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dr-spencer-reids-queen · 2 years

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Scared to Death: Part Two

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~1.8k

Warnings: canon violence, canon language, canon talk of death, methods of kill

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Criminal Minds. All credit goes to their respective owners. If there is any warnings that exceed the normal death/kills from the show, I will list them. If you’ve seen the show, then it’s the same level of angst unless otherwise stated

You kept your promise and went to the hospital and made it back in forty minutes. You had to use your FBI advantages to get things moving along quicker, but there isn't any damage to your lungs or throat from the smoke. There is a little irritation, but the doctor prescribed you an inhaler to take twice a day for a week.

You're the last one on the plane where everyone is. You put your bag off to the side and take a seat next to Spencer with a huff.

"Everything okay?" Derek asks.

"Yeah, no permanent damage. Just a little irritation. The doctor gave me an inhaler. What did I miss?"

"We haven't started. We were waiting for you," JJ says.

Just then, the plane doors closed, and the pilot started to takeoff.

"Can we go over what Portland found?" Hotch asks.

"One female and two male victims were found buried together in the same grave. All twenty-five to thirty. All had been dead for six months."

"That sounds like three different MOs," Emily says.

"Gary Taylor, the Phantom Sniper, was all over the map, just like this guy. He changed his MO as his need to control the situation changed," Spencer rants.

"What about the fresh grave?"

"Female, twenty-eight, roughly dead for forty-eight hours. She was asphyxiated."

"It's a good thing this guy's dumpsite has been compromised."

"Is it? That means he'll find a new place. A place that could be far away from the others. Maybe over state lines."

"As soon as the unsub knows that, he may feel pressured that we're onto him. It could push him to make a mistake."

"Maybe," you shrug.

"Hey, you," Penelope's voice says. You look to the table to see her face on the monitor that's connected to a video chat she's using. Spencer doesn't realize and looks around for his friend, but she just chuckles. "Down here."

"I knew that."

"Good thing you're handsome, doctor," she grins. You lean up and kiss his cheek, glad that not only you can see how cute Spencer can be. "Attention team members--this killer guy continues to stoop to an all-time low of lows by posing as his victims. He's also manipulated two of the families into thinking that everything was okay, even after they were reported missing. One of the fake emails was from their daughter. She said she met this guy and was taking him to her favorite place, Australia, for a couple of weeks. The family contacted the Australian authorities after too much time had passed."

"This guy sure knows a lot of personal information about his victims," you state. "How did he get access to their email accounts?"

"The screen name was the same, but the domain was different. The families never noticed. When I find more pieces of the puzzle, you'll know. Garcia out."

She hangs up the phone, and you look to Hotch for instructions.

"This guy's creative. Let's go over the details one more time just to make sure we haven't missed anything."

By the time you got to the police station in Oregon, you already knew every detail by heart. Hotch made everyone go over it at least three times to make sure no one was confused about anything. It sure felt like the team wasn't complete without Gideon around. You hope he's doing well... wherever he may be. He has your number, so you hope he uses it if he needs anything.

"You must be the BAU. Special agent Bill Calvert," Bill introduces himself to the team.

"Hi. Jennifer Jareau. This is SSA Aaron Hotchner. These are agents Morgan, Prentiss, Y/N, and Dr. Reid."

"I appreciate your help on this case."

"We'd like to take a look around Jenny Wittman's apartment," Hotch says.

"I'd take you myself, but I'm waiting to meet a family, so I'll have another agent drive you out there," Bill says.

"I'll stay behind and work on victimology," Emily offers.

"Great. Reid, Morgan, Y/N, I could use some extra hands. We'll call you if we find anything."

Along with an agent, your half of the team leave for Jenny's apartment. She lives in a building that looks run-down and old. It definitely needs some upgrades and renovations, but maybe the inside is better. The agent can't be here with you, so he's only going to drop you off and pick you up when you're done.

"Wittman's place is on the fourth floor," Spencer says.

Derek presses the button on the elevator, but it's a small one. Only three people will be able to fit easily inside, but four would be way too crowded.

"I'll... meet you guys up there," Hotch says.

He heads to the stairs, but you, Derek, and Spencer enter the elevator. Derek presses the button for the fourth floor, and you sigh heavily.

"Are you okay?"

"Someone was in my apartment, Derek. Either someone has a key or they broke in while I was sleeping. I wasn't harmed. Why? Why break into my apartment and not hurt me? Why fire? I can't get my head wrapped around this."

"We'll help you figure it out. Whatever you need," Derek says.

"At least you weren't harmed. You're here. That's all that matters," Spencer says.

You look at the display screen that tells the occupants inside the elevator what floor they're on. It says you're on floor number three, but then the elevator rolls to a stop. You think that maybe there are people on that floor that need the elevator, but the door doesn't open.

In fact, it's stuck.

"Why isn't it moving?" Derek asks, bouncing up and down a bit to see if it'll kick start the elevator.

"I don't know. Don't--stop it! Don't..."

"What? What's the problem?" Derek asks and bounces again.

"Don't do that!"

"Why not?"

"Because there are six elevator-related deaths per year. Not to mention 10,000 injuries that require hospitalization. Chill out."

"That sounds like pretty good odds to me. Are you scared, Reid?" Derek grins.

"I'm not scared."

He is, but you don't comment on that. Derek is scared too, but only a little bit. Derek jumps once more, and that causes the elevator to drop a few inches. It's at this point, that everyone is shitting their pants. You, Spencer, and Derek all hug the walls, and you're trying not to let the emotions of the two men get to you.

"Push it!" Spencer panics, pointing to the big red button on the panel.

Derek pushes and pulls it, but nothing happens besides the emergency ringing whenever Derek pulls the button out.

"I'm doing it. Nothing's happening."

The elevator drops a few more inches, and you actually might cry. Everyone is panicking, and you're becoming unstable because of them

"No, no, no, no. Not today. No, not today."

"Hotch?" Spencer says, his voice cracking at the end. "Hotch!"

"I love you guys, but panicking is only making it worse. Please calm the fuck down!" you whimper.

Just then the doors to the elevator open, and Hotch is standing there with a confused look on his face. All three of you exit the elevator as quickly as you can with relief across your expressions.

"Was that the alarm? Are you guys okay?" Hotch asks.

"I'll get back to you on that," Spencer sighs.

Without another word, Hotch walks over to Jenny's apartment where the landlord is waiting to let you in. Derek follows quickly, but you and Spencer are still trying to calm yourselves.

"Are you okay?"

"I will be once your heart stops racing," you sigh.

"Sorry."

"Don't be. We're fine. We'll just take the stairs when we leave. Come on."

You and Spencer approach the apartment and head inside. The place isn't as bad as you thought it was going to be. This is small, but Jenny was living alone, so you didn't expect much.

"The FBI was already here two days ago. They didn't find anything," the landlord says, getting out of the way.

"We're from the Behavioral Analysis Unit."

"What's that mean?"

"It means that we study human behavior. We don't just look at the evidence. It helps us to determine why this killer chose this particular victim. The place has a lived-in feel to it."

"It looks like she spent most of her free time here," you say, already connecting with her spirit. You can see her lingering around and doing whatever makes her relax. Nothing you see suggests she was ever in danger. That means she might not have had any enemies. "No messages on the answering machine."

"Hey, guys. Come take a look at this," Derek says from the bathroom. You join him where you can see a bunch of boxes stuffed inside her walk-in shower with glass walls. She wasn't using the shower, so she must have taken baths to clean herself. "There are bath products all around the tub, but she never turned the shower on."

"Uh, did anything ever strike you as odd about Jenny?" Spencer asks the landlord.

"You know what? When she moved in here two months ago, she walked up and down those stairs a hundred times. She wouldn't use the elevator."

"I don't blame her," Derek mutters. "Okay, so we know Jenny didn't like tight spaces or the elevator. What else do we know?"

"We know that the unsub preys on people that are new to the city with no strong social ties."

"Jenny fits the model. She was an easy target," you say. "The unsub is probably betting that she won't be missed."

Due to Jenny's apartment being too small, there is nothing else that you gathered from her place. You didn't use the elevator on the way down, as you probably won't use any besides the ones at your work. There is nothing left to do here, so you had to go back to the police station to see what JJ and Emily found out.

"We have been over the details of this case so many times, I could recite it in my sleep," Emily sighs.

"Nothing like being prepared."

"Sorry to interrupt, but I just spoke to Jenny Wittman's family," Bill says and walks into the conference room.

"Did they give you any insights?"

"Well, they weren't what you'd call close-knit. It was like she wanted a fresh start. She struck out on her own."

"Yeah, Garcia couldn't come up with any connection between the victims. Different socioeconomic backgrounds, levels of education, and areas of work. However, they all had relocated to Portland without any family or friends--one divorced, the rest single."

"That'd describe me to a T. I transferred to this field office a month ago. I'm thirty, single, and I don't have much of a social life since I work so much," Bill reveals.

"Well, I need to go over whatever evidence you found at the other victims' homes, and then I would love to pick your brain about how you got settled into the city," JJ says.

'Absolutely. So, this guy... He burns them, hangs them, and smothers them. Why does he kill so many different ways?"

"That's exactly what we're trying to find out."

You stare at the board with all the victim's information. One burning, one hanging, and one asphyxiation.

"I have a fear of burning alive," you mutter to yourself, but no one else hears you.

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xipiti · 2 years

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The Department of Homeland Security launched a failed operation that ensnared hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. protesters in what new documents show was as a sweeping, power-hungry effort before the 2020 election to bolster President Donald Trump’s spurious claims about a “terrorist organization” he accused his Democratic rivals of supporting.

An internal investigative report, made public this month by Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, details the findings of DHS lawyers concerning a previously undisclosed effort by Trump’s acting secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf, to amass secret dossiers on Americans in Portland attending anti-racism protests in summer 2020 sparked by the police murder of Minneapolis father George Floyd.

The report describes the attempts of top intelligence officials to connect protesters to a fabricated anti-fascist terrorist plot in hopes of boosting Trump’s reelection odds, raising concerns about the ability of a sitting president to co-opt billions of dollars’ worth of domestic intelligence assets for their own political gain. DHS analysts recounted orders to create organizational charts that could be used to establish links between the arrested protesters; an effort that would seemingly legitimize President Trump’s erroneous tweets about “Antifa,” an organization DHS tried but failed to prove shared a central source of funding.

“Did not find any evidence that assertion was true”

The DHS report offers a full accounting of the intelligence activities happening behind the scenes of officers’ protest containment; “twisted efforts,” Wyden said, of Trump administration officials promoting “baseless conspiracy theories” to manufacture of a domestic terrorist threat for the president’s “political gain.” The report describes the dossiers generated by DHS as having detailed the past whereabouts and the “friends and followers of the subjects, as well as their interests” — up to and including “First Amendment speech activity.” Intelligence analysts had internally raised concerns about the decision to accuse anyone caught in the streets by default of being an “anarchist extremist” specifically because “sufficient facts” were never found “to support such a characterization.”

One field operations analyst told interviewers that the charts were hastily “thrown together,” adding they “didn’t even know why some of the people were arrested.” In some cases, it was unclear whether the arrests were made by police or by one of the several federal agencies on the ground. The analysts were never provided arrest affidavits or paperwork, a witness told investigators, adding that they “just worked off the assumption that everyone on the list was arrested.” Lawyers who reviewed 43 of the dossiers found it “concerning,” the report says, that 13 of them stemmed from “nonviolent crimes.” These included trespassing, though it was unclear to analysts and investigators whether the cases had “any relationship to federal property,” the report says.

A footnote in the report states that “at least one witness” told investigators that dossiers had been requested on people who were “not arrested” but merely accused of threats. Another, citing emails exchanged between top intelligence officials, states dossiers were created “on persons arrested having nothing to do with homeland security or threats to officers.”

Questioned by investigators, the agency’s chief intelligence officer acknowledged fielding requests by Wolf and his acting deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, to create dossiers “against everyone participating in the Portland protest,” regardless of whether they’d been accused of any crime, the report says. That officer, Brian Murphy, then head of the agency’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), told interviewers that he’d rejected the idea, informing his bosses that he could only “look at people who were arrested,” and adding that it was something his office had done “thousands” of times before.

The DHS report, finalized more than a year ago, includes descriptions of orders handed down to “senior leadership” instructing them to broadly apply the label “violent antifa anarchists inspired” to Portland protesters unless they had intel showing “something different.”

Once the dossiers were received by the agency’s emerging threat center, it became clear that DHS had no real way to tie the protesters to any terrorist activities, neither at home nor abroad. Efforts to drum up evidence to support the administration’s claim that a “larger network was directing or financing” the protesters — a task assigned to another unit, known as the Homeland Identities, Targeting and Exploitation Center, diverted away from its usual work of analyzing national security threats — “did not find any evidence that assertion was true,” the report says.

[story continues at link]

#lying liars who lie #dhs #Portland #magats

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 years

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An internal investigative report, made public this month by Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, details the findings of DHS lawyers concerning a previously undisclosed effort by Trump’s acting-Secretary of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, to amass secret dossiers on Americans in Portland attending anti-racism protests in summer 2020 sparked by the police murder of Minneapolis father George Floyd.

The report describes attempts by top officials to link protesters to an imaginary terrorist plot in an apparent effort to boost Trump’s reelection odds, raising concerns now about the ability of a sitting president to co-opt billions of dollars’ worth of domestic intelligence assets for their own political gain. DHS analysts recounted orders to generate evidence of financial ties between protesters in custody; an effort that, had they not failed, would have seemingly served to legitimize President Trump’s false claims about “Antifa,” an “organization” that even his most loyal intelligence officers failed to drum up proof ever existed.

“DID NOT FIND ANY EVIDENCE THAT ASSERTION WAS TRUE”

A TRUMPED-UP THREAT, A TRUMPED-UP HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT

Fears of political toadies occupying key intelligence roles had been aired publicly by former intelligence community members during the Trump administration’s early years, but their concerns were all but ignored by Senate Republicans during confirmation hearings that would ultimately inflict serious reputational damage on a number of agencies that, for their own survival, had long avoided partisan leanings.

The report is based on interviews with approximately 80 employees conducted by attorneys drawn from various agency components, including U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard. The investigation began in response to leaks of internal DHS emails in July 2020 that prompted questions from lawmakers about potential intelligence abuses, including the monitoring of journalists’ activities online and the liberal application of terrorism-related language to describe Americans engaged in protest.

I&A is one of the nation’s 17 intelligence community members overseen by the nation’s “top spy,” the Director of National Intelligence, whose office drafts daily top-secret briefings for the President. The directorship was held throughout the protests by John Ratcliffe, a Republican of Texas and renowned Trump loyalist, whose nomination to the post was withdrawn initially in 2019 over qualifications concerns raised by lawmakers and career intelligence officials.

The dossiers, known as Operational Background Reports, or OBRs, are known colloquially within the agency as “baseball cards,” the report says. The task of creating them was handed, “with little to no guidance on execution,” to the agency’s Current and Emerging Threats Center, an analysis unit whose “actionable intelligence” is distributed widely throughout the government. According to the report, the dossiers would’ve been shared with, among others, the agency’s Field Operations Division, which works closely with House and Senate committee staffers, and the Federal Protection Service, whose core mission is securing some 9,000 federal facilities across the country. The extent to which entities outside the federal government were meant to be involved is unclear; however, the report indicates that DHS state and local partners, which would naturally include law enforcement, but also potentially organizations like National Governors Association, could have also been in the loop.

Funded to the tune of $1.5 billion, the Federal Protective Service (FPS) is comprised of thousands of security officers drawn from private contractors such as Triple Canopy, a firm merged in 2014 with another contractor called Academi, previously known as Blackwater. Its staff notoriously included elite warfighters recruited from among the Navy SEALS, the Army Rangers, and the Marines expeditionary force MARSOC.

Activated to engage protesters targeting federal buildings in Portland — including the well-vandalized Hatfield Federal Courthouse — FPS personnel were eventually joined by officers hailing from across the federal government, including some on loan by the U.S. Marshals Service tactical unit normally tasked with making the arrests of the nation’s most violent fugitives. They converged for a mission dubbed “Operation Diligent Valor,” authorized under Executive Order 13933, purportedly to apprehend “anarchists and left-wing extremists” who’d been driven by Floyd’s murder to target U.S. monuments commemorating slave owners and Confederate traitors — dangerous individuals, Trump said, advancing a “fringe ideology” painting the U.S. government as “fundamentally unjust.”

Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, convicted of murder and sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison in 2021, sparked more than 100 days of continuous marches in Portland. Sporadic protests continued well into the next spring, frequently marked by nightly standoffs between protesters toting bottles, fruit, and fireworks and riot-control squads armed with nightsticks, pepperspray, and “kinetic impact munitions” designed to irritate, disorient, and compel compliance through pain.

Police would eventually rack up an unprecedented 6,000 documented use-of-force cases against the demonstrators, who in turn reportedly inflicted more than $2.3 million in damage to federal buildings alone. Police ran off legal observers and physically beat journalist who suffered injuries at the hands of federal agents armed with crowd control weapons as well. In response to the bad press, Justice Department lawyers filed a successful motion in court giving police the power to force reporters off the streets.

Reports began surfacing, meanwhile, of protesters being abducted near demonstrations by men jumping out of unmarked vans in military fatigues. After widely circulated footage confirmed the accounts, DHS acknowledged the abductions, as well as the fact that agents had taken intentional steps to ensure their identities remained secret.

Analysts would feed protesters’ names into an array of databases, including LexisNexis, a tool used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to hunt undocumented immigrants. Another tool, referred to as “Tangles” — a likely reference to the now-defunct Facebook app CrowdTangle — was used to “[compile] information from the subject’s available social media profiles.”

The report also states that dossiers were requested on multiple journalists, including Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare.

Wittes was targeted for publishing unclassified DHS materials, including the initial leak that set off the investigation. Wittes had coauthored an article at Lawfare with Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, in July 2020, which included leaked guidance — known as a “job aid” — disclosing DHS plans to act on Trump’s executive order. The document, Lawfare reported, implicated “at least parts of the intelligence community” in the “monitoring and collecting information on some protest activities.” Later leaks obtained by the New York Times included a DHS memo that, among other things, summarized tweets that had been published by Wittes.

One tweet, published on July 26 — a week after Lawfare published the guidance document — included a leaked email by DHS’s acting-Chief Intelligence Officer, relaying orders to begin referring to all violence in Portland as the work of “Antifa.”

As the summer nights grew longer and the 2020 elections near, the media spent less time focused on the cause of the demonstrations — the suffocation of a Black father of five by a white Minneapolis police officer who was outwardly unmoved by Floyd’s desperate pleas for air, or the heartrending cries for his mother. Headlines shifted instead, as if on cue, to focus on the narrative crafted by the president’s flailing reelection campaign; a pre-packed delusion designed to strike fear in voters’ imaginations and tether Democrats to a fictitious terrorist threat.

Nothing could dissuade Trump from continuing to propagate the claims, which his supporters — most to this day — continue to blindly believe. “In my book it’s virtually a part of their campaign, Antifa,” Trump said in the final months before the election. “The Democrats act like, gee, I don’t know exactly what that is.”

