#They served decades in prison for a crime they say they didn’t commit

[reasoningdaily]

From left: Charles Turner, Timothy Catlett, Levy Rouse, Chris Turner, Russell Overton and Clifton Yarborough, attend the funeral for their friend Kelvin “Hollywood” Smith on Oct. 27 in Capitol Heights, Md. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

https://wapo.st/3PFKslz

Clifton Yarborough patted his chest as he turned his gray Honda into a narrow alley in Northeast Washington. “My heart racing fast,” he said. He eased the car to a stop and pointed to a garage behind a rowhouse. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s where it happened.” There was graffiti on the weathered plywood door. Otherwise it looked ordinary. There was nothing to indicate what had unfolded in the small structure 39 years earlier.

The alley in the H Street neighborhood is around the corner from the home where Yarborough, 56, grew up, but this is the first time he has been here since he was a teenager. He didn’t want to stay long. He put the car into drive and pulled away from the place where a 49-year-old mother of six from the neighborhood was found dead in 1984, the victim of a brutal beating and rape.

Then 16, Yarborough was the youngest of 17 people arrested in the case. He and seven other young men from the neighborhood would eventually be tried, convicted and incarcerated for a combined 258 years. Justice, it seemed, was served.

But the men have insisted all along that they had nothing to do with the rape and the murder. That they didn’t know anything about those crimes. That their trial wasn’t fair.

Kelvin Smith, who served 35 years before being released in 2019, died at home in October. Steven Webb died in prison in 1999 after a stroke. He had served 15 years. The other six men — Yarborough, Christopher Turner, Charles Turner, Timothy Catlett, Levy Rouse and Russell Overton — are now in their 50s and 60s.

They have completed their sentences and been released from prison. The final one got out just last year.

But this ghastly crime hangs over them. They are free, but not free.

What they want, they say, is for their names to no longer be associated with one of the most vile crimes in Washington history. And they want the government that prosecuted and jailed them to admit it was wrong for not sharing evidence they believe would have helped them prove their innocence.

All of the men now live in Washington or its close-in suburbs. They have jobs — forklift driver, maintenance worker, parking lot attendant, janitor, warehouse worker.

They have reconnected with their families and friends and are trying to shape a new life in a city and world that has changed immeasurably from the city and world in which they grew up. Their newly free lives are dominated by thoughts of what they’ve lost and what they can still salvage.

“What hurts is my character being slandered, that people say I would do such a thing that I didn’t do, especially to someone I knew,” Yarborough said. “Clear this. Make it be known we didn’t commit this crime.”

Rouse says it is hard for him to trust anyone. He was 19 when he was arrested and had a newborn son,whom Rouse wouldn’t see in person until his release in 2019.

“I wrote letters to him a lot, and when he grew older he would write me back, saying — Dad, I know you’re innocent and I’m always going to love you,” Rouse said. “It hurts me inside to know he had to go through that.”

Rouse says he and his 39-year-old-son are now the best of friends, making up for time they were apart.

Since getting out of prison, Rouse has focused on moving forward.Now a maintenance worker, he has completed computer courses from a career training school. He also counsels other former prisoners who have recently been released. And in September, he got married. “It’s wonderful, wonderful,” Rouse said. “Best thing that ever happened to me.”

But even as he looks forward, Rouse can’t let go of the past. “It’s important the truth comes out because they know they was wrong,” he said.

Charles Turner lives at brother Christopher’s apartment in Southeast Washington. He has a full-time maintenance job at the Martin Luther King Jr. library in downtown Washington. He’s determined to reclaim his time.

“They took 36 years from me, so I plan to be out here alive for another 36 years,” Turner said. “I’m gonna get those 36 years back.”

Turner, 59, said he feels cheated that he was locked up when his mother died and that he couldn’t say goodbye to her. And he laments never having children.

“Being locked up, they took my bloodline,” he said. “No one is gonna ever know I was even here.”

Christopher Turner, nicknamed “the Mayor” by other defendants, was the first to bereleased. He was given a shorter sentence than the others because he had completed high school and had no criminal record. In prison, he spent much of his time reading and learning about the law. While incarcerated and in the years since his release in 2010, he has led the effort to clear his name and those of his fellow defendants.

Along the way, Christopher Turner has also become an advocate for prisoners. He is on the board of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, which works to prevent and overturn convictions of innocent people, and Free Minds, a D.C.-based book club and writing workshop for incarcerated youths.

The men’s effort to continue lobbying for their innocence while reentering the workforce and reconnecting with their families and their city, Christopher Turner admits, is wearying.

“I know the guys are really tired,” he said recently over breakfast at a Capitol Hill diner. “We’re trying to move on with our lives. But this is still a fight we need to fight. As long as there’s air in my body, I’ll continue to fight.”

The men compare their case to that of the Central Park Five, the five teenagers from Harlem who were convicted of the 1989 rape of a woman and spent years in prison before DNA evidence and a confession led to their convictions being overturned in 2002.

But this murder occurred before the use of DNA in solving crimes began, and no evidence that can be tested survived. And unlike the Central Park case, no one else has come forward to admit guilt.

Over the years, the men have unsuccessfully appealed their convictions.

In 2017, at the Supreme Court, their attorneys argued that prosecutors violated the Brady rule by not turning over evidence to the defense. The court ruled 6-2 that the withheld evidence would not have made a difference in the outcome of the case. After that decision, the men were out of options.

But their attorneys and some of the most powerful law firms in Washington have stuck with them.

“I wouldn’t represent them if I thought they had any involvement in this whatsoever,” said Shawn Armbrust, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and Christopher Turner’s attorney. She has been working with the defendants since 2005. “Our standard is — you can’t have any involvement in the crime. If we find evidence pointing to guilt, we’re done.”

But there are no legal appeals left to file. No courtroom arguments left to make. No witnesses left to cross-examine.

For the defendants and their attorneys, their only hope may be a presidential pardon. And that, all of them acknowledge is, a long shot.

Crime was a problem in Washington in 1984, especially in the busy, blue-collar corridor of H Street NE. Murders in D.C. were nowhere near the astronomic levels they would climb to in the late 1980s and ’90s, but they weren’t rare either.

Among them, one murder stood out: The Oct. 1, 1984, killing of Catherine Fuller.

Fuller was 49, Black, a married mother of six who lived a short walk from the alley behind H Street where she was found dead on that rainy October day. She had been beaten and sodomized with a pipe-like object. It tore through her intestines and abdomen, according to medical examiners. Her ribs were broken. Fuller weighed less than 100 pounds. She had been robbed of $50 and some jewelry.

Years later, her son David Fuller would remember her as “a loving, caring parent.” His mother, he told The Washington Post in 2017, “was the type of person who would go out of her way to do anything for you.”

The pressure on police and politicians to find the culprit — or culprits — was intense. The most promising information came the first day, when a street vendor who found the body told police he saw two men acting suspiciously in the alley, one with an object under his coat. They ran when police first approached the scene.

But there was little else to go by. Then a couple of anonymous phone tips. A caller referenced the “8th and H Crew” and mentioned a few names.

Three days after the murder, detectives, acting on the tip, picked up Yarborough. Then 16, Yarborough was a special-educationstudent at Eastern High School. His IQ was below 70, and he had difficulty reading. He was interrogated for hours without a lawyer or a parent present.

Yarborough said he told police he didn’t know anything about the crime, but he eventually signed a statement that provided some details and names. He would later say he signed the document because he was scared.

Despite the early leads, the investigation stalled. It was not until late November that a 16-year-old girl gave police the name of Calvin Alston, a person she said had talked about committing the crime. The girl later acknowledged being high on PCP when she was interviewed by police. Alston denied being involved but eventually gave police information about Fuller’s death and a few names, including Yarborough’s. Later Alston would testify that police threatened him with life in prison if he didn’t admit to a role in the murder.

The detectives brought Yarborough back in.

According to Yarborough, the questioning this time was relentless. He said detectives slammed him against a desk, injuring his knee, and held his head above a flushing toilet. The detectives denied those allegations under oath and said the injury was preexisting.

Eventually, Yarborough said, the detectives wore him down. He said they read a statement to him given by Alston and told him to corroborate it. Yarborough agreed, and his statement was videotaped.

“The homicide people interrogated me to a point where I wanted to do anything to get out and go home,” Yarborough said, sitting at a Starbucks across from a Whole Foods on a revitalized H Street that bears little resemblance to the neighborhood in which he grew up. “First they had to calm me down from crying.”

His attorneys would later argue that Yarborough’s testimony was coerced. The two lead detectives and a police officer who worked on the case either declined or did not respond to interview requests for this story.

Yarborough’s statement became crucial evidence that helped lead to the arrests and conviction of his fellow defendants and cemented the idea in the public mind that the crime was the work of a ruthless gang, the “8th and H Crew.” All of those charged, however, said there was no gang. Some of them didn’t even know one another.

Ultimately, 10 people were brought to trial in 1985 for Fuller’s murder. After deliberating for seven days, the all-Black jury found two defendants not guilty and six guilty. The jury told the court it was “impossible” to reach a unanimous verdict for Christopher Turner and Russell Overton.

The judge ordered the jury to continue deliberating, and two days later, the jury returned with guilty verdicts for both men. It had taken “40 to 50” more votes to reach a unanimous decision, jurors told reporters later.

Christopher Turner, then 20, was stunned. He was so certain he would be found innocent that he had turned down a plea deal that would have required him to serve just two to six years. Taking a plea deal for something he hadn’t done was something he objected to on principle, he said. “People still ask me, do you regret not pleading guilty and going on with your life? And my answer is no, emphatically no, I don’t regret it.”

David Fuller was 16 when his mother was killed. He knew a few of the defendants. Christopher Turner was three years older and helped manage Fuller’s go-go band. Yarborough was the same age and lived around the corner. Yarborough said he used to bring pies his grandmother made over to the Fuller house.

Fuller, who now lives in Missouri, originally agreed to be interviewed for this article but then did not respond to messages. The Post was unable to locate Catherine Fuller’s other children. But David Fuller talked about his mother and the case in 2017 for a Post story.

By then, he said, he had found a measure of peace with what had happened. “Even with loss you got to keep going,” he said.

And he acknowledged that some or all of the men may not have been responsible. “My heart goes out to some of the gentlemen if they were falsely accused, because they suffered,” he said.

Russell Overton, 65, folds his 6-foot-7-inch frame into an armchair in the living room of his 85-year-old mother’s tidy Silver Spring home. He has lived here with his sister since his release in March 2022.

Overton, the last of the men to be released, was the oldest of them when they were arrested. He was 26 then and had children. Now he is a great-grandfather and getting to know his family as a free man.

The adjustment hasn’t been easy. Overton still sleeps with his door open and wakes at every sound. He keeps his toiletries in a container on his dresser the way he did when he was locked up. He has a job at a warehouse where he is doing well but is still coming to terms with engaging in pleasantries and trusting people.

“What happened to [Catherine Fuller] was wrong. I’m sorry that it happened. Sympathy for her family,” he said in an interview, leaning forward in his chair. “But there’s no way I can have remorse when I never did have anything to do with it. I wasn’t no angel out there. I got in trouble here and there, but I didn’t do this.”

The system, he said, failed them all.

In 1995, while still in prison, Christopher Turner wrote to Post reporter Patrice Gaines, who had helped cover the original trial. He told her he wanted her to know he was innocent. Gaines looked into the murder and made discoveries that raised questions.

In 2001, Gaines reported that Harry Bennett, called as a witness in the case, told her he had falsified testimony to avoid a life sentence.Bennett said the prosecutor, Jerry Goren, “painted a picture for me. All I had to do was say yes.”

Gaines would also learn a critical piece of information never turned over to the defense. Three weeks after Fuller’s murder, a woman named Ammie Davis told police she had been in the alley that day shooting heroin and saw a man she knew named James Blue. She said Blue savagely attacked a woman and stole money from her in the alley. The week before the Fuller trial began, Blue fatally shot Davis. He died in prison in 1993.

The defendants in the Fuller case challenged their conviction in D.C. Superior Court in 2012 and learned during discovery that another key piece of information was never turned over.

One of the men who ran when police first approached the scene was James McMillan, a 19-year-old who was new to the neighborhood. Three weeks after Fuller’s body was found, McMillan was arrested in two violent assaults and robberies of middle-aged women in the neighborhood. But even though he had been identified at the scene by three witnesses, prosecutors did not share that information with the defense in the Fuller case.

Eight years after Catherine Fuller’s murder, McMillan would be arrested for the murder and forcible sodomy of a woman in an alley in the same H Street neighborhood. He is serving a life sentence in federal prison in Virginia. He declined through prison officials to be interviewed and previously denied any responsibility for Fuller’s death.

During the 2012 proceedings, Goren, the prosecutor, admitted that evidence had been withheld from the defendants. He testified that he didn’t pass on information about McMillan because he did not believe it relevant enough. He also said he didn’t tell the defense about Davis because he didn’t find her story credible.

Reached briefly by phone at his California home earlier this year, Goren declined an interview.

D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick H. Weisberg ultimately rejected the bid for a new trial, saying the “petitioners have not come close to demonstrating actual innocence.” In 2015, the D.C. Court of Appeals confirmed that ruling. The Supreme Court decision in 2017 ended any hopes the men had of having their convictions overturned.

For some who have followed the case, the Supreme Court ruling was the culmination of a process that has been flawed at every step of the way.

“It’s reaffirmed for me that there are some deep systemic problems in the legal system and that those need to be fundamentally changed,” said Thomas L. Dybdahl, whose book, “When Innocence is Not Enough: Hidden Evidence and the Failed Promise of the Brady Rule,” tracks the legal journey of the Fuller murder defendants in the context of examining Brady disclosure requirements.

Dybdahl argues that even though the Brady rule requires prosecutors to hand over favorable evidence to the defense, they have little incentive to do so because they face little threat of punishment for not adhering to it.

The defendants in the Fuller case “didn’t want mercy, they wanted justice,” Dybdahl said. “Unfortunately, they didn’t get either.”

In 1985, Michele Roberts was a D.C. public defender representing Alphonso Harris, one of the men charged in Fuller’s murder. Roberts, who retired last year as the executive director of the NBA Players Association, remembers the “intense pressure on the government” to get a conviction. Her client was one of the two defendants to be found not guilty.

While her client went free, Roberts said the evidence withheld from the defendants would have been critical to the outcome of the case.

“If I had what we later discovered … all of them would have walked,” she said. “The most powerful evidence that you can present as a defense attorney, if it’s credible, is to be able to say ‘Not only did my guy not do it, but let me tell you who did.’”

John Williams, a lawyer with the powerhouse Washington firm Williams & Connolly who represents Yarborough and argued the men’s case at the Supreme Court, said one option may be available to the defendants to provide them some measure of justice.

Williams said he and the other attorneys are actively considering petitioning for a presidential pardon. It is a complicated process that could take years, and there is no guarantee they will be successful.

“Those are always long shots,” he said. “But these men are incredibly deserving.”

“They were wrongly labeled as murderers. The system still regards them as murderers,” Williams said. “I understand why they’re continuing to fight, and that’s why we are continuing to fight for them.”

In late October, the six surviving defendants wore suits to the funeral of their gregarious and fun-loving fellow defendant Kelvin Smith, known to all of them by his nickname, ‘Hollywood.’ On a breezy, sunny afternoon at a cemetery in Hyattsville, they walked past rows of headstones and markers to the gravesite. One of Smith’s favorite songs, “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by the Verve, played through a speaker nearby.

Smith was Christopher Turner’s best friend. On the day of the funeral, Turner said he thought about how little freedom his friend had been able to enjoy and how he wouldn’t live to see his name cleared. “I felt bad because I wanted him to have that moment,” Turner said.

On days when he struggles to find the energy for this fight, Turner said, he thinks about Hollywood and about Steven Webb, who died in prison. And he thinks about his fellow defendants and their families and friends, whose lives were forever changed by a horrific crime in a small garage in an alley in Washington almost 40 years ago.

“I’m not even sure what keeps me going,” he said. “I just know there’s a fire burning inside me to right a wrong.”

[mariacallous]

“The Hague’s Hypocrisy,” roared the headline in one of Israel’s mass-circulation dailies. “The Hague’s Disgrace,” blared the competing paper.

Outrage was the most obvious public response in Israel when the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, announced that he’d seek arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of crimes against humanity. Khan’s parallel request to arrest three Hamas leaders didn’t quiet the fury.

Netanyahu, predictably, accused Khan of feeding “the fires of antisemitism.” But even Israeli legal experts who are deeply critical of the prime minister were disturbed that Khan seemed to put Israeli and Hamas commanders in the same category. “It’s unacceptable to create legal equivalence between the attacker (Hamas) and the attacked (Israel),” as one wrote.

I’m an ordinary enough Israeli to share some of that reflexive anger. The world does seem to pay outsized attention to Israeli actions, and to forget which side committed atrocities on Oct. 7, 2023, and ignited this war.

But outrage is a poor tool for judging whether Khan has a case against Netanyahu and Gallant. For me, the key to answering that question is in a name: Theodor Meron.

Before submitting his request, Khan submitted his evidence to a committee of leading experts on the laws of war. They agreed unanimously that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the suspects he identifies have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity within the jurisdiction of the ICC.” Theodor Meron—a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor, jurist, and former Israeli diplomat—is by far the most prominent of those experts.

I first encountered the name “T. Meron” in the Israeli State Archives more than 20 years ago while researching The Accidental Empire, my book on the history of Israeli settlements in occupied territory. His signature appeared at the bottom of a page in a declassified file from the office of the late Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. The top of the page was marked “Most Secret.” What appeared in between pushed me to find out more about him.

Meron was born in 1930 to what he would describe as a “middle-class Jewish family” in Kalisz, Poland. His “happy but, alas, short childhood” ended at age 9 with the German invasion. Somehow, he survived the Holocaust while living in Nazi ghettos and labor camps. Most of his family did not. Soon after the war, at age 15, he managed to immigrate to the city of Haifa in what was then British-ruled Palestine.

For six years, his only schooling had been suffering. The lost years of education “gave me a great hunger for learning,” he’d say later. He completed high school in a new language, then a law degree at the Hebrew University, then a doctorate at Harvard and post-doctoral studies in international law at Cambridge.

In 1957, with no academic position in the offing, he took an offer from the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Just after the Six-Day War in 1967, he was appointed as the ministry’s legal advisor—effectively, the Israeli government’s top authority on international law—as a 37-year-old wunderkind.

A decade and an ambassadorship later, he returned to academia. As for many Israeli scholars, this meant going abroad—in Meron’s case, to New York University’s law school. His legal writing has been described as having “helped build the legal foundations for international criminal tribunals”—starting with the one established by the United Nations in 1993 to deal with crimes committed in the wars following the breakup of Yugoslavia.

By then a U.S. citizen, Meron was appointed as a judge on that tribunal in 2001. He served for several years as its president and on its appeals court. In an interview, he said he found his position “poignant” and “daunting”: the onetime child prisoner of the Nazis now presiding in judgment on crimes including genocide. He has taken particular pride in a ruling that “defined rape and sexual slavery as crimes against humanity.”

Well into his 90s, Meron is again a law professor, this time at Oxford University—as well as an advisor to Khan, the ICC chief, most recently on the case against the Israeli and Hamas leaders.

