar about to wrap his arms around your waist, you move away and forward into the room. "Y/N..." he starts.   "Why is there a picture of her?" You ask as you look at it. Bruna looked gorgeous in it. Too gorgeous, and you felt that jealousy creeping up your body... "She gave me that when we dated as a gift. It was my favorite picture of her so she gifted it. I didn't throw it away because it wasn't something I saw as bad?" He says, or more like questions at the end of the sentence. "I don't think many people have a picture of their ex on their wall...Not this big anyway" you say and frown. "Nor they'd arrive in the same flight, same day, at the same place" you add and glare at him. "I didn't know-"   "You never know anything about her, Neymar!" You snap and frown. "You didn't knew she'd be at the shopping place, you didn't know why she was calling you, didn't know why she was on the same flight as you. It can't all be coincidence" you say and slightly take a few steps, almost about to start pacing. "You did knew she'd be at the final, and you didn't mention anything to me" you say.   "It all happened so fast. She suddenly appeared" Neymar explains. "The champion speech was her, and I really couldn't just ignore her after I won the Olympics. Then she was with my friends and I saw it was normal because we have common friends. Then the calls...I don't know how to explain those and I guessed she came to Barcelona to watch the season but-" "But why keep all those things from me? Why hide them? You could've told me and I wouldn't be as mad as I am because I heard it from someone else" you say. "Neymar, I have to deal with people questioning our relationship because you are going out with your ex. I have to listen to all the theories and what else can I do than believe them when my own boyfriend doesn't tell me things?" You feel that sting in your eyes that only meant that you were about to cry, that knot in your throat was growing and there was nothing you could do about it.   "You could maybe not listen to them? Never believe them, Y/N, they just-"   "And who should I believe? You? Did that and you kept things from me" you say, trying to keep a steady voice.   "I only did it because it didn't seem like something bad and-"   "Not for you. Maybe your other girlfriends haven't been this jealous, maybe they don't care about who you go out with, but I do!" "Bruna knew better than not to believe rumors!"   "Oh, so you are comparing me to her?" Your tears had started to roll down your cheeks.   "I am not! I just said she didn't believe in those things!"   "Well, I'm sorry for not being her, Neymar! I don't know who to believe when my boyfriend just seems to be still into her by keeping all the things related to her a secret. Its like you would think I'd never know if you two were together or not. If you aren't doing anything bad, why keep it from me?!" "Then maybe I'm confused, Y/N!" You were about to argue, but those words changed everything. He might haven't even realized he had said them. "I don't know if I still have feelings for her and maybe I want to find out. Maybe I did go out with her just to test. Maybe I'll meet her after practice tomorrow" in a way, his voice sounded like sarcasm, pure sarcasm. In another way, even if it was sarcasm, that was a terrible, terrible thing to say right now. "Y-" you try to speak but your knot in your throat had grown too much and you could barely speak without sounding broken. "Y/N, I didn't mean-"   "Shut up..." You manage to say, holding your hands up. "Just, don't say anything else..." "I didn't-" "Stop..." You say and your lips press together to stop them from quivering. You move past him and you can feel his soft stare behind you. The puppy eyes that would make you forgive him anything, but not this time.   You go for your luggage and with shaky hands reach for your purse and look for your phone. Who you were going to call? No idea, but you were surely not going to stay there. Maybe a cab would do to take you to some hotel to stay the night. "Babe, come on. I'm sorry for what I said. I didn't meant to hurt you..."   "Oh, but you did, Neymar. You certainly did..." You scroll through the screen, finding the number of a cab company before you start dialing the number. "Who are you calling?"   "I'm not staying here. Not tonight" you say and place your phone on your ear before you hang up. This was stupid. You didn't know the address of Neymar's house, nor would you start up drama by having a cab pick up Neymar's girlfriend from his house.   "I can take you wherever you want...You can go to your room if you want. I won't bother you until you want me to..." he says and you frown before sighing and nod your head, feeling the tears coming again to your eyes. It was the second time in your relationship, after it was made public, that you have fought with Neymar and you hated it. It was why both times you have tried to get away, you have failed.   He picks up your things and takes them to your room, which you suspected wasn't meant to be your room as he planned, but his, but with everything that happened, he wasn't going to do that. After placing everything, you notice that he is wanting to say something, but holds himself and walks away, closing the door in the process.   You hated not knowing where to go. It wasn't like if you knew the city, or where exactly you were. You can't really call any cab because you didn't want anyone to come by and find out why Neymar's current girlfriend just left the house in a cab. You didn't want the attention on yourself or your relationship, it was enough with what they were saying about Bruna and your boyfriend.   