Trump’s highest ranking intelligence crony, John Ratcliffe, meanwhile, would go on to play the only card left with a little help from Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Shocking and alarming career intelligence officials, Graham posted a letter online ahead of the election’s final debate. It contained a batch of Russian disinformation that a Republican-led committee had disregarded as bogus four years earlier. Apparently, it focused on the only Democrat left on whom they could find any material with which to smear: Hillary Clinton, who had no election to lose.

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amberjazmyn · 11 months

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dr spencer reid one-shot

𝓲𝓶𝓪𝓰𝓲𝓷𝓮 - i'll look after you

𝔀𝓪𝓻𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼 - spencer crying, major character death, his girlfriend consoling him but, other than that, just the regular cm warnings

𝓭𝓮𝓼𝓬𝓻𝓲𝓹𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 - "just let it out, just cry it out, i'm right here," prompt. basically, after losing his dad two years ago, spencer and the rest of the bau just watch helplessly as diana is shot in front of them.

𝓪𝓾𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓻'𝓼 𝓷𝓸𝓽𝓮 - i haven't updated this book in yonks and i apologise! i legit spent most of today rereading most of these chapters and realised how much i missed writing these since i've been so caught up with my other book, stars. also, i just realised how much i missed watching criminal minds and reading/writing fanfic so, that is what this is lol. please enjoy and, apologies for making it another sad one for the reidster! i promise the next one will be a sillier/fluffier one!

masterlist

- - -

falling to the floor, spencer wept as his girlfriend and fellow agent ellianna consoled him. his mom diana had just been murdered in front of him, his dad william dying two years prior, not that spencer cared, he hadn't seen his dad since the riley jenkins case so it wasn't much of a loss in his eyes. but, losing his mom was like his whole world collapsed around him, taking him down with it. throughout spencer's entire life, it had always been him and his mom after his dad left them that was until it was him, his mom and the behavioural analysis unit in qauntico. sure, his mom was institutionalised but, it was only because he had no other choice because, he was eighteen and, at the time, he was doing what he thought was the smartest idea. because it was supposed to help make her better. he never would've imagined that he'd have to watch the murder of his own mom right in front of his own eyes alongside the rest of his team during a case that wasn't even originally connected to his mother, that was until it was when ellianna made the connection as to who the unsub was.

two hours earlier

this case couldn't have been any worse than any other case the bau had ever done before. they were in portland, Oregon trying to solve a case, their unsub would kidnap his victims and then would kill them with poison and then, shoot them after the fact. however, what had thrown the team off was still trying to figure out why the unsub was shooting them after poisoning them. what was the need for such overkill when this unsub had only just started their crimes up a month ago? they had only profiled the unsub to be around their early to mid-twenties in age and possibly a white male - but even then they had absolutely no idea if it was a man or a women or how old they even were.

ellianna, irritated, threw down a case file, "jayje, i can't find anything on this unsub, let alone if it's actually a male or if it's a female, can you?" the young agent grumbled as jj shook her head, also throwing hers down onto the table

"nada, rossi?" jj sighed, looking over to their senior supervisory special agent who also shook his head

"zilch, prentiss?" rossi sighed as prentiss was seconds from responding, also shaking her head when spencer and aaron hotchner walked in, noticing their girlfriend and agent, ellianna suddenly staring at a file that everyone had seemingly missed earlier

hotch eyed the young agent before speaking up, "you alright, de angelis?" hotch questioned as he held another pile of files given to him from the portland police bureau - spencer placing muffins and coffees across the table for the team as ellianna nodded her head

"uh...yeah, i'm fine hotch, just, this case file, this one's new. it wasn't a file we were originally given by ppb when they first gave us all their initial files to the case!" ellianna stuttered out before she then picked it up, quickly flicking through it before stopping

her eyes widened as she saw one specific name in the file and it quickly caught the team's attention, "what is it, el? do we need to call up garcia?" spencer spoke up as ellianna shook her head before jumping out of her seat and running out of the bullpen of the portland police bureau

the rest of the team followed after their youngest agent, but, when they finally caught up to her, they never expected to see her squaring up to the head police officer of the portland police bureau but, here they were, "officer brooks, where did this file come from and why was it not given to us at the beginning with the rest of the case files?" ellianna demanded, after she quickly recognised the name in the file, officer brooks looking at the fbi agent in genuine confusion

"i...i'm sorry, agent de angelis?" officer brooks questioned with confusion before ellianna softened slightly and opened the file to show her

"this, officer, this whole time my team and i weren't able to get a lead, let alone figure out if the unsub was a male or a female but, now, seeing this file, i think i've now figured it out and it's in this case file, everything that we've needed from the beginning but where did it come from because it wasn't one that you guys had given to us in the beginning so, i'll kindly ask you again, where did it come from? is it one of yours from this case or is it not?" ellianna requested as officer brooks was in shock, also recognising the name in the file straight away, she hadn't seen that case file in years she truly thought that the case file had been put away in the archives

"it...it's a case file from a previously archived case. it was from a case that was solved years ago back in the late 90s, or a case that we thought had been solved. we had been told by washington police, who we did this case with, that they hailed this case as solved because they had been informed that the unsub had...you know, killed himself so, we just put the case file away into our archives, after being ordered to by washington police. why, do you think that this case file has to do with this current case?" officer brooks questions in worry, especially because of the main suspect in that 90s case file as ellianna nods her head with a worried look in her eyes

"that's exactly what i think, officer. i don't think that robert just killed himself, he's too proud of himself and cares about what everyone else thinks of him to even think about killing himself. he takes too much enjoyment in his crimes but also when he isn't having an episode, he does get quite empathetic and realises what he's done which is why i think the unsub has to be him. we need to find him and we need to find him now. otherwise, oregon, washington, idaho, nevada and california could all potentially be in deep shit, got it? so if you could get your officers to communicate with those in washington, idaho, nevada and california, that would be amazing!" ellianna ordered as officer brooks nodded her head and wasted no time in getting her police officers to be informed and to contact washington, idaho, nevada and california police departments

walking back over to the bullpen, ellianna noticed the shocked faces of the rest of her team, she then chuckled, sliding the case file of robert jackson onto the table, "what?" ellianna questioned with a scoff

"nothing at all, just, how on god's green earth did you recognise the name in the case file so quickly after we were struggling for hours and then, poof, out of nowhere you just figure the whole thing out?" prentiss was aghast as ellianna chuckled even more, as she then rung up penelope garcia, their tech analyst who was back in quantico

quieting the rest of her team, garcia responded to ellianna, "what do you need my little flower petal?" smiling at the nickname, ellianna went straight into the action, telling garcia the important information

"garcia, i found a new case file in the middle of the ones we had been given by officer brooks and, it seems as though this was the missing link as it has given everything we needed because it sounds as though our unsub could be a man in his early to possible mid fifties by the name of robert jack..."

"...robert jackson..."

"...how...how did you know that garcia?" ellianna stuttered in shock as she looked at the rest of her equally as shocked team and garcia chuckled

"washington and nevada police departments had faxed over a copy of the exact same file to me. both departments in washington and nevada think it's the same guy who was said to have "mysteriously" killed himself after going on a massive kidnapping, poisoning and shooting spree back in the late eighties and early nineties throughout oregon and the neighbouring states, washington, idaho, nevada and california. on the back of the envelope, it's written that it's suggested that the unsub we're looking for is robert, who was also responsible for those crimes back in the eighties and nineties..." garcia trailed off as ellianna scoffed, shaking her head as the rest of the team was shocked by this new revelation

"...but, why wait this long to start back up again? why wait, what, two decades before coming back? why stage your own suicide to only then start the crimes back up again?" ellianna questioned as her team shook their heads, not knowing until garcia spoke back up

"because he wanted everyone to believe the threat was gone after he convinced everyone he was dead and then...uh oh..."

"...what garcia? what's happened, talk to me?" ellianna stood up from her position from leaning on the table when garcia just pointed everyone's attention to the television in portland's bullpen

"just...watch this...it was just sent in from the unsub himself...he clearly knows we're here..." garcia's face turned away as she just pressed play when screams filtered through the bullpen of portland's police department, scaring the entire team and making them jump out of their skin

the screams just weren't any person's screams, they were the screams of spencer's mom, diana. diana had been kidnapped to be the unsub's final victim, that was robert's end goal all along. that was why ellianna had immediately recognized the man the moment she opened up that case file and showed officer brooks. robert was a former patient in one of diana's mental health facilities back in nevada after he had discharged himself from bennington sanitarium where they both resided in.

"diana..." ellianna whispered, her hand covering her mouth and garcia speaks up again, filling the silence

"...i found where they are and the address has been sent it all of your phones! i want all of you plus diana back safely, please!" garcia pleaded and the agents stood up without another beat to wait as they rushed out, everyone but spencer and ellianna

spencer was frozen, it was as though he couldn't move, he genuinely thought his mom was safe in nevada, in bennington, robert jackson not ringing any sort of alarm bells or bells at all that he was the unsub let alone had any connection to his mom. ellianna knew she had to get her boyfriend to move quickly otherwise his mom would be dead and, that was anything but the outcome they wanted. although he wasn't cut up about his dad's death two years ago, he didn't need to be parentless at thirty years old.

"come on spence, we have to go! we don't have a lot of time before you could potentially be faced with the dead and mutilated body of your mom! we need to hurry up!" ellianna's voice was unusually frightened but she didn't care, because she was truly frightened to find the potential dead body of her boyfriend's mother

spencer then nodded his head and quickly got himself prepared for the fact that he was about to save the life of his own mother.

one hour later

it had taken almost an hour to figure out how to unlock the loft in which robert had kept diana in but, the moment they did get themselves in, it took a special sort of strength in the team for them to not outwardly react to the way in which robert jackson had brutally injured diana. it was clear she had been beaten black and blue, her face barely identifiable, she was dehydrated, it had looked as though she had been sexually assaulted by the way she couldn't lay comfortably, with a few more bruises from being beaten most likely more than just the one time yet it didn't look as though robert had gotten to the stage of poisoning or shooting her, whether that was coming next or not, they had no idea.

ellianna decided to take charge since she was the one most familiar with robert and his connection to diana, even more than spencer had and she spoke up, "robert jackson, my name is ellianna de angelis and i'm with the fbi's behavioural analysis unit, do you know what that is?" her voice unsure but filled with somewhat of strength as her team watched, robert groaning as he lay next to a beaten and unconscious diana reid

the man refused to even look up at the agent, "no, why would i want to know?" he was vicious as ellianna took in another breath and she refused to point her gun at him but, she kept it close just in case she would need to use it

"wouldn't you want to know why you're hurting someone you consider a close friend of yours?" she spoke softly which got robert's attention as he stood up from the ground to face the young agent

"i...i, do you think i'm actually hurting diana? how dare you think that? she's just asleep because we've been out all day running errands!" robert found it extremely insulting that ellianna would even allud that robert would harm diana

"yes, i...i do think you're hurting her robert. and do you want to know how i know that you're hurting her and that she isn't actually sleeping like you're trying so hard to make us believe she is?" ellianna raised her voice slightly as the rest of her team looked on in worry, spencer barely even able to look

"mhm," the middle-aged man mumbled out as ellianna exhaled before she nodded her head and continued her profile

"if you look closely, whilst you can see that diana is still breathing, it's not in the same rhythmic pattern that it would be if she was asleep. the way that she is breathing though lets us know that she's struggling. she is finding it so hard to breathe properly that it's shallow and it's most likely causing her a great deal of pain. she is also completely face down, and her airways are being squashed which is also another reason why she's finding it so difficult to breathe and why it's so painful for her. she's also been severely beaten and she's severely dehydrated, and she's also been sexually assaulted due to the infected and inflamed bruises around her crotch area, near her genitals. you have seriously hurt diana, robert. and she's bleeding in more than just one part of her body and that's not a good sign if she's bleeding everywhere else. why did you hurt her, robert?" ellianna questions as she tries to not get mad and immediately, as though it was expected to happen, robert got defensive which caused the young agent to reach for and pull out her glock twenty-six

"i didn't hurt diana!" the clearly deranged and psychotic jackson shouted, his hands over his ears as he was clearly going through an episode and ellianna stepped back, gesturing for her team to also step back

ellianna, once again, took one last deep breath in before she continued, "yes, you did robert, whether you were consciously hurting diana or not, you did seriously hurt her. she needs medical attention and quickly otherwise she's going to die and we don't want..."

before ellianna or her team could even do anything else, robert removed his hands from his ears and as though he was a magician, pulled out a gun, "...robert, wait, no!" ellianna shouted, the direction of the gun not know by the agent as she had closed her eyes and turned her head around - the rest of her team also turning their heads away

she opened her eyes after she noticed that she hadn't been shot but was confused as she was covered in blood and could tell it had splattered onto her face and hands. but, it wasn't her blood that she was suddenly covered in, it was a mix of diana and robert's blood... diana was the one that got shot, not ellianna. and once again, ellianna's profile on robert was wrong, because he made sure to shoot both diana and himself.

ellianna stood in shock, covered in blood as she lowered her gun, limply holstering it back into her holster. gulping before she turned to hotch, who nodded his head, allowing her permission to get robert and diana's pulses to see if either or both of them were still alive or if either or both of them were dead.

no one had to see ellianna's face because they all saw the way her body faltered and the way her hand limply fell to diana's cheek, stroking it softly. she then turned to see her boyfriend and the son of diana reid, spencer, on his knees weeping.

present time

spencer had been silently crying for what had felt like hours now. it felt like his entire world had been swallowed up by that gunshot that took away the life of his beloved mother. but, he didn't need nor did he want the entire state of oregon to know that he had just lost his mom from a gunshot. ellianna had since reassured the rest of her team that she was very much capable of taking care of and comforting spencer with the promise that she'd evacuate them out of robert's loft safely. so, she quickly farewelled the rest of her team, letting hotch know that she and spencer would meet them on the jet later on. she then made her way back over to where spencer was still on his knees, meters from the now dried-up bloodied puddle that his mom died in.

meeting her distraught boyfriend at his level, she cradled him, holding him tightly, knowing he wasn't able to cry quietly anymore. he needed to let out his loud cries otherwise he would explode so, ellianna let him grieve and for him to cry as loudly as he needed to and, he did.

"just let it out, just cry it out spence, i'm right here!" ellianna whispered, repeating it over and over again as spencer cried, grieving over the loss of his beloved mom, his last surviving parent until this case

the one case that took spencer way too long to realise was connected to his mom.

as the supervisory special agents left the loft, spencer managed to whisper one last thing to spencer before he fell asleep in the fbi-issued suv, "i'll look after you,"

- - -

rewriting this was quite fun which makes me sound so evil and heartless but i just love going back through my old written works and seeing how i started and then how i improved and made them better!

ok ily bye xx

wc; 3337

#angst #dr spencer reid x reader #tears

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anonymous-nicholas · 2 years

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Some of My Favorite Urban Legends

I loved the Nascar season growing up because I knew that my dad would be in the living room ALL day, leaving me to watch whatever I wanted, unsupervised, in the back bedroom. Nothing raunchy or super inappropriate, but I always gravitated towards horror. This unsupervised TV time is how I found out about cryptids. I would watch Lost Tapes on Animal Planet whenever I got the chance. It was one of the most intriguing TV shows to me.

Lost Tapes awakened in me a hyperfixation that lasted well into my 30’s. I fully believe that show, and that show alone, is the sole reason I find myself so enthralled with things like cryptozoology and urban legends. So, while I open the latest MetaZoo box and compare the MSRP of the rare cards to what I paid for the box, I want to talk about some of my favorite cryptids and urban legends featured in this set.

Before we get into the juicy stuff though I just want to thank everyone who has subscribed thus far. Theres not even 200 of you yet but those of you who are here seem to be some of the coolest guys, gals, and non-binary pals out there. There have been so many kind words regarding the content on the channel, and it feels like monetization is right around the corner despite there not even being 200 subs. We’re growing really quickly now, and getting closer every day to a channel that can afford to pump out more content. So if you haven’t already, please be sure to subscribe, or at least hit that like button and type some kind words below so the YouTube god that is the almighty algorithm will push the video to more like-minded people.

Now for something completely different.

Polybius

In 1981 the arcade business was booming and the method of quality assurance testing videogames before release was more about crowdsourcing information. The arcades of Portland, Oregon were a hot spot for QA testing new games before they hit the market, so it was normal for black, labeless arcade cabinets with no artwork to show up overnight. One such night a collection of black cabinets appeared that read “Polybius.” It quickly became popular around Portland as the mechanics were so addictive. Oftentimes children would have to wait to play as men in black suits would visit the arcades to open the cabinet and collect data from the machine, sometimes the men in suits would hang around and watch as the game was played, and sometimes the game would periodically disappear and reappear as these same unknown men would take the game and later bring it back. Soon children who played it would report becoming sick with seizures and hallucinations, and some children found themselves amnesia stricken or would experience night terrors and PTSD. In a few extreme cases Polybius was linked to a number of children who had committed self harm and even suicide. As the game was becoming more well known as a “haunted game,” kids would now dare each other to play it. But the game was quickly pulled out of arcades for good by the previously mentioned men in black suits, and Polybius was never seen again.

It was around this same time that the US Government had first started testing the idea of using videogames as training simulations for US soldiers. The year prior to Polybius the US Army collaborated with Atari to create The Bradley Trainer. And in the decade just before the public had been made aware of the MK Ultra experiments being carried out by the CIA for almost 2 decades. It’s possible that this timeline of events, (MK Ultra disclosures, The Bradly trainers' development and delivery to the US Army, and then Polybius mysteriously showing up in arcades) could be what lead people to one of the more popular conspiracies surrounding the machine. It was believed that Polybius was possibly another egregious human experiment being carried out, one that tested the mental fortitude of the average person. Theoretically, this kind of experiment could deliver useful information on patterns and lights that could induce seizures at will, or the effects of long term exposure to subliminal messaging.

For a long while it was thought to be a myth because there seemed to be no corroborating evidence, until a 2006 post to coinop.org. The post was made by a man named Steven Roach. Steven claimed to have previously worked for a company by the name Sinnesloschen (Sin-es-slur-shin). He heavily details his involvement with the game, explaining away the US Government conspiracy, and providing a much more believable tale. In short, him and some buddies ran Sinnesloschen as a little start up where they made hardware, they were approached by a company with the idea for a game that would net the boys a sweet compensation package, the game was made, delivered to Portland arcades for QA testing, but then one child in Portland had a seizure while playing the game. The parent company had to settle the resulting lawsuit and scramble to remove all the arcade cabinets. And that's that. . . Allegedly.

A couple easily verifiable facts:

Sinesloschen can be translated from German as “mind wiping” or “mind altering.” A little on the nose, don’t ya think?

Polybius was the name of a Greek philosopher who is credited as being one of the first real historians in human history, and was quoted as saying *clears throat* “If history is deprived of the Truth, we are left with nothing but an idle, unprofitable tale.”

So do with that what you will.

Hatman

Before discussing Hatman I want to get one common misconception out of the way: Freddy Krueger was not inspired by the Hatman myth. Wes Craven explained in an interview on some DVD commentary that Freddy was inspired by a bully from his school during his youth, a disfigured homeless man who had frightened him when he was 12, and the 1970s pop song "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright. So yeah, super disappointing.