It is crucial to recall that Khan’s request for warrants is not a conviction. What Meron and the other experts confirmed is that the evidence and the law provide a basis for trying Netanyahu and Gallant, as well as Hamas figures Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh.

The experts’ report rejected any Israeli claim that the International Criminal Court lacks standing. “Palestine, including Gaza, is a State for the purpose of the ICC Statute,” they said. Unlike Israel, it has accepted the court’s jurisdiction. The court therefore can rule on actions in Gaza—and by Palestinians on Israeli territory, the report says.

In a joint opinion piece in the Financial Times, Meron and his colleagues also stressed that “the charges have nothing to do with the reasons for the conflict.” To unpack that: Israel may be fighting a justifiable war of defense—but certain Israelis, including the head of government, may have committed crimes in the way that they’ve conducted that war.

The proposed charges against Sinwar, Deif, and Haniyeh include the crime against humanity of extermination in the killing of civilians in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and the war crimes of taking hostages and of rape.

The central charge against Netanyahu and Gallant is that they engaged in “a common plan to use starvation and other acts of violence against the Gazan civilian population”—in order to eradicate Hamas, free the Israeli hostages, and punish the Gazan population. In other words, impeding humanitarian aid wasn’t a foul-up. It was allegedly an intentional means of waging war.

Khan lists the types of evidence that he gathered—interviews with survivors, video material, satellite images, and more. He did not release the evidence itself. For now, we’re left to rely on the unanimous view of the experts. And there is likely no one on earth more qualified than Meron to judge whether Khan has a solid case. To suggest that Meron is persecuting Israel seems laughable. To claim that he is antisemitic is obscene.

This isn’t a verdict. It’s a reason to take the charges seriously.

In fact, Israel would likely not be in this situation if its government had taken Theodor Meron seriously much sooner—in September 1967, when he wrote the memorandum that I found in the archives.

At the time, Prime Minister Eshkol was weighing whether Israel should create settlements in the territory it had conquered in the unexpected war three months earlier. Eshkol leaned toward reestablishing Kfar Etzion, a kibbutz that had been overrun by Arab forces in 1948. The site was between Hebron and Bethlehem in the West Bank, which had been ruled by Jordan in the intervening years. Eshkol was also interested in settlement in the Golan Heights, Syrian territory that had also recently been conquered by Israel.

In a cabinet meeting, though, the justice minister had warned that settling civilians in “administered” territory—the government’s term for occupied land—would violate international law. Eshkol’s bureau chief asked the Foreign Ministry’s legal advisor to weigh in.

Meron’s response was categorical: “My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” The 1949 convention on protection of civilians in time of war, he explained, barred an occupying power from moving part of its population into occupied land. The provision, he wrote, was “aimed at preventing colonization” by the conquering state.

Nine days later, a group of young Israelis settled at the Kfar Etzion site, with the government’s backing. At first, the settlement was identified publicly as a military outpost. As Meron himself had noted, it was legal to build temporary military bases in occupied territory. But this was a ruse, and it quickly wore thin as the civilian character of new settlements became obvious.

So the government soon depended instead on the argument of two prominent Israeli jurists, Yehuda Blum and Meir Shamgar. They argued that the Fourth Geneva Convention didn’t apply to the West Bank. Since Jordan’s sovereignty there had gone almost entirely unrecognized internationally—so their argument went—it wasn’t occupied territory.

As Meron himself wrote in 2017, 50 years after his original memorandum, this theory doesn’t hold water. The convention isn’t aimed at protecting states and claims of sovereignty. It protects people living under occupation from acts of the occupying power.

This raises the question: What would have happened if Eshkol’s government had gritted its teeth in 1967 and accepted its own lawyer’s opinion?

To start, there’d be no settlements in occupied territory. The entire network of large Israeli suburbs, smaller gated exurbs, and tiny outposts wouldn’t exist. The Israeli military would not need to guard these communities, and Israel would not have invested vast resources in tying itself to occupied territory.

We can’t know if there would now be a Palestinian state next to Israel, or perhaps peace in some other constellation. Settlements have not been the only obstacle to a peace agreement. But they are a major one. Moreover, a portion of the settlements—the ideological exurbs—have been a hothouse for the Israeli radical religious right, utterly opposed to giving up land. The two most extreme parties in Netanyahu’s government are led by settlers and count the settlements as their core constituency. Without the settlements, the odds of Israel avoiding its current predicament would have been better.

Accepting Meron’s opinion back then could also have established a different attitude toward international law among Israeli politicians and military leaders—namely, a position of stringent observance. Perhaps such an attitude would have led Netanyahu and Gallant to conduct the current war in a different way, avoiding the acts now alleged by the ICC prosecutor.

Yet the key word is alleged. A critical element of the crimes that Khan alleges is that they were intentional—that starvation and other causes of civilian death were a policy.

It is indeed possible that Israel’s leaders deliberately prevented food and other basic needs from reaching the people of Gaza—that aid was blocked as a means of pressuring Hamas to release hostages or even to give up rule of Gaza. Hamas has used Gazan civilians as human shields; perhaps Netanyahu sought to use their suffering as a weapon against Hamas.

It’s also possible that the failure to get food to Gazans is a result of multiple factors: of the chaos of battle, Egyptian mistakes, Hamas actions, Israeli soldiers mistakenly firing on aid workers just as they have sometimes mistakenly fired on other Israelis, and of the Israeli government’s incompetence—a continuation of the miserable ineptitude that left Israel unprepared on Oct. 7.

All too many people in the world seem to be certain already which of these possibilities is true, based largely on their prior assumptions or the tsunami of media reports. If Khan ever does manage to bring Netanyahu and Gallant to trial, though, he will need to establish intent with hard evidence.

There is another lesson that I took from finding Meron’s 1967 memo: The best evidence of government intent often lies in documents that stay secret for decades. This is even more true of decisions in war, and it adds to the reasons that Israel itself should be investigating what has happened in Gaza.

It’s unlikely that the International Criminal Court would have access to classified Israeli documents. On the other hand, an Israeli state commission of inquiry into the entire conduct of the war—from the disastrous intelligence failure of Oct. 7 onward—would be able to demand such access, and to call top officials and officers to testify.

An explicit point made in Khan’s announcement is that he would defer to Israel if it were conducting its own “independent and impartial” investigation of the alleged crimes. This is the principle of “complementarity”: The ICC’s jurisdiction applies only when national judicial systems fail to act.

A commission of inquiry isn’t a criminal proceeding. But if Israel were investigating itself, then Khan would have good reason to suspend or end his own investigation.

Within Israel, however, it’s a given that Netanyahu’s government will not instigate an inquiry commission with the necessary independence and wide mandate. That can come only if the country’s intense political crisis leads to the fall of the government and new elections.

Netanyahu would like to use the reflexive public anger against Khan’s request for arrest warrants to restore some of his lost support. But the rational reaction is the opposite: The potential ICC case is one more reason to end Netanyahu’s rule and investigate all facets of the war.

Or to put it differently: In 1967, at the start of the occupation, an Israeli government ignored a warning from a remarkably young advisor on international law. Today, Israel needs to heed a new warning from a remarkably old authority on the laws of the war—the same man.

[bagelbun333]

Writing WIP

I've never done this before but thanks for the tag @tanaleth

Idk who to tag but anyone can feel free to join in ^-^

I happened to have this Wrightdot fic WIP that’s just been collecting dust for more than a year, so I might as well use this as an opportunity to share what I have so far c:

Major spoilers for aa3, minor spoilers for aa4, aa5, and aa6.

For context, this takes place after aa6.

Diego Armando is a man who had far from an ordinary life. From being poisoned in a courthouse cafeteria, to being comatose, to waking up alone, to taking a life of another person, then to rotting in jail… alone. But his life didn’t end there — no, far from it. His sentence was lessened down to 10 years due to his circumstances. But that’s not to say it wasn’t a long time, it’s still a whole decade out of his life after all. Five years in a coma and ten years in prison, a third of his life just… gone.

He was a broken shell of the man he used to be — he still is to be honest — but there was one man who saved him, a certain spiky headed idiot, who goes by the name of Phoenix Wright. He’s the one who put him in prison in the first place, but that didn’t matter to him. Phoenix saved him from further descending into madness, into Hell. Even though he still killed a person, he deserved to be saved. He had to be saved from the vengeful persona that was ‘Godot’, because he wasn’t the man that he truly was — Godot was an inner demon that was slowly but surely taking over his mind and body, something that Mia would’ve hated to see.

Once his prison sentence was finally over, he actually had someone waiting for him… several people in fact. More than he ever had in his life. Some people he recognised and others he had never even seen before. Of course, there was Phoenix, Maya and Pearl… but who was the little magician, the horn headed boy and the futuristic space girl? Turns out, they were Phoenix’s subordinates and family. It was strange to be welcomed back with open arms. He never thought he would have anyone waiting for him ever again, especially not after that unforgettable crime he’d committed.

He eventually settled into the Wright Anything Agency as an assistant — and with Phoenix and Edgeworth pulling a few strings, he was actually allowed to be a prosecutor again. If Blackquill was allowed to prosecute while serving his sentence, so could he. Phoenix even let Diego live in the same house with him, because he had nowhere else to go.

After months of taking cases, Diego was slowly getting his swing back. He often took cases against his colleagues — including Phoenix himself. Diego was so good at handling cases that he even gave Phoenix a hard time, he was a tough guy to beat. Even though they’re not enemies anymore, Diego still loved making Phoenix fall apart like a house of cards — but not in a vengeful way, more like in a playful way. He was happy that he still had that fire in him and could still embarrass Phoenix in a tease.

His new life wasn’t 100% perfect though, he still has his drawbacks. His health was far from stable. He still relies on his visor for vision of course. Not only that, but he needs to take a concerning amount of medicine every day. Medicine such as blood pressure control, cardiac pills, pain relief, antidepressants, and anti hallucination pills — his hallucinations worsened during his time in prison. Only Phoenix knows about the amount of medicine he needs to take, and it does concern him quite a bit. Diego doesn’t want anybody else to know about it so Phoenix promised to keep quiet. Maya and Pearl already know about his broken down body because of the poisoning incident and why he had to wear a mask, but they didn’t know the extent of how bad his health actually was — especially not his hallucination problems.

He also has a lot of trouble remembering things sometimes. Like random memory lapses that just hit him out of nowhere. Most of the time they aren’t too bad, like sometimes he just loses his train of thought. But other times he forgets too much. Trucy witnesses this at home every now and then. She notices Diego stressing out, forgetting where he puts things, and even forgetting things that happened five minutes prior. Sometimes Trucy would ask her dad about it. “What’s wrong with him? Is he okay?” She would ask, but Phoenix could only respond with “We all have days like these, it happens…” then later he said “It’s a long story…” Trucy was just left confused and a little worried, but she decided not to question it further.

While living with Phoenix and his daughter, Diego felt like he was part of a new family. It felt like he belonged somewhere. When he first found out that Phoenix had a daughter, he couldn’t believe it. He was so shocked. People younger than himself were already moving on with life much faster than he was. Everyone else was moving forward while he was just frozen in time. He was like a human artefact, for everyone to gawk at. It made him feel much more inferior to everyone else.

But even so, Trucy treated Diego as if he were her other dad, she even started calling him Papa. This wasn’t a position that he thought he would ever experience, but he greatly appreciated it nonetheless. Trucy loves showing Diego her magic tricks. He was genuinely entertained each time he watched, although he was very confused and concerned when she first showed him her magic panties — he wondered if Phoenix raised her right.

Eventually, one day, during a trial… a scary and unforgettable event took place. Phoenix and Diego were working on a case against each other. Diego had the upper hand on this case as usual, he was making compelling arguments and had hard evidence… but something unexpected happened while he was in the middle of explaining something.

The judge banged his gavel. “Prosecutor Armando, please explain to the court the significance of this evidence.”

“The footprints left at the crime scene only belonged to the defendant and the victim. There were no other traces found at the-” Suddenly Diego went completely out of it and lost his train of thought. He stared blankly at his desk for a solid minute until someone snapped him out of his thoughts.

“Prosecutor Armando? Your evidence?” The Judge asked with a confused expression on his face.

Phoenix looked across at him and immediately knew that something was wrong. Diego was clearly becoming more and more stressed. “Your Honour! I humbly request for a recess! Just for ten minutes. I think… he needs a quick break.”

The Judge nodded. “Very well. The court will now take a ten minute recess.” He banged his gavel.

Diego sat in the prosecutor’s lobby, still clearly out of it. Phoenix and Trucy decided to check up on him while they had the time. Phoenix sat next to him on the sofa. “Hey, are you alright?” He asked, holding his hand.

Diego was rapidly losing his memory. He was so confused when Phoenix sat so close to him. In his head he thought “Why… why is he sitting so close to me?” Then when he suddenly felt Phoenix’s hand on his own, he flinched and hissed at him aggressively. “Don’t fucking touch me, Trite!”

Phoenix gasped at his sudden bitter remark. He covered Trucy’s ears because his fatherly instincts told him to. “Diego… what’s wrong? Why are you acting like this?”

“H-How…?”

“Huh?”

“How do you know my name…?”

Phoenix looked heavily concerned. “W-What?”

“I never told you about- Why do you know this??”

“Arman- Godot! Calm down…”

Trucy moved Phoenix’s hands away from her ears. “Daddy? Papa? Is everything alright?” She asked as she looked at Phoenix and Diego.

The prosecutor was completely baffled by Trucy’s question. It felt like she was referring to him as her “papa”, but how could that be? He had no idea who she was, at least that’s what he thought at the moment anyway.

Phoenix got up and whispered to her. “Ah… I think he’s having another one of those brain farts again. Let me handle this.” Trucy nodded and stepped back while Phoenix tried to sort this problem out.

Diego was looking around the lobby being completely confused. Himself, Phoenix and Trucy were the only ones in the room so that could only mean that Phoenix and himself were Daddy and Papa. “I… I don’t understand… what did you just call me?”

“Papa?” Trucy tilted her head with a bit of worry.

“I-I’m not your Papa…”

“Well… I guess not… but…”

“Godot…” Phoenix interrupted. “Don’t you remember? It’s been six months since you and Trucy met…”

“What are you talking about? Who’s Trucy?”

Phoenix stared at him for a second and then sighed. “Okay, this is worse than I thought…”

Suddenly Gumshoe entered the room, wondering if everything is okay. Unfortunately it wasn’t, so Phoenix asked Gumshoe to ask the Judge for another trial day. Diego wasn’t in any state to prosecute in this trial and a ten minute recess just wasn’t enough time to sort this out.

“Alright, we have an extra trial day. So let’s head home, you need some rest.” Phoenix said, holding his hand out for Diego.

The prosecutor just slapped his hand away as he kept getting more and more confused. “You… But you don’t know where I live??”

“You live with us, Papa…” Trucy said, becoming more concerned.

Diego’s heart sank. He felt ill. He felt like he was in a completely different world. The only familiar face he recognised was Phoenix, but he wasn’t someone he wanted to be on friendly terms with — not to his knowledge anyway. Diego hates him, he wants to humiliate him. So why is Phoenix being so friendly and openly concerned about him? Why is there suddenly a little girl who sees him as a father? So many unanswered questions. It’s making his head spin.

Suddenly, Diego stood up and tried leaving the room. His mind was racing with thoughts and he didn’t know what to do about it. Phoenix followed behind him. “Hey! Where are you going?”

“I’m going home! I don’t want you near me!” He hissed.

“But… you live with us now…”

“In what world would I live with you? I hate your guts!”

“Godot, just please listen to me! This is serious.” Phoenix shut the door before Diego could leave.

“And why should I listen to a lowly, worthless scum of a lawyer like you?”

“Because… you’re a different person now. You have a new life.”

“What?”

Trucy took out her phone and showed Diego her lock screen. It was a picture of the three of them at a zoo together. It also pictured Diego carrying her on his shoulders. Once Diego saw this image, he was at a loss for words.

“I…I don’t understand… When did this happen?”

“Just last week, Papa…”

“Huh…?”

“Diego… let us take you home. You’re clearly not well. We’ll try explain everything once we’re there.” Phoenix explained and led the way. Diego sighed and slowly nodded and then followed behind them until Phoenix remembered something. “Ah! Actually, I left some things back at my office. We should go there first before I forget again.”

The three of them headed back to Phoenix’s office, or as it’s now known as The Wright Anything Agency. Once Phoenix opened the door, they were greeted by none other than Apollo and Athena.

“Oh hey, you guys are back early!” Apollo said as he was watering Charley.

“So, who won the case? I’m placing my bet on Mr. Godot!” Athena said in her usual high-spirited attitude.

Diego just became more and more confused as they continued talking. He felt so uncomfortable by everyone acting overfamiliar with him. He’s never seen these people in his life. Why are there so many people being so friendly and close to him? He was becoming overwhelmed. Not only does he not know who these people are, he is also far from used to talking to this many people at once. He’s so adapted to his crippling loneliness, he has no idea how to react to this kind of attention.

Phoenix could tell that Diego was quickly getting stressed. He kept giving confused glances around the room and was nervously sweating. “Not now guys, he’s not feeling too good…” The blue lawyer said as he dragged Diego into the other room and switched the lights off before he quickly shut the door behind him.

Apollo and Athena just gave each other worried glances as they watched their boss pull Godot into the other room. They could hear him breathing heavily, almost as if he was about to have a nervous breakdown. Trucy understands what was going on, but she had never seen it get this bad.

“Ehh… what’s going on?” Athena asked with obvious concern all over her face.

“Papa is… having one of those… hard times again…” Trucy suddenly said.

“Again? This isn’t the first time?” Apollo asked.

“No… well… not exactly. You see, he has these… memory lapses from time to time. Although it’s over small things like forgetting where he puts things and where he was going. And in the trial today, he was in the middle of talking until he suddenly stopped. I thought he lost his train of thought like he usually does but… it got much worse than that.” Trucy obviously didn’t like talking about this particular subject.

“Wait! Don’t tell me…” Athena gasped.

Trucy nodded. “He forgot who I was. He forgot what happened during these past six months. He forgot a lot of things. And I guess seeing you two made him lose it even more…”

“I see. That’s very… unfortunate. That would explain the overwhelming shock and sadness I heard inside his heart.”

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Apollo asked, determined to help.

Trucy just averted her eyes, looking concerned. “I think… we just have to hope that this will all pass soon.”

“I know! When Boss lets him out of the room, I can give him a quick therapy session with Widget!”

“Of course! That little toy has worked wonders in the past!”

Athena pouted. “It’s not a toy, Apollo! It’s my trusty partner!”

Eventually, Phoenix and Godot came back out of the room. Both of them looked exhausted. “Okay, this isn’t working…” Phoenix sighed.

“Is everything alright?” Apollo asked.

“Simply put… no. Everything is not alright.” Phoenix said bluntly.

“What isn’t working, Boss?”

“This is hard to explain… but Mr. Godot isn’t well today. He needs to go home.”

“I sense a lot of discord in his heart. How about I try using Widget on him?”

“Widget…?” Diego mumbled.

“Well, no harm in trying I guess. Go ahead.”

“Wait… what are you doing…?” Diego nervously asked, still trembling.

“I’m going to give you a little therapy session, Mr. Godot.”