What were you supposed to do now? Talk with Neymar? You knew he didn't really meant to say those things, but it was a bad choice while you two fought. What if he was really confused? What if he still felt something for her? You weren't sure what to say or do, but for the rest of the day, you will be stuck in your room until you cool down. You lay down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling before you fell asleep, finally maybe getting some decent sleep hours after your trip.   You wake up and it was probably past midnight because everything was too quiet around the house. You toss in your bed until you are resting on your stomach and you just let your mind think things. 'He does love you and won't risk anything stupid enough to lose you' Rafinha had once said when you were at the Olympics in Brazil after your first fight with Neymar. 'Maybe he doesn't want you to be mad when he is away' he said when you told him about Bruna and him arriving at the airport. 'Talk to him, he is new to this' and he meant to probably having a girlfriend who was so invested on him and was scared to lose him, or so Rafa made you think.   It wasn't long until you were on your feet and pulled some pajamas out of your luggage. You almost never went to sleep in normal clothe, so you felt uncomfortable sleeping like that. Shower will have to do in the morning. You change in the bathroom of the room and as you head for the bed you stop and look at the door. Chewing on you cheek thoughtfully, you move towards it and open it. Ney had his door open so it was easy to spot his room. You lean against the door frame and watch him sleep for a few minutes. He looked so peaceful and calm instead of his usual hyper mood that it melted your heart a little. Taking a few steps in, you stop as he stirs before you continue until you are on the edge of the bed. You get on quietly, trying to not push too much weight on the bed so it wouldn't shift and wake him up. You lay on your side looking at him before you notice he smiled and you hold your breath. Before you know it, his free hand is around you and pulls you close and kisses your forehead. You were about to say something but you stop yourself and turn around, his front against your back and you both fall asleep that way.   You wake up to the sound of the bell ringing downstairs and you groan as you open your eyes. Neymar wasn't around, that was given when you noticed the paper folded in half besides you, on the front the word 'Princess' was written on his handwriting. You were about to reach it before the bell rang again and you sigh. Who could be coming by at 10am in the morning?   Making your way down the stairs and to the doors you tried to fix yourself to look at least okay since you just woke up. When you open the door, your eyes widen before they squint in a glare. "Can I help you with something?" You ask at the female in front of you. Bruna. You notice she was with a driver and then turn your eyes at her.   "You must be Y/N. Is Ney home? He isn't answering my texts" she says. Did she actually had the nerve to admit she was texting him.   "Clearly not" you say and cross your arms against your chest. "Mind telling me why you want to talk to my boyfriend?" It was taking all your will power to not be rude.   "Right, your boyfriend. Forgot he was dating someone. Funny thing, he didn't mention you once the times I've been around" she says before shrugging. "Tell him I came by, its urgent."   "If its so urgent, why not tell me? Or why even bother coming here?"   "I hoped to find him here. I forgot he must be training. Why not take you with him, though? We always went together" at this point, she was just trying to get on your nerves.   "Long night, you know?" You wink and your face turns back to your glaring expression. "What do you want?"   "Just wanted to ask him if I could stay here while they fix something back at my house" she pauses, "but I'll just ask him later, or would you deliver the message?"   "Absolutely" you say and then add, "not. I'm sure you can stay at a lovely hotel. He doesn't want anything to do with you and less have you in his house."   "Does he? Does he still have that picture of me and-"   "You can go now, Bruna."   "One day here and already kicking people out. Didn't expect anything less from a fan" she says and shrugs.   "Didn't expect anything from you except for you to leave. Bye now" and with that you shut the door close before taking in a deep breath. You didn't realize your tears of anger and jealousy wanted to escape but you hold them back.  You lean against the table in the kitchen before you let out a frustrated groan. You know she was messing with you, and she did it. She got in your last nerve with everything she said and you hated her for that but hated yourself more for getting like this. It was evident she was doing it on purpose yet you let her rile you up.     After a few hours Neymar came home as you laid down on the couch watching TV. You just made a quick sandwich on the kitchen after your encounter with Bruna and didn't move from the living room ever since, so you were still on your pajamas, not in the mood to really change.   "Mi amor (My love)" Ney says as he jumps the side of the couch and land on the edge of it. He was smiling and was crawling on top of you now. You smile lightly as he leans forward to kiss you, but you move your head to the side.   "Bruna came by" you say and he stops in his track, lips puckered before he looks at you after pulling away slightly.   "She came here? I thought that after ignoring her messages she would stop...What did she say?" He was sitting up now. "She wanted to stay here...And other things, but that's besides the point."   "Stay? Here? Oh...Her house" he says and sighs, "I read her message. Wait, what else did she say?"   "Nothing" you shrug and look away to the TV.   "Wrong move. Princesa, if she was rude to you-"   "Typical girlfriend against ex girlfriend behavior. Not surprised."   He sighs and stays silent for a moment before he speaks, "You didn't read the note, did you?"   "Not really...I wasn't in the mood after such a lovely visit" you say sarcastically. "Why?"   "I was going to take you out around the city. Visit a few places, go out. I want to make it up to you after how bad I screwed up last night. I'm sorry for hurting you. I just..." he runs a hand through his hair, "I just get frustrated because you don't trust me. I'd never cheat on you. I'm just new to this. Having someone who does care, who feels like you do...I don't know how to explain it" he voices.   "I do trust you, but after you didn't tell me about her in the shopping, and then her coming here didn't help. At all" you admit to him and you sit up.   "Then you believe me when I say I'm sorry for everything?" He asks before adding, "I have never had to tell my girlfriends what went on with me, they didn't really mind and when they did they just got angry for a few minutes and then waved it off" he explains.   "I'm not like them. I care about you. About us" you say quietly. "Whatever threat I see against us, I'll react because I don't want things to get complicated" you sigh then, "Sometimes I wonder if keeping things a secret would've been better" you notice him eyeing you curiously before you add, "the biggest fights we have had have been after we made it public, maybe if-"   "No. I wouldn't have allowed it to get this far. I wouldn't just hide you, princess, I'm not ashamed of you or us. I know I have made really, big, stupid moves and said horrible things, but I love you, and I'm happy that I get to be with you out in the open and not worry about anything" he pulls you close and kisses your temple a few times making you smile.   "I love you, too, Ney" you whisper and he cups your face and places a soft kiss against your lips and you smile against it and so does he. It was a relief after everything that has happened.   "Now let's go and change, I'm taking you out" he says with a happy smile and you nod your head, both of you getting up to get ready. After you were both ready, you both start heading down the staircase, Neymar, at the end of it, picked you up and carried you bride style around the house making you laugh as he pretended to almost hit you with the walls and such. He pretended to trip and almost did which you both laugh at as you make your way to the door. He sets you down and starts putting on his coat while chuckling and he opens the door.   "Having fun without me?" A female voice said and both of your expressions went from laughter to a neutral expression. Ney's at least. You knew it was Bruna and your eyes glared at her.   "You know there is a reason why I haven't answered your texts, right?"   "Right, you are here with your new girlfriend but that's no excuse" your heart was beating loud now and you just wanted to push her out. "I came to stay with you since I don't want paparazzis all over the hotel I would stay at while my house gets fixed" she says. Is that a pout?   "Too bad for you, no space for you here in this house with about five guest rooms completely available" you say with a fake smile.   "Are you going to let her talk to me like that?" Bruna questions Neymar and he looks at you before turning to her.   "I believe so. You can't stay here. Isn't it common sense?"   "But Ney-"   "I'm sorry, Bruna. If Y/N doesn't want you here, neither do I. Besides, you have done enough already and I didn't know you'd even come here after everything." "Neymar I came here to see you-"   "And I didn't ask you too, now please, leave us alone" his voice was determined, and he reached for your hand to give it a light squeeze as he held to it.   "So you did change me for her?"   "I just fell in love for someone else who is different from you. She is nothing like you so I didn't change you like you say" Neymar says and a triumphant smile took over you as you see Bruna get angered by the answer. "I'm going to leave, but when this little temporary crush of yours is gone, you will be coming back for me" she says and sounds so sure of herself that you have to roll your eyes. At least she does leave and Neymar lets out a sigh of exhaustion. "I hope she stays away now" he says and closes the door and he turns to you, your expression neutral. "Neymar" you say and he arches an eye brow, he was reflecting an expression tyat asked if there was something wrong, and when he does, you wrap your arms around him, placing a kiss on his lips. His own arms go around you and hold you by your hips as he returns it and you pull away smiling. "That is all I needed. For you to show in front of me that you don't care about her like before" you admit.   "Of course not. I may have tried to keep things normal, but she crossed the line" he admits. "She was acting nice just to have her way. I'm glad things got settled now and hopefully she won't be a problem to us anymore" he admits, his forehead resting against yours.   "Thank you..." You whisper.   "Any time..." he pauses. "Still want to go around the city?"   "I'd love to" you say with a soft grin before kissing his cheek and he opens the door for both of you to go out and enjoy Barcelona.