ANYWAY, Hatman is still super cool. He’s recognized as the most common version of a sleep paralysis demon. Some people see bugs and insects, some people see actual demons, but most people see the Hatman. Hatman is interesting because so many people - all over the world - describe the same figure. About 6 feet tall, wears a black suit, and always wears the same hat. He transcends race, culture, and geographical location.

If you didn’t know, sleep paralysis is when your mind wakes up before your body. Your brain has this switch that turns off your ability to move while dreaming so that you don’t hurt yourself by acting out your dreams. Sometimes people's eyes will open before this switch returns to its original position. For the few seconds the switch is off you often continue to dream, resulting in hallucinations.

Some people report the Hatman as someone who just watches them, others report that he is “sucking the breath or life out of them,” some say he puts pressure on their chest by sitting on them or forcing them down with his hands, and in some extreme cases he has been reported to attack people.

I have suffered from sleep paralysis at a few junctions in my life. Constant stress is a common trigger for sleep paralysis. I never saw the Hatman though. Often I saw disembodied hands. They would be coming from under the bed I slept on, coming out of the closet, and one time it looked like an entire arm gently wrapped around me. But the worst time I saw a disembodied hand was one night in my old home. I had designed my room for “maximum comfort” by placing the bed against the window and my flatscreen at the foot of my bed. I had a collection of pillows under my bed so that I could create a large comfy chair when gaming or watching TV. One night I was up kind of late and watching anime. I was working a crap job at the time and always angry, so sleep paralysis happened often. On this night I must have fell asleep with my eyes open because a hand came in through my window and made motions in front of my face. It triggered my fight or flight and I lunged at the arm, ready to grab it, but it disappeared. I knew it was my sleep paralysis but my adrenaline had already started pumping. I couldn't get to sleep that night because I was so wired afterwards.

An estimated 40% of all humans will experience Sleep Paralysis in their lifetime. So if you haven’t met the Hatman or the disembodied hands yet, you still might.

Flatwoods Monster

I’m not going to spend too much time on this one because Ash and Aliana made an episode of the Morbid podcast that absolutely killed this topic. Theres literally no reason for anyone on the internet to talk about the Flatwoods Monsters anymore because that Morbid episode is the definitive piece of content. I highly recommend that you check it out if you’re even the least bit interested in cryptids or aliens. I’ll give you a TL;DR though.

On September 12 in 1952 three boys, Edward and Fred May, and their friend Tommy Hyer, say they saw a red object pass through the night sky and land on a nearby farm property around 7:15 PM. The boys ran to tell Ed and Freds mom, Kathleen. Kathleen agreed to help th boys investigate - because what responsible parent would just let their children investigate the crash sight of lord-knows-what - and along the way a few other boys from the neighborhood, one accompanied by his dog, all tagged along. 17-year-old Gene Lemon, a National Guard member, also accompanied the group and took the lead as they entered the woods.

Once in the woods Lemon saw a “ 10-foot monster with a blood-red body and a green face that seemed to glow.” The monster was also surrounded by a dense mist that made the party nauseous.

The story got picked by almost every major radio station and newspaper in the US, and became one of the biggest stories that year.

Seriously, go check out the Morbid episode about this fun little guy. It’s worth your time.

The Grays

This is another one I’m not going to spend too much time on because who doesn’t know the grays? These guys are aliens 101. But here are some cool facts you probably didn’t know.

The first ever description resembling a modern Gray can be found in the 1891 novel, Meda: A Tale of the Future, written and published by Kenneth Folingsby. In the book the narrator passes out due to overworking himself and then just wakes up in the year 5575. In the book he encounters aliens who are small, gray skinned, and have “large balloon shaped heads.”

Another popular description was written by H.G Wells - who you’ll recognise as the author of War of the World and the Invisible man - in his 1893 short story, Man of the Year Million. He describes future humans kind of like Grays. Bald, no mouth or nose, and large heads. He then later described a race of future humans that he called the Eoli in his book The Time Machine. They were described in a similar manner.

But I think my favorite early description of a gray alien - predating Roswell and all that - comes from one of the most interesting men you’ve never heard of, Aleister Crowly. Aleister was a writer, poet, painter, a freaking mountaineer, an occultist, and whatever the hell a “ceremonial magician” is. He’s most well known for founding the religion of Thelema. I could write a whole book on this guy but I don’t want to get too off topic.

In 1917 Aleister and his girlfriend at the time conducted a ritual they referred to as “Amalantrah Workings.” And during this ritual they claimed to come in contact with a "preternatural entity" - or alien - named Lam. Crowley made a drawing of Lam if you wanna look it up, which is weird when Lam was also described as “being incomprehensible to the human mind.” Other UFO-oligists have claimed to have met Lam in one way or another, and they claim he is linked to several famous sightings of Gray aliens.

Also, before you go thinking that conducting magic rituals with your lover is a fun date idea, it probs isn’t. Aleister and his honey broke up soon after. That was probably Lam’s fault too.

One last things I want to discuss because it’s cool (and also I have so much space to fill for this video) is another cool alien fun fact. It’s not gray specific, but I don’t think I’ll ever get the chance to discuss this on the channel again.

In 1630 John Wintrop led a wave of Puritans from England to establish the second major settlement in New England, known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and he would serve as the governor for the first 12 years following its founding. As he and the other Puritans began to settle in America John Winthrop kept a diary that recorded the colony's growth. While most of it is just boring US history, there was one particular entry that many credit as the first ever UFO sighting in recorded United States history.

On March 1 of 1693 John Wintrhop recounted in his diary a strange event that was reported by James Everell and two other men whose names seem to have been forgotten by history, possibly because John Winthrop doesn’t mention their names in this entry.

John WIntrop starts by explaining that James Everell was a “sober” - very important detail for a story like this - “discreet man.” James and his two buddies were rowing on the Muddy River at night when they saw bright lights in the sky. Over the course of about three hours the men say that the light darted back and forth, between them and the village of Charlestown. When it stood still it was about “three-square yards” large, and - this part is weird - “when it ran, contracted the form of a swine.”

So basically a giant light up space pig, I guess. This is exactly why John Winthrop led with the details of James’ sobriety.

This next part is my favorite: James and buddies reported that when the magical space pig disappeared it had faded away, and the squad was now a mile UPSTREAM, not down. The three men had no recollection of rowing against the current, so it’s possible that they lost time. If you know anything of modern American alien abduction stories then you know that “losing time” is a common trope amongst them. Because of this, some UFO-ologists believe that James Winthrop didn’t only record the first UFO sighting in written American history, but possibly the first abduction as well.

While I don’t believe in aliens in this manner I do find these things interesting and fun to discuss.

Charles Mill Lake Monster

On March 28, 1959, in Mansfield, Ohio, three teenage boys - Denny Patterson, Wayne Armstrong and Michael Lane - were hanging out near Charles Mill Lake when they claimed to see it. A 7-foot tall, armless amphibian with glowing green eyes and large, webbed feet rose from the lake almost directly in front them. Immediately, out of fear, the three boys ran to the police station to report what they saw. The police investigated the scene and found no such monster, but they did find a collection of tracks that “resembled the foot gears worn by skin divers.” There probably were never any more sightings of the Charles Mill Lake monster, and I saw “probably” because many people believe that the Chalres Mill Lake monster is also another cryptid known as Orange Eyes.

Orange Eyes has significantly less information, and while all the info you can find tells the same stories - or pieces of it - there's no names, no police report filed, and a lot of speculation. Allegedly, in 1963, several teenagers sighted Orange Eyes in the Lovers Lane area near Charles Mill Lake. The teens reported that it was 11-feet tall and possibly 1,000 pounds. They also defined it as hairy - not amphibious - and confirmed that it did have arms. After escaping from the initial encounter the terrified teens gathered up an armed posse to hunt the beast down. Details are vague so it isn’t clear if this posse included adults with guns or just other teens who were also, OBVIOUSLY, studying the bible at Lovers Lane. Some info surrounding the monster will tell you “this is for sure how it happened,” but again, I can’t track down any sources, and sources are never listed. However, one thing everyone seems to agree on is that Orange eyes could have been living in the sewers. Prior to both sightings there was construction of a highway that possibly resulted in the destruction of sewer tunnels near the lake.

The final sighting was in 1991 when a couple fishermen - both chose to remain anonymous - claimed to have seen the same creature described as Orange Eyes. The two men claimed that the 11-foot beast ran past them and into the woods. That’s it. That’s their whole story.

Rougarou

The Rougarou isn’t a cryptid, but instead a piece of Cajun folklore hailing from New Orleans, Louisiana. Many people refer to it as the Cajun Werewolf. It’s speculated that the Rougarou folklore evolved from the French folklore of the Loup-Garou, which is a French Canadian and European werewolf. The story of the Loup-Gaurou was passed down orally from generation to generation, and French settlers in New Orleans would retell the tales, eventually becoming the Cajun Rougarou.

The Rougarou is mostly recognised as one of those cautionary monsters that only exists to scare children into certain behaviors. The story was commonly passed down from Cajun adults to their children as a way to inspire obedience. Things like not traveling too far into the woods or going out when its late, otherwise the Rougarou will getcha! Likewise, the Loup-Garou served the same purpose in French Catholicism. One of the most famous Loup-Garou tales states that breaking catholic lent for seven years in a row will turn you into a Loup-Garou. And in French Canadian Christian folklore the Loup-Garou is a cursed man who sinned so much that he would unwillingly turn into the beast every night for 101 days, cursed to roam the countryside in werewolf form.

One neat fact related to the Rougarou: The New Orleans Hornets, now the New Orleans Pelicans, once filed for a trademark to become the New Orleans Rougarous. That would have been waaaaaaaaay cooler than the Pelicans.

Kodiak Dinosaur

I had never heard about this one prior to writing the video so I had to do some research, and in my research I found an awesome song from an awesome band. If you’re a fan of Swancore style music or the band who invented it, Dance Gavin Dance, I highly recommend checking out Galleons and their song Downtown Dinosaur Gang from their 2015 EP Kodiak Soul. It is currently sitting at a CRIMINAL 629 views so please help me change that and check out their newer stuff too. They released an album last year that's super good.

So anyway: There is a ton of information surrounding the Kodiak Dinosaur, and the only evidence of it possibly being a “dinosaur” is that it was big.

The Kodiak Dinosaur was “spotted” - and I am using that term lightly - in 1969 by the Mylark shrimping boat of the coast of Alaska, in the Shelikof Strait The shrimping boat was equipped with, at the time, some of the best sonar that the late 1960’s had to offer. One day the crew went out to catch shrimp and on the sonar they noticed a large blip on the radar, 300 feet below the surface. When doing research on the topic the blip ranges from anywhere around 130-200 feet long. There's a picture of the sonar recording, sometimes referred to as an “echogram,” that looks pretty convincing.

But real quick, let’s talk about how sonar works, because it’s basically echo location. Why is that important, you may ask? Something you may not know about the Loch Ness Monster is one of it’s largest pieces of debunking evidence; the surroundings. Many skeptics believed that Nessy, as it appears on sonar, looked to be the sonar reading it’s own wavelengths as they traveled back from hitting the sides and rocky bottom of the Loch. Even changes in water temp can cause readings that look like animals. Some scientists and skeptics would argue that sonar is an unreliable tool when trying to prove the existence of an underwater dinosaur.

But also remember that Cryptozoology has proven the existence of many things thought to be fake. Komodo dragons, Okapi, and even the Giant Squid were all thought to be hoaxes and urban legend at one point. And sometimes cryptids do exist just not as we imagined them, like finding out the Chupacabara was a diseased fox or that the Jackalope was a rabbit with some kind of calcium-tumor condition.

So who knows. Maybe these plesiosaur creatures being spotted everywhere are just severely endangered species that never really went extinct.

The Kodiak Dino has allegedly been spotted several more times since the initial sighting, and the Kodiak Museum actually has a pretty in-depth article on the sightings and origins if you’re interested. It’s called Here There Be Dragons: Sea Monsters of Kodiak Island and it’s a pretty fun read.

#urban legends #cryptids #cryptid #monsters

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weather-usa · 3 months

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A scorching summer from history is wreaking havoc and refuses to relent.

A historically scorching summer is ravaging the United States this July, with no signs of abating as the hottest days are yet to come.

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This summer has broken records in nearly 100 cities across the country, from Maine to California. At least 37 deaths in the US have been attributed to the heat in July, a figure likely underreported due to the time it takes to confirm such fatalities.

Most of these deaths occurred in the West, where cities experienced unprecedented and prolonged heat waves, conditions consistent with scientific predictions for a world affected by climate change driven by fossil fuel emissions.

In Santa Clara County, California alone, heat is suspected in the deaths of at least 19 people, according to the county's medical examiner's office.

Climate and Average Weather Year Round in 05404 - Winooski VT:

flickr

While everyone is susceptible to heat-related illnesses, certain groups face greater risks, including children, the elderly, pregnant individuals, those with heart or blood pressure issues, outdoor workers, and anyone lacking reliable access to cooling.

Among those who may have succumbed to the heat in Santa Clara County, at least three were unhoused individuals without adequate cooling, and nine were over the age of 65, as reported by CNN.

In Southeast Texas, at least one person has died from heat-related causes, with over 1 million residents still enduring power outages four days after Hurricane Beryl. Tragically, others have also perished or fallen ill attempting to cool off using generators improperly.

Across the country, several children have lost their lives to the extreme heat this month: a 2-year-old in Arizona, another 2-year-old in Georgia, a 4-year-old in Texas, and a 5-year-old in Nebraska, all tragically left in hot cars.

Additionally, a 10-year-old child passed away from a heat-related medical issue while hiking in a Phoenix park during intense heat last week, amidst a period where Phoenix has broken or equaled numerous daily heat records since July began.

In Phoenix, temperatures have soared above 110 degrees Fahrenheit, with nightly lows not dropping below 90 degrees for over a week. Maricopa County is investigating dozens of other deaths potentially linked to the extreme heat.

In Oregon, at least 10 deaths suspected to be caused by heat have been reported, with six occurring in Portland's Multnomah County. Portland experienced record-breaking high temperatures for five consecutive days recently, reaching triple digits on three occasions.

Weather Forecast For 43235-Columbus-OH:

https://www.behance.net/gallery/200370397/Weather-Forecast-For-43235-Columbus-OH

The heat has also taken a toll on outdoor enthusiasts. In Death Valley, a motorcyclist succumbed to heat exposure with temperatures reaching 128 degrees Fahrenheit, setting a new daily record and coming within six degrees of the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.

A 50-year-old man tragically passed away while hiking in Grand Canyon National Park amidst sweltering heat, confirmed by the National Park Service.

Confirming heat as a cause of death remains a complex process, as explained by David S. Jones, a physician and historian at Harvard University, in a previous CNN report. Medical examiners or coroners must attribute a single cause of death, a task made more challenging in some jurisdictions where these officials lack medical backgrounds and are political appointees or elected officials.

"The assessment of cause of death itself is intricate," Jones noted. "For instance, if someone is found deceased in an apartment, determining the primary cause of death can be ambiguous. Many medical examiners might conclude the person died from heart disease since their heart ceased functioning."

As temperatures remain high, the number of heat-related fatalities is expected to increase in the coming weeks once these cases are fully investigated.

The intense heat wave in the Western United States is forecasted to gradually subside by late this weekend, marking a return to near-normal summer temperatures. July typically sees high temperatures even without record-breaking daily extremes.

See more:

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-80006

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-80007

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-80010

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-80011

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-80012

Across much of the country, above-average temperatures are anticipated to persist through the end of July and potentially into early August, according to the Climate Prediction Center.

#forecast #climate #weather app #usa #Youtube

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foodinsecuritypdx · 11 months

Text

Environment and Context

People may think that food insecurity occurs because there is not enough food for everyone in America. However, that is not the case since America produces twice the amount of food needed to feed everyone in the country (Portland Food Project, 2022). One of the largest issues at hand is poverty. According to the Portland Food Project, “Many of our neighbors simply can’t afford to buy enough food—even when they’re working. Feeding America reports that at least 1/3 of all American families who get help with food have one or more people working (2022). This is unfair, but learning about those that are most targeted by food insecurity is even more crucial. Feeding America states that “Food insecurity is influenced by drivers including poverty, unemployment, and household assets. A long history of racism and structural oppression has been perpetuated through policies that have caused many communities of color to face disparities in those drivers and, in turn, food insecurity itself (2022). From this, it is clear that the driving forces of food insecurity are poverty, unemployment, and racism and structural oppression, which means that people of color are disproportionately affected by food insecurity. This is reflected in the Oregon Food Bank’s statement that “Hunger and poverty disproportionately impact BIPOC communities in every corner of Oregon and Southwest Washington. According to data from the Oregon Center for Public Policy, Black and Latine households in Oregon are twice as likely to experience poverty as White households. These disparities are also reflected in food insecurity rates. In Oregon, over 22 percent of Latine households and 21 percent of Black households experienced food insecurity in 2018, compared to 9.9 percent of White households” (2023). This means that Black and Latino people experience far more food insecurity and poverty than their white counterparts. Historically, these groups have been disadvantaged compared to white people because of what they look like. The color of their skin has limited their access opportunities and even food. Fortunately, there are resources available to help combat food insecurity in Portland. One place that actively works to help eliminate food insecurity is Urban Gleamers. They have free food markets in Portland where “All are welcome, food is always free, and there are no income or personal information requirements to participate, unless site is affiliated with OFB” (Urban Gleamers, 2017). Another organization that helps to address food insecurity is the Portland Rescue Mission. They “give hope and restore life to men, women, and children struggling with hunger, homelessness, and addiction” (Portland Rescue Mission, 2023). Both of these organizations provide food to people that need it, no questions asked, and are funded by the community. These organizations took matters into their own hands to make food more accessible to the community. For those that can’t go to these organization’s food markets/pantries, the Multnomah County Website provides many other organizations that can provide food for those that need it. The Oregon Food bank is another organization that provides free food to people.

About Urban gleaners. Urban Gleaners. (n.d.). https://urbangleaners.org/about-us/

Fostering equity: Centering black, indigenous and all people of color to end hunger. Oregon Food Bank. (n.d.). https://www.oregonfoodbank.org/posts/fostering-equity-centering-black-indigenous-and-all-people-of-color-to-end-hunger

Portland Rescue Mission. (2023, June 13). https://portlandrescuemission.org/

Race & Ethnicity and Food insecurity. Feeding America. (n.d.). https://www.feedingamerica.org/research/race-food-insecurity#:~:text=Food%20insecurity%20is%20influenced%20by,in%20turn%2C%20food%20insecurity%20itself.

Why it matters. Portland Food Project. (2021, October 3). https://portlandfoodproject.org/about-us/why-it-matters/

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adultswim2021 · 3 years

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Aqua Teen Hunger Force #57: “Boost Mobile” | December 12, 2005 – 12:15AM | S05E02

I don’t remember liking this episode when it originally aired. I’m not sure if I did or didn’t. The biggest sense memory I had of this episode was feeling uneasy seeing product placement in this show, even if it was tongue-in-cheek/quasi-parodic/experimental. But, it’s the experimental that I’m precisely afraid of, my dear boy (WOMEN DO NOT READ THIS BLOG AND IT IS A HUGE PROBLEM). What if the experiment were to result in “oh we should do this all the time”. Not that Adult Swim isn’t somehow powered by a baby raping/eating conglomerate in some some small way or another. But I do like to think of it as having more integrity than most of the tentacles stemming from a soul-devouring capitalist machine. They are robotic tentacles, in case you were about to question my metaphor mixing. I know, I agree with you--it DOES defeat the purpose of them being tentacles.