“Therapy? I don’t need therapy! Leave me alone!”

“I-It’s okay! It will only take a moment.”

“No! I refuse!”

“We’re only trying to help you…”

“Please! Leave me alone! I don’t know who any of you are!” He yelled desperately.

Phoenix sighed. “Perhaps we should do this another time. He’s being very uncooperative right now.”

“Alright… fine.” Athena sighed and put away Widget.

Phoenix grabbed the case file that was left on the desk and headed for the door with Diego.

Apollo tilted his head. “Mr. Wright? Where are you going?”

“Well I said we’re going home, didn’t I? We came back here because I left one of the files behind. I wasn’t planning on staying long.”

“So you’re staying home for the rest of the day too? What about the trial?” Apollo asked.

“The trial will resume tomorrow. I’m going to prepare for it of course. You two stay here and take care of the office and other errands.” Phoenix said. “Oh, and Trucy? Are you coming with us or are you staying here?”

“Oh! I’ll stay here actually. I can help Polly and Athena out with stuff. You go on ahead with Mr. Godot and sort his problems out.”

Phoenix smiled softly. “Alright, I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

The esteemed lawyer waved goodbye to his little family as he left the premises with his confused and agitated adversary. The three youths were still very concerned about the unusual man’s circumstances, so they hoped that things will blow over without any dire consequences.

[rpf-bat]

My Cellmate’s A Killer

Pairing: Gerard Way x Reader

Genre: Drama, Romance

Summary: Written for Gothtober 2020, Day 22. Prompt: “Prison”.

Gerard is a convict, currently serving time for murder. When he receives a serious injury, the prison warden brings him to the hospital, where you work. As you nurse him back to health, you form an unexpected bond with him. But, can you really trust a killer? 

Trigger warnings for mentions of past violence, and sexual assault. 

The doctors told you that the patient was a criminal. He “lived” at the maximum security prison on the edge of town. Apparently, he’d gotten injured in his cell, and the guards had no choice but to bring him here, to the hospital, to receive surgery. 

You didn’t care. You were a nurse - that meant you would treat any person that needed medical help. You nervously approached the police officer, who was guarding the front door of the hospital room. 

“It’s time for Mister, uhh….,” you glanced down, checking your chart. “Mister Way’s next dose of medicine.” 

“Alright,” the guard nodded, allowing you past. “Be careful in there, miss. He’s a dangerous man.” 

You peered through the window, before entering the room. The dark haired man lay calmly on his cot. His hands were handcuffed behind his head. 

“Was it really necessary to restrain him like that?” you frowned. 

“We can’t allow him an opportunity to escape,” the guard reasoned. 

“He just got thirty stitches in his leg,” you pointed out. “I don’t think he could walk out of here, even if he wanted to.” 

“Just go give him his pills,” the guard huffed. “And stop asking me questions.” 

“Yeah, alright,” you sighed, and entered the room. 

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

“Hi, Mr. Way,” you smiled, trying to treat him like any other patient. “It’s time for another dose of hydromorphone, okay?” 

“Call me Gerard,” the man said softly. “What’s your name, Nurse?” 

“I’m Y/N,” you introduced yourself. You began puncturing the blister pack that contained his painkillers. 

“Is it a pill you’re giving me?” Gerard asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“Yes, sir,” you nodded. “A standard eight milligram dose.” 

“I don’t exactly have a free hand to take it from you,” Gerard chuckled, glancing at the cuffs, that held his hands fast. “What are you gonna do? Feed it to me?” 

You blushed at this suggestion, taking a closer look at him. His long, dark hair framed a pale and handsome face. He looked more like a magazine model, than a convicted felon. The idea of bringing your fingers to his lips sounded….both appealing, and wrong, all at once. 

But, if his hands are incapacitated, you considered, stepping closer to his bedside, what other choice do I have?

“Come here,” Gerard chuckled, “I promise, I won’t bite you.”

“The cop at the door says you’re dangerous,” you hesitated. 

“Well, yeah,” Gerard said dryly, “I was convicted of second-degree murder.”

“M-murder?!” you gasped, jumping back. He confessed to it so casually, as if it was nothing. 

“It’s true,” Gerard said, sounding frighteningly unrepentant. “I killed a man. But, I had my reasons.”

“What reason could possibly justify taking a human life?!” you cried, horrified.

Is he some kind of sociopath?, you wondered, shuddering. Should I be scared, being alone in a room with him like this?

“....Do you really want to know?” Gerard asked, gazing up at you, with his cold, hazel eyes. 

The truth was, you’d always had a weird fascination with true crime documentaries. It intrigued you, hearing the motives, that would drive seemingly ordinary people to kill. 

“...Yes,” you decided, setting down the pills, and taking a seat, beside the bed. “Tell me.” 

“I have this little brother,” Gerard explained. “His name is Mikey. He was in his junior year of high school. Some classmate of his, decided that he looked gay.  Whatever that means. And then he decided, that he needed to beat him up, just for, I don’t know, existing too gay-ly.” 

“That’s terrible,” you frowned. You never understood, why kids bullied each other, for such stupid and prejudiced reasons. 

“They beat Mikey so bad, that they put him in the hospital,” Gerard recalled with a pained expression. 

“I’m so sorry,” you said sympathetically. You wondered if little Mikey was okay. 

“It’s okay,” Gerard shrugged. “I paid the bastard back, by putting him in a grave.” 

You gasped, at this chilling admission. 

“You don’t understand, Nurse,” Gerard said insistently. “The son of a bitch hit my brother in the face so hard, that he went blind in his right eye, for the rest of his life!” 

“That poor kid,” you frowned. 

“Well, he’s not a kid anymore,” Gerard clarified. “I got revenge against the worm who hurt my brother, in 1997. I was sentenced to fifteen years in prison….and I’ve already served seven years of that.” 

“So, you have eight more years to go?” you calculated. 

“Yeah,” Gerard said sadly. “Mikey will be thirty-two, by the time I get out.”

“What does he think about your decision to avenge him?” you asked curiously. You imagined how much you would miss your own siblings, if you were separated from them, for over a decade. 

“He visited me in lockup,” Gerard replied. “He said it brings him peace, knowing the bastard can never hurt him again. So, say what you want. But I ain’t sorry, for putting a bullet between his eyes.” 

“This hospital is the first place you’ve been, other than that prison, in such a long time,” you realized. 

“Yeah,” Gerard nodded. “I ain’t sorry for what I did to get sent here, either.” 

“What did you do?” you asked, eyes wide. 

“I got a new cellmate,” Gerard explained. “His name’s Bert. He just started a five-year sentence, last week.” 

“What did he get convicted of?” you asked curiously. 

“Drug trafficking,” Gerard replied. “One of the harder ones. Prison life is gonna force him to get sober, though. By the looks, withdrawal has been a real bitch for him so far.”

You recalled the symptoms of drug withdrawal, from your medical textbook. Shaking. Vomiting. Rapid heartbeat. Seizures. It was nothing you would wish on anyone - even a dealer, who had sold the poison to others.

“I’m sorry he’s going through that,” you said empathetically. 

“Well, he almost went through something way worse,” Gerard grimaced. 

“What could be worse than that?” you wondered anxiously. 

“We were in the showers,” Gerard recalled, paling. “Some big guy, from Cell Block A, tried uh….he tried to…..touch Bert. In a way he didn’t want to be touched.”

“Oh,” you gasped. You heard about these things happening in men’s prisons - but it was still a sickening thought. 

“I clocked the sick fuck,” Gerard snarled. “Knocked him the fuck out.” 

“....Good,” you said, without thinking. Maybe you shouldn’t encourage a confessed killer, to commit more acts of violence. But, if he hadn’t done what he did, his friend would have been sexually assaulted. Preventing such a thing, was a noble motive. 

“Problem was, the guy was in a prison gang,” Gerard sighed, continuing his story. “After I bloodied him up, all over the bathroom floor, his buddies came after me. One of them had a shiv. Shanked me right in my fucking leg.”

“.....That’s why you needed all those stitches?” you realized. 

“Yeah,” Gerard replied, sinking back into his pillows. “That’s how I wound up here.” 

“Let me give you your pain medicine,” you said, standing up. His stab wound must hurt him terribly. 

“You’re not scared of me?” Gerard asked softly. “After everything I just told you I did?” 

“You���re a violent man,” you considered. “But, I don’t think you’re an evil man, Gerard.” 

“....Really?” Gerard’s eyes widened.

“Truly,” you nodded. “You attacked two men, yes. But, they were bad men. Men who hurt innocent people.” 

“I’d never hurt a nice lady like you,” Gerard whispered. 

You took the pain pill, and put it between your fingers. “Open up,” you instructed. 

Gerard, to your surprise, blushed. 

“What’s wrong?” you asked. 

“I haven’t had  a woman this close to me in seven, long years, Nurse,” Gerard said shyly. “Let alone such a beautiful one.” 

It was your turn to blush. He thought you were beautiful? 

“C-come on, now,” you stammered. “Say ah.”

Gerard opened his mouth wide. You glanced down at his pale pink lips, as you leaned over him. Your hair brushed his cheek, making his whole face go red. 

You gently placed the pill on his tongue. His lips closed around your fingertips for a moment, almost sucking them. You drew back from his touch, startled. 

“What’s the matter, Nurse?” he asked, a sly look on his face, as he swallowed the tablet. 

“I -I told you,” you mumbled, looking away, “my name’s Y/N.”

“Can you do me one more favor, Y/N?” Gerard asked quietly. 

“What is it?” you asked, heart pounding. 

“....Ya think you could scratch my nose for me?” 

You burst into laughter, at his odd request. It wasn’t what you were expecting. 

“I’m serious! It really itches!” 

Overcoming your giggles, you glanced again, at the handcuffs on his wrists. The guard had, perhaps unwisely, left a key on the bedside table. 

“....I really don’t think you need to be tied up like this,” you confessed. 

“They don’t want me on the loose,” Gerard shrugged. “Told ya, I’m a killer.” 

“If I were to unlock the cuffs for you,” you asked, your voice a whisper, “do you promise to stay in your bed?” 

“I won’t try to escape, Y/N,” Gerard said seriously, staring up into your eyes. “I promise you. If I went on the run now, I’d never see my brother again. It’s not worth it to me.” 

“...Then, I’ll do it,” you decided, grabbing the key. You prayed that you were not going to regret this. 

The key turned in the lock, and the cuffs unclicked, releasing Gerard’s hands. He didn’t lunge at you, or jump up. He simply scratched his nose - exactly as he said he would. 

You breathed a sigh of relief. 

“I know you got other patients to look after, Nurse Y/N,” Gerard said, looking suddenly sleepy, as the medication started to kick in. “So...have a good night, alright?”

“Good night, Mr. Way,” you smiled, and walked out of the room. 

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

The next day, you came to provide another dose of hydromorphone. The guard glared at you, as you approached the door. 

“What the hell were you thinking last night?” he asked. “You gave the prisoner an opportunity to escape!” 

“.....Did he escape?” you asked, your heart suddenly aching. Had he manipulated you, into feeling sorry for him, so he could go on the lamb?

“....No,” the guard shook his head. “I guess we got lucky. The prisoner is still sittin’ in there, like a good boy. Exactly where you left him.” 

You breathed a sigh of relief. Gerard had kept his promise. 

“...May I give him his medicine, Officer?” you asked, staring the guard down.

“Yeah, lady,” the cop said, with a defeated look. “You go on ahead.” 

You entered the room, shutting the door behind you. “Hi, Mr. Way,” you greeted. 

“I told you, Y/N,” your new favorite patient smiled, “the name’s Gerard.”

“Hi, Gerard,” you corrected yourself. “How are you feeling today?” 

“Not so good,” Gerard confessed. “As you can see, Officer Jackass put the cuffs back on me this morning.” 

It was true - he was, once again, shackled to the bed. 

“I guess I’ll have to feed it to you again,” you mumbled, cheeks aflame. 

“You kinda looked like you were enjoying it, the last time,” Gerard smirked. 

“N-no!” you denied, blushing harder. 

“Oh, really?” Gerard teased. “Well…..I know I sure did.” 

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” you stammered. You were a medical professional. He was a patient in your care - and a convicted murderer, to boot! You shouldn’t let him flirt with you like this. 

But, although you hated to admit…..he was right. Something about your fingers in his mouth, had been strangely attractive to you. 

“What can I say, Nurse Y/N?” Gerard shrugged. “I got nothing to lose. As soon as I’m healed up, they’re gonna take me back to the penitentiary. I won’t see, or touch, a woman again, for the rest of this decade.” 

“That must be...lonely,” you breathed. 

“I knew the price I was gonna pay, when I got Mikey his justice,” Gerard sighed. “It’s far too late, to start having regrets now. But…..if I could have just one wish….”

“What would you wish for?” you asked, your heart hammering. 

“Just one kiss,” Gerard begged. “Before they lock me back up, and throw away the key.” 

“....I’ll grant your wish,” you decided, in a whisper. You felt so hot, all of a sudden. 

“Wh-What?” Gerard stammered. 

“Sssh,” you shushed him. “Hold still, and say ah for me again.” 

You leaned down, beside his bed, and kissed him softly, on the mouth. Despite the sterile scent of disinfectant in the room, the taste of the moment, was incredibly sweet. 

He struggled against his chains, trying desperately to bring his body, closer to yours. You sat on the bed, closing the gap. 

Now practically in his lap, you kissed him harder. 

“Ahhh!” he cried. 

“....Did I hurt you?” you gasped, pulling away. “Did I sit on the leg that was injured?”

“....No,” Gerard panted. “That…..wasn’t a noise of pain.”

“....Oh,” you flushed. 

“I’d be greedy to ask for a second wish,” Gerard said seductively. “But, if I could have one….oh, pretty, please, Nurse, would you do that again?” 

You nodded, pushing him back, into the bed. “You can wish for it, as many times as you like.”

[diosaadivina]

You & I : A Tokka Short

(Legend of Korra, Book One, Yakone’s trial flashback)

They’d done it. Yakone was finally under arrest and his day in court was set in just a few days. 

“I’ve beaten every trumped-up judge you yahoos have brought against me... and I’ll beat this one too.” Toph knew not this time, this time would be different because he, Sokka, was back as head councilman. 

After an active and exciting arrest, Toph spends the rest of her night at her apartment with Lin. Having their usual tea after dinner, they acknowledge familiar footsteps at the door with their seismic sense. 

“Sokka’s coming!” Toph abruptly states as she sits up excitingly from her relaxed state. She couldn’t help but smile as she remembered the exact reaction she experienced all those years ago during the war. When she realized just how complete and at ease she felt with Sokka’s presence, and how incomplete she felt without it. 

Now, at forty years old, she still gets as excited as she did when she was twelve.

“How are my two favorite earthbenders this evening?” Sokka asks as he makes his way in the room. Lin runs straight into his arms while Toph makes her way to greet him the same. Despite secretly living together for a year now, this was still one of her favorite moments of the day. 

“Mom finally did it!” Lin states as Sokka picks her up, “Her and uncle Aang finally caught the bad guy!!” Despite already knowing the good news, Sokka couldn’t help but join in on Lin’s excitement. 

Toph reassures, “Remember Lin we just arrested him, once he’s proven guilty in court, then this nightmare will really be over.”

Sokka knew the day would come when justice would be served, and he was ecstatic to be the one to determine Yakone’s fate in just a few days. He places his hand onto the small of Toph’s back and moves it gently up and down, a gesture of reassurance that he will make life in Republic City for everyone - and especially for themselves - much more peaceful. They have hidden their relationship from the public for over a year, awaiting for this moment that will bring more ease into their lives. 

After tucking Lin into bed, Toph makes her way into the bedroom and finds Sokka making his way to the bed. 

“There’s something I need to tell you Sokka...” Toph exhales as she sits down on his side of the bed, she feels her own heartbeat begin to accelerate. Sokka notices and distinguishes her facial expression right away, she’s worried. 

“Toph, if this is about the upcoming trial, you have nothing to worry about..” He instantly grabs her hand closest to him, “You and I both know how hard you’ve been busting it out there trying to stop him and his plays-” 

“It’s not about the trial or about Yakone...” Toph lets out a sigh and she takes in a deep breath. Sokka, now concerned, instantly reaches for her other hand, uncertain of what could be worrying her. 

Toph’s heart is practically beating out from her robe as she breathes out, “Sokka, I-I’m pregnant.”

Sokka felt his heart stop for a second, which felt more like an hour. She’s preg- pregnant?...we- we’re pregnant? Toph breaks the silence as she literally only feels his heart rate begin to increase, not feeling the butterflies in his stomach and happiness consuming him internally. 

“I know this is horrible timing, with current events and Republic City’s most important trial coming up...I just couldn’t go on without telling you.” She professes, her voice begins to shake, “I-I’m so sorry this happened Sokka, I-” Sokka cuts her off by bringing her into his arms, holding tightly onto her. He is filled with so much emotion that his tears begin to stream down his face and onto her shoulders. 

“Don’t, you dare apologize..” Sokka murmurs. Toph, now feeing and understanding his reaction, closes her eyes as she lets out a sigh as well as her own tears of happiness. Moments pass as they’re still tightly concealed in eachothers arms, taking in this moment together. A baby, they simultaneously thought to themselves. In times of uncertainty, they somehow knew that everything was going to be alright because they had eachother.

(Day of Yakone’s trial)

Toph and Sokka secretly meet in his office before making their way into the courtroom. 

“I can’t believe we’ve made it here, together...” Sokka says as they holds hands. “All this time we, especially you, have been trying to put Yakone in his place. Now I am here to ensure that justice is done and that Republic City sleeps soundly from now on. Not to mention, that we move onto this new chapter of our lives in peace.” Sokka places his hand onto Toph’s still flat stomach, trying to assure her and their unborn child, safety. 

“I think you should know by now that you and I make a great team Sokka.” Toph affirms as she gently squeezes his hands. 

“You’re right, history has shown that you and I - are invincible..” He can’t help but recall all those years ago when they were able to stop those fleet of firenation airships. “...I know I am invincible, as long as I am with you.” 

Toph brings herself into his arms, “Must you have to be extra mushy before we  step out to probably the most important moment of our careers? Also, it doesn't help that I am more emotional these days.” She says as she tries to not tear up. She raises her head up to him and Sokka places his hand onto her cheek, “But I dont care, I cant wait to hear you kill it out there, councilman. And I can’t wait for us to live our lives.”

“Me too..” Sokka leans down and gently places a kiss onto her forehead, “Now lets go and serve some justice!” 

“Councilman Sokka will now deliver the verdict.”

Sokka opens his eyes and lets out a breath, “In my years, I’ve encountered people born with rare and unique bending abilities. I once bested a man with my trusty boomerang who was able to firebend, with his mind...” Despite mentioning another unique bender or bending ability, he finds the moment to praise his favorite unique bender of all time. “...Why, even metalbending was considered impossible for all of history - until our esteemed Cheif of Police, Toph Beifong, single-handedly developed the skill....” Toph can’t help but enjoy the spotlight for a moment as never gets tired of Sokka showing his admiration of her abilities, it was their thing. “...The overwhelming amount of testimonial evidence has convinced this council that Yakone is one of these unique benders and he’s exploited his ability to commit these heinus crimes... We find Yakone, guilty of all charges and sentence him to life in prison.” As soon as Sokka slams the gavel, he can’t help but feel proud of himself by his improvement in public speaking. Finally, it was over. Yakone had lost and this nightmare was over, or so they thought. 