This episode is about Shake putting product placement into the show. It’s as though the Aqua Teen players are real people doing a sitcom, and one of the cast members refuses to take off his 9/11 IS AN INSIDE JOB shirt, and is going off-book a lot, and one of the other cast members is visibly frustrated. There’s only one way to get someone to take off their 9/11 IS AN INSIDE JOB shirt. Offer them nine-hundred and eleven dollars. You will have to pay them the money for real, but isn’t it worth the price of helping your government stifle the truth? We are all in this together. ACT LIKE IT

So if you couldn’t tell from these last couple paragraphs: I’m a real “Fight Club” kinda guy. And by that I mean I’m ANTI-CAPITALIST, ANTI-CONSUMERISM, a gay guy from Portland, Oregon, and I love that freaking Pixies song that plays during the credits. DEAL WITH IT (brattily sticks tongue out).

Okay, I’ll actually talk about the episode. Shake has a Boost Mobile phone that he hangs out with and he keeps just shilling for the phone. Sometimes he gets calls from, presumably, the Boost Mobile offices, mad at Shake for failing to deliver certain lines properly or fudging technical specs. Frylock is pissed, and wants nothing to do with the advertising. He eventually tricks the phone into traveling into the earth, into the bowels of hell itself. I remember reading somewhere that Boost Mobile--a real company with a real product to sell in 2005 if that wasn’t clear and I should have said so earlier--actually asked them to change this scene from something else. I think they go up into the mountains in order to make the phone lose reception, but the higher-ups didn’t like that. So they changed it to be them going towards the planet’s core, where hell lives.

Again, I was nervous at the time that this could become a trend. The Simpsons wasn’t ruined by any single event; the reason The Simpsons got ruined was because the show got bad, but stayed profitable, so why bother fixing it getting bad. When the Simpsons staff realized they could turn in a lackluster version of the show, stay just as employed and only get richer-- what could possibly be the downside in that? Just pretend the show is as good as ever in interviews and someday historians in a distant future won’t be able to tell the difference between season 4 and season 40, so The Simpsons will just be canonized like Shakespeare even though I’m sure there were people who knew better than everyone else way back then and thought Shakespeare fell off after his tenth play and “Hamlet’s actually his worst play!!” So, it reasons to some degree to argue that maybe the same could happen on Adult Swim. I remember when they flirted with putting voice overs on credits. That spooked me. I wanted Adult Swim to stay perfect. I wanted to never be spooked again. I wanted to NEVER grow-up!

Good stuff: Meatwad getting upset about his hair. Shake calling Frylock black. A part where Carl swore (a thing I did was I monitored this episode for how “edgy” it was, thinking maybe Boost Mobile, the company, might have asked them to soften the show’s edge; I found this episode to be about typical of a normal episode of the show. Carry on), and said he was going to “fuck your ass up” to Shake. They bleeped “fuck” of course, but weirdly my Plex app had one of it’s sporadic audio hiccups and it perfectly covered the bleeped f-word, making me think that the show opted to blank audio out like when they show movies edited for television. I hate when they do that for movies on TV. Just bleep it you freakin’ weirdos!

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #aqua teen hunger force

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stxrrywildflower · 4 years

Text

hypothermia

pairing - spencer reid x reader

summary - you and derek go to extreme lengths to save a victim

warnings - injury, mentions of case, cursing

word count - ?

cold.

all you felt was cold.

you could barely remember where you were or what had happened.

your senses felt frozen.

all you could manage to do was shut your eyes.

___

the team arrived in portland, oregon a few days prior.

it was march, meaning the temperatures barely passed the the mid-fifties at the high, and dropped extremely low during the night. even snow fell on the ground as you landed, resulting in everyone on the team adding an extra layer or two.

the unsub was killing women and disposing of their bodies on the streets lining the beaches. it was becoming extremely difficult to narrow the suspect pool down, due to the large population.

hotch ordered you and spencer to go to the morgue and look at the previous victims to find out what you could.

“he must have some sort of emotional tie to to the ocean. it would explain why the unsub chooses that location,” spencer spoke from the passenger seat.

you nodded, “possible grew up on the coast or maybe even lost someone to drowning.”

upon arrival at the morgue, the two of you made your way inside. you both greeted the coroner before grabbing gloves. as you moved around the victims bodies, spencer talked to the man about what he could figure out.

“they’re not drowned. there’s a puncture wound in her foot, probobly died from a heart attack,” you concluded.

with that, you and spencer returned to the police station to alert your team about what you had discovered. while walking towards the doors, the wind picked up causing you to hug your jacket a little tighter. spencer pulled you closer to him to keep you warm.

the next four days were agonizingly slow. another body had been found, but it had the exact same marks as the others with nothing different. if anything, it slowed your investigation down rather than help you.

the team worked long hours, desperate to find a lead. and finally, after those four days, they found one.

hotch sent you and morgan to investigate the suspects house that night. it was dark and very cold. upon arrival, you found it was empty. but with further investigation, you two concluded that this defiantly was your guy.

pictures and articles on these women were pinned on the walls as well as an article about a little boy drowning in a riptide a month or so ago.

“stresser,” you informed morgan.

as you two were walking out of the house, a red car sped out of the garage of the house and down the road. you managed to catch a glimpse of the driver and passenger; it was the unsub and his current victim. thankfully, she was alive.

morgan jumped into the drivers seat as you got into the passengers seat. he sped off, following the car the best he could. at one point, due to the darkness and wind, you lost the car.

however, a few moments later, after driving around, you saw the red care carelessly parked on the side of the road. the unsub was dragging the girl, who was gagged and tied at her wrists and ankles, towards the end of the pier.

“unsub located, he has a girl with him. location is the pier just off of south street,” you spoke into your communication system.

you and morgan slowly stepped out of the car and took a step towards the unsub who had a sly grin on his face. he held an automatic rifle which was pointed at the girls head.

“morgan she has weights on her,” you informed your fellow agent.

“you don’t have to do this man!” morgan shouted, “just let the girl go. we can tell the judge you cooperated. let her go.”

the next moments happened all so quickly. the unsub pushed the girl off of the pier into the water. due to the weights attached, she slowly began to sink to the bottom. the man then pointed his gun at morgan. you fired a shot, killing him instantly. you and derek shared a quick look before taking off sprinting off of the pier and diving into the water.

the team arrived just in time to see you and morgan go under. rossi and emily went over to the unsub, checking his pulse before concluding him to be dead. the rest of the team stayed on the beach, narrowing their eyes at the water, no sign of you or morgan anywhere.

after hitting the water, your entire body tensed up. the water couldn’t have been more than 35-40 degrees. you managed to pry your eyes open, just enough to see the light from derek’s flashlight.

the water was pitch black and you needed to find the girl. you were both loosing oxygen quickly and no doubt the victim was too.

after then more seconds of desperately searching, you saw the woman floating towards the bottom of the water. as quickly as you could, you grabbed your pocket knife and sliced the ropes. the process was painfully slow, and with each moment, you felt yourself in more and more pain.

finally, the ropes fell and you took one arm while derek took the other. after pushing off the ocean floor, you made it to the surface, gasping for air. you used your spare hand to push back your hair as you frantically looked around.

in the distance, you could make out your team as well as the police standing on the beach. your whole body was shaking as you couldn’t believe how far out you were. slowly but surely, you began to swim towards the mainland.

in your mind, the process seemed to take forever. your boots finally made contact with the sand, allowing for you to stand up. you and morgan hauled the victim onto the sand where the emt’s were waiting.

you and derek, however, seemed locked in place, still standing waist deep in painfully cold water. spencer was helping the emt’s after orders from hotch but looked over when he heard a large splash. his head turned just in time to witness morgan collapsing, just after you went down. thankfully, emily and hotch were there to catch you both.

“w-who are you. where a-am i,” you spoke shakily, mind incredibly fuzzy.

the pain began to increase throughout your body, but it seemed to attack your head the most. after your legs went out, your arms were next. they were holding emily’s arms but then dropped. your head rolled to the side. upon looking at hotch, derek was having the same results.

“medics!” hotch shouted.

“hey y/n, i need you to stay awake. keep those eyes open. come on y/n, please,” the woman who you couldn’t quite remember in front of you pleaded. the next few moments were a blur as you couldn’t follow her demands and instead shut your eyes.

once the second wave of emt’s arrived, you and morgan were quickly loaded onto stretcher’s and rushed to the hospital. the team stood on the beach, still processing what happened. hotch and emily were starting to feel a little sick from entering the water to help their team.

“i know we all want to get to the hospital but it’s already late. everyone go back to the hotel and get changed and we can go to the hospital afterwards,” hotch spoke to his team.

as everyone began to walk back to to the car, spencer stopped, tapping his hands against his leg as he looked at the ocean. j.j. noticed this and made her way over, placing her hand softly on his shoulder.

“talk to me,” j.j. spoke with a calm tone.

“hypothermia is one of the most dangerous medical conditions out there. your body literally shuts down after being in the water for only a few minutes. but y/n and morgan were in the water for a long time. i’m just so worried,” spencer struggled to get out.

for a genius who knew so much, he had run out of things to say.

“spence, the doctors are going to do everything in their power to help them. you have every right to be worried. derek is your best friend, besides me of course,” j.j. joked, causing spence to smile slightly, “and to state the obvious, you’re so in love with y/n. you two have known each other for practically forever and she’s your girlfriend, of course you’re going to be worried. but for now, all we can do is go back to the hotel and then the hospital.”

he nodded slightly before allowing j.j. to lead him to the car and to the hotel.

spencer changed into a comfortable button up with a sweater overtop before meeting the team back in the lobby. everyone made sure to bundle up, especially after the situation with you and morgan, before they made their way to the hospital.

after using his status as an fbi agent for a little leverage, hotch managed to get the nurse to give them some information. you and morgan were currently in the icu but that’s all they received. the nurse permitted two members of the team to stay overnight while everyone could return the following morning. at that point, full medical information could be released.

spencer was as easy first choice. j.j. was nominated to be second. she was the closest with spencer and would be the best moral support. the team echoed their goodbyes to the two before promising to be there tomorrow morning right when opening hours started.

the two were led to an area where they could sit and rest for the night. it wasn’t outside of yours our derek’s room which wasn’t ideal, but spencer and j.j. accepted it. the two collapsed into the chairs, each pulling a blanket over themselves before slowly drifting to sleep.

the following morning, the team re-grouped in the waiting room of the hospital. surprisingly, spencer and j.j. had managed to get an actual good night of sleep.

“i can take you to agent y/n and morgan’s took where a doctor while then brief you,” the nurse told the group.

they were lead to a different floor and down the hallway. the nurse motioned for chairs to sit in while she went to go get the doctor later. a moment later, another women appeared in front of them, introducing herself.

“first of all, agent y/n and morgan will be okay,” the doctor spoke causing a relived sigh to echo through the hallway, “but, both have sustained serious injuries. hypothermia is the obvious one. y/n and derek were in the freezing water for an extremely long time causing their bodies to almost shut down completely. i’ve never seen two patients cases mirror each other but y/n and derek’s do. y/n’s heart stopped for a quick few seconds but quickly started beating again. moments later, derek’s stopped also. thankfully, both are hooked up to iv’s and are recovering nicely. the only problem is, it may take awhile for the two to wake up. they really should have died, and i am unsure how they’re still okay. without their selfless efforts, the woman who is now in recovery would be dead. so i wanted to thank your team for their actions.”

the team processed the doctors words. “can we see them?” emily asked. “yes of course, we put them both in one of the larger rooms. it’s room number 503, three doors down on the left,” with one more smile, the doctor then left.

entering the hospital room, the team paused. you both had thick blankets covering your bodies, a slight buzz sounding from the electric heater inside. spencer looked at you first. your lips were still a slight shade of blue and your fingertips had a few black marks on them. derek was the exact same.

spencer teared up at the sight of the two of you. he collapsed in a chair by your bedside first. he pressed his lips together and rubbed his temple. all the team could do was wait for you two to wake up.

a week later, at around 10pm, derek woke up. the room was dark and the hallway lights were dim, as it was past visiting hours. he went to sit up but his muscles were weak. it took a large effort to move his hand to the ‘call nurse’ button. after pressing it, he moved his head to the side where you were still laying. a few moments later, a nurse entered the room. “good to see you awake agent morgan, how are you feeling?”

“not great. what happened?” derek asked.

“you and agent y/n went into the freezing ocean to save one of the victims. luckily, she has since been released. for the two of you, your hearts both stopped momentarily as a side effect of the hypothermia. but, with lots of rest and recovery, you two should be fine.”

derek nodded to the nurses words before leanining back into the hospital bed.

at close to 4am, you woke up. you felt the same way as derek did but managed to move your head to the side. derek was sitting up, looking at some magazine the nurse must have given him.

“hey kid,” derek spoke softly.

you moved your hand up to your head. “remind me to not go swimming ever again during the winter,” you first spoke resulting in derek to laugh. soon after, a nurse came in, checking over you first before changing the iv’s. “your team should be here in a few hours, they’ve visited everyday,” the nurse told you with a smile.

true to her word, once visiting hours, you heard talking from outside of your room. the doors opened seconds later. spencer immediately rushed to your bedside, hugging you softly as you did your best to return it.

“you’re amazing,” spencer spoke before cupping your cheeks and kissing you softly.

the two of you stopped when morgan called over, “hey lover boy, no hello to me?” loud laughs echoed through the hospital room as relief washed over the team that you two were okay.

#criminal #criminal minds #spencer reid #spencer reid x oc #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #aaron hotchner #derek morgan #emily prentiss #jennifer jareau #david rossi #penelope garcia

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lils-writes-stuff · 4 years

Text

Heathridge Manor

spencer reid x reader

Summary: Oregon and mystery has the reader and spencer growing closer in a case.

warnings: normal criminal minds things,

A/N: based on season 7 episode 19; this is one of my fav episodes

“You know, Y/N, you should join me for one of my hand-on-hand combat classes,” Derek spoke walking up to stand between Y/N and Spencer who were walking out of the elevator.

“And why’s that, Derek?” She asked, her head dramatically turning to the side to look at him.

“Well you got shot, you need to add some combat to go along to your scars,” he said laughing.

Y/N rolled her eyes at the man, knowing he meant no harm, and he genuinely wanted her to come to one of his classes.

“Morgan, I am a very good hand-on-hand fighter, remember I was top of the class at the academy,” she said, opening the door to the bullpen.

“She was, and when she was scared by her neighbor the other morning she--”

“Hey! Look Hotch texted we have a case let’s go,” Y/N interrupted Spencer before he could finish the embarrassing story.

“Alright wonder woman, whatever you say.” Derek laughed as he ruffled Y/N’s her walking towards the round table room, her and Spencer following closely behind.

The round table room was filled with the others as they sat down. Penelope being the only one missing from the room.

“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry for the delay,” Penelope said, swiftly walking into the room as she carried her laptop in her hands. “The system was down. We overwork her. And I had to go into the belly of the beast, who I affectionately nicknamed Persephone, and do some machine whispering, oh-” she stopped, grabbing her remote from Derek as he handed it to her- “thank you. Which is good because this one is a doozy.”

“It will never cease to amaze me how much she can get out in one breath,” Y/N said leaning over to Rossi next to her.

“Oh yeah,” he agreed.

“Emma Baker, thirty-eight, math teacher from Medford, Oregon. She went missing seventeen days ago, and her body was found yesterday afternoon at St. Baldwin’s, St. Baldwin’s is a now-defunct psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. Now that is in Salem, Oregon, which is 270 miles away from Medford and we’ve been called in for the bizarre nature of the case.” Penelope then pulled up a picture of the body that was found.

The victim laid on a bed, hands folded across her stomach, and dressed in a dress from the sixteenth century.

“Wow, look at that dress,” JJ said as she looked at the picture.

“Was she going to a renaissance fair?” Emily asked.

“Not with her feet bound,” Y/N said as she looked at the victim’s feet.

“And the missing persons report says she was in jeans and a t-shirt,” Penelope added.

“Look at how she’s laid out, it’s almost like it’s a ceremony and she’s the sacrifice,” Derek said, flipping through the pictures in his hand.

“There’s obvious staging going on,” Rossi said.

“Could it be a ritualistic killing?” JJ asked.

“And the cause of death is still unclear, the M.E. report shows no sign of sexual assault or mutilation except mangled and missing fingernails,” Hotch explained.

“You know, there were rumors of satanic rites being performed at a Byberry Hospital in Pennsylvania, which is also an abandoned asylum,” Spencer said.

“Judging by all the graffiti, this place isn’t exactly locked down,” Derek observed.

“Uh, yeah, local P.D. said that vandals and vagrants have been breaking in,” Penelope added on to Derek.

“Which means she could have been killed elsewhere and placed here,” Y/N said.

“She had limestone under her fingernails, but limestone wouldn’t have been used when this asylum was built, so she was obviously held somewhere else,” Spencer said, looking over to Y/N.

“Well, the bottom line is, the unsub transported her hundreds of miles from her hometown for a reason,” Emily said.

“We just need to find out what that reason is, wheels up in 30,” Hotch said, dismissing everyone.

---------------

“Emma Baker was a divorced math teacher, no children,” Rossi said as they began going over victimology.

“She has a boyfriend, though, who’s a drummer in a goth band. Her Facebook has pictures of them at the Bram Stoker Vampire festival and Slayerama, which celebrates all things gothic,” Penelope explained.

“Hm, a teacher by day, Elvira by night,” JJ said with a posing smirk on her face.

“Well, clearly this is a woman with two different sides to her personality,” Derek said, taking a sip of coffee from his mug.

“Yeah, the boyfriend’s band pours fake blood all over themselves on stage,” Spencer said, looking at a page in the manila folder.

“Ah, reminds me of high school,” Y/N said as her eyes locked on the file in her lap.

The eyes of everyone on the team turned to her in question at her statement. She looked up, realizing what she had said didn’t make sense to them.

“Don’t ask.”

“Okay, so if these two were Satanists, it wouldn’t be a stretch,” Emily said, going back to the topic of victimology.

“Garcia, has the boyfriend been questioned by local P.D.?” Hotch asked.

“He has, by phone. He’s got an airtight alibi, he and his band have been on tour in Asia for the last month,” Penelope answered.

“If it’s not the boyfriend, the unsub could be someone in their circle,” Y/N said.

“Emily, you asked earlier if she was going to a renaissance fair, there’s something to that,” Rossi said, looking at Emily next to him.

“Based on the dress, there could be more of a connection to history then the occult,” Emily spoke.

“Renaissance fairs typically replicate sixteenth-century England,” Spencer began. “They surged in popularity since they began in the 1960s.”

“And it’s not just a bunch of nerds in customs eating turkey legs, you guys,” Penelope added.

Y/N hummed in agreement, memories of her and her high school friends going to the fairs coming to mind.

“A different time is somehow very important to this unsub,” Hotch said.

-------------

Y/N stood with Spencer and JJ as they waited for the tailor in the shop to come back. They had just gotten a call from Derek telling them that she died from nicotine poisoning through the garments of the dress she was sown into.

“This unsubs’, not the first to do this, poisoned garments actually have an incredibly long history, going all the way back to the shirt of Nessus, which killed Hercules,” Spencer explained, Y/N listening intently.

A door chimed as the tailor entered the room, bringing the attention of the three to him.

“Okay, so, I double-checked, and this fabric-” the tailor pointed to the fabric in the evidence bag- “is not manufactured for commercial sale,” he explained.

“Is it possibly something from the past that was maybe discontinued?” Spencer asked.

“No,” the tailor responded. “I can tell you one thing though, the fabric is a double-layer brocade. It was probably custom-made for someone, and is very pricey.”

“What about the dress, was there anything that stood out?” Y/N asked the man.

“Well, it’s homemade for one,” he responded.

“Okay, how do you know that?” JJ asked.

“Well, the seams are uneven. Whoever the seamstress is, she isn’t very skilled,” the tailor explained.

“What makes you so sure it’s a woman?” Spencer asked.

“Well, there’s some detail to the work in here that would require small hands,” the tailor explained.

Y/N looked up to Spencer, seeing how he also had the same questioning look on his face as her.

“Oh and this is interesting,” the tailor said to bring their attention to the picture of the dress. “See, now, the stitching on this hem, it’s narrow in some places and wider in others.”

“Small hands, easily distracted,” Spencer said, picking up on what the tailor was showing in the picture. “Let me ask you this, how old do you think someone could be and still effectively sew this?”

“Well, a pattern of this complexity, they’d have to be a teenager,” the tailor said, handing Spencer the items as he turned around and saw some fabrics being brought in.

“Okay, thanks,” Y/N said to the man as he walked away. She walked over to Spencer and looked at the pictures of the dress again.

“Based on the size of the victim’s body, I think only an adult male would be able to lift her and move a hospital bed,” JJ said, putting together all the information she had been told.

“So, what’re we looking for a team?” Y/N asked looking between JJ and Spencer.

“Or an unsub with a young accomplice who’s been coerced,” Spencer elaborated.

JJ and Y/N looked at each other both nodding as they silently agreed with what Spencer was saying. The three left the building and headed to the car parked outside the door.

---------------

Y/N walked into the room of the next victim with Emily and Rossi. The body adorning another renaissance style dress was laying in the middle of the room.

“Alice Pritchard was 22, a senior at Portland College, she went missing five days ago, a realtor found her body here this morning,” The detective explained as they walked up to the body.

“I don’t see any physical similarities to our first victim, she’s a lot smaller than Emma, different coloring, different age,” Emily pointed out as she observed the victim.

“So that means these women aren’t surrogates for anyone,” Y/N said.

“But he did lay her out the same way,” Emily added.

“She’s displayed in the center of the room just like the other victim in the asylum,” Rossi said.

“It’s almost like she’s being presented,” Y/N said, tucking her hands into her navy coat pockets as she walked to the end of the body.

Emily crouched down next to the body and inspected the dress. “There is so much attention paid to detail, this is also satisfying some internal desire of the unsub,” she explained.

“So, why leave bodies in an empty storefront and the asylum?” The detective asked.

“Good question,” Rossi said, turning around to look out the window. Y/N followed behind him to see what was out of the window also. “There should be a connection between the two.”

“Or maybe it’s not about the storefront at all, look,” Y/N said, pointing to a theater across the street.

“A theater company performing Shakespeare,” Emily said, reading the sign above the doorway.

The three turned back to look at the body.

“The dress, the white makeup, this victim could literally be wearing a costume,” Emily said as she looked between Rossi and Y/N.

“What if this was the closest to the theater that the unsub could get…” Rossi trailed off.

“Without being caught,” Y/N finished.

----------

Y/N stood next to Spencer as him and Hotch worked on what the numbers from the writing on the wall could be.

“Alice’s sorority sisters say she wanted to be a nurse and she was active in a Christian youth group,” Derek said as he approached the three.

“So the opposite of our last victim,” Y/N said as she let out a huff, sitting down in one of the seats around the table.

“Yeah, and if she was into anything dark, her best friends sure didn’t know anything about it,” JJ continued.

“She was in Portland collecting donations for an orphanage when she disappeared. The unsub could have approached her on the street,” Derek said, looking at Hotch.

Y/N looked over to Spencer, his eyes darting back and forth from the folder in his hands to the numbers written on the clear board.

“Hey, baby girl, you’re on speaker, give me the lowdown,” Derek said answering the phone.

“Chocolate thunder, you can have the whole kit and caboodle just say the word,” Penelope flirted. “Oh, and I cross-referenced the names you found on the wall with missing women in Oregon and I came up with some matches. Christine Torres is a forty-year-old homemaker from Eugene, Oregon. She went missing over a month ago after she dropped her kids off at school.”

“Any other women named Emma missing?” JJ asked.

“Uh-uh, just the one whose body we found, same thing with Alice,” Penelope answered.

“Garcia, what was the exact date Christine was reported missing?” Spencer asked as he backed away from the board.

“February 28th, Emma went missing on March 19th, and Alice on the 22nd,” Penelope answered.

Spencer walked back over to the board and looked at the numbers. Y/N stood up from her chair to stand next to him, wondering what it was he was seeing.

“What is it, Spence?” She asked him.

“Look at this.” Spencer grabbed her hand gently and pulled her behind the clear board. “I think these numbers are dates if you reverse them and chop off the eleven at the beginning and end--”

“That’s two days after each woman went missing,” Hotch interrupted.

“It’s more than that though look,” Spencer said coming back around to the front of the board, pointing to the first number. “March 1st is Sain Eichatadt day, March 21st is the Spring Equinox, and the 24th is the Feast of the Beast.”

“Those are all important holidays in the satanic calendar for sacrifices,” Y/N said coming to the same realization Spencer was. Their minds clicked together and now they both had the same thoughts running through.

“What about the eleven on the end?” Derek asked.

“To many of occultists, the eleven is symbolic of Lucifer,” Spencer explained.

“Okay, I thought we were moving away from satanic killings,” JJ said.

“Apparently we need to reconsider it.” Hotch’s eyes were trained on the file with the victims in them.

“There’s gotta be some sort of connection to the devil here,” Spencer said, which had Y/N nodding her head in agreement.

“Reid, what other upcoming dates are significant to Satanists?” Hotch asked.

“Good Friday, then Easter Eve, and then preparations begin in mid-April for the most important night of all--”

“Walpurgis night on April 30th,” Y/N said, turning to Spencer. He looked at her surprised, having no idea she knew so much about this stuff.

“Good Friday’s in two days, that means he’s hunting for his next victim today.” Derek’s concern in his voice was evident as he spoke.

“We need to give the profile soon,” Hotch said, agreeing with Derek’s concern.

They nodded, going their separate ways to do their work. As normal, Spencer and Y/N stayed by the boards to work, as they both found it was the easiest place to focus.

“Since when did you know all about these things?” Spencer’s back was turned to Y/N as he looked at the boards.

“Hm?” She questioned, not knowing what he meant.

“About these Satanic things, should I be concerned?” He joked with her, which she returned with a small laugh.

“There’s a lot of things you still don’t know about me, Dr. Reid.” Y/N winked at the boy wonder, making a beating red blush form on his face.

His mouth opened to speak, but truly he was too flustered to do so. The simple act of the wink making his knees go weak.

“No, in high school I had to write a paper on the Salem Witch Trials. I dabbled into some of the Satanic stuff to build my thesis more and give some context,” she said, shrugging as she turned back to her work.

Spencer nodded as if silently saying ‘cool’, his own attention now being divided back to the board.

As the two worked, they gave silent glances to each other. Unbeknownst to the other, these were the simple acts that formed their love for each other inside. While they had been dating for a while now, both of them falling in love each moment they spent together, they never voiced the feelings for each other.

Spencer not doing so because of his small fear of rejection. Thoughts that said, what if she doesn’t say it back? or does she not feel the same way?, were ones that vacated his thoughts. But when he looked at her smile, he couldn’t help but feel a fire burn in his heart, her presence being the very thing that started and fueled it. When he held her in his arms, her scent vacating his senses, he could feel all his anxiety leave him. The only thing mattering in those moments was her, and how she felt and smelled. How when she touched him he’d go weak and want nothing more than to just lay with her all day. The thoughts of their future would play like a movie in his head as he held her, and he couldn’t wait for him to act it out.

Now Y/N, she never voiced it because of her constant fear he would be taken away from her. Her fear being that the moment she said it, the next day he would be gone. Her tormentor taking him away and hurting the one she was beginning to love the most. She wasn’t afraid of love per se, but the thought of her having to say it aloud like she had to in front of Caroline to her friends, it only made her want to crawl away and hide. Y/N knew, she knew this feeling that Spencer was it for her, was true. Her heart could tell her it faster than her brain could even have time to think about it. When he held her or when she kissed him, the butterflies were everywhere in her. They fluttered in her stomach and they clouded all rational thought. And the one thing that gave her the most anxiety, was the fear of her great love being taken away.

-------------

“Based on the dresses and makeup the victims were found in, we’re looking for an unsub who is living in an elaborate fantasy world.” The crowd of officers listened intently as Emily began the profile.

“Be believes he’s special, as though he could be acting on behalf of the devil,” Y/N continued.

“This unsub tortured his victims by submerging them in water for days before killing them,” JJ said.

“Which means he’s deliberate and patient,” Y/N embellished on what JJ said.

“This guy has a vivid imagination,” Derek began. “The costumes and makeup suggest that he’s a history buff or he may be a fan of Shakespeare.”

“Using nicotine as poison is highly unusual, so he’s either very well-read or under the guidance of another,” Spencer spoke with his hands as he explained.

“His interests and delusions have caused him to become isolated socially,” Emily said.

“He can’t appear normal to his potential targets, and his crimes are not driven by sex or greed, but instead by his delusional belief system,” Rossi added.

“Although the bodies of only two victims have been recovered, there’s likely a third. Specifically, Christine Torres, who disappeared in February,” Hotch said.

“This unsubs exact age is difficult to determine, but he’s probably in his 20s to 30s,” Derek explained.

“The fact that he travels so far to abduct his victims indicates he has very specific selection criteria,” Y/N said, then turning to Spencer who began to speak.

“This unsub has a female or underage accomplice who sewed the dresses the victims were found in, but she may not be a partner in the traditional sense. It’s quite possible she was coerced into helping and may actually be a victim herself, ” Spencer said.

“Most importantly, this unsub is working according to a specific timetable,” Hotch explained.

“This timetable is corresponding with the Satanic calendar and his plans are to kidnap another victim of today,” Y/N said.

“Thank you.” Hotch’s words dismissed everyone.

----------

The room bustled as people were working on the case and other things. Y/N’s eyelids were heavy from the long day as the aimless chatter in the background made her sleepy. She reached over to her coffee cup, taking a large gulp of the warm liquid, praying that the caffeine would give her a boost of energy.

She looked at the photos Spencer held, her chair sliding closer to his so she could observe them closer, Spencer and the photos. The heat from his body radiating onto hers as she got close and she was able to be filled with his warm scent. Her eyes panned up to look at Spencer’s face, his brows furrowed in concentration as he looked at the white makeup on the faces of the victims.

“What’s got your wheels turning?” She asked him.

Spencer’s head turned to look at the woman next to him. He stuttered a bit as he formed his words, not realizing she was this close to him. “I’m not sure, something about it--” he cut himself short as both his and Y/N’s attention turned to Rossi as he spoke to them.

“So, Garcia checked out everyone associated with that theater production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, they’re all in the clear.”

“The gowns have to be connected to the theater somehow, it can’t just be a coincidence,” JJ said.

“There’s something else that’s been bothering me, why is he putting white face makeup on his victims after they’re dead?” Spencer said, voicing his question to the group he almost said to Y/N a minute before.

“Isn’t that what they wore in the Elizabethan era?” Rossi asked.

“Yes, but only upper-class women wore white face makeup, it was a symbol of virginity and purity,” Spencer explained to the group.

“But he’s dressing them like characters in The Merry Wives of Windsor,” Y/N said as she followed Spencer’s train of thought.

“And that’s one of Shakespeare’s rare plays about the middle class,” Spencer added.

“So, it’s inconsistent.” JJ looked at Spencer as she waited for confirmation on her statement.

“The makeup could mean that he believes death is purifying them,” Hotch spoke.

“What if this is like the Salem Witch trials, where they’d test the girls by trying to drown them? Y/N said something to me earlier about how she had to write a paper on them, and it got me thinking,” Spencer said.

“If they died, it meant they were innocent, and if they somehow survived, they were considered witches and then hanged,” Y/N elaborated on what Spencer was saying.

“Wonderful, a lose-lose situation,” Rossi said.

“But the unsub didn’t submerge the victims in water to torture them, it was some sort of test?” JJ asked, looking over to Spencer.

“With death being the only possible outcome,” Spencer answered.

“Well, if he believes he’s killing witches, he probably thinks that he’s a vigilante or a protector against evil of some sort,” Hotch said.

“Laying the victims out the way he did could be a message to the devil,” JJ added.

“A symbol of victory and a warning, like putting a head on a spike.” Rossi looked down from his standing position to Y/N and Spencer who sat next to each other. Y/N then looked at Spencer, her mind thinking the same thing as him as Rossi’s word’s made him pause.

“He’s not worshipping the devil,” Y/N said with realization.

“He’s trying to fight him.” Spencer looked over to Y/N as he finished what she was saying.

“So we have an unsub who’s challenging the devil, this could not get any more strange,” Y/n said.

-----------

“Missing woman is Sarah Gammon, she’s a 27-year-old graphic artist, to pick her up for her weekly breakfast together, she wasn’t there,” the detective said, walking into the room.

It was the next morning, the team only getting a couple of hours of sleep after the long night they had before.

“Where was she last seen?” Rossi asked.

“At a nightclub in Portland, the, uh, Mirage Room.” The detective stuttered as he tried to remember the name. “She went with a girlfriend who had to leave early.

“Morgan and I will check it out,” Rossi said as he exited the room.

As Rossi left the room, Hotch’s phone rang.

“Okay, so I did some varsity-level sleuthing,” Penelope said as soon as Hotch answered the phone. “And it turns out the costumes were donated to the theater by a young actress named Cate Harris. She was in their production of The Merry Wives of Windsor 16 years ago, which was the only other time that the play was produced there.”

“Where is she now?” Y/N asked.

“Oh, I was hoping you would ask because I have the answer,” Penelope spoke with excitement. “She died in 1998 in the fire at St. Baldwins psychiatric hospital.”

“I revoke my statement from last night on this getting weirder,” Y/N whispered to herself.

“Was she a patient there?” JJ asked.

“Oh, most definitely. And some say that she set the fire.”

“Garcia, can you get her medical records?” Hotch asked the woman.

“Yeah, I tried to do that, but it turns out that the new director of St. Baldwin's was a technophobe hyper-Luddite like our Dr. Reid, and he only wanted the psych records to be on paper to protect confidentiality,” Penelope explained.

“Okay.” Hotch picked up his phone and hung it up, then pocketing it. “Detective, we need you to get a copy of those records.”

“You got it,” the detective said, turning to walk out of the room.

-----------------

The navy jacket was wrapped tightly around Y/N’s torso as her, Emily and JJ walked to the storage unit of St. Baldwins that lay beneath the asylum. They were stopped outside the unit as the caretaker unlocked it.

“Apparently, the state would have to pay for a new storage facility if they moved the records,” the detective explained as to why the unit stayed here. “Someone decided, why bother if the old place works?”

The three women nodded their heads as they heard the clanking of the lock coming off of the door. The caretaker opened the door, the creaking sound giving an eerie feeling to the air.

“Ladies.” The detective motioned his hands in a welcome motion as the three walked closer to the unit.

“No electricity, I take it,” Emily said as she noticed the absence of light.

“You would be correct,” the detective said from behind the three.

Y/N and Emily sighed, both of them pulling flashlights from their pockets as the entered the room. As Y/N walked through the room, her eyes followed the flashlight’s glow as she pointed it at all the different shelves. The creepy feel from the room made her on edge as she looked for the files they were looking for.

“Hey, I think I found it.” Y/N jumped slightly, not expecting to hear a voice jump in the quiet room.

She made her way over to Emily, JJ and the detective joining her as they looked over the report in Emily’s hand.

“Yeah, oh- first of all, Cate Harris was a stage name for Catherine Heathridge, a textile heiress. Her family kept the pseudonym for her medical admission to protect their privacy,” Emily explained as she read through the file.

Y/N picked up another file from the stack that was labeled ‘Cate Harris’. “According to the intake report,” she said as she began to read the file. “Catherine was an aspiring actress who went off her psychiatric medications when she was pregnant with her daughter. She had a minor part in The Merry Wives of Windsor 16 years ago when she became floridly psychotic. She was convinced the other actresses were the devil’s wives, so she stabbed one of them.”

“Is that when she was admitted here?” JJ asked.

“No, not yet,” Emily said as she looked at the report over Y/N’s shoulder.

“It looks like she had a son and a daughter. After she fled the theater--” Y/N gasped as her eyes gazed over the next line, handing the file to Emily as she wasn’t able to say what the woman did out loud. “You can finish it.”

“After fleeing the theater, she chopped off the left arm of her infant daughter,” Emily finished as she took the file from Y/N’s hand.

“Why would she do that?” The detective asked, voice stoic.

“To make the childless appealing to the devil,” Y/N said as she looked up to JJ and Emily. Her head previously resting in her hand.

“She believed that killing the devil’s wives was her mission on earth, which is what our unsub is doing now,” Emily explained.

“But she died in the asylum fire,” the detective stated.

“Someone else must be carrying out her mission,” JJ said.

“And I bet you it’s the son,” Y/N said, the gut feeling being present as she said her words to the others.

---------------

Y/N sat at the table while she told Spencer, Hotch, and Rossi about what they had discovered at the asylum. Her head resting on her hand as she looked up at the three men.

“If someone’s carrying on in Catherine’s mission, then it’s quite possible they both suffered from folie a deux, a shared psychotic disorder between two people who are extremely close and that would mean it’s most likely a family member,” Spencer explained after Y/N had told them all they found.

“It’s the son.” Y/N’s voice spoke in a sing-song tone under her breath.

“Maybe one or both of her kids,” Rossi stated.

“Garcia, I need you to find everything you can on the Heathridge family, specifically Catherine’s son and daughter,” Hotch ordered Penelope when she picked up her phone.

“Okay, finding it as we speak…” she trailed off as she began to look for what Hotch was asking. “Bingo, Catherine, a wealthy textile heiress, had a son: James, now twenty-six and a daughter Lara, now sixteen. Father died in a speedboat accident right before Lara was born. They were raised by their grandfather in a mansion outside Portland after their mom was committed.”

“Is the grandfather still alive?” Hotch asked.

“No, he died last year,” Penelope answered.