It all happened so fast. Before the next steps could be taken, Yakone had unleashed his sinister ability of mind-controlled bloodbending. With Sokka naturally being his first target, it took a moment before the room was able to comprehend what was unfolding in front of them. Toph felt her heart stop when she felt Sokka’s desperation, him being succumbed to Yakone’s evil power. She’s never witnessed Sokka in this state before or any bloodbending in person for that matter. Once she caught onto what was going on and that the entire council was now victimized, she tried to stop him but all it took was one look from him for her to feel the wrath of his power. 

NO! Sokka yelled to himself in his head as he watched this nightmare unfold in front of his eyes. Toph! She’s never experienced this before..., he thought to himself. He was so sure she would have never go through this horror, ever. And now that she was, in this malicious way, he felt so helpless. I- I need to do something. His first instinct was to always protect her when she was at her most vulnerable, and now that she was, he couldn’t do anything but watch. 

This- this can’t be happening right now. I really... hate this... Toph barley thinks to herself. No! I- I can’t let him free, she says in her head as she realizes his plan. Then, in an instant, she becomes completely blind. Yakone progressed his control over Toph by making her reach for the keys to his escape and bringing her towards him, effortlessly. Toph recalls never feeling this scared since her last traumatic experience hanging on the side of the airship all those years ago. At the very least, she had Sokka and his words to prep her for what was to come, he was her sight in that moment. Here, she didn’t know what to expect, her fate was literally in the hands of Yakone. That wasn’t even the scariest and worst part of all this, she was no longer fearing for herself but for someone else.

The baby!! Sokka thinks to himself. His strife amplified immensely as the thought of his unborn child came to his head. His heart felt like it was slowly being ripped out in front of him as he watched the monster bring Toph towards him. No no no, please- the baby...let them go NOW!! He can only manage to say in his head. As soon as Yakone sets himself free, he proceeds to knock out nearly everyone in the courtroom. Sokka really felt his heart stop as he literally saw his life flash in front of his eyes and collapse onto the ground - unconscious. 

He knew that him and Aang would be the last ones standing due to their experience with bloodbending decades ago. Yet, his extra time didn’t last long as he began to feel himself slowly fade away. His last image before falling unconscious was exchanging a look with Aang then, onto his heart, laying out cold- in front of him on the floor.

Moments passed until Sokka regained consciousness, he was the first one awake. Instinctively, he ran towards Toph who was still knocked out on the ground. He quickly took her into his arms and couldn’t help but search for a pulse. He didn’t want to imagine the worse, but from what he witnessed, she took it the hardest. Despite being one of the strongest person he knows, he didn’t know how her body would have responded - especially since she was pregnant. His hand moves towards her lower abdomen, hoping that their unborn child was unharmed. He can’t ignore the immense guilt beginning to consume him. 

A few more moments pass and Toph begins to wake. Sokka watches as she slowly opens her eyes and moves her hands to where Sokka has his placed. Toph seems to hold her breath but lets out a relieved sigh as she places her hand there. Sokka seems to read her expression clear as day, and they were okay. 

“The baby is okay, I can feel it’s heartbeat..” Toph reassures to Sokka, she seems to have read his mind. “Toph-...” Sokka can’t seem to put his words together, he was still trying to recover from this scare. Toph reaches and touches his face, “I’m okay Sokka, we’re okay. Man, that really is the worst feeling in the world.” He brings her into a tight hug and whispers, “I love you.”

Toph answers, “I love you Sokka.” In that moment she didn’t think about where Yakone was, Aang was gone too and she knew Aang well enough to know that he’d for sure stop him. She only cared that the life growing inside of her was still there, as well as Sokka’s and her own well-being. 

Sokka says into her ear, “See? I told you we’re invincible.” Toph smiles and responds, “We are, together.”

[managedmischiefs]

chapter eighteen

genre: angst

warnings: prison, solitary confinement, kidnapping, ptsd, hospitals, car accident (no description, just mentions), Cat Adams, allusions to sexual assault

word count: 12.4k (sorry friends)

summary: amelia comes to terms with spencer coming home. spencer needs to save his mom and catch scratch. it's too much for 24 hours.

pairing: season 12 spencer reid x oc

AMELIA

Being woken up by banging at my door was not how I expected my day to start. I'd barely even slept. All my friends came over to my apartment when I told them I needed support, and we wound up staying up until the early hours of the morning watching tv.

But Frankie shook me awake, telling me that someone had been knocking on the door for a few minutes and they weren't going away. I pushed Frankie away at first, murmuring for him to answer it himself.

"Lia," Jenna took her turn in shaking my shoulder, "it's Penelope and JJ! You have to open it. Go."

And so I pushed myself off the couch, falling onto my knees but dragging myself away from my sleepy group of friends. Penelope and JJ burst in the door as soon as I opened it, and in the past, the tear stains on their cheeks would have made me panic. But they're smiling and hugging me and grabbing my hands and the excitement confused me but didn't make me wonder what happened to Spencer.

"We're going to get him." Penelope blurted out, holding my shoulders too tightly and beaming at me and JJ. "You didn't want updates so I didn't give you any but now that we know about Lindsay and that she drugged Reid, we found evidence that put her in Mexico and we also found partial prints and we got them to a judge just in time and she agreed to release Reid!"

"It's over, Amelia, he's coming home," JJ added, pulling me into another too-tight hug.

I didn't believe them. Penelope and JJ seemed elated and ready to bring me to the prison, and even my friends gave me hugs when I moved back towards the living room for my shoes. But it didn't seem real. It didn't seem like reality. Almost five months without Spencer and receiving bad news after bad news after bad news, I should have believed that all of a sudden he's coming home? It wasn't possible.

The girl's ushered me upstairs and told me to change as quickly as I could. And if I believed them, maybe I would have dressed better. Maybe I would have throw on a dress and my signature boots and put my hair up and thrown in my piercings and slapped a smile on my face. Maybe I would've made myself look presentable. But none of this seemed real and so I didn't even care. I just threw on a new pair of pajamas and my glasses and ran my fingers through the knots in my hair. When I returned to the girls downstairs, I just grabbed my backpack and shrugged.

"I'm gonna take my own car," I had picked my car keys up from the bowl as we left my apartment. I insisted that I wanted to drive my own car and not ride with the girls and Luke, but Penelope insisted that she drive my car. Something about me maybe not being in the right mindset to drive. I didn’t have the energy to argue. So she snatched the keys out of my hand and dragged me to my car, making sure I got in the passenger seat, and then drove off.

The silence loomed over us as she drove and I just stared out the window at the passing sights. I tried to keep my breathing regulated and my tears at bay. A few slipped out and rolled down my cheeks but I didn't let them stay for long, I couldn't let that type of weakness linger.

"Hey," Penelope eventually broke the silence, "why aren't you more excited? Spencer's coming home."

I shook my head, biting down on my lip. "Because I don't believe it."

"You don't believe it?" She asked, glancing over at me. "We’re going there now, Amelia. Going to go get him."

"Penelope." I turned to her, my throat tightened to stop the flood gates from opening. "Every time I came to the BAU, there was some horrible news waiting for me. Spencer's arrested, Spencer's going to prison, Spencer's trial was pushed back, Spencer got beat up, Spencer stabbed himself to get into solitary confinement. I know you guys are amazing at your jobs, you're the absolute best at your jobs and I'm sorry if I'm being harsh, but I'm not gonna believe it when you and JJ come knocking on my door on a random Wednesday morning to tell me that Spencer is coming home after he basically tried to start a fight with someone in prison. I'm not getting my hopes up."

Penelope didn't say anything after my tantrum. She just kept her eyes forward and she drove, and when the prison finally came into view, I had to look away. I had bitched and moaned and cried and screamed about Spencer not putting me on his visitor list but as I finally laid eyes on the building where Spencer was being trapped and tortured, I knew I'd never be able to step foot inside. I knew I couldn't force myself into a building where Spencer went through the worst moments in his life.

"I can't go in," I said to Penelope, and she didn't even ask why. She didn't ask why, she didn't try to convince me to go in, she didn't complain.

The three of them rushed inside the prison and I was left in the parking lot. I eventually migrated outside my car, leaning against the driver’s side and staring up at the clouds. I couldn't see any shapes at that moment. I wonder if Spencer was able to see any yet. The last time I'd asked, he couldn't. I wonder if he could look up at the sky and see a hair bow or a tree or a bird.

Time ticked on, and on, and on, and my heart sank closer and closer to my feet. I knew it was too good to be true. They went in there to get Spencer and now they won't let him out. Why else would it have taken so long? How long does it take to get someone out of prison? Surely not the hour and a half that I stood out in the cold, trying to bring my sweater closer around my body to keep me warm.

I just stared at the clouds and wished with every fiber of my being that this would be over soon so I could go home and curl up in bed. I didn't want to be trapped in my stuffy car, or stranded at this horrible prison, or anywhere near the BAU team.

I reached into my pocket, pulling out Spencer's sobriety medallion. There was never a day that I left my apartment without it. I traveled every single step with it on my body. It didn't serve the same purpose to me that it would for a recovering addict, but it did do something similar. It reminded me that Spencer would come home to me. Every time I looked down at the circular metal, at the engraved N on the back, it reminded me that whether it be tomorrow, or next month, or next year, or next decade, Spencer would come home to me. He would, like he promised so many times that he would, remember to keep going north and he would come home. He would do what he believes is right and he would come home to me in one piece.

I twirled the cold metal in my hand and tapped my foot, waiting for this torture to be over. And maybe it was privileged of me to have that thought. I had all the privilege in the world to be sitting outside of a prison with car keys in my hand and a car full of gas that could take me anywhere, while my boyfriend was trapped inside, wasting away and serving time for a crime that he didn't commit while serial killers roam free and taunt the BAU with what they've done.

When you're younger, you memorize the sounds of your family members. I could always tell by the sound of a set of keys if it was my mom or my dad walking in the front door. By the pressure and amount of knocks, I could tell if it was my brother coming into my bedroom to play or my dad coming to hit me. I could always tell who was screaming louder downstairs by the frequency, and I quickly learned who was my mother and who was my father, even if their voices were muffled.

I only started to cry when I heard footsteps. I heard Penelope's heels clicking against the pavement from a mile away, but the moment I heard Spencer's dress shoes against the pavement, I relaxed and let the tears fall. I'd heard him wear those shoes for the entirety of our relationship and I knew the sounds of those just as well as the sound of my own voice. That was the moment that I knew it was real. This was happening. It was over. He was coming home and I would have him in my arms again.

He didn't say anything for what seemed like the longest time. Even as I sniffled and wiped my tears, he just stood and stared. I knew that the moment I looked at him, I would lose it, but not exactly how. I'd yelled and I'd cried and I'd lost my cool at the team, but how would I react towards Spencer? Would I do the same? I was pissed at him, that's for sure. I was pissed and hurt and scared and angry, and I wanted nothing more than to scream at him for putting me through this pain and for leaving me by myself for so long.

But I knew that I'd give anything to hug him, to kiss him, to comfort him, to have him in my arms. I wanted to cry and tell him that, despite his mother's abduction, he's safe. He doesn't have to fight for his life anymore and he doesn't have to watch his back. I just wanted to love him endlessly. But I didn't want to look at him. I didn't want to see what he looked like and face what he had been through and see the physical effects. So I kept my eyes up at the clouds, searching for clouds that I could distinguish to be a shape.

He moved closer and I swear, I could've screamed. Screamed, why? I'm not sure. My chest was so tight, I needed to get some sort of emotion out. But I just clutched the medallion as tightly as I could and zeroed in on a cloud that could possibly, maybe, only a little bit look like a square.

"I'm sorry," he said, but I had no clue what he was apologizing for. Honestly, there are so many things. Was he sorry for approaching me? Was he sorry for going to prison? Was he sorry for getting arrested? Was he sorry for going to Mexico? Was he sorry for bringing his mother to live with him? There are so many things that, in Spencer's mind, he could apologize for. Why now? But I still didn't look at him. "I tried to see dinosaurs and cars and lamps like you told me about, but I couldn't. I need you to teach me how to see shapes in the clouds because I can't do it without you, baby."

The fucking clouds. He apologized for not seeing shapes in the fucking clouds. He apologized because of one conversation we had after I dragged him to the park after he came home from a rough case. But somehow, I understood what he meant by it. He thought that he failed me and that he disappointed me because of this whole ordeal. Not being able to see a fucking dinosaur in the cloud is just a metaphor for his inability to keep himself out of harm’s way and out of Scratch's way. But I never saw it like that, and I wish he knew that.

And in my horrible effort to silently communicate to him that he didn't need to apologize, I looked into his eyes. I love this man with all my heart, but he looked absolutely horrible. His hair was significantly longer than I remembered and looked like it hadn't been brushed in years, his facial hair, while I was right in predicting that it is undeniably sexy, was unkempt, and he had the darkest circles under his eyes that I'd ever seen. I'd seen him deprived of sleep before, but at that moment, I wondered if he ever actually closed his eyes for the duration of his stay in prison.

He reached out for me, and just when his fingers were about to brush the fabric of my coat, he retracted his hands. I wished he hadn't. I wished he grabbed me as tightly as he could the moment he walked over here and kissed me with every bit of strength he had left in his body. I trembled with desire, just needing to feel Spencer on me. But I didn't want to rush him. I knew he went through a lot in those walls and he was clearly a bit unhinged, and I didn't want to set him off.

"I--" he hesitated, it seemed, stumbling over his words. He gulped, choking back tears. I wanted to reach for him, to hold him, to kiss him, to hug him like I'd been craving to do for months on end. But I reminded myself to breathe through my tears and not accost him. "Lia, I need you."

That was all it took. We broke down after that. We broke down crying, and hugging, and kissing, the way we had both been longing to do so badly for months. It was an outpouring of love and emotions and tears and part of me thought that it still didn't even feel real. It was just a moment of relief and happiness before Spencer would be ushered back inside and stolen right from me again.

Even now, it doesn't seem real. Even now as JJ comes to put her hands on our shoulders and grins at us, telling us that the other three are going to head back to the BAU. Penelope and Luke give us hugs and head back to the SUV, leaving Spencer and me alone again.

It doesn't feel real as I pull my keys out of my pocket, turning to my boyfriend with a slightly tired smile. "I know I shouldn't try to convince you to go home and shower, or change, or just-- go home and rest."

Spencer gives me a tight-lipped smile, shaking his head no. "I know you want me home, but I gotta get my mom back."

"I know. I knew that answer already. Get in," I gesture to the passenger side of my car and climb in, starting the engine. I watch the SUV pull away in front of us and put my car into drive, double-checking that Spencer has buckled his seat belt before I pull away from the prison. I catch Spencer's eyes lingering on the building as we pull away, and I wish I could know what's going on in his head. "Hey," I whisper, and his head slowly turns to me, "it's over, dove. You don't have to go back ever again."

Spencer starts to nod but his gaze travels out the window again. The silence in the car thickens and it makes me nervous. It scares me, to be honest. I've heard stories about inmates being institutionalized, but I have no idea what that means. I know of the major events that happened to Spencer in prison but I don't know what he saw, or experienced, or what's going on in his head. I don't know if he's changed and I don't know if he's stayed exactly the same. But if I'm getting the answer based on this car ride, I would bet that he's changed exponentially. Spencer always filled our car rides with stories and facts and statistics. We've never had a silent car ride.

"Amelia?" He's, surprisingly, the one who breaks the silence. "Um--"

"Yeah?" I encourage him to keep talking, looking over at him when I stop at a red light.

Spencer looks down at his lap, fiddling with one of the cuff links on his jacket. "This seems sort of, um, silly, I guess, but, um, could you, um--"

"Lovey, just ask. You don't need to be afraid," I turn my head to him and smile. I try not to let my mind wander off and question how maybe smiles he's seen lately. I try not to let my mind wander off and question how many times he hasn't been afraid lately.

Spencer chews on his bottom lip as he stares back at me, still wondering if he should even ask what he wants to. And I'm not sure what it is that finally calms him enough to ask, but he nods after a moment. "Could you, um, if you could still drive, could you, just, hold my hand?"

It's such a simple request. It's a question that, in the past, would have never even needed to have been asked. Spencer would have just reached over and grabbed my hand at a red light without asking. Maybe he would have kissed me too, and he probably would have even had his hand on my thigh by now. But now he seems so hesitant to touch me, and I don't know if I want to know if it's my fault or his fault.

I retract my right hand from the steering wheel and hold it out to him. "Of course. You know you don't need to ask, Spence."

Spencer nods wordlessly, intertwining our fingers and dropping our hands into his lap. He holds them there, staring straight forward when I start to drive again. I soon feel his other hand covering my knuckles and it brings goosebumps to my skin.

"You got another tattoo," he observes, and then runs his pointer finger over the black ink, "and it's for me."

"I got it after your court hearing," I say softly because even though he brought up the tattoo, I don't necessarily want to bring up things like his arrest and when he was sentenced to go to jail. "Everyone came out to tell me what happened and I just dragged Penelope out and got it done right away. I wanted a reminder of you."

Spencer lifts our entwined hands, pressing his lips to the back of my hand. "I love it." His lips are soft and warm and I never want him to pull away, but then I remind myself that his kisses aren't going anywhere. He's out of prison and he's not leaving me again and he's coming home.

I glance down at our hands and a small smile comes to my face. But he doesn't say anything else and he just moves his gaze back out the window. So I keep driving and I don't say anything else until we arrive at the building where I've spent all of my time lately.

I'm starting to break again as I throw my car into park, leaning my one hand against the steering wheel as I choke back a new wave of tears. "Spencer," my voice cracks pathetically, and I can't even bring myself to look at him, "they're gonna find your mom, and everything's gonna be okay."

"You don't know that," Spencer scoffs and he drops my hand from his grasp. "She's been taken by serial killers who put me in prison just because they wanted to have some excitement in their lives. They could--" he shutters, digging the heel of his hand into his eye, "they could just kill her and-- and-- I'll never see her again."

When I look over at him, something just makes me realize how much he's changed, but I'm not sure what. Maybe it's how he's speaking to me and how he let go of my hand. Spencer never used to let go of my hand if he had the chance to hold it. He would always be making some sort of physical contact with me. I see how he's changed in the way his hair curls, and the way his suit lays on his broader shoulders, and the way his eyes dart across the new environment he's moved into. I suddenly don't even know how to talk to him. I suddenly don't even think I should be in the same car as him, sitting next to him, and then more tears are streaming down my cheeks as those horrible thoughts come to mind.

I tug the keys out of the ignition and reach for the door handle. "Ready to go in?" And without another word or a glance towards me, Spencer pulls open the passenger door and strides towards the entrance.

I always thought that when Spencer got out of prison, it would be an absolute relief. I thought once we cried and hugged and kissed, we would spend some time with the team, and then I'd be able to take him home. I'd be able to take him home and shower him in love and tell him how much I missed him and how much I love him and start dishing out all the affection he missed out the last few months.

I didn't think that he'd hug the team for two seconds upon his return to the BAU, and then they'd go running off in their kevlars. We had gone to his apartment to grab a few things but that was a quick stop and we came right back.

I didn't think that my first day back with Spencer would consist of me watching him pace insistently in the round table room. But here I am, sitting with my legs crossed in the of the rolling chairs while Spencer mumbles to himself and walks the length of the room, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It's making me crazy, honestly, and he's never paced before. I've always hated pacing. But I know he's anxious about his mom and there's nothing I can do to help.

"Spence?" He barely even acknowledges when I say his name. "Spencer," I say his name a bit sharper, and that's when he stops pacing and looks at me. His hair is disheveled and his eyes are swollen from how he keeps rubbing them.

I beckon him over with a slight wave of my hand, turning the chair beside me towards him. Spencer's chest deflates at my simple and silent request and that hurts, but nonetheless, he throws his body into the seat beside me. "What do you need?" He forces the question out, trying to sound somewhat polite despite his utter panic and stress.

I reach into my pocket and pull out his medallion, staring down at it for a moment before handing it over to him. "I've been carrying it around with me since you got arrested. Haven't taken a step without it in my pocket. Maybe it'll help to, I don't know, ground you? Maybe it won't help at all but I figured it wouldn't hurt you to have it right now."

Spencer reaches forward the grab the medallion from me, and when his fingers brush against mine, it sends a shock up my arm. Gosh, it's like we're touching for the first time all over again. He stares down at it, flipping it around in his fingers a few times before he lets out a long breath.

"Amelia," he practically whimpers, and the sound hurts more than his hostility. He makes a fist around the medallion around me and looks up at me, his eyes rimmed red. "Will you hold me?"

I quickly scramble out of my chair and onto Spencer's lap, wrapping my arms around his neck and resting my head on his chest. We sit like that forever, it seems, just waiting for any word from the team or for them to arrive back here. Spencer stays silent though and just holds my waist, his forehead resting against my shoulder. We stay so still and so silent that I fall asleep in Spencer's embrace. After all, I was woken up at the crack of dawn after a late night with wine and my friends.

I'm shaken awake, though, when Spencer quickly ushers me off his lap and back into the chair I was previously in. He's on his feet in a minute, spewing out a million questions to the team that is filing in with their kevlars still on.

"Where's my mom?" He asks hastily, glancing around the room. When nobody gives him an immediate answer, he slams his hands against the table with every bit of strength he has, and the force is enough to jolt me completely awake and alert. "Tell me! Where is my mom? Is she dead?" I stand, placing my hand on Spencer's arm, but he quickly and easily shakes it off. "Don't touch me!" He shouts, barely even looking at me before returning his attention to his team. "Where's my mom?!"

Everyone in the room is utterly shocked by his explosive behavior, especially me. I'm so shocked that I cower away from him, all the way until my back hits the wall and I'm across the room from him. But nobody pays any mind to me, they're all staring at Spencer.

"Spence, she wasn't there," Emily speaks first, quietly and gently. "We have reason to believe that she's okay, but, um, we got more insight from the house that we need to tell you about. And Amelia, I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to ask you to leave."

I don't need to be asked twice. I flee from the conference room. I tangle my fingers in my curls and hurry down the ramp, falling into the chair at Spencer's desk, pulling my knees up to my chest again. I pull in deep breaths through my nose and close my eyes, trying to forget the image of Spencer yelling at me and rejecting my comfort.

He's never, ever yelled at me like that. We've been together for two and a half years now and in the two years that we were physically together, we never fought. And in the times that we argued, it was over little things. We argued over missed dates and forgotten chores and broken household items. But Spencer never once raised his voice at me like that and he never pushed me away from him.

I don't know how to deal with him. I've only been in his presence for two hours, at most, and I've already had countless moments of confusion and bafflement. He's different. I should have expected that. But he's so different and I don't know how to help him. I don't know how to calm him down and what I'm supposed to say to him to remind him that he's safe. Am I supposed to say anything at all?

I only lift my head when I start to hear shouting. My eyes dart back towards the conference room where it seems like the team is arguing all amongst each other, shedding their kevlars and throwing them aside. Their anger seems to be mostly towards Emily, but then it momentarily turns to Spencer when he starts speaking, and then it's back to Emily. Rossi is pacing, Penelope is on the verge of tears, and the rest of the team just looks outraged. But oddly enough, Spencer looks calm. He's looked calm this whole time.

And then he lets his gaze linger out to me. He lets himself look out of the conference room to my curled up body, watching helplessly from the outside as the team argues over a matter I can't be involved in. His face softens and even from here, I can see that he sighs. I try to muster up some sort of smile, one that's surely weak and not comforting in the slightest. But at least I offer him something other than crime and arguing.

Spencer turns away from his team and leaves the conference room, taking his time in wandering over to me. I watch his every step, wondering what is going on and why everyone is so up in arms. Maybe I don't even want to know. I'm sure it will just make me mad anyways, especially if it's making Penelope so upset.

Spencer gets to his desk and leans against the edge beside me, breathing out a sigh that's tense and rigid. "I, um--" he clears his throat, putting his hands in his lap and looking down at them, "I'm sorry I yelled at you like that."

I nod at him, reaching forward to wiggle my fingers into his intertwined hands, and he resists at first but lets me hold his hand after a moment. "It's okay, dove. What's going on?"

"Do you remember," he keeps his gaze away from me, "when we first went cloud watching?"

I furrow my eyebrows at him, cocking my head to the side. "Uh, of course I do. We went on a picnic after you had a hard case."

"Do you remember the case?" He asks next like he’s trying to draw out his questions to avoid what he really needs to tell me, and his grip on my hand gets tighter.

"Vaguely," I murmur. "You had to go on a date with a hitwoman and pose as a married man who wanted to kill his pregnant wife. What does that have to do with this? I thought she was in prison, Spence."

"She is," Spencer starts to nod continuously and breaks one of his hands away to rub up and down my arm, a stiff attempt at comfort. "She orchestrated this from prison. Scratch was never involved apparently. She had an accomplice in the free world who did all her dirty work for her, but she ultimately called all the shots. It was her, Amelia," he sighs, and when his hand stops moving, I hear him sniffle. "When the team went to that house just before, they found a message from Cat, she's the hitwoman. She said that if I want my mom back, then I have to go and talk to her."

My eyes widen at his words, and I'm utterly stunned. "What?"

"Me and JJ are leaving in ten minutes. I just came to say goodbye to you, and to tell you I'll be back in a few hours," Spencer never meets my eye. He hasn't this whole time and I don't know if I prefer it that way.

"No!" I exclaim, ripping my hand away from his. The action stuns him and he reaches for me as I pull away, but I'm already standing. "You have to go back to prison? Absolutely not! You just spent three months locked up and going through hell! Send someone else! There's a whole team in that room that's just as smart as you and they can deal with her. I'm not letting you go waltzing right back into prison!"

I turn on my heel and go bounding towards the conference room, but I feel Spencer hot on my heels. He grabs my arm before I can get too far, holding me back. "I know you're upset about this and it's not ideal, but I have to do this to get my mom back."

I turn to him, my eyes filled with tears that I refuse to let fall. "Send someone else." I hiss through my clenched teeth.

"We can't," Spencer responds, and when I try to get out of his grasp, he holds me tighter. "It has to be me. She wants to play her stupid game. I've outsmarted her before and I can do it again--"

"I know you can outsmart her!" I exclaim, pushing his chest, sending him stumbling back a few steps. Our yelling brings the team out of the conference room to check on us but they don't intervene. They just watch us standing on the ramp. They watch me break down for the millionth time.

Spencer groans, running his hands through his unruly hair. "Lia, I--"

"I know you can outsmart her, Spencer!" I shout, hot tears streaming down my cheeks and down my neck, wetting the collar of my tank top. "That's not what I'm worried about! I know that you're smart enough to outsmart every goddamn serial killer that gets on your radar. I've known that since the moment I met you. But I don't--" I choke my words, bringing my hands up to cover my mouth.

I've admitted my feelings to Jenna and to Penelope and somewhat to Dave, but I haven't gotten the chance to speak to Spencer. I haven't been able to tell him how I spent every single moment of his incarceration in fear for his life. Now, I know he had it worse because he was actually experiencing it, but I was in the dark. I couldn't see him and I couldn't talk to him. I was only getting secondhand information from a team of profilers who could have lied to me with ease.

"I can't-" I drop my hands and breathe in a long breath, but it doesn't do anything to slow my rapidly beating heart. "I've spent three fucking months walking around and not being able to see you. I spent three months crying and screaming and cursing the universe for putting you through such intense pain that you don't deserve, because you deserve the motherfucking world, Spencer! And now you just wanna go right back to prison and face some psycho who landed you in a place that had you beat and broken and taken away from me. So I'm sorry that I don't want you to go," I pause again, just staring at Spencer's face. He's giving me a blank face that I can't entirely read. He's never looked at me like this. "I'm sorry that I don't want you to go back to a place that has clearly traumatized you and I'm sorry that I just want to have you here, in my arms so I can hold you and promise you that everything is going to be okay. I'm sorry, okay?"

I push past Spencer and go running off, furiously wiping at my cheeks, but it's a useless attempt. The tears won't stop and I know that. My monologue was also another useless attempt and I know that too. Spencer is going to do absolutely anything in his power to get his mother back. And if that means going to see a serial killer in prison who's clearly obsessed with him, then he'll do it. He's always been that selfless and I used to admire that. But right now I just wish he would listen to me for once.

I throw myself into one of the interview rooms and curl up on the couch, sobbing into my hands. I've just gotten my Spencer back and now he's leaving me to go back to prison. He's getting taken away from me yet again and, after three months of psychological torture, he needs to outsmart a serial killer to save his mother. Can he handle that? He could barely handle asking me to hold his hand in the car. Can he handle a criminally sophisticated serial killer?

The door opens slowly and quietly and then I hear the sounds of Spencer's shoes again. They're dense and heavier than I remember them to be a few months ago. I'm covering my eyes with my hands but I hear him sit down beside the couch I'm on and then his hand reaches out to push my hair behind my ears. My curls bounce back into my face and it makes Spencer chuckle, and that simple sound makes my heart flutter. I want to hear his full-fledged, loud, obnoxious, unhinged, head-tossed-back laugh. I'd do anything to hear that.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, pushing my hair back again and holding his hand on the back of my head. "I know you're unhappy, and I know you're upset and worried and panicked and that you missed me. And I--" he scoots closer to the couch, resting his chin against the cushion, his face right in front of my covered one, "I don't want any of this to be happening either. I wanna go home and finally sleep, and eat something good, and just hold you and-- and cry out my emotions. But I can't do that. I need to do everything I can to save my mom right now. JJ is going to the prison with me and she's gonna make sure everything goes smoothly."

I drag my hands down my face, revealing my tear-stained face to him. Spencer gives me a sad smile, using his free hand to wipe my tears. "Baby?" I whisper.

He hums softly in response, and for a moment, the old him starts to shine through. His tender touch and his soft smile remind me of the person he was. It reminds me of the times we would lay on the couch at night, tangled in a blanket as we eat take-out. Or the times we sit on a freezing cold balcony and shares stories of our days. Or the times we would meet every morning at the same cafe and I could send him off to work with a kiss and a pinky promise to return home safely. This moment gives me just a little bit of hope that the old him is still in him, and that it's just buried deep down.

"Are you gonna be allowed to have your phone?" I murmur, and Spencer nods a tiny bit in response. "Will you just-- can you call me if you need me? I'll keep my phone on me with the ringer on. I know you'll be busy but if you need me, just call me. Even if you just wanna hear my voice, don't hesitate."

Spencer smiles, and I swear, it's the most beautiful sight I've seen in my life. "Of course. I'll always need you, sweetheart."

I grab the hand that's on my face and bring his knuckles to my lips. "I love you so, so much, okay? You got this, dove."

Spencer moves our hands and presses his lips to mine in a gentle kiss. "I love you too. I'm gonna be back as soon as I possibly can be. But, uh, before I leave, can you just do one more thing for me?"

I sit up and look down at him on his knees, running my fingers over his jawline. "Anything."

Spencer reaches into his suit jacket and pulls out a thin, black sharpie. "It's a weird request, I know. But, that tattoo on your hand, could you draw it on me?"

I raise my eyebrows, glancing down at my hand, a small smile playing on my lips. "Seriously?" He nods, thrusting the sharpie in my hand. "Sure, of course. I wouldn't imagine you want it on your hand, where I have it. On your arm? Just on your forearm?" I gesture to my Starry Night tattoo right under the crook of my elbow, for a reference of placement. Spencer starts to push up his jacket and sleeve, leaving me room to draw an identical symbol to the one on my hand. "Spence, you won't even be able to see it."

"I know," he mumbles, watching me draw the little N, "but you can't see the butterfly on the back of your arm. But you know it's there and it makes you think of your mom. I know this is here and it'll make me think of you."

I cap the sharpie and toss it aside, smiling at him. "Be safe, Spencer," I grab his cheeks again, stroking his skin with my thumbs. "You're smarter than her, you know you are. I meant what I said before. You can outsmart every single serial killer out there and you've already outsmarted this one. You can do it again."

He searches my face for something, but I can't quite tell for what. He reaches for my waist, squeezing tightly. Spencer takes in a long breath and closes his eyes. "Please tell me you love me," he whimpers.

"Oh, my darling," I lean forward and rest my forehead against his, closing my eyes too, sinking onto his lap so our bodies can be as close as possible, "Spencer Reid, I love you with every fiber of my being. I love you more than I love myself. My heart beats for you, Spencer. Please, don't ever forget that. I love you and I'll say it until I'm blue in the face. It'll be the first thing I tell you in the morning and the last thing I tell you at night. I just-- I love you."

Spencer doesn't even respond to my second, yet equally dramatic, monologue of the day, but he just presses his lips to mine. The kiss is the fervent and needy we've shared, but that's what we need right now. This is how I would have kissed Spencer if I had the chance to kiss him goodbye before he went away to prison, and even though I know he's going to come back to me, I have so much time to make up for and I need to start now.

"Say it back," I murmur against his lips, turning my head and kissing him again. "Say it back and promise me that you're gonna come back to me in one piece,"

Spencer wraps his arms as tight as he can around my waist and draws me even closer to his body. "I'm gonna come home to you, just like I am right now, I promise," he presses one more long kiss to my lips before pulling away breathlessly. "I love you."

///

"Amelia," Penelope comes bursting into the interview room I never left, a smile on her face, "Spencer and JJ are on their way up."

I jump to my feet, following her out, walking beside her to the elevator. "Is Diana okay?" I ask quickly, pausing beside her when we reach the doors.

"Yeah, Diana is, you know, physically okay. The team got there and we did our magic and Lindsay betrayed Cat and gave up Diana and the team is on their way back with her now," Penelope throws her arms around me, weeping with joy. "Amelia, it's all over. Diana is safe, Spencer is home, everyone is good. It's over."

I sigh into her shoulder, smiling. "Yeah, it's over."

"Whoa, I wanna join in this hug!" We hear JJ's voice from the elevator, and in just a second, she's joined our hug and thrown her arms around the two of us. We laugh, hugging her waist and accepting her into our circle. "Oh, I love you girls. And I can't wait for when things settle down and we can get Tara and Emily and Lisa and Monica and all go out for a girls night. But for now, Amelia, go get him."

I lift my head and I immediately lay eyes on Spencer. He's sitting on the floor beside the glass doors of the bullpen, knees pulled up to his chest and his sobriety medallion in his hand. I give a smile to the girls and unravel from them, heading over to my solemn boyfriend.

I sit on the floor between his bent legs and cross my own legs, grabbing his free hand and intertwining our fingers. He barely even responds to my touch and he just keeps his eyes on the floor. I reach forward and tuck my fingers under his chin, lifting his gaze until it reaches mine. His eyes look dull and he's truly never looked more exhausted. I thought he looked utterly exhausted when he got out of prison this morning, but now it's the middle of the night and he's been working and stressed all day, and the exhaustion is settling in.

His eyes meet mine and I try to give him a smile. "I'm proud of you," I tell him. "I knew you could do it. You saved your mom."

Spencer just stares at me for a moment before he looks down again, and when he shifts his body a bit, my hand falls from his chin. "It was really hard," he whispers. "She was working with one of the correctional officers at my prison, and he managed to get my FBI file with confidential information in it."

"I'm sorry," I whisper back, placing my hands on his knees. "I'm sure that--"

"And she brought you up," he blurts out. "You're in my file because we've been together for an extended time so you’re required to be in there for protection purposes and she brought up your name and I just-- I like, I freaked out. She spoke so horribly about you. She said terrible things about you to throw me off but she doesn't even know you! How could she say those things?" He rambles on, getting more and more worked up.

"Sweetheart," I keep my voice quiet and calm, "you just said it yourself. She was saying it to throw you off. She doesn't know me. She knows absolutely nothing about me. You surely don't think I'm horrible and terrible and that's all that matters. So ignore what she thinks, okay? She's a psychopath."

Spencer looks up at me with red eyes. "She's pregnant." He states a bit too abruptly. "She told me the baby was mine to try to get me to break.”

My eyes widen. "Excuse me?"

"And she tried to tell me that when Lindsay dosed me in Mexico, that Lindsay, you know--" Spencer gulps, "got my DNA. And Cat tried to tell me that she had Lindsay pose as you to get me in the mood."

"But that's not true. That didn't happen," I shake my head, moving closer to him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders. Spencer buries his face in my neck, hugging my waist.

"But I have no way of knowing that. I'm still missing time. She still might have tried to do that. Lindsay might have posed as you," Spencer whimpers and that's a sound that will always break my heart.

"Spencer, listen to me," I pull away again and hold his face in my hands with a delicate grasp. "Cat's ass is still in prison. Lindsay's ass is on her way to life in prison. You're out of prison and you're going to be able to live the rest of your life as a free man. And you saved your moms life and you're about to see her. Those women are out of your life forever, okay? I know it's really hard, but you should try to not even think about them," a small smirk comes to my face. "The only woman you should be thinking about is me."

Spencer chuckles lightly, shaking his head. "You're incredible."

I hold my hands out in a shrug, grinning. "Which is why I should be the only woman you have on your mind. And also the only woman you're having babies with. Spence, we'd have the cutest babies."

He laughs again and lets his head fall back against the wall, staring me up and down. "We would have some cute kids, wouldn't we?"

"The absolute cutest! Genius babies who can read eighty thousand books a day while painting a landscape with their right hand and drawing a bowl of fruit with their left hand. And they--"

"They're here!" Penelope exclaims, running out of the bullpen and waving her phone in the air. "Emily just said they parked and they're coming for the elevator!"

Spencer jumps up to his feet without a second thought or hesitation, and with a second thought, he holds out his hand to help me off the floor. And I keep my hold on that hand, squeezing tightly. JJ and Penelope move to either side of us, and when the elevator doors pop open, I feel Spencer's body tense up.

It's obvious that as Diana steps out of the elevator, she doesn't recognize Spencer. She doesn't recognize any of us, even though JJ has visited her many times and I've visited Diana countless times over the years I've been dating Spencer. And so I squeeze his hand tighter but I know that this is not how he wanted this to go. He wanted to just hug his mom and get the physical affection that he didn't really get as a kid. But she isn't lunging at him and now he's starting to tremble in my embrace.