“That could have been the stressor,” Spencer thought aloud.

“Penelope, where are the kids living now?” Y/N asked.

“James was kicked out of a seminary in Colorado three years ago, but that’s still his listed address. Lara dropped out of school six weeks ago, coincidentally on her birthday and the family home is her listed address, and I’m sending you pictures...now.”

Photos of the house and kids appeared on the tablet screen. Y/N stood up and walked over next to Rossi as he clicked on the picture of the son.

“That could be him, the man at the night club who left with Sarah Gammon,” Rossi said as he inspected the picture.

“All right, contact the seminary,” Hotch said, looking at Spencer and Rossi. “Garcia, I’m gonna need an address, Y/N let’s go.” Hotch nodded for Y/N to follow him as he began to walk out of the room.

“Yes, sir,” she responded and followed him.

“Be safe.” Spencer’s words made Y/N turn back and give him a reassuring smile that said, I always am.

“Whipped,” Rossi said, covering it up with a cough as he walked away to grab his phone. Spencer just looked at the man confused, but simply went back to his work.

---------

The cars pulled up to the manor. Sirens turned off so that they still maintained the element of surprise. They piled out of the vehicles, JJ, Emily, and Derek joining Hotch and Y/N back at the station.

“Morgan, you and JJ take the back, we’ll take the front,” Hotch said.

JJ and Derek nodded and made their way around back, while Y/N, Hotch, and Emily stayed upfront.

Y/N examined the front of the house. It wasn’t a manor in the traditional sense, it had more of a woodsy feel to its exterior.

“You see that?” Emily asked Hotch and Y/N.

Y/N looked back up at the house, finally noticing what Emily was talking about. “There’s a girl in the window.”

“All right, you check up there-” Hotch nodded to Emily. “Me and Y/N will look for James.”

Emily nodded as they took off into the house, Y/N and Hotch separating from Emily as she headed up the stairs.

Hotch pushed the door to the kitchen open, turning quickly to his right and Y/N to the left. The darkrooms they entered were only lit by the flashlights. They walked through the rooms slowly, only separating for a second to go into two different sides of the room.

Y/N walked down the steps to the basement first, Hotch now behind her as he followed closely. The basement was cold, damp, and slightly lit through the windows by the moonlight. Y/N’s heart pounded in her ears, one foot in front of the other as she moved down the steps. Her light shined as she saw the body of the missing girl on the ground by what appeared to be well.

Y/N felt a sharp pain hit her hip. She groaned as she fell to the ground, her hand clutching her hip as she felt the bruise already forming.

Hotch also let out a groan as he was hit in the legs, his gun, and flashlight sliding across the ground.

Y/N looked up to see James get tackled by Hotch and shoved into a wall. James head-butted Hotch giving him a second to go over and try to hit Y/N while Hotch stumbled back.

James brought a fire-poker around from his left side, but before he could hit Y/N with it, she kicked it out of his hand. She pushed herself up onto her feet and got a quick, hard punch in to throw him off. This allowed Hotch to grab him and shove him back to a wall. The two threw punches back and forth before Hotch pulled him away and tried to push him into the ground.

Hotch had him off his guard and he began to push him towards the well. When James fought back and punched Hotch, Y/N came over and gave a hard kick to James’ chest.

James stumbled back, the kick was just enough to send him falling onto the edge of the well. When he came back up and lurched for Hotch again, clearly being his focus, Hotch was quick to throw him back, having him fall into the well this time.

Y/N stood next to Hotch as they looked down into the deep well, James’ body laying at the bottom.

“Teamwork.” Y/N huffed the word as she looked at Hotch who just shook his head and the two made their way out of the basement.

“You’re bleeding, better get that looked at,” Hotch said, pointing to Y/N eyebrow that was in fact bleeding from when she hit the ground.

When they reached outside, Hotch told the paramedics where James was and made Y/N get looked at after her many protests.

“I’m fine, seriously.” Her protests did not make him change his mind.

“That’s an order.”

Y/N now stood with Derek as a paramedic put some butterfly bandages on the cut after accessing it was only a superficial cut.

“You good wonder woman?” Derek asked, the nickname from the previous day sticking.

“Oh yeah, you should see the other guy.” Her joke, cliche as it was, made Derek chuckle anyway as he turned to Emily as she approached.

“So, Lara is gonna be okay,” Emily said, walking over to the rest of them. “She confirmed that the bodies were left out as messages to the devil.”

“Well, her brother’s dead, so what happens to her now?” Derek asked.

“There’s always foster care,” the detective answered.

“For an heiress?” Y/N said the paramedic finished with her face and had moved on to the ambulance.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” JJ agreed.

“There will be guardians and trustees coming out of the woodworks before she gets put into foster care,” Y/N said, making her teammates chuckle.

“So she’ll end up back here, in a house that breeds delusions,” the detective said, looking back to the house.

“Hopefully not,” Hotch spoke.

-------------

“Okay, okay, what is the best book you have ever read?” The question made Spencer ponder.

Y/N and Spencer sat in a booth at a diner in D.C., the table holding breakfast foods for the late-night date. The warm glow that surrounded the two made all their worries vanish, their attention only on the other.

“That’s a hard one, I’ve read so many.” His thumb and pointer finger lined his jaw as he placed his head between the two. “I mean, I guess fiction might have to be one of Dickens works.”

Y/N nodded her head, her legs pulled up in the seat and she sat with her back to the wall. Spencer began going on about Oliver Twist and Y/N was listening intently to every word he spoke. Watching how his lips would move faster as he began to get excited about something he was saying, or the way his voice would go an octave higher when his hands moved as he spoke. A smile played on her lips as she listened to him as he went on.

She was so engrossed in her own mind of watching him that she didn’t even notice he asked her a question until his lips stopped moving.

“Sorry, what?”

“I said, do you have a favorite work by Dickens?” He repeated his question with a laugh.

“Oh, probably Great Expectations, but I’m more of a fan of Poe, more than anything,” she answered. Her legs moved under the table as she sat facing Spencer in the both.

“For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams, of the beautiful Annabel Lee,” Spencer quoted the poem, Anabel Lee. A smile formed on his as he watched a bashful blush on Y/N’s cheeks.

The simple poem about a tormented, beautiful young love never failed to have Y/N swoon. In high school, Anabel Lee was the poem she would read repeatedly in her textbook. The words she could quote by heart only sounded so sweeter coming from Spencer’s lips.

“I’ve always been a fan of dark romanticism,” she spoke. “This case we just had, reminded of something out of a book though if I’m being honest.” She brought her milkshake straw up to her lips, taking a sip of the creamy liquid.

“It was an odd one,” Spencer agreed.

Y/M hummed, her lips still wrapped around the straw. She pulled her eyes off Spencer to look out the window. She watched as people walked by, couples holding hands, men getting home from their offices late, but one stood out to her.

From a distance, about fifty yards across the street, a dark-haired man stood, staring at Y/N and Spencer out the window. She had no idea who this man was, but it made her stomach drop as she got a bad feeling.

“Spencer I think we should go home now,” she spoke calmly.

He furrowed his brows in confusion. “Okay, any reason why?”

“Because there is a man out there who has been staring at us for I don’t know how long, and I don’t want to deal with it anymore.” She stood up from her seat in the booth, wrapping her navy jacket around her body.

Spencer did the same as he stood up and walked next to her out of the building. “Do you think it has anything to do with--”

“I have no clue--”

“Could it?”

“I don’t know, let's just go back to your place, it’s closer.” So, that’s what they did. Spencer grabbed Y/N’s hand protectively and led her down the street while she kept her head down. The man’s face still in her thoughts, no expressions, just stoic and unsettling. His face was almost calm, seemingly normal to an untrained eye, but she knew. She could only hope this had nothing to do with Caroline and she was simply overreacting.

Tag List (let me know if you want to be added!!):

@throughparisallthroughrome @word-scribbless @nintendumbfuck @confused-and-really-hungry @justine-en @andiebeaword @itsarayofsunshine @baby-i-am-fireproof @abitofeverythinggg @nanocoool @marceline-is-my-spirit-animal @fancyfaucet @im-a-raging-gay @atletino @mo-whore

#spencer reid imagine #spencer reid #criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds meme #aaron hotchner #aaron hotch hotchner #derek morgan #derek morgan imagine #spencer reid smut #spencer reid series

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taylizmasterpost · 4 years

Text

Jake Gyllenhaal and Jealous Liz (October 2010 - February 2011)

Now, there’s a lot to say about Jake and Taylor. The time they got together was a time when he was promoting his movie, Love and Other Drugs, and she was about to drop Speak Now. So at first glance, it look a lot like a traditional PR stunt. However, they do not have a first public meeting -- something that Taylor has with a lot of her other PR relationships (think Calvin at the Fund Fair or Harry at the KCAs), and seemed generally more camera shy.

Jake’s costar in Love and Other Drugs, Anne Hathaway, was also single at the time, and arguably a PR relationship between the two of them would’ve drummed up significantly more buzz for the film, so stunting with Taylor seems an odd choice.

Jake also reportedly annoyed Taylor with how much he wanted to hide from the press, which is interesting. I’m not totally certain if they were real or not, but I’ll put all of their stuff in here, because it’s interesting to note Liz’s reaction to all of it, despite her relationship:

23 October 2010 - Emma Stone hosts SNL. Both Taylor and Jake G show up to support her, supposedly they’ve already started dating at this point and this was their first public appearance together.

"They walked around together backstage, but they were careful not to be seen too close. It was hard to tell if they were together, but everyone was shocked that she brought him," a source told People magazine.

Notice the lack of public meeting. Strange that they just showed up together dating.

24 October 2010 - Liz tweets about listening to Never Grow Up

October 2010 - Taylor writes All Too Well, the first of the three “Nashville songs” -- All Too Well, State of Grace, Stay Stay Stay-- that were written for the Red album before she moved to LA, based on the fact that she said she started writing for Red slightly before Speak Now was released.

We also know All Too Well has to have been written in 2010 because what the copyright record for it says:

Now, it seems to me that this is too soon to be about Jake. It’s obviously a breakup song, and Taylor and Jake have only just started dating (unless they had a secret dating history we don’t know about). It would be weird for her to be writing all this about him while they’re still dating.

All Too Well could be about any of the three women I’ve spoken previously about in this masterpost. However, I’m going to try to make the case that this song is for Liz:

All Too Well is Liz’s favorite song from Red. She has said so on multiple occasions. Years later, when she came to watch Taylor’s Reputation tour in Glendale, Taylor even played it for her as the surprise song. Sure, it could just be that Liz is just a fan, but the song fits where we are in the timeline. Liz has moved on with someone else. Taylor is trying to get over it, but she can’t help but think back to the past she remembers “all too well.”

If the song is about a woman, lines like “back before you lost the one real thing you’ve ever known” reads to me as Taylor making a (possibly unfounded) dig at closeting. All Too Well also carries the bad driving metaphor with “almost ran the red,” which runs throughout a lot of the other Liz songs on Red, and which Liz will later reference herself in her own music. The lines in the bridge about “asking for too much” and “running scared,” remind me of Taylor insisting she was single during Valentine’s Day, despite spending it with Liz, only to turn around and miss her once Liz got a boyfriend. Lines about loss of innocence are also interesting, when we think about that L Chat post about Liz from earlier...

Of course, obviously, you can think this song is about whoever you want. If you wanna claim it for JH or Joe Jonas or Taylor Lautner or maybe even some girl Taylor went to high school with, be my guest. I personally don’t buy it being about Emily in a post-Dear John world, and the timeline doesn’t read as Jake to me, so I’m giving it to Liz!

25 October 2010 - Speak Now is released. In the album’s prologue, she specifies that the song “Long Live” is for her band, which is interesting to me, considering that the bridge of the song sounds like it might be about a relationship, and the secret message of the song is “For you,” which sounds oddly specific:

Will you take a moment? Promise me this That you’ll stand by me forever But, if God forbid, fate should step in And force us into a goodbye If you have children someday When they point to the pictures, Please tell ‘em my name

The secret message for Mine is “Toby,” which is the name of the actor who played her love interest during the song, making it make no sense for the song to be about him (and, in my eyes, making it more likely she was trying to cover up who the song was really for). We’ve already discussed Story of Us having “CMT Awards” and Back to December having “Tay,” so I won’t beat you over the head with those.

Unlike the original handwritten lyrics to Sparks Fly, which featured the lyric “Get me with those brown eyes, baby,” the version that Taylor put on the Speak Now album had the lyric “hit me with those green eyes, baby,” with the eye color presumably being changed because Liz has green eyes:

The secret message for Sparks Fly is “Portland, Oregon,” which is where Taylor and The Agency covered Tom Petty’s song American Girl in May 2009 during the height of early TayLiz.

26 October 2010 - Taylor and Jake are spotted together in Brooklyn getting lunch with Emma Stone:

Liz does a sound check for Taylor for the Today Show. A video later gets posted on YouTube and someone leaves this comment noting Taylor and Liz’s chemistry:

31 October 2010 - Taylor and Jake are spotted in Big Sur together and stay at California’s Post Inn Ranch.

Liz spends Halloween with her boyfriend:

1 November 2010 - Taylor’s appearance on Ellen airs. Ellen asks her about Jake. Taylor says “I’m always optimistic about love. Yes, always, sometimes.”

2 November 2010 - Taylor and Jake are spotted in Santa Barbara together. They get ice cream, interact with fans, and Taylor reportedly laughs at everything Jake says.

16 November 2010 - Jake attends the Love and Other Drugs premiere alone. This is interesting to me, considering if this was a PR relationship you would’ve thought he’d bring Taylor as his date. Still, Paula made some weird decisions in her time as Taylor’s publicist (like putting her with a carousel of 18 year olds), so this could just be Paula thinking that Taylor showing up at the premiere with him would be too obviously read as a stunt. Doesn’t rule it either way. Still, I think Anne would’ve been a better choice for PR for this.

Mid November - Perez Hilton alleges that Jake has picked up Taylor on his private jet to fly her to London because she was “feeling lonely.” Jake was in London promoting Love and Other Drugs so this seems very stunty to me personally.

22 November 2010 - Taylor attends the American Music Awards and wins Favorite Female Country Artist.

Liz tweets congratulations at her and seems generally excited.

24 November 2010 - Love and Other Drugs is officially released in theaters.

25 November 2010 - Taylor and Jake spend Thanksgiving in Brooklyn with Jake’s family.

26 November 2010 - Liz seems to have spent Thanksgiving with Jason:

27 November 2010 - Taylor and Jake are spotted in a coffee house in Nashville:

And, maybe in response, Liz makes this weird and vaguely jealous Tweet:

Now, I don’t know what this means. Maybe the “you” refers to Liz and she’s having what Carly Rae Jepsen would call “boy problems” -- feeling torn and overburdened between a best friend and boyfriend:

youtube

Or, perhaps, the “you” in this Tweet refers to Taylor, and Liz is trying to say that Jake is “using her up,” maybe meaning taking up her time. Or maybe Liz wasn’t referring to any of this. We can’t really know. Still, it’s interesting.

29 November 2010 - TayLiz hang out and Liz tweets about it. Perhaps to make up for the lack of time spent together since they both got boyfriends.

30 November 2010 - Taylor and Jake have coffee in Nashville:

1 December 2010 - Taylor writes a MySpace post about the CMTs.

Liz tweets about watching Glee, meaning she’s the one who got Taylor hooked on the show and therefore interested in Dianna. Hilarious.

2 December 2010 - Taylor calls Love and Other Drugs a “good movie” when asked about it, and won’t say anything more. She also adamantly refuses to talk about her personal life (This gives me 2018/19 Joe vibes, whatever that means).

3 December 2010 - Liz tweets that her favorite song on Speak Now is Last Kiss. She also tweets at Jason about his cooking:

5 December 2010 - Jake is asked about Taylor and says this:

“One of the greatest parts about being in a relationship is the intimacy you share, but it can be difficult if you’re being watched the whole time.”

This reminds me so much of what Taylor’s currently saying about Joe. Interesting, looking back on it.

7 December 2010 - Jake and Taylor do the “maple latte” pap walk stunt in Brooklyn with Maggie and her daughter. This is the only series of photos of them that I think was a set-up, but that means it’s pretty gross this is the one they chose to bring a child into:

I think the reason this was so obviously a pap walk was to get the “maple latte” in the shot. I’ve already speculated that Taylor had written All Too Well prior to her relationship with Jake, and this stunty pap walk would make sense if she needed to use him to cover for it.

8 December 2010 - Liz makes another weird vague possibly jealous tweet:

Now, in the context of Mine possibly being about Liz and Taylor saying that song is about her “tendency to run from love,” it’s possible Liz is shading Taylor’s pap walk with Jake the previous day. This tweet feels very “back before you lost the one real thing you’ve ever known.”

However, maybe she’s just really happy with Jason. I don’t know. I don’t know these people.

9 December 2010 - Taylor and Jake drive around LA, Jake yells at the paps.

Compare these to those photos with Taylor Lautner earlier in the timeline. These are not nearly as staged. Take away from that whatever you will.

13 December 2010 - Taylor turns 21. Liz and Caitlin bring her a pizza. Liz tweets at Taylor that she’s changed her life. This is supposedly the birthday that Jake didn’t show up to that The Moment I Knew is about. Liz and Caitlin bringing her pizza if she’s sad about it would make sense...

31 December 2010 - Taylor and Liz spotted together in Nashville. They get Pei Wei and JustJared calls Liz a “gal pal.” Taylor seems upset, possibly about her whole Jake birthday thing. Or possibly something else.

Liz tweets about going for a run and listening to Speak Now:

5 January 2011 - Taylor and Jake break up.

19 January 2011 - Taylor and Jake are spotted together by fans in Nashville, first at a coffee shop and then at dinner. Jake did not have any other business in Nashville, so it can be assumed he came there to talk to Taylor:

CONCLUSION: Were Taylor and Jake real? I don’t know. They really only ever did that one pap walk and didn’t seem to publicly promote each other’s work, as far as I could find, despite both releasing projects while together. The one pap walk they did seems to maybe have been to cover for All Too Well, which had possibly already been written (likely about Liz) before Jake and Taylor started dating.

Were those tweets from Liz jealousy? Or am I reading too much into it?

Either way, Taylor’s had her fun, and now it’s time to maybe start thinking about getting back together with Liz. There’s just one problem: her boyfriend.

The Speak Now Tour Begins (February 2011 - May 2011)

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spcncershybrid · 4 years

Text

Past Pleasures

GIFS ARE NOT MINE

KAI PARKER X FEM!WITCH!READER (PAST RELATIONSHIP)

BAU TEAM X READER (PLATONIC)

SPENCER REID X READER (BRIEF AT END)

Request: Ohh I'm anxious for misunderstanding part 2! It's sooo good 💚 idk if you're taking requests (sorry if you're not) but i thought it'd be pretty cool if reader works at the bau and is someone from kai parker's past (a childhood friend/crush/whatever) and when the team's called for help in mystic falls, kai's the unsub.. thanks in advance and, again, sorry if you're not taking requests! Take care :)

(Summary: Never in a million years did you think your ex boyfriend would be on the BAU’s radar.)