Emily leans over to Diana and whispers, "It's Spencer," and that's all it takes. Diana looks once more at her son before gasping and the moment she does, Spencer releases my hand and throws his arms around her.

It's the most relieved I've seen him since before this entire ordeal, and I can confidently say it's also the most relieved I've been. I see Spencer smile over Diana's shoulder, his eyelids squeezed shut. "Hi, Mom."

The team starts to disperse to give them their space and to relax after the ridiculously long day. I give everyone tight hugs, thanking them for all their hard work and giving half-assed apologies for how horrible I was acting towards them. I know that no apology will excuse how I acted while Spencer was incarcerated, but I have to try, right?

"Amelia," after a while, Diana comes to give me a hug, letting Spencer breathe for just a split second. "It's good to see you, honey."

"It's good to see you too," I hug her waist. "How are you feeling? Is there anything you need?"

Diana glances between the two of us, shaking her head slowly. "I'm just-- I'm tired,"

"Okay, Mom, well, why don't I get you back to my apartment so you can rest?" Spencer suggests, reaching to wrap his arm around her waist to support her weight.

Diana gives me a side-eye and I return her look. "Actually," she says, putting her hand on his shoulder, halting him from walking her towards the elevator, "Amelia and I had something we wanted to talk to you about."

Spencer narrows his eyes at me and when I wave the two along to one of the interview rooms, he doesn't put up a fight. Maybe he's too tired by now, or maybe he's genuinely interested in what we could possibly have to say. But either way, he ushers his mom onto a couch and then stands a few feet away as I fall into an armchair. He glances between the two of us, then crosses his arms protectively over his chest. "What's this about?"

Diana immediately looks to me to explain, clutching the cardigan around her shoulders. "Okay," I breathe out, turning my head to my confused and concerned boyfriend, "it's no secret that a lot of people, me included, were not fond of Diana living at home with you. So while you were away, I spent some time looking at facilities around here that would take Diana in, and there's one that's ten minutes away from here. I called them when you were working and they said that they would be happy to let Diana move in tonight."

"Spencer," Diana reaches for Spencer's hands and he happily gives them to her, "this is going to be good. I've always wanted to be close to you. This way, you can visit me more often and you don't have to spend money on flights and hotels. Maybe I can get out to see one of Amelia's art exhibits. I don't want any more experimental medicine, honey. I wanna be close to you and to be comfortable and to be happy."

Spencer pouts and he starts to tap his foot on the floor. He's nervous, and rightfully so. He's about to give his mom up again, right after she was abducted by a serial killer team. He looks from his mom to me, then back to his mom, and then to me again. "Did you go to the facility?"

"Yes, sweetheart. Me, Diana, and Cassie went a while ago and we all liked it," I tell him. "She'll be a ten minute drive and a six minute train ride away instead of a five hour plane ride. You can see her every single day if you wanted to."

"And," Diana grins, glancing between us, "when you two get married and have babies, I'll be right here to help you with it."

Spencer lets out a shaky breath, nodding his head hesitantly. "Okay. Let's go."

///

Spencer and I wave goodbye at Diana and then go heading off to my car, hopping in and I start the ignition. I let out a loud yawn, covering my mouth as I buckle my seatbelt. I feel Spencer's hand in my hair and it makes me smile, and as the ridiculously long day comes to a close, I find myself more and more excited to crawl into bed. And then upon further thought, I get even more excited to crawl into bed with Spencer at my side.

"Do you want me to drive?" Spencer asks, dragging his hand to my jawline. "You look exhausted."

"Oh, you should see yourself, bub," I quip, turning on my headlights. "I'll be fine. It's just a ten minute drive back home."

"Hey, wait," Spencer says, reaching for my hand on the wheel. I turn my head to him, smiling tiredly. "Um," he returns my tired smile, "I just wanted to say thank you for doing this. For, you know, finding a facility for my mom. It means a lot to me to know that you care so much about her."

"She's your mom, Spencer. Of course I care about her. I just wanted to help out and make everyone's lives easier," I shrug gently.

"And also," Spencer drops his voice to a whisper and looks down at his voice, "I wanted to thank you for not abandoning me. I don't-- well, I don't have a lot of people in my life and people have a habit of leaving me after they've been around me for a while. But you've stuck with me through the craziness with my mom and through my arrest and through prison when I'm sure there's plenty of guys who are banging down your door and you could--"

"Oh god," I grimace at the thought. "Dr. Reid, I don't wanna be with anyone else but you. I thought I made that clear before. Remember? Sitting in the hallway? We're getting married and having babies, remember? You're my first and only boyfriend and I don't want any other asshole guy who's gonna swoop in and think they're a Know It All. Why would I want a fake Know It All when I have the read deal Know It All right here?"

Spencer chuckles and he turns his hand to intertwine our fingers. "Thank you for waiting for me. And thank you for even coming to the prison. JJ said you were a bit too scared to come in so I appreciate you coming at all."

I choose not to comment about that. It's not the time to talk about this. It's not the time and not the place. We're exhausted and Spencer is fragile and while he needs to eventually talk to someone about his time in prison, it probably shouldn't be me and it probably shouldn't be at 3 am in a parking lot.

"I'll always be waiting for you," I smile in an attempt to move on from that topic of conversation, and when my phone buzzes in my pocket, I quickly pull it out to find Penelope calling me. I just miss the call and see that she already called me three times. "Oh, that's weird."

"Call her back," Spencer says, leaning over my shoulder. "And put it on speaker."

I dial Penelope's number and put my phone on speaker. She picks up after only half a dial tone. "Thank god!" She exclaims. "I feel like I've been calling you for my entire life!"

"My phone was in my pocket, sorry. What's up? Is everything okay?"

"No!" She shouts, and just her sharp tone of voice makes me panicky. "Are you with Reid?"

"I'm right here. On speaker. Garcia, what's going on? Is the team okay? Is it Lindsay or Cat?"

Penelope goes on the explain how Morgan got a text from Penelope about a safe house Spencer was supposed to stay at. It was all completely fake and due to Penelope's super skills, she figured out that her phone number was duplicated by none other than Mr. Scratch himself.

"The team drove out there but it was a trap!"

"Scratch's traps have traps, Garcia, we know that. They should've been prepared. Are they okay?" Spencer's voice gets louder as he gets more nervous.

"Not really. The house wasn't rigged. The street on the way was. There were road spikes and he was watching for when they came. And after they hit the spikes, a truck came and hit them. They all have to go to the hospital. Luke is okay and he's driving me to the hospital right now, and Matt Simmons is here too. But Tara's in shock, Rossi hurt his leg, JJ has glass in her forehead, Emily dislocated her shoulder, and Stephen is-- he's--"

Spencer and I exchange a downcast look as we understand what she can't say. Stephen is dead and it's all Scratch's fault. This man has been terrorizing this team for years and now he's killed a member of their team.

"Okay, Penelope," Spencer murmurs, "we're on our way to the hospital now. Keep us updated." Despite the fact that my phone is in my hand, Spencer hangs it up. He takes it from me and places it into the cup holder, then replaces my phone with his hand. "Amelia," he whispers, "do you want me to drive?"

Silently, I nod. I climb out of the driver’s side and practically waddle to the passenger side, sinking into the seat that Spencer was just in. He starts the engine and drives off, calmer and gentler than I had imagined he would be.

"I'm sorry," Spencer eventually breaks the thick silence, glancing over at me. "I know you liked Stephen and I'm sure you guys got really close the last few months."

My head slowly swivels to him, and I find that, as he should be, he's not looking at me. His eyes are locked on the road and focusing extra hard since it's the middle of the night. But I'd rather have it that way right now. "I'm--" I hesitate before I speak, but I know that now I've opened my mouth, I've sealed my fate, "I'm a horrible person."

I see Spencer furrow his eyebrows. "Huh?"

"I'm a bad person, Spencer, because I'm only kinda upset that Stephen is dead. I'm upset because--" I hiccup, my eyes widening as I try to speak. "Every time I see a dead cop or a dead agent, all I think about is how that could've been you. That dead agent could've been my boyfriend, dead in the field and I'd have to be the one called in to identify his body. I can't imagine how Monica and her kids are going to feel but I just always think about how I'd feel if I was woken up by that call that you were killed in the field.”

"You won't," Spencer answers with a stubborn shake of his head. "I'm careful in the field. I don't want you to worry about me, Lia. I’m gonna be fine.”

///

I can't remember spending much time in emergency rooms. But in the time that I have, they were never this chaotic. There are people everywhere and I'm surprised it's this busy on a Wednesday-into-Thursday at 4 am. But Spencer grabs my hand and takes charge, marching right up to a doctor and demanding he knows where the Behavioral Analysis Unit agents are. And I have to admit, despite how distressed I am, he looks incredibly sexy taking charge like that. But the doctor answered him and pointed to a certain section for the BAU.

"Amelia," JJ sighs of relief as she sees me, reaching a hand out and I quickly grab it, giving her the support she's looking for, "thank you for coming. I'm sure you're so tired--"

"Shh, shh, stop, don't worry about me," I coo, taking on her usual role of the mother figure. "Are you okay? Do you need anything?"

"Um," a few tears fall down her cheeks and she quickly wipes them away, "I haven't called Will yet and--"

"I did that in the car on the way over here, don't worry. He's on his way over," I tell her, fixing the wrapping on her ice pack so it isn't falling off anymore. JJ nods, relieved, and relaxes more into my touch. "Me and Spencer are both here so if you need anything, you just ask either of us, okay? Don't hesitate."

JJ nods, wrapping her free arm around my waist to give me an awkward side hug. "Thank you so much. Go check on everyone else. Emily is right over there and Rossi is refusing treatment, I think."

"Okay, I'll check on you later," I give her one more smile before heading off towards Emily's gurney. She's laying down and her shoulder is covered by a pile of dressings and her face is full of little cuts and bruises. Her eyes widen when she sees me and she reaches her uninjured arm for me. "Hi, Em. Do you need anything? Are you okay?"

"Amelia," Emily chokes out, and just from the way she speaks, I can see that she's in an intense amount of pain. "You should--" she hisses in pain, "should take Reid and go home. He deserves to go home and so do you. You're both exhausted and just got out of prison and you're--"

"We're here to help, Emily. We're not going anywhere until we know you guys are okay," I adjust the ice pack that's on her head and her eyelids flutter, and as badly as I do wish I could take Spencer home, I know that we need to be here to help everyone.

"Go help Rossi. He's being a little bitch about this," Emily responds, making me laugh. "I've got more balls than him. I'm fine. Go."

I laugh at Emily, shaking my head at her stubbornness, but nod nonetheless. I turn on my heel and start to head towards Rossi's little room but before I can get there, I run right into Spencer and Luke.

"Is Dave okay?" I ask, glancing between the two men who tower over me. "JJ and Emily are beat up but they're pushing through."

"Rossi needs us to go back to the BAU to get something for him," Luke says, holding up his car keys. "Me and Reid are heading back now."

My head snaps over to Spencer, eyes widened. Of course, I should have expected this. Why did I think that we would just show up here to help Spencer's teammates and not expect him to get roped into some kind of work? It was a stupid expectation, to be honest. Almost the entire team is down and Scratch is clearly very close to them. They need all hands on deck.

I just nod slowly, letting out a sigh. "Okay. Just be careful, please. Be really, really careful."

"We will be," Spencer nods back at me. He turns to leave, but before he can leave, I grab his wrist. "Amelia," he swivels his head, "we need to go."

"Just," I hold out my pinky, "humor me."

Spencer smiles softly, wrapping his pinky around mine. "We're just going back to the BAU. We're gonna be fine."

"Please let me know when you get there. And if you leave the building," I squeeze his pinky in mine before releasing him completely, waving him away with Luke. And so, I'm left with four injured FBI agents after an attack from an escaped serial killer, and a boyfriend who clearly has PTSD and hasn't slept or eaten in almost two days. I sigh, turning to look in Dave's room, then at JJ and Emily. "Great. Just great."

///

"Will just got here?" Emily asks, adjusting the strap of her sling, her arm now popped into its socket.

"Yeah, he's with JJ now. I think they said they were gonna--" I'm cut off when my phone starts ringing in my pocket. How is this thing not dead yet? I see that Penelope is calling and I swear, for a moment, I don't even want to pick up. She never has anything good to say. "Hi, P. How's it going?"

"H--Hi," she stumbles over her words, sounding a bit distant. "So, um, I'm at the BAU with Matt Simmons and Spencer is here too and Luke went to get Monica, but, um, I think you should come here."

Emily can hear my phone and she gives me a confused look, which I immediately return to her. "Why? Is Spencer okay?"

"He's just--" Penelope pauses. "We all got to work when we got back and he took on a lot of work and then he kicked me and Matt out of the conference room so he could be alone because he said he couldn't focus and he's just getting really frustrated and he looks so angry and-- Amelia, I feel like you're the only one who can bring him down to Earth."

Emily nods in agreement, gesturing towards the door as if to tell me to go. I feel bad leaving the team in the hospital without anyone to help them, someone who's not a nurse, but Spencer is my main priority right now. So I tell Penelope that I'll be there as soon as possible and go rushing out of the hospital and out to my car for the millionth time today.

///

The elevator doors open and the first thing I notice is how quiet the sixth floor seems. I'm so used to it bustling with people who have agendas and schedules and meetings. But now it's the middle of the night and everyone is home resting, where I wish I could be with my boyfriend.

I pull open the glass doors and find Penelope working on a desk with a man beside her, someone I've never seen before. She looks up when I enter, sighing a breath of relief. "Thank god you're here," she gestures towards the conference room where Spencer is furiously pacing and is clearly talking to himself, waving his hands back and forth. "He's only gotten more worked up since I called you."

"You're Amelia?" the man steps forward, holding his hand out. "I'm Matt Simmons."

"Yeah, Amelia," I nod, shaking his hand politely with a tight smile. "I'm Spencer's girlfriend. I believe I've heard him mention in the past before actually. You have four kids, right? Bless your--"

I'm completely cut off by a loud banging, and the three of us look up in time to see Spencer hurling a book at the glass panel in the conference room. There isn't even a moment of hesitation before we're rushing towards him, pushing open the door and approaching him.

"B-CAP," Spencer states, his hands digging into his eyes. He starts rattling off something about what this plant is, where it's from, and how to find it. Matt responds and Spencer nods, and there's no chance I'll understand what they're talking about, but that's not my main focus. Spencer drops his hands from his eyes and then glances between the three of us. "Why are you staring at me?"

"You," Penelope whispers, "you throw a book at a window. It was jarring."

"Yeah, well," Spencer scoffs, turning his back to us, "it took me thirty minutes to deduce what should have taken me thirty seconds. And if Scratch gets away and more people die because of it, then I'll be throwing a lot more than books," He leans his hands against the conference table and hangs his head, taking labored breaths.

I quickly usher Penelope and Matt out of the room, closing the door behind them. Penelope gives me a concerned look over her shoulder but I just give her a smile in return. Nothing can provide comfort right now, but I'm really trying.

Spencer hasn't moved when I turn back to him so I creep forward and reach for his waist. The moment my fingers make contact with his body, he completely jumps out of his skin and cowers away from me, as if he hadn't even realized it was me touching him.

I retract my hands as he backs away from me, holding them up in the air so he can see there's no foul play going on. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I apologize quickly. "I just-- I just wanted to help. I'm sorry, I didn't think you'd--"

"I can't let him get away!" Spencer is shouting again, waving his hands around frantically. "He's been getting away for too long! He's so close and I can let him--"

"Dove, I know it's hard," I step closer to him and when he doesn't cower away again, I move closer again. "I know you wanna catch Scratch and you absolutely will. But you need to rest. You haven't slept in who knows how long, you haven't eaten, you haven't showered, you haven't changed your clothes. You--" I let out a breath and just gently hold my hands out to him in the hopes that he'll grab them, and when he doesn't, I keep them there as a silent, continuous invitation, "you're a little burnt out, Spence. I know you wanna work and that you wanna help your team, and I admire you for that, but--"

"Rossi reinstated me," he tells me stubbornly, a switch flipping him back to seriousness and away from fear as he walks back over to the whiteboard. "In the hospital, he said I'm fully reinstated for right now and that I need to help out. I'm doing what he asked."

"Spencer," I snap, crossing my arms over my chest, "Rossi was fucking delirious. JJ told me that he told you to get tickets for a baseball game."

"It was code," Spencer retorts, picking up the book from the floor like it wasn’t the object he took his aggression out on and starting to read. "I'm not stopping."

"Fine," I give up, marching over to him, taking the book out of his hands and putting it aside, "keep working then, but I'm not leaving."

Spencer's face solidifies and he gets serious again. "You should leave. You haven't slept or eaten either and--"

"I'm not leaving until you leave. So I'm gonna get on this fucking table and go to sleep and you can join me if you'd like. But I'm not leaving you, Spencer, I told you that. I'm not abandoning you," and with that, I strip off my coat and climb on top of the conference room table, balling up the coat like a pillow and laying down. And with the crazy events of the day, I fall asleep right away, despite being on a table and despite having my unhinged boyfriend in the same room.

When I eventually wake up again, I'm in a different room. I'm not laying on a hard table but instead, I'm in an interview room on a couch. It takes me a moment to get used to my surroundings, but when I do I realize that I'm covered by Spencer's suit jacket and that my hand is clutching his sobriety medallion.

His absence quickly dawns on me and I gasp, sitting up and rubbing my eyes. I search for my phone to check the time and realize it's not on me so I stumble out of the interview room and towards Penelope's office. But before I can even get there, I find her wandering towards the elevators with her heels in her hand and her phones in her other.

"Amelia! You're awake!" She exclaims, grinning. "Come! The team is just coming up."

"What did I miss? What happened? Where's Spencer?" I ramble on tiredly as she drags me away.

"We got a hit on where Scratch was. Spencer, Luke, Matt, Emily, and JJ all went to the warehouse that he was at. They're coming back," she says as we pause in front of the elevators.

"Did they get Scratch?" It wasn't a necessary question. Penelope would have led with that information if it were true. I knew they wouldn't have captured Scratch. It's too easy. She doesn't answer.

The elevator doors open and the team files out in their kevlars with their guns on their hips, and Spencer comes out last. He gives me a tiny smile, his hands tucked in his pockets. He doesn't even make an effort to hug me when he approaches me, just stands close enough that I can feel his breath on me.

"Don't you ever," I sneer, pointing my finger at him, "leave to chase a serial killer without telling me. Don't you ever do that again."

Spencer nods shamefully, chewing his bottom lip. "You were so tired that I thought I could get there and back without you waking up. I almost did."

I breathe in a long breath, shaking my head. "You were close. I woke up two minutes ago," Spencer nods in response, staring down at the floor. Everyone is walking away now, discarding their vests and guns and reaching for their car keys. "Can--" I gulp, "can I hug you?"

Spencer nods and pulls his hands out of his pockets, sliding them around my back and pulling my body flush against his. I hug his waist tight, and despite the harsh lines of the kevlar, I melt into his embrace and close my eyes. Spencer rests his head on the top of mine, starting to hiccup as tears stream down his cheeks. "Amelia?"

"Yes, my dove?" I quip in response.

"Can you bring me home now?"

I let out a breath. A breath that releases all the bad energy and all the horrible events of the past few months. Because even though Scratch has escaped, the BAU will catch him, there's no doubt of that. But my Spencer is coming home finally, and he's here to stay.

"It would be my absolute pleasure."

  TAGLIST

@babybloodstonebones @bxnnywriting @blameitonthenight21 @feralreid @anepiphany @reidscardigan @itsmyblogandillreblogifiwantto @4x24 @whollytaciturn @thegingerfairchild @yasminwashere @shrimpyblog @anamelessfacelessnerd​ @wonderlandhatter​ @whxt-to-write​ @inkandexchange​ @just-call-me-non​ 

[kyndaris]

A Hero Lies in You

On April Fool’s Day 2019, a video was released showing the latest game in the Yakuza franchise. Many thought it was a prank. The reason why? The sudden change in combat. Gone was the brawler beat-em-up that was associated with the series. In its stead was a turn-based system reminiscent of role-playing games. Characters waiting for their turns before utilising special skills? In a franchise known for its hard gritty storylines about gangs duking it out in the streets of Japan? ‘Haha Ryu Ga Gotoku. You thought you could fool us, but we see right through you. This isn’t our first rodeo and you’re not Square Enix,’ was many a thought when the footage had been viewed by thousands online.

What gamers did not know was that this was no gag. Fast forward several months to August 2019 and it was confirmed that Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon, starring new protagonist Kasuga Ichiban, would actually incorporate turn-based battles. There would even be JOBS! 

As I had just finished playing through Kiryu’s story, as well as Judgment, in 2020 I was eager to see what new protagonist Kasuga Ichiban would bring to the table. From trailers, I could already see how much livelier Ichiban would be in comparison to the more stoic Kiryu. And, in contrast to Yagami, he was definitely more of an idiot. A lovable idiot, to be sure, but an idiot nonetheless.

Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon released in a huge week for video games. While I would have preferred to play it earlier, I had other huge titans to wrestle into submission first. Once I had managed to satiate my Ubisoft open-world needs with Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, I dived head first onto the streets of Yokohama, ready to bust some heads.

The game opens on a play. For a moment, I thought I had somehow purchased the wrong game. But as the lengthy prologue progressed, it was very clear that this was most definitely a Yakuza game. It just needed to set up a little bit of the tale, starting with Arakawa Masumi - father figure and role-model for our erstwhile hero. It isn’t long before players are introduced to Kasuga Ichiban with his trademark ‘punch perm.’ Born in a soapland and raised by those that lived on the fringes of society, Ichiban, rather than being hardened by his experience, is empathetic and not afraid to show emotion. Tasked with collection, he interprets his orders in a way to benefit those that are struggling. His goofball attitude immediately makes him a character one can connect to. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s a bit of a nerd, having played Dragon Quest during his childhood and likening many of the people around him to things in the game.

It’s not long before the plot escalates and Ichiban volunteers to give himself up to the police. Sentenced to fifteen years in prison, he inadvertently extends his sentence when his Patriarch is insulted by one of the fellow inmates. After nearly two decades spent in prison for a crime that he did not commit, Ichiban is released with little fanfare and no waiting convoy. Disappointed, he takes it in stride. The first thing on his order of business: to get his signature punch perm and reconnect with his second father-figure and Patriarch of the Arakawa family.

Along the way, he is dogged by a former policeman: Adachi. At first, it isn’t made clear why Adachi seeks Ichiban for help. After all, Ichiban had supposedly killed another yakuza in Kamurocho, Tokyo. Adachi, on the other hand, was a detective in Yokohama. Why would he have any interest in uncovering the truth behind what had put Ichiban behind bars?

After a few shenanigans are had in and around Kamurocho, our protagonist is shot and left for dead - waking up in a homeless shelter in the heart of Isezaki Ijincho. Climbing his way from rock bottom, Ichiban embarks on a journey to uncover the truth, stumbling upon a series of events and unearthing a vast conspiracy in which he was to serve as a pawn.

Many of the earlier chapters felt a little contrived. In particular was the death of Nonomiya. While it served to move the narrative forward, it was most assuredly a means to an end that didn’t highlight any significant character growth. Poor Nonomiya was fridged just to bring Ichiban into conflict with the Liumang branch of the Ijin Three.

It was only in the later chapters that the story picked up steam - with the confrontations with Bleach Japan and the encroachment by the Omi Alliance. Joined by a menagerie of characters like Zhao, Saeko, Han Joon-Gi, Nanba and Eri, there was a lot to keep track on as the plot barrelled forward at a breakneck pace, connecting Ichiban’s past with his current present and all the while setting up a juicy conflict between two men that could have been brothers. And honestly, the ending with Arakawa Masato and Ichiban got to me. I loved how that Ichiban was finally able to reach his old charge by being vulnerable and finally letting out a little of his resentment at the life Masato led, despite the fact that he could not use his legs.

The characters were superbly written and their motivations were a good reflection of the human condition. The themes of family and finding a home were evident, right from the start, even though a lot of it was glossed over by Ichiban’s desire to be a hero in a video game.

(I also really liked Seong-hui and would love to see her be an actual playable character in possible future instalments. On a side note, Arakawa...you cannot simply say: ‘See you tomorrow, Ichi,’ and expect to walk away. You basically wrote your own name into the Death Note with that line!)

As far as aping Japanese role-playing games go, however, Yakuza: Like a Dragon falls woefully short. While the Tendo twist was a good one - it was pulled a little too early. Worse, there was no world-ending threat. Everyone knows that a Japanese role-playing game MUST HAVE A VILLAIN/ EVIL GOD FIGURE THAT INTENDS TO DESTROY THE WORLD. Yakuza: Like a Dragon was too focused on old childhood rivalries to extend it further afield. I mean, yes, Aoki Ryo hoped to pull the strings of the Japanese government as chair of the CLP, but WHERE WAS THE METEOR HURTLING TOWARDS EARTH? 

Honestly, 1/10 for holding true to Japanese role-playing games.

Other than that, the summons with Pound Mates was amusing. As were the side stories. Honestly, there can never be enough side stories to flesh out the wacky world of the Yakuza franchise. So many old favourites made their return. From Pocket Fighter (now dubbed Dragon Fighter) and Gondawara Susumu with his baby fetish.

Also, I didn’t think I’d be so obsessed with it, but I think they cracked property management this time round. Ichiban Confections, later known as Ichiban Holdings, was a blast to manage and accrue juicy money for.

The bartender of Survive also looked very familiar. I mean...what with the huge scar across his face. My suspicions were confirmed when I searched up Kashiwagi up on the Yakuza wiki page and was awarded with the fact that HE MANAGED TO SURVIVE THE ASSAULT HELICOPTER FROM YAKUZA 3!!

Other than that, my few other gripes involved the implementation of the levelling system and the way area of effect skills were handled. In particular, the pathing for how characters moved around the battlefield proved, at least to me, a bit of a frustration. Often, characters would be blocked by a knee-high fence or a corner. Sometimes they would be able to go around, but other times the game (after several seconds of watching them fail to walk through a solid building) warp to the enemy that I had targeted to launch their attack.

And even though the combat is turn-based, most of the enemies tend to walk around the battlefield - either clumping together or distancing themselves from each other. What truly annoyed me was when there were moves that could be used as an area of effect, with the MP cost to go along with it, but were limited by their effectiveness when the enemy combatants were too far away. Yes, it makes sense, but golly gosh, how much of a pixel measurement does it have to be for it to not hit?

Besides that, the levelling was also a bit of a tedious chore. Were it not for the invested vagrants, I feel like I might have put the game down with how much grinding there was - particularly when it came to the various jobs. The biggest hill to climb was from 20-30. Without the exp (experience point) boosting items, it would have been a torturous slog. I know that in the original Japanese release of the game, the cap for jobs was level 30, but if you change it to 99, please, for the sanity of all the gamers out there, tweak the requirements to make it easier. And maybe give normal trash mobs a bit more experience points for the playable characters to munch on. 

Goodness, imagine having to grind on level 55 Ornery Yakuza and receiving a paltry 1000xp for each battle (when, in order to level up a job, you needed almost a million).

Yakuza: Like a Dragon is a break from the traditional formula that’s been a staple of the franchise for many years. Much like Ichiban, it’s a bit of fresh air to liven up the experience that might have gone a bit stale after I slogged through the whole Kiryu arc last year. With a few tweaks, and a few more Persona 5 CD soundtracks, I’m eager to see how the story evolves and whatever contrivances Ichiban will somehow force him into.

Although, to be fair, is it still appropriate to call this franchise Yakuza when the game literally saw the dismantling of the two biggest clans? Then again, Civilian: Like a Dragon 2 just doesn’t have the same ring to it. In any case, I hope the next one comes soon and we’ll be able to have Seong-hui in our party. I feel like she’d be wielding a gunblade.

(Did I just use a lyric from Mariah Carey? You bet I did! I had been tossing up the idea between this line and ‘I need a hero.’ Why? Well, I think that would be self-explanatory after knowing Ichiban’s proclivities. And it fits so, so, so well!) 

[brandonimhotep]

Keeda Haynes believes she brings a unique perspective to the race for Tennessee's 5th Congressional District. After spending over three years in prison for a crime she says she didn't commit, she hopes a spot in Washington will allow her to speak for vulnerable constituents -- and make a little history as well. Haynes, a former public defender, is in a three-way race that includes 17-year Democratic incumbent Rep. Jim Cooper. The primary election, which is slated for Aug. 6, has no Republican in the race so the winner will almost certainly be elected to Congress come November. "I have a unique perspective that a lot of people don't have. ... I've been a defendant and defender," Haynes told ABC News. "I really saw just how this war on drugs really decimated Black and brown, low-income communities." If elected, the progressive Democrat would make history as the first Black woman in Tennessee ever elected to Congress. The state has only had two Black representatives elected to Congress, with the last candidate elected over two decades ago, according to the U.S. House of Representatives. Along with supporting criminal justice reform, the 42-year-old Haynes is also passionate about issues such as providing access to affordable housing, raising the minimum wage and reducing student loan debt. At 19, she started dating a man in Nashville for a few years and began accepting packages for his cellphone and beepers shop, she told ABC News. She later found out that those packages actually contained marijuana. She spent three years and 10 months in prison -- on what was initially a seven-year mandatory minimum sentence -- on charges of conspiracy to distribute marijuana. In 2006, Haynes was finally released from prison while continuing to maintain her innocence. She went on to pass the bar exam and work in a public defender's office for over six years. Her historic run comes as a record number of Black women are running for Congress across the U.S. In 2019, a record number of Black women were serving in state legislative offices, according to The Center of American Women and Politics at Rutgers. Source: abcnews https://www.instagram.com/p/CGRjtPzj9-a/?igshid=kpfxeje12le5

[rametarin]

What the war on drugs can teach us about gun control

Consider that for the last 40 years, we’ve been in a culture as well as a physical war with illegal drug sales and narcotics sales. It was thought that the way to curb their illegitimate use and the harm that does, the only way to do so was A.) regulate B.) punish people SEVERELY when caught and convicted for use C.) Punish people SEVERELY!!! for distributing and dealing.

What happened?

The illegal narcotics market never stopped, didn’t even feel a dent. More people got jailed and died in prison. More people overdosed in the shadow of society because they wanted to use drugs and accepted the risks to use them illegally, even if it meant death.

The war on drugs did not shrink drug use. D.A.R.E had the opposite of the intended effect, or its effect was so negligible that all it did was slow the magnitude growth.

All the War on Drugs really did was make illegal narcotics less safe, increase business, increase the profitability of the venture, and serve as a lifeline for everybody from the Russian, to Mexican, to Chinese mobs.

Despite the lingering dangers of being caught using, the bankrupting effects of getting caught up in addiction and dependence for decades, the life threatening and destroying effects of addiction, the hollowing out of families fortunes, people still wind up using drugs.

People can still attain drugs.

Despite how many years you can get sent away to prison for their sale, distribution, possession and consumption, people still use drugs.

The War on Drugs didn’t work, because regulating by punishing law abiding people, making it harder for them to operate in a world designed as a playpen to handle those that abuse drugs, doesn’t work. The war on drugs didn’t work, because government cannot be everywhere and govern everyone in their personal lives. And it’s folly and draconian and authoritarian to try.

Now, a similar thing occurs when you talk about the War on Guns.

Those that wish to do harm with firearms, already do harm with firearms. Legal regulations do not stop it. Because the vast majority of people that commit crime with hot guns that aren’t even stolen from gun stores, get them illicitly. To where stronger LEGAL barriers in the way of when maniacs try to go through legal channels to get them for their rampages serve as near to no barrier at all.

We know this, because while some troubled white boy off his medication and raised in single mother houses get the most press for shooting people, the vast majority of shootings occur between black narco-gangs in urban areas. To where every year, if we get 400 people dead by rifles, that’s peanuts compared to the 8-9 thousand caused by handguns. And most of those are from illegal handguns. Between felons, whom by LAW, shouldn’t have access to firearms in the first place. So sayeth the government.

But again, the War on Drugs and contraband and the war on guns via gun control have been DISMAL failures. Law abiding citizens don’t kill people nor do they want to.

Suppressors? Machine guns? The criminal element don’t even use those. Not because they fear reprisal by the government, or multi-million dollar operations of illegal narcotics make it hard to get guys that can smith guns just for the narco-gangs. They don’t use them, because they’re otherwise worthless and impractical save as cover fire or aesthetics. It serves absolutely no one to make those illegal for any reasons. They save no lives by being illegal and a felony for a law abiding citizen to possess. And if a person conspiring to commit a crime pleases, they could illegally mod or get it illegally modded to be a full-auto, anyway.

They’re analog devices. That means they’re practically tinker toys compared to the sophistry of manufacturing narcotics. Machine guns being illegal helps absolutely nobody be safe or secure from anything, whatsoever. The illusion that them being illegal will somehow protect you is not too different from the illusion putting chips in automobiles so nobody can ever go over 80 miles an hour on national roads ever again will somehow prevent fatal crashes.

It might feel good. That thin veneer of security and satisfaction as you support the passing of, “common sense reform” this, and “reasonable gun control” that. But the truth is, if you’re in favor of gun control, then you’re probably just the leftist equivalent of the Law&Order republicans that thought harsher criminal sentencing and steeper penalties for trafficing and dealing would clean out the gene pool of “certain problemed communities.” And the problem would fix itself within 20 years, as people were removed from the conversation and prevented from having kids.

But banning ‘armor piercing’ rounds does nothing. Banning bump stocks does nothing. Banning butt stocks does nothing. Banning rifles over a certain size does nothing. Banning shotguns under a certain size does nothing. Banning magazine and clips of certain ammo sizes, does nothing. Banning colors, banning materials, banning styles, banning aesthetics, does nothing.

Because you’re trying to whittle whittle whittle until you can get around that constitutional right that says an individual over the age of 21 shall be permitted legal right to a firearm, and the state cannot infringe upon it. That’s ultimately what it boils down to.

People can defend their property, people can defend their family, people can defend their community, people can defend their country, with legal access to open and concealed carry firearms. What can you do with legal narcotics? Get high. The absolute necessity of being able to use firearms outweighs the risks of an individual and the harm they could do with those firearms.

If you so much as entertain the idea that the way to win the war on drugs is to end the war on selling and distribution and instead go to the psychological roots of why people abuse and how to get them clean in the first place, then you cannot philosophically, logically, morally, support gun control laws. Because the same issues that drive a person into a self-destructive spiral of narcotics abuse are often the same issues that drive people to shooting rampages.

Even that nonsense about possession of firearms contributing to murders from domestic fights is just malarky designed to allow the government to constitutionally neuter private individuals if their estranged and ex-wives decide to get revenge on their beau by declaring them a danger.

We don’t need national serial registries owned by the government, we don’t need bans on machine guns, ammunition types, barrel lengths, or styles.

Outside a person being deemed incompetent in their mental state as determined by their psychologists and psychiatrists, and the mental health instituitions being able to privately post your mental health information for relevant bureaus or businesses that deal in things like firearms or automobiles, there’s absolutely no reason why firearms should be illegal for anybody but felons. And it is way too easy to get technically ruined by even simple firearms federal laws.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Now begins the lame duck pardon party.

Every outgoing president issues tons of pardons in their final weeks in office to tie up any loose threads and appease their supporters.  I for one think the president shouldn’t have the power to unilaterally overrule a duly adjudicated criminal conviction, as it spits in the face of the rule of law.  Especially under an administration as corrupt as this one, the pardon is a blank check for the president’s allies to commit any federal crime they want for any reason with no fear of prosecution.

Trump pardoned Flynn who admitted he lied to the FBI, he already pardoned Roger Stone, he’s probably going to pardon Paul Manafort, possibly Michael Cohen (Cohen jumped off the Trump Train and became a registered Democrat, but he’s a bloodsucking lawyer first and foremost, so he’ll jump right back on it if the gettin’s good enough).  There have been too many names, big and small, that have been charged for breaking the law to protect Trump, and like good little mobsters the ones who didn’t squeal will be hailed as heroes by conservatives everywhere.  “Congratulations, you got away with it scot free!”

The most telling thing will be when Trump begins pardoning people who haven’ yet been convicted of anything.  When Richard Nixon resigned, Ford pardoned him before he could face justice; his pardon was purposefully broad, covering any and all crimes that Nixon may or may not have committed or witnessed throughout his entire tenure in office.  It was a pre-emptive pardon, meant to stop the judicial process before it even started, and Trump will almost certainly reward his biggest cronies with these sweeping pardons; he might do it now, or he might wait until January 19th so they can go carte blanche for two months.  He is printing literal “Get Out of Jail Free” cards.  How far back will the pardons go?  Nixon’s covered just his presidency from January 20, 1969 to August 9, 1974, so will Trump’s pardons range from January 2017?  A lot of crimes were committed by his campaign, so 2016?  2015?  He and his goons have been grifting for decades, and the only limit to his pardon power is that he can’t undo impeachment, but considering he was acquitted it is irrelevant anyway.  I expect some of his closest advisors, attorneys, and cabinet members will be pardoned for crimes going back well into the 1970s an 80s, crimes the media doesn’t even know about, many crimes for which the statue of limitations had already expired, but Trump will want to cover his bases anyway.

And the big question is whether or not Trump will try to pardon himself.  The constitution doesn’t say he can’t, but it’s never been tested before.  I have no idea what the Supreme Court would have to say about a self-pardon; it is an open secret in politics that the president is effectively above the law, but it’s not on any books so everyone can still pretend like laws matter and crimes will be punished.  But if Trump pardons himself, and it is allowed, it will establish this as lasting legal precedent, meaning that every future President will be handed a blank check to commit any crimes he wants with ZERO repercussion.  Their popularity would probably tank if they did something egregious, or it might fuel their base and make them more popular than ever, but however the public responds, they will be sitting pretty knowing that they’re untouchable.  They can lie and cheat and steal and do things much worse than Trump already has, free in the knowledge that no prosecution can ever be laid against them.  If there was ever even a question of the legality of a president’s actions, they could pardon themselves and make it disappear.  They could assassinate political opponents, they could throw dissidents in prison without trial, they could cancel elections and throw away the constitution entirely because they can pardon themselves faster than the House could impeach and the Senate could convict.