(A/N: I'm altering the Prison World storyline from TVD for this imagine! Also I’m altering Kai’s storyline to fit this. Lastly some stuff in this story involving the hospital may be inaccurate. Also sorry this took so long to post. I hope you still enjoy it!)

REQUEST ARE OPEN (+ Harry Potter has been added to the list recently!)

“Hotch I’m going to be a bit late this traffic is a pain in the-” I start before I get cut off. “Y/L/N take all the time you need just make sure you get here in one piece.” Hotch’s stern voice says. “Yes sir I will be speeding there right now. Not literally Hotch.” I say before hanging up the phone. I steadily drive over to work and park my car. I enter the building and head up to the unit area. “Hey Y/N/N.” I hear Penelope’s happy voice greet me as I step out of the elevator. “Hey Pen.” I say smiling as I swing open the doors of the bullpen. I head over to my desk and sit down. “Ah don’t get too comfortable my BAU baby. We have a case.” Penelope says strolling past me and up the stairs.I haven’t had coffee yet.I follow her into the room. “Here I heard your commute was very long.” Emily says, handing me a cup of coffee. “Oh what did I do to be blessed with Emily freaking Prentiss.” I say smiling as I take a sip. “Here you go babes.” Penelope says handing us our files. “Okay Mystic Falls Virginia just outside our room. Multiple bodies were sent to the hospital all banged and bloody.” Penelope says shivering at her words.I look at the file pictures and these seem vaguely familiar.“So why are we being called in?” Derek asks. “Because they all identified that it was the same man.” Penelope says.Great it’s serial.“They all said it was a blue eyed, dark brown haired guy.” Penelope says. Oh shit Kai. “Do you have a name yet?” I ask Penelope. “No but, like major but a similar thing was done by a guy named Malachai Parker.” Penelope says shivering slightly. “So why haven’t they caught him yet?” JJ asks, confused. “No one has been able to find him.” I look down to the floor remembering the prison world escape.

“Kai you and I both know she won’t get us both out.” I say snuggling up to him. “Babe have a little faith.” He says kissing the top of my head. “Kai what if we don’t get out?” I ask sadly, remembering my life outside of this world. “We’ve dealt with each other for this long and plus we can kill our way to the top. I’ll consider sharing my coven with you.” He says smiling at me. I smile back at him. “As fun as the killing game sounds Kai I don’t want to hurt people. I want to do what I planned before I got in here.” I say fiddling with my fingers. “The FBI thing?” Kai asks quirking an eyebrow. “Yeah Kai I would’ve been perfect for that.” I sigh sadly. “If you became an agent would you put me away?” Kai asks, grabbing my hands. “I don’t think I can run a coven on my own.” I say smiling up at him. “Good now let’s find our ticket out.” He says clapping his hands together.

——————

“Y/N?” I hear Spencer whisper beside me catching my attention. “Hmm?” I ask looking up at him. “We’re headed to the jet now.” He says shyly, handing me my go bag. “Thanks Spence.” I say smiling as I stand up. We head towards the elevator elaborating on ideas for the case and catching Kai. We step onto the jet and take our seats. “Okay so his M.O is very bloody.” Emily says twisting her pen between her fingers. “He could be sadistic.” JJ suggests turning a page to look at crime scene photos. “Or he can be a sociopath. Or at least showing the signs.” I say as I shrug leaning back. “Why do you think that?” Rossi asks. “It was just a suggestion Rossi I honestly have no clue on how to approach this case.” I say closing the file and stare out the window.

——————

Kai and I enter the back seat of a taxi. “We‘re free baby.” I say laughing giving him a kiss on the cheek. “Where are you guys off to?” The driver asks. “Mystic Falls.” Kai says quickly. “Why are headed back to that trashy town Kai.” I say rolling my eyes. “Old friends.” He says grabbing my chin so I turn to face him. “What kind?” I say smiling at him. “Family kind.” He says placing his hands over my shoulder. “Why are we going to visit your family? They have caused you nothing but trouble. For fucks sake Kai they treated you like shit.” I say shifting to look at his face. “Relax it isn't going to be a fun reunion.” Kai says shrugging. I sigh lightly this most likely won’t end good.

——————

“Tell us baby girl.” Derek says as he puts Penelope on speaker. “Okay so this Malachai guy has a rough history. He was born in 1972 in Portland Oregon. He has multiple siblings which he, oh my gosh, murdered. He has a twin sister named Josette Laughlin and two younger siblings Lucas and Olivia Parker who are still alive.” Penelope says. “Is that all Penelope?” Hotch asks walking over to the phone. “Actually no this is weird. Malachai went off the grid in 1994, like disappeared. Then he reappeared in 2012.” She says, sounding confused. “Isn’t your hometown Portland Oregon?” JJ whispers beside me. “Sadly.” I say. “There’s been a series of bodies that are injured in the local hospital. Malachai was also admitted there but he isn’t seen on the cameras. They suspect he’s still in the hospital. ” The sheriff says quickly entering and exiting the room. We all scramble and put on our vests. Half of us enter one van and the rest in another as we speed off into the hospital.

——————

We enter the hospital with our guns drawn low. “Reid, Y/L/N, Prentiss take the upper area of the hospital. The rest follow me.” Hotch instructs. We all nod in unison and head up the stairs with our weapons still out. We make it to the floor with the victims and the lights go out. “What the hell.” I hear Emily say. “Welcome to Mystic Falls’ Hospital BAU agents. I am Kai Parker, nice to be acquainted with you guys seeing as my ex-girlfriend is on your team. Hello Y/N.” Kai’s voice booms through the hospital speakers. I groan internally at his words so much for being lowkey. I turn on the flashlight on my gun and look around. Great Emily and Spencer are nowhere to be seen. I surprisingly make my way down the steps and head towards the speaker room. No ones in here. “Of course you're the first to be here.” I hear Kai say from behind me. “Don’t make this difficult Kai.” I say turning to him. “Or what you’ll arrest me. Last time I checked you hurt people too. Before this whole FBI thing that is.” Kai says, stepping towards me. “Actually that’ll be kind of hot so I won’t oppose it happening.” He says, smirking at me. I lay my hand out to start inflicting pain on him. “Immobilis.” He says halting my movements. I freeze completely and stare at him as he walks around me.

“You still look the same. You even still have that scar from when we escaped the prison world.” Kai says as he drags a finger onto my cheek outlining the scar. “Does your team even know about me? Do they know you could’ve found me so easily with your magic?” He asks, gripping my arm. He siphons some magic from me causing pain but I can’t scream out. He lets go of me and drops the spell. “Motus.” I say immediately sending him flying out the room. He groans and gets up off the floor. He speeds over to me and grabs me by the neck pinning me to the wall. He grips my neck tightly as I gasp for air. “I won’t kill you because well we dated and you're hot.” He says dropping me. I fall to my knees holding my throat. “Malachai Parker. Put your hands in the air.” Emily says as she appears behind Kai. Kai smirks to me and puts his hands up. “Remember your house in the prison world. I hope you remember what I told you.” Kai says to me. “I love you and always win.” I say looking at him confused. “Ad somnum.” He says, turning to Emily making her drop to the floor. He turns back to me and grabs me by the chin. “I always win baby.” He says kissing me before speeding out of the room. The lights on the floor immediately go back on as he runs away and Emily stands up rubbing her head. “Where did he go?” Emily asked, looking around. “He’s gone.” I sigh sadly. “Guys!” We hear Spencer exclaim. Emily and I scramble out the room towards his voice with our guns drawn. “Oh my gosh.” Emily gasps as we see Kai holding Spencer up by the neck. I place my hand forwards and feel the gust of wind moving around me from the vents. I focus my energy on Kai and think of pain. Kai immediately drops to the floor, dropping Spencer in the process. I step closer to Kai as Emily grabs Spencer moving him to the side. I twist my fingers making the pain intensify as Kai screams out in agony.

I drop my hand and Kai stands up glaring at me. “Mittite.” I say flinging him into the wall. He stays pinned tightly into the wall and I twist my hand snapping his neck. His body drops to the ground lifeless. “Cuff him and put him in the car before he wakes up.” I say to Spencer who nods back at me.

——————

We head back to the station and Kai gets put into one of the cells. “Make sure you call Bonnie and Damon quickly. Kai is dangerous.” I say quietly to Sheriff Forbes who nods in understanding. I nod over to her and walk off to the room where we all set up. “Where is everyone?” I ask, noticing only Spencer in the room. “Back at the hotel.” He says holding his bag tightly. “Oh um well I’ll be right back.” I say opening the door. “Hey Y/N would you maybe want to go out sometime?” I hear Spencer says. I turn to him blushing profusely and nod not trusting my mouth to say actual words. He smiles widely as I exit the room. I walk over to Kai’s spelled cell and look at him tilting my head to the side. “Goodbye Kai. I hope you enjoy the new and improved prison world you'll most likely be sent to.” I say waving him off. I head back to the set up room and grab my bag. I lace my hands with Spencer and we walk out of the station.

#kai parker #kai parker imagine #the vampire diares imagine #the vampire diaries #tvd imagine #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds

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thefightfortranshealthcare · 3 years

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Proper health care is vital to everyone’s long term quality of life. Illness and injury are the most obvious threats to life, however, access to gender affirming care can be critical to the lives and wellbeing of transgender people. Trans people are people who do not identify with the gender they are assigned at birth. While this in itself is not an issue, an inability to be perceived and accepted as their true gender often causes trans individuals large amounts of stress and distress. This manifests in a wide variety of ways, one of the most common being a discomfort or disdain for one’s secondary sex characteristics. This is commonly known as gender dysphoria, and it is often incredibly painful. The best and only cure for gender dysphoria is transition, the process of beginning to present as one’s true gender. The process of transition can include voice training, the process of learning to speak with a cadence and tone more often attributed to one’s true gender, changing how one dresses, learning to use different body language, and medical transition. Medical transition is the process of changing a person’s body directly to more closely match their true gender. Medical transition can include hormone replacement therapy, in which one sex hormone’s production is blocked, and another sex hormone is added to the body, and gender affirming surgery, the altering of a person’s body in order to give them characteristics attributed to their true gender, or to remove characteristics of their assigned gender.

Transition is important for trans people, not only because it decreases feelings of gender dysphoria, but because it allows trans people to be seen and accepted for who they really are. This is incredibly important because trans people are overall in greater danger of developing mental health issues, especially depression, due to a combination of gender dysphoria and widespread discrimination and oppression. For example, according to Mental Health National, LGBT youth as a whole experience depressive symptoms at a rate six times greater than straight youth.

This increased prevalence of depression can be deadly in trans communities. Mental Health National reported that forty eight percent of trans adults in the United States considered committing suicide in 2017, despite only four percent of all adults in the United States feeling the same. The Centre for Suicide Prevention reported that in 2015, between twenty two and forty three percent of trans people had attempted suicide at least once throughout their lives, and that even within the LGBT community, trans people are two times more likely than cis LGBT people to attempt suicide. Mental health issues are particularly concerning for trans youth. According to the Centre for Suicide Prevention, sixty six percent of trans youth practiced self harm in 2015, and Mental Health America has said that trans youth are twice as likely as cis youth to experience suicidal thoughts, and are four times as likely to act on those thoughts.

Given the dangerous and deadly nature of trans mental health concerns, it seems clear that the best course of action is to help to diminish the factors that contribute to high rates of mental illness in trans people. For the community at large, this would involve taking steps to prevent and protect trans people from discrimination and oppression, and at an individual level, this would involve providing greater access to transition related medical care to trans individuals, especially trans youth. Many lawmakers are however, doing the exact opposite of this right now. On April eighth of this year, Arkansas passed a law banning transition related healthcare for trans youth, and the governments of fifteen other states proposed similar laws. These laws are designed to prevent the parents, guardians, and doctors of trans children from being legally allowed to aid in their children’s transition. These laws are framed as intending to protect children, but in reality, these laws are designed to legally erase the existence of trans children. Medical transition has been shown time and time again to save lives. For instance, the Center for Suicide Prevention reports that a 2014 study in the United Kingdom found that in a survey of transitioning trans people, sixty seven percent of people were more suicidal before or near the beginning of their transition and less suicidal after their transition, as to only three percent who were more suicidal after their transition. Because medical transition improves the quality of life and mental health of trans people, and decreases their chances of attempting suicide, blocking access to that care will inevitably end lives.

Saving and improving the lives of children, and all trans people is a cause worth fighting for, and as such opposition to this legislation is encouraged. This blog is focused specifically on the fight to prevent bills HB 1 and SB 10 from being passed in Alabama. These bills make providing transition related healthcare to children in Alabama a crime and force schools to out trans students to their families, regardless of the issues that may arise from doing so. These bills, if passed, would therefore condemn trans youth in Alabama to childhoods of dysphoria and neglect, as well as most definitely drive some children to suicide.

Thankfully, there are many organizations actively working to protect and uplift transgender youth throughout the nation, all of which oppose this type of legislation. There are several organizations around Portland that focus on transgender individuals and families around Portland. Two highlighted organizations that provide a variety of services for transgender youth, adults, and families are the TransActive Gender Project and Outside In (Namior.org, 2021).

TransActive Gender Project

The TransActive Gender Project (TGP) is a Portland-based organization that provides “a holistic range of services and expertise to empower trans and gender nonconforming children, youth, and families” (Namior.org, 2021). The organization is based at the Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling, and focuses on advocating for transgender rights in a variety of avenues (TransActive Gender Project, 2021).

“The services provided include:

“support groups for adults, families, allies, and youth ranging 4-18 years old;

“professional development and community-centered training and education;

“advocacy related to gender-diverse social justice;

“policy development and implementation consultation and guidance,

“and screened referrals to mental health and medical providers”

(TransActive Gender Project, 2021).

Regarding the recent surge in anti-trans legislation, the TGP has come out with a statement saying, “we must continue to prepare for the ripple effects of the previous administration’s policies and attitudes towards the gender diverse community” (TransActive.org, 2021). The organization will continue to resist hate and discrimination and continue with “education, support and advocate for transgender youth and families, and continue to work against the disinformation and misinformation around anti-trans policies and practices” (TransActive.org, 2021).

Outside In

Founded in 1968, Outside In is “a coalition of medical and naturopathic doctors and interns, acupuncturists and Chinese herbalists who provide multidisciplinary care to homeless youth and low income individuals lacking health insurance in Portland” (Namoir.org, 2021). Among their work, Outside In offer services to transgender individuals (Namior.org, 2021). The Federally-Qualified Health Center offers a wide range of services including but not limited to case management, housing, meals, education, job training, and primary healthcare (Outside In, 2021).

References

American Civil Liberties Organization of Alabama. (n.d.). HB 1 / SB 10 (2021) - ANTI-TRANS YOUTH. ACLU Alabama. https://www.aclualabama.org/en/legislation/hb1-sb10-2021-anti-trans-youth

Centre for Suicide Prevention. (n.d.). Transgender people and suicide. Centre for Suicide Prevention. https://www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/transgender-people-suicide/

Cox, C. (2021, April 8). As Arkansas bans treatments for transgender youth, 15 other states consider similar bills. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/04/08/states-consider-bills-medical-treatments-transgender-youth/7129101002/

Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling. (n.d.). TransActive Gender Project. Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education. Retrieved April 28, 2021, from https://graduate.lclark.edu/programs/continuing_education/transactive/

Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling. (2021). TransActive Update: Moving Ahead in 2021. Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling. https://graduate.lclark.edu/live/news/45482-transactive-update-moving-ahead-in-2021

Mental Health America. (n.d.). LGBTQ+ Communities And Mental Health. Mental Health America. https://www.mhanational.org/issues/lgbtq-communities-and-mental-health

National Alliance on Mental Illness . (n.d.). LGBTQ Specific - NAMI Oregon. Namior.org. Retrieved April 28, 2021, from https://namior.org/resources/community-resource-lists/culturally-specific-services/

Outside In. (n.d.). Outside In. Outside In. Retrieved April 28, 2021, from https://outsidein.org

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saintvalentinex · 4 years

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Blast from the Past

A/N: this was a paid writing commission from ____ who wanted to expand on their idea of Wendy’s mom! It was super fun to explore and I appreciate the opportunity! It goes from present day to flashbacks, flashbacks will be blended in and marked with italics.

Summary: an investigative reporter visits the town of gravity falls, oregon to look into the missing citizens. one stands out in particular.

Word Count: 3,230

My name is Eleanor Parker and I’m an investigative reporter from Portland, Oregon. I’ve been sent out to the sleepy town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, to try to connect the dots between strange happenings and the missing citizens of this town. In the entire list of names that I was given, one stood out in particular. Adeline Marie Girard, mother of 4 and wife of Dan Corduroy.

Born in the town of Gaspé, in the province of Québec, she was the youngest of 6, and the only girl. A demolitions expert by profession, a nature lover at heart, she found herself relocating to the Pacific Northwest for a job. She was friendly, confident, and a down to earth girl that got along with everyone in town. Despite all this, I know two things:

Adeline Girard was reported missing August 28th, 2006.

She was not the first, nor will she be the last.

I stepped into the diner on a foggy September morning, the smell of bacon and pancakes immediately hitting my nose. Stomach rumbling, I took myself and my files to an empty corner booth, relaxing amongst the atmosphere of mystery.

“Well it’s about time I see a new face!” I looked up from the photo of Adeline to be greeted by a kind old face, eyelid droopy and painted blue.

Susan.

“Well, I’m not staying in town long, but I’ve heard from everyone here that you’re the best waitress. So I decided to see what the fuss was all about.”

“Well that’s so kind! What can I get started for you, honey?”

I glanced over the menu and around the diner, noticing many of the same plates in front of the many different people. I felt Susan change, and I looked up. She was staring at the open file before me, right at Adeline.

“Do you know her?” My painted finger rested on her face, looking up at Susan with intent. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, but hurriedly glanced away from the photo.

“Your order?”

“Um… yeah could I please get a stack of pancakes, with blueberries instead of strawberries please. And uh… classic bacon, egg and sausage platter. Over easy. Thank you.”

Quickly scribbling, she ran to the kitchen to call the order, leaving me to Adeline’s unblinking face and the millions of notes of where she could be.

The windshield wipers looked like they were about to fly off the car in Adeline’s eyes. Her fingers were wrapped tight around the steering wheel, knuckles white with tension as she just tried to keep her focus on the road.

“It’s freezing…” Her mouth was set in a straight line, pressed together to try and keep her lips warm. The trapper hat was fixed firmly on her head, her blonde hair for once messy and out of control. Adeline reached for the heater before seeing brake lights, slamming on her own to keep from hitting the person in front of her.

Letting out a long and tired sigh, she heard her duffle bag fall from the backseat, hitting the floorboard with a dull thud. Her dynamite.

Reaching into the backseat, she kept her hand on the wheel as she fixed her bag, making sure to keep the charge in place. Quickly turning back around, she looked for any sort of road signs to find where she was located.

Oregon Border. 500 miles.

Just 500 miles to go, and then it was a new life, a new job.. a new everything. Adeline sighed to herself, tapping her fingers to the music as she enjoyed the slow crawl of the Washington freeway.

“Ma’am?” A gentle knocking on the window stirred Adeline awake, the smell of rain and pine coming through the cracked windows of her car. She looked up at the officer before her, a friendly enough looking fellow with too big of a smile.