Trump absolutely will try to pardon himself, though I don’t think he expects it to be successful.  No, I think his endgame is just to drag out the process so long that the statue of limitations will expire while his self pardon is still being appealed.  Say he committed a crime in 2016 and it has a 5 year statute; if he pardons himself and fights in the courts until 2022, the statue will expire and the pardon will be irrelevant, whether the court upholds it or not.  He just wants to obstruct, to slow things down, cause as much gridlock as humanly possible so that he can coast to freedom on a raft of bloated bureaucracy.  He expects the self pardon to fail, but he expects it to take so long to decide that it won’t matter.

The only saving grace is that he will still be culpable for state crimes.  Of course, any red state governors will pardon him at his request, but he made the mistake of doing all his business in Deep Blue New York.  Cuomo is gonna fry his ass.  Trump and McConnell have been pushing through literal hundreds of Trump-friendly judges to stack the courts in his favor, so the Biden administration will have its work cut out for them, but there are enough prosecutors in enough independent jurisdictions without conflicted judges to see the entire Trump Crime Family face decades of jail time.  Now, I don’t expect them to serve any considerable length, maybe a few months in minimum security before being released to house arrest and then paroled for “good behavior,” and I know that no matter what happens Trump will claim victory (he’ll either be found not guilty, or he’ll cry foul and appeal to a higher court he helped staff to get himself off), but Thank God for the 10th Amendment.  States ave considerable power over the feds, a right which conservatives have been fighting for for centuries, and now it’ll come back to bite them in the ass when the other side decides to start using it.  “Wait, we thought only we were allowed to do whatever we wanted...  You can’t do that yourself, that’s not fair to us!”

Trump may try to call Double Jeopardy; pardon himself for federal crimes then claim that he can no longer be charged for state crimes, but I don’t think it will hold up in New York.  SCOTUS is another matter; with 6-3, I’m sure they’ll find a way to protect their Golden Goose.

The entire system needs to be burned to the ground.  The constitution is broken, we need a frame-off restoration, a whole new document from the ground up.  It’ll never happen, but a Constitutional Convention would do wonders for this country; other countries rewrite their constitutions all the time, but America’s amendment process is completely nonfunctional by design.  We need big change, and that’s gonna require some very reluctant old Liberals to shift further left and actually balance the out of control right.

[joaqqquiin]

POLITICAL DYNASTY - AMPATUAN

CHAPTER 1 

INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Politics in the Philippines have been quite a contentious and fragile topic for the past decades. Politics have led to numerous outcomes such as disunity, distrust, dissension, dispute, and even violence. These are some of the factors that have contributed to how society in the Philippines acts in the present which commonly affects the atmosphere the people work and dwell in, the socio-economic status of Filipinos, and most importantly, the well-being of individuals. One example of a hot topic in the past is regarding the feud between late former president Ferdinand Marcos and the Aquino family. This topic is a topic that a number of people would call controversial due to the mixed views and feelings people have in regards to the topic. A riveting concept the two families have in common is that they are both political dynasties in the Philippines. Some people and politicians would consider political dynasties as a root cause of issues that arise such as poverty, bias, impunity, and even quarrels between political dynasties that may get in the way of making rational decisions and lead to neglection of appointed duties. A case in point which proves that political dynasties are nothing but problems was the largest massacre that the Ampatuan dynasty committed. 

The Ampatuan massacre, or popularly known as the Maguindanao massacre, is a carnage which was a ploy made by the Ampatuan family to gain the upper hand against their rivals. This unfortunate event that the Ampatuan dynasty planned was recorded as the single deadliest event for journalists in history. Being a journalist is a reputable job as one is tasked with the obligation to inform the public with the news, however, the Ampatuan family has dented the country’s reputation of being a safe space for journalists as 32 were killed in the massacre. The Maguindanao massacre alone may show that the Philippines is not an utterly safe place not only for journalists but in general. The Ampatuan family has contributed greatly to putting the Philippines in a position where press freedom is attacked, impunity is exercised, and power is corrupted. The Ampatuan dynasty jeopardized the credibility of the nation as a fun and safe place to spend time with your family.

CHAPTER 2

SUMMARY

Background

The Ampatuan family is considered the largest political dynasty present in our country with over 51 members. A few prime members of this family are considered to be the most politically involved and have had the most transgressions. The late Andal Ampatuan Sr. was a patriarch of the Ampatuan clan and was also a main suspect of one of the largest massacres in the Philippines, the Maguindanao massacre. Before the case was resolved, Ampatuan died after falling into a coma caused by a heart attack. Andal Ampatuan has 4 sons, namely, Andal Ampatuan Jr, Sajid Ampatuan, Zaldy Ampatuan, Anwar Ampatuan Sr.

Andal Ampatuan Jr. was the 8th child of Andal Ampatuan Sr. and Bai Laila Uy-Ampatuan. He was known as the mastermind of the Maguindanao massacre and was convicted of 57 counts of murder alongside his brother, Zaldy Ampatuan. He is currently located at the New Bilibid Prison where he is sentenced to a maximum of 40 years without parole. 

Sajid Ampatuan was among the accused of plotting the massacre. He claims that he had already cut ties with his family and said that he assisted his wife who was filing her candidacy at the time of the massacre. He was not present during the promulgation of judgement and was given 5 days to reason out his absence. Due to this instance, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with graft charges and lost his chance to appeal since the rule of court states that absence during the promulgation is not justified.

Zaldy Ampatuan was a governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) however he was expelled from office due to his participation in the massacre. It was said that he planned the Maguindanao massacre alongside his brother, Andal Ampatuan Jr. However, all charges against him were dropped, citing lack of evidence. This was until Justice Secretary, Alberto Agra, restored the murder charges against Ampatuan due to new findings.

Anwar Ampatuan Sr. is the brother of Andal Ampatuan Jr. He was part of the mastermind group and was also convicted with 57 counts of murder. Unlike Anwar Sajid and Anwar Jr. who were identified as first-class convicts or those who had plotted and fired at the victims, Anwar Sr. fell under the second class of suspects or those who had prior knowledge of the crime but were not at the crime scene.

Political History

The Patriarch of the Ampatuan clan, Andal Ampatuan Sr. was already a vice mayor in charge of Maganoy when President Marcos appointed him as mayor. Maganoy is now Shariff Aguack. However, in 1986, due to the People Power Revolution, President Marcos was departed, and Corazon Aquino came into power. As she came into power, she replaced every locally elected official with officers-in-charge. Ampatuan Sr. was also replaced by another Ampatuan, Datu Modi who served for two years in that capacity.

In 1988, after the 1988 local election, he served as mayor for 10 years as he had been winning three consecutive local elections 1988, 1992, and 1995. In his 10th year as mayor in 1998, he was elected as governor and started to accelerate his Clan activities. His family occupied almost all the political costs in the area, the family tried to widen the range of the power, and even, eighteen of the mayors in Maguindanao were once members of the Ampatuan clan.

In 2001, his clan solidified its hold on power by keeping a close friendship with Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The reason for this is because Arroyo assumed the presidency after EDSA People Power II. And His choice was excellent. The family was appraised by the “Popular support” and openly supports Arroyo. In 2004, during the 2004 presidential elections, Arroyo came into power succeeding the previous president Joseph Estrada and dominated the polls in Shariff Aguack and most of Maguindanao. 

And lastly, in 2006, Arroyo issued Executive Order 546, allowing local officials and the police to deputize local militia to aid in the fight against insurgents. This greatly contributed to the establishment of power in the Ampatuan Clan. The Executive Order was issued shortly after an assassination attempt on Andal Ampatuan Sr. and the end of the Clan's history and relationships was dreadful. 

Issues they were associated with

It is no secret that fear is often instilled to control people. The Ampatuan clan, despite being popular and influential, they were feared. Numerous journalists would say, “They own the people'' or “The word of the Ampatuans was the law. The lives of the people living in Maguindanao would lie in the hands of the Ampatuan family as they had a private army consisting of 2000-5000 armed men composed of government-supported militia, local police, and military personnel. An instance when this private army was put into use was on the 23rd of November back in 2009. This instance was the Maguindanao massacre which would be the biggest issue of this political dynasty. 

Maguindanao mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. was challenged by Buluan vice mayor Esmael Mangudadatu as he was going to file his certificate of candidacy (COC). Vice mayor Esmael received death threats from his rivals so he thought that inviting journalists to his filing of COC would lessen the chances of ambushes. Esmael invited 37 journalists with him to file his COC. Along with the 37 journalists, there were also reporters, lawyers, aides and his family. As 58 of them were on their way to the Elections provincial office, they were kidnapped and murdered. Some were even raped before they were killed. There were at least 198 suspects including Andal Ampatuan Jr., Andal Ampatuan Sr. and several other members of the Ampatuan clan who were charged with 57 counts of murder. However, this was not the only issue the family had. They have a history of killing people way before the Massacre.

Back in 2005, 25 armed men in the military uniform killed the wife and child of Mando Tambungalan. He had identified that the suspects were hired killers on the Ampatuan payroll since he had been targeted by the Ampatuans for running for vice mayor of  Datu Piang in 2001. In 2006, the Ampatuans planted a bomb which exploded near the Shariff Aguak market, killing five people, including Ed Mangansakan who was a known weapons supplier for the Ampatuans. Another instance of their wrongdoings was when motorcycle-riding gunmen, linked to the Ampatuan clan, shot and killed Judge Sahara Silongan while he was driving his family home. A relative of the judge believes he was killed for failing to issue an illegal warrant of arrest demanded by the Ampatuans. As well as in 2008, a cousin of Ampatuan, Jr., and his armed men allegedly shot and killed eight members of the Lumenda and Aleb families. One gunman told the Human Rights Watch that he and the others were ordered to shoot the family because the Ampatuans doubted their loyalty.

CHAPTER III

REFLECTION

Abad, Anton Angelo T.

  My thoughts about the Ampatuan clan is that I'm surprised to see that they haven’t all been imprisoned and even some of them are still not arrested. I was shocked to read that they are responsible for the massacre and that they only did it because they didn’t want to get arrested. I think that people should learn more about these clans and start to plan a way to prevent them from gaining too much power. Because just like the Ampatuan clan they have so much power that they have their own private army and were able to delay there inevitable arrest for 51 murder.

Golamco, Janise Kate A.

The Philippines suffers from widespread corruption. From embezzlement, nepotism or police brutality, the common denominator to these actions is greed. Political dynasties such as the Ampatuan family are a huge factor to further influence these acts. Yet, people continue to tolerate their wrongdoings by doing nothing to prevent them. Because of fear, people have been silenced by their own timidity. Because of their own selfish desire, civilians were caught in the crossfire resulting in one of the largest politically involved massacres. The innocent lives lost cannot compare to merely a few years of imprisonment.

As students continue to grow and learn, it is vital that people know of the things that harm their society and strive for change. Influential families, such as the Ampatuans, use their power at their own disposal and further contributes to socio-economic inequality. It is why knowledge is greatly needed in order to stop corruption. By learning about the vulnerabilities and impacts of misconduct citizens are given a chance to end impunity once and for all. 

Lee, Noah

After exploring the largest political dynasty in the Philippines, there are a number of things left on my mind. It has been 19 years since the gruesome mass murder took place and threatened the Philippines. But I would appreciate that still now, we are studying this and learning about that happening and being reminded to be wiser in how to live as people in this country. We have to know what is currently happening, and what is harming or damaging the order of our country. It is our duty to argue for justice in our society and politics and to heritage it to our next generations. To achieve our duty, we all have to have a bright notion about the corruption of power that someone longs for enough to commit mass murder. 

However, the most damning aspect of the report for me was the support of the Ampatuans by the state, the police and the military, allowing them to consolidate their power. I strongly oppose the idea of making use of the public power for the private benefit of chosen families. It is said that there is no person above the law but I feel irritated about the fact that there is a person who takes advantage of the laws. Until we can generate real justice, we should keep our eyes on our country.

Velasquez, Joaquin Gabriel D.

Having the power to be able to do everything we want is something that if not all, most people dream of. The power to be exempted from the law, the power to generate money, the power to rule the world, or the power to make this all come true. To be able to obtain that amount of power is like living everyone’s dreams, but no, it makes us corrupt. Corruption of power is one of the deadliest aspects that can not only destroy an individual but also a whole nation. Corruption has been present in the Philippines for decades already, it has never left the country and I think it does not plan on leaving anytime soon. Corruption has many factors, it can be through pocketing money, abusement of power, and even the act of impunity. Impunity is as dangerous as corruption as it serves as an immunity pass to those with power. There have been several occurrences in which both impunity and corruption have been present, working hand in hand. A famous case is in the presence of political dynasties. Political dynasties have been believed to be the root cause of far-reaching problems in the Philippines. 

The Ampatuan dynasty or family is one of many political dynasties present in the Philippines. The Ampatuan family is known for planning the biggest massacre which ended up killing around 57 people. Several suspects have been charged with 57 counts of murder. However, due to impunity, a large number of suspects are still at large. In respect to this, I do not condone the presence of political dynasties in our country. As a part of the youth, it is important that we are aware of when corruption and its likes are present, lurking around us. I may not have the power to be able to do everything I want but I have the power that not everyone has the ability to do, speaking up and using my voice to amplify the voice of those who are silenced by the effects of the wrongdoings of these political dynasties. Raising one’s voice does not necessarily mean joining rallies but spreading awareness regarding the wide-ranging effects of the influential families sitting in power. Not speaking up and allowing corrupted families in power to continue and degrade the country’s socio-economic status will make us all accomplices to the destruction of our nation as a whole for failing to protect it. 

CHAPTER IV

CONCLUSION

Conclusion

The Ampatuans remain a powerful and dangerous force with which to be reckoned. For years, the department of justice and the military has been trying to get the Ampatuan family to pay for their actions yet they haven’t achieved full justice. A police officer once asked, “what do we do? This is an influential family.” The Ampatuan family is a powerful family with many connections making it hard for people to stand up against them. The trial of the Ampatuan massacre is a case that has far-reaching implications not only on press freedom in the Philippines but also on one of the biggest threats to the country’s democracy, impunity.

With impunity present in our country, killings and other illegal doings happen all around with no one to be held accountable. Thousands have been killed with impunity in the Philippines’ illegal war on drugs alone, how many more innocent people have died from other activities and remain greatly suppressed, away from where the world can see. In these cases, it is imperative that we equip ourselves with the proper knowledge and be a voice to those who are voiceless.

[ahistoricalramblings]

Understanding Transitional Justice

                                                                                              October 13, 2020 

Last week Tim brought up my podcasting post at the beginning of class. He actually wanted to talk about transitional justice more than he wanted to talk about podcasting, something I was definitely okay with. Since then, I cannot stop thinking about it. A fair warning: this is absurdly long, like way too long, but I’m obsessed with these questions and have been struggling to cut myself off. In all honesty I wanted this to be about 1000 words longer. Transitional justice is one of those topics that has so many unanswerable questions that you fall down a rabbit hole all the time. 

For those reading who aren’t in the class, Tim had asked my opinion on the comments of a French public historian at a conference in 2017 in Bogotá, Columbia. This man had said that following WWII France chose to consign the actions of the Germans and the collaborators to oblivion. They chose to let these issues rest for a couple decades and pick them back up when the wounds had scabbed over. I should be clear, the Frenchman is not the only person to hold this belief, not by a long shot. Individuals, often individuals in power, in every country facing questions of transitional justice have advocated for some form of forgetting. 

This view of transitional justice is outdated and it ignores so much of what transitional justice is. 

Transitional justice is not about criminal justice. Or at least, not entirely. It can certainly be about holding perpetrators accountable for crimes through the legal system; but often that is largely impossible. Here are some examples: in Chile, the former dictator was still head of the military and had threatened attack if anyone was tried; in Rwanda, the number of perpetrators was so large that it overwhelmed the prison system; in South Africa, there was a controversial Amnesty for Truth law that gave perpetrators amnesty if they testified in court. In cases like Argentina, Germany, and Peru successful trials have brought down the very heads of the institutions that committed the crimes but have largely left low-ranking individuals alone. Legal justice is only a small portion of the larger discussion on transitional justice. 

So, what else is there? Well first I’m going to plug my podcast because who would I be if I didn’t? Listen here to hear me talk about an amazing memorial in Paine, Chile. 

Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs), the creation of memorials and museums, and reparations are three of the biggest forms of non-legal transitional justice. TRCs are government funded commissions that use oral history and traditional research methods to uncover what happened. They create the state narrative and become the beacon for government work. 

Memorials and museums can be both private and public and can serve the state or serve the people. If you’re interested in this (which I imagine some of you might be) I have a good deal of knowledge on this part of transitional justice particularly in (can you guess?) Chile and also the former USSR, Germany, and Argentina. 

Finally, we have reparations. We might imagine reparations to be cheques handed out once or monthly or yearly to victims or victims’ families. And reparations can be cheques given to individuals, but they can also be sustained investment into infrastructure. This is particularly important when talking about traditionally underserved communities – for example the Mapuche in Chile or, oh would you look at that, Indigenous communities in Canada. This can be controversial because it brings up questions of who you consult about infrastructure changes, how you prioritize issues, and how you split funding (didn’t I tell you, there are tons of unanswerable questions in this field). 

Each of these three methods do not involve the legal system. Instead, they work to rebuild the social fabric of a country in the wake of devastation. They provide truth, memory, and restoration and they provide justice. We just need to reframe what justice means. 

When we think of transitional justice as criminal justice, we imagine the black and white world of a judicial verdict. We imagine that transitional justice will solve everything and make the world whole again. It won’t. It can’t. It never will. Massive human rights violations are irreversible, they tear through lives and communities, social structures and societal ideals. Instead, transitional justice is about holding systems accountable and reforming them; it’s not about the individual who committed the crime, but rather about the system that allowed, accepted, or authorized the crime. 

I really got lost on a tangent there but now you know a little more about what transitional justice looks like on the ground. 

Back to the Frenchman. His argument centres on the idea that talking about recent crimes only serves to re-traumatize victims. He’s not wrong in this idea but his solution is too encompassing. Instead of silence as a national policy, transitional justice allows for silence as a personal choice. All TRCs and trials are self-selected meaning the victim choses to tell their story. This isn’t a perfect solution, but it allows the victim the dignity of choice and the ability to put their own needs first. 

France is a unique case. They could say, “well it’s time to forget what the Germans did to us” (this ignores the roles of collaborators, but it still works). France as a country could project all of the crime onto an ‘other’, who were truly an other because they left. Again, we’re ignoring collaborators. Almost no other country has this option. In Rwanda, when the civil war and genocide subsided, no one left. The same can be said for South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Peru, Canada and the list could go on forever. So, we need transitional justice to mediate the relationship between the victims and perpetrators as they co-exist in a single society. 

The 1990 National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation Report in Chile explains the need for transitional justice quite well. In the introduction, they wrote “although the truth cannot really in itself dispense justice, it does put an end to many a continued injustice – it does not bring the dead back to life, but it brings them out from silence: for the families of the ‘disappeared,’ the truth about their fate would mean, at last, the end to an anguishing, endless search.” (The National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation Report, “Introduction,” 14.) 

I hope my ramblings on transitional justice have been informative. It’s not perfect, it’s not black and white, but it’s necessary. There is no healing in silence for society, that is an individual choice. Society is