“How can I help you?” Adeline asked with a slight crack in her voice, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“You know being pulled over asleep on the side of the road is illegal. You ain’t supposed to be doing that.”

“Oh… I’m sorry. I’m not exactly from around here and I just wanted to take a rest.”

“Where you from? Where are you headed to?”

“Québec, Canada. And I’m headed to Gravity Falls, Oregon for a job.”

The officer clapped the top of Adeline’s car, making her jump in her seat. He radioed to his partner, who got out of the passenger side of the cruiser.

“Well welcome to our town! You coulda just stopped about 5 minutes down that way and hit a motel! We can lead you that way if you need a guide and some safety in case you go back to sleep behind the wheel.”

“Uh…. no I think I’ll be fine officer….” Adeline paused, squinting to adjust to the early morning sun reflecting off his badge. “Blubs?”

“That’s my name! If you need anything just holler!” He walked back to his car, pulling his partner in before driving off ahead through the massive trees. She ignored the sinking feeling in her stomach, turning on her car and letting the engine run for a moment. Running her long fingers through her hair, she hummed to herself, getting back into a driving position to drive off.

Welcome to Gravity Falls.

The rain began almost immediately as she parked in front of the dingy diner, getting out and running through the door with a soft tinkling of the bell. Most of the counter was empty, minus a woman with a heavily painted face. The booths were another story.

Full of smiling and chattering faces, most looking up at Adeline when she walked in. She was used to all eyes being on her, but in this circumstance it felt.. different. Off. Heading to the corner of the restaurant, she took a booth to herself, putting her purse beside her.

“Well aren’t you just the prettiest flower that ever bloomed! I’m Susan, what can I get started for you?”

Adeline smiled softly at the woman before grabbing her matches out of her purse. With a cigar gently resting in between her teeth, she lit the stick on the bottom of her heel, lighting the cigar with a few puffs.

“Coffee, black. Um… do you have maple pancakes here?”

Susan kept staring at the woman before her, not quite sure what to make of this new customer.

“We have maple syrup for the pancakes?” She sounded unsure of herself, eyelid twitching a little as Adeline inhaled the rich maple smoke of her cigar.

“That’s fine. And eggs please, scrambled. No meat please.”

Susan walked away, calling out the order as the other customers chatted amongst themselves. The only person who came in here alone was that man who lived in the woods. No one really got a name from him, but they both seemed to be the same loner type.

As Susan came back with Adeline’s water, the blonde smiled up at her.

“Is there anything fun to do here? I have a demolition job here in a few days, and I was wondering of any… um… enjoyable activities?”

“Fishing! We also have downtown Gravity Falls. It’s not much but it’s something to do!”

“Thank you Ms. Susan, I appreciate the hospitality.” Adeline put out the cigar, smashing the tip of it into the cracked plastic ashtray that sat to her left. “Where’s the fishing spot?”

“Um… Lake Gravity Falls. About 5 miles from here.”

“Perfect.”

Susan and Adeline stared at each other before the younger woman quirked up an eyebrow. The waitress turned away, leaving her alone in the corner booth.

I sat in my car overlooking the lake, watching the people gathering around an older gentleman who seemed to be yelling about something. Quickly grabbing my notebook, I climbed out of my car, walking over with breakneck speed as I caught the end of his speech.

“I’m tellin’ ya! I saw a monster in the damn water!”

“Dad, you’re embarrassing me.”

What I could only assume was his son clapped his shoulder, pulling the man out of the crowd and leading him back to the bait shop by the shore of the lake. Everyone went back to their business, leaving me standing there completely out of place.

Lake Gravity Falls. One of the last places Adeline was spotted before she went missing.

I squinted my eyes, looking at the islands that seemed to sit in the middle, cliffs climbing and cutting into the sky. The boats littered the water, nature being the only noise filling my ears. Looking towards the shack, I let myself wander that way, away from the curious looks the townspeople gave me.

“Hello?” Opening the door, I listened to the staticky radio play in the corner, the smell of decaying meat filling my nose. Covering the lower half of my face, I let out a small gagging noise.

“What can I do for you?”

The man behind the counter’s face was hidden by hair and a giant hat. He was leaned against the glass top with one elbow, his body turned to face mine.

“Uh, I actually wanted to speak to your father. About his.. ravings.”

“Ah.” He spit out some dip, rubbing his bottom lip. “Let me get him. He’s out back.”

I watched him walk towards the door before quickly catching him with a cough.

“Actually I’ll just go talk to him. I might be able to get him to give me answers if it’s just us two.”

“All you’ll get from him, lady, is his crazy. But sure, go for it.”

Letting out a gentle sigh, I guided myself out the backdoor to be greeted by the smell of a cob pipe burning. The older gentleman sat in a rocking chair, staring into the woods as his lips twitched around the stem. Smoke billowed around him, almost giving him the aura of a wise sage.

“Hello?” I called out, closing the door behind me as I saw him jump slightly in his chair.

“Well I’ll be! You’re that reporter everyone’s talkin’ about in town!”

“I…” I let myself pause, squinting slightly. I don’t remember seeing this man in town, or even relatively close to the diner. He met my gaze, not breaking it as he took another puff. I waved away the smoke, giving a soft clearing of my throat.

“Yes. Yes I am. My name is Eleanor Parker and I was wondering if I could ask a few questions about an individual?”

“I can’t guarantee a remembrance but! I sure can try!” He let out a laugh, slapping his knee. “Who we talkin’ about?”

“Adeline Girard-Corduroy. She disappeared a couple years back but we don’t have any suspect of foul play.” I opened her case file, not noticing the man’s face starting to glaze over with disassociation. “She married Dan Corduroy and has 4 children with him. I’m looking for any eyewitnesses that might have seen her a few hours before her disappearance. The last recorded person I have was a day before-“

“The agents took her.”

I felt my eyebrows furrow, looking up at the old man. He refused to make eye contact, and my fingers fidgeted with the papers.

“Agents? What agents are you talking about?”

He wouldn’t speak anymore, and I stood up, brushing off my pants.

“Well… thanks. I guess.”

He quickly grabbed my wrist, causing me to startle as he leaned forward in his chair.

“It’s not safe to be chasin’ ghosts around here, understood? Sometimes ghosts deserve to stay that way.”

Pulling my wrist away, I stared at him until he broke eye contact to look back into the trees. I didn’t want to know what he meant by that, and I didn’t want to know why he kept looking that way.

Adeline arrived at the lake, nearly empty except for a single boat treading the water. Her cigar hung from her lips, thick and treading smoke. For a moment, her green eyes sparkled as she remembered when her mother found out about her new habit. Always trying to fit in with her brothers, she said.

Holding it steady in between her lips, Adeline put her hair up into a bun, tucking it underneath her trapper hat.

“Alright, fishing it is.”

Walking to the cabin that sat beside the lake, she watched as a little boy ran out, a man with wild eyes stepping forward through the door.

“Now you get back here- Oh! Now what can I do for you on this fine afternoon?”

“Renting a fishing boat. You got one available?” Adeline held the cigar down, just in case the smell was offensive to the gentleman standing before her. He eyed her for a moment, taking in the strange choice of attire before stepping to the side.

“Please, come in. The boats are docked on the side but you can pay in here.”

She treaded carefully on the wood planks, making sure to not get her heel stuck in an eye of the wood. Pulling her wallet out along the way to the counter, she quickly pulled out a $20, handing it to the gentleman.

“For any damages caused.”

“Damages? Ma’am you haven’t even gone fishing yet!” He looked shocked to say the least, hand tight fisting the bill all the same.

“It’s just in case, Cherie.”

She strutted out, letting her cigar rest back in her mouth, walking through a cloud of smoke and out the door, going towards her car and then the boat.

The bag was resting on her knee as the other boat on the water came towards her own. She side eyed it, making sure it wasn’t anyone who was going to hit her rental or steal her catch. Whatever would be left of it that is.

“You don’t have a pole!”

The voice was aggressive in volume, but tender in tone. Adeline turned her head fully to catch the eye of the red headed man with kind amber eyes, freckles splotching his cheeks. A beard was growing in, a beanie tucked under his thigh.

“I know.”

“But…. you.. need a fishing pole?”

“Do I now.” Adeline raised an eyebrow at her future husband, a smirk growing on her lips. He could tell it wasn’t a question, but more of a genuine comment. He fiddled with his own fishing pole as he watched her take out a stick of dynamite, flicking her cigar quickly to light the fuse.

Boom.

Not only did the dynamite explode, but so did his heart.

Fish shot out of the water as Adeline laughed, landing in her boat and in his own. They locked eyes and he reached out his hand, a smile plastered on his face.

“Daniel! Daniel Corduroy! Everybody calls me Dan though!”

Adeline eyed his hand for a moment before reaching out her own.

“Adeline. Adeline Girard. No one calls me anything.”

Her eyes sparkled with mischief, and he couldn’t help himself. Dan absolutely had to make a fool of himself then and there.

“Want to go out to dinner with me?”

“So forward!” She laughed, Dan’s face going as red as his hair before she leaned over, puffing a little bit of maple smoke into his face before lighting another stick, tossing it over her shoulder. “What time?”

Months had gone by. Adeline was making money with her demolition job, her last one taking place in a week. An old church outside of town, beautiful, but an absolute mess.

As the young blonde sat next to her boyfriend, she leaned into his side, lacing her fingers through his own.

“Dan… I have a question for you.”

She stared at their interlocked hands before looking up at him, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

“Yeah?”

“I have a job coming up here soon, and I don’t really have anything holding me back from going home. Except you.”

Dan looked at her, raising an eyebrow as he listened intently.

“Want to make this thing official? It’ll make it harder to leave… I might just ask for an official job here.”

“Are… are you asking me to marry you?”

“You’re so thick skulled! Yes! I’m asking if you’d like to marry me!”

Adeline laughed as Dan leaned in, capturing her lips in his own. Squeezing her hand tight, he nodded in agreement.

“Do you want rings? A ceremony?”

“Nothing too official… but you know that old church outside of town?”

“Of course I do. My parents got married there. Nearly everyone’s folks got married there.”

“It’s my last job. Blowing it up. Maybe… maybe we can have it there. After all, wouldn’t it be fitting? Our relationship began with a bang after all!”

Dan snorted, letting out a belly deep laugh as he looked at her.

“You’re absolutely crazy darlin’. But yes, let’s start off with a bang.”

It’s been years now since she arrived in town. Adeline settled with her new tight knit family, a young daughter heading the brood of four. Wendy. She always liked the name Wendy, and she wanted it for her daughter.

The daughter who was so much like her. The daughter with the same vibrant green eyes and tenacious attitude. She was going to be a little hell raiser and she knew it.

Adeline smiled to herself as she locked up the diner door, turning to wave to who she thought was Susan. The robed figure stared from under the streetlamp, their face completely hidden in the shadows.

“Hello?”

Before Adeline could say anything, her vision was blurred. Wrong place, wrong time.

Walking along the bustling sidewalks, I was met with curious looks from quite a few citizens. Things were strange in this town, but nothing stranger than this club that was held in reverence.

Remembering things here wasn’t a good idea, according to the man at the lake. In the last few hours I researched them. The society of the blind eye. Keepers of memories no one wanted, or who they assumed would not want them. Lapses of memory were fairly common with everyone I had spoken to so far.

But how? There’s no way of erasing memories. No logical way anyway.

I didn’t fail to notice the feeling of dread digging its way into my stomach as I crossed the threshold of the town’s history museum. I saw a shadow pass by, and ran for it, skidding against the tile as I saw it round the corner.

As my hand rested against the wall, my vision went blurry mid turn. Finding myself suddenly unable to see, I reached out, trying to find something, anything, to make this situation better.

“HELLO?!”

I didn’t find salvation. I found a pair of hands.

“Shh.”

Adeline and Eleanor moved as one now.

Strapped in the chair. Sworn to secrecy, an oath they both would not remember.

Only separated by time and one detrimental flaw in the beginning. These hands were experienced with the memory gun, those were not.

As the women stumbled out the doors and into the moonlight, blinking eyes staring out into the night, one would head back to her car, wondering and questioning why she was in this Podunk of a town to begin with. The other would fade from the lives of those she loved, found and forgotten by another who she never met.

#paid commission #my writing #gravity falls #gravity falls au #gravity falls oc #eleanor belongs to me! oc is commissioners own work with my name addition and slight flair!

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lilacmoon83 · 4 years

Text

Mysterious Fathoms Below

Also on Fanfiction.net and A03

Chapter 9: A New Life

The years passed quickly, as David excelled in his job of a bail bondsman, alongside Cleo Fox. She had been in the business a long time and was immediately amazed at his uncanny ability for finding people. Unfortunately, without much to go on, they had yet to find the young boy he was really looking for. And as the years passed, he knew that young boy was probably nearing adulthood by now, as was his own daughter.

For the most part, they had settled nicely into the Land Without Magic for a second time. They settled into a small coastal town in Maine, with a house on the water and fairly secluded a few miles from the nearest town. It allowed them plenty of time in the water, while maintaining their lives on the mainland.

David was successfully running Cleo's east coast operation, while she ran the west coast operation out of Portland, Oregon. He traveled some to assist her with difficult cases, but was home most of the time, much to Snow's and his children's liking.

Since they settled down almost six years ago, the kids had settled as well. They were a normal family to everyone in town, traditional and tight knit and no one was any the wiser about their magical secret. The kids loved their school and had lots of friends. Snow loved working at the local daycare with small children, caring for them and teaching the preschoolers, while David worked in Cleo's office she kept there as the hub for the eastern seaboard. Their reputation was good enough that those from bigger cities often sought them out to find people instead of the firms in the cities.

That afternoon, he arrived home to find his family playing in the water on a warm, sunny summer day. It brought a smile to his face, as he watched their older children play in the water. Emma was almost eighteen now and he could hardly believe it. Ben was fourteen and the twins, Hunter and Rose were twelve. Perhaps the most incredible vision though was his wife, as she sat in the surf, her brilliant white mermaid tail splashing in the water and her long raven hair cascading down her back. He watched the way her beautiful face lit up, as their youngest ones swam around in the shallow water with her. Their cherub faces made his heart soar as much as hers did, as their three-year-old daughter, Astrid, swam around her mother and their baby son, Jackson, clung to Snow while splashing in the water. A lot of people thought they were crazy for having seven kids, but neither of them would change it for the world. A large family is what they both had always wanted and it was all the joy they could have imagined and more.

"Daddy!" Astrid called, as she flipped her lilac colored tail and swam toward the surf.

"Look Jack...Daddy's home," Snow cooed, as their son called out to him too. He smiled and looked around. When he saw that no one was around, per usual on their small property, he shed his shirt and walked into the water, before removing the pendant around his neck. His red tail appeared and he put his arms around Snow, as their lips met in a passionate kiss.

They were unaware though of the photos being snapped of them from afar…

~*~

"Okay...yeah, this sounds like a big job though. I'm going to need to call in my partner to help. The fees will be significant," Cleo said, from her office in Portland.

"This one has skipped bail twice and has stashed some really pricey watches from Phoenix in Portland. Your fees will be covered and you'll be well compensated," the man assured.

"Okay...I'll be in touch," she replied, as he ended the call and then made a call to David.

~*~

"Well...there's my favorite family," a woman said, as they entered the town diner that evening. Her name was Betty and since they had come to town, they had been her favorite customers. She loved children, so naturally, she got excited every time they came to the diner. She always made sure the large circular booth was available for them to sit in and promptly fetched the highchair for little Jack.

"Thanks Betty," Margaret, as she was known to the town, said, as she put the baby in the highchair.

"I see you lot when swimming again today. If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were all half fish," she mentioned. Snow and David shared a secret smile, while the kids giggled.

"We do love the water…" David agreed, as they failed to notice the two men spying them from another table.

"I'll get your orders in right away," she said.

"Are you sure?" one man said, as they observed the attractive couple and their brood of equally attractive children.

~*~

"I'm telling you...I know what I saw. The kids...they walked into the water and then they had tails. The parents...they removed something from around their necks once they were in the water and then they had fish tails too," the other man said.

"You sound crazy," the first man accused.

"I know...but I snapped some photos and they're developing right now back in my darkroom," he said.

"Fine...let's go. If you are right...then we are looking at a fortune to the right buyer," he replied, as he looked at the family.

"A family of mermaids...we'll be swimming in money," he said deviously.

~*~

Their food was delivered promptly and they enjoyed their meal together as a family. As they were finishing, David's phone rang and he answered.

"Hey Cleo…" he answered.

"Portland, Oregon?" he asked, as he listened to her.

"Okay…we'll see you there," he replied, as he hung up the phone.

"You have a case?" Snow asked.

"Yeah, this time all the way in Oregon. It's a big payday," David replied.

"That's so far away," she mentioned. He smiled.

"I know, that's why she suggested that we make a family trip out of it. We can drive across the country and then you and the kids can have fun in Portland while I'm working," he replied. She smiled.

"Oh, that sounds perfect!" Snow gushed.

"Do they have an ocean in Portland?" Hunter asked.

"They sure do. It's a different ocean and a bit further from the city, but we'll find it," he promised, as the kids all got excited at the prospect of a family trip together.

~*~

Neal watched the cops at the corner and cursed inwardly. He had really done it this time. The watches he stole for a quick profit had backfired. He thought that skipping town in Phoenix was enough to take the heat off, but it had caught up to him in Portland. And now he was trapped. He was going to need some serious help escaping to Canada without being caught and right now, he had no means to do so. That meant laying low for a while and hoping they didn't find him.

Since escaping Neverland and landing in this new place, things had not been good. He avoided the system, not wanting anything to do with any foster families and had been living mostly on the streets for the last few years. He stole to get by and hated it, but it was the only way to stay alive. Sometimes, even Neverland and dodging Pan was better than this land. He went the other way and hoped that found a way to escape soon or he would be going to prison for a very long time.

~*~

He had been convinced by the photos and now he and his new partner watched the family pack their van for a family trip.

"Did you get a hold of your boss?" the portly man asked.

"Yes...and the Madam was very interested in the photos you took. She wants them," the thin man replied.

"Then we're going to have to follow them. Looks like a family trip," the portly one said.

"Don't worry, the Madam is wiring me the funds for anything needed. She wants us to bring them to Seattle once we have them," the thin one replied.

"Well…I heard they're headed for Oregon. That won't be far to go once we get them," the portly one said.

"Then this will be the beginning of a beautiful partnership, Jasper," he said, addressing his new partner.

"Indeed it will, Horace,"

~*~

"Well...we're all packed and ready," Snow said, as she came out of the house with the baby in her arms.

"Okay...and I've got the route all mapped out," he said, as they shared a kiss. He smiled at her, as she put the baby in his car seat and buckled him in, before they both got into the front seat.

"Wow...you plotted out all the beaches along the way," Snow gushed, as she looked over their route.

"Of course...we may have to drive there, but I made sure there will be plenty of water time for this family," he replied, as they kissed again, before he put the van in gear and they began their journey…

#Snowing #SnowxCharming #Charming family #AU #Snowing mermaid AU #romance #adventure #family #mysterious fathoms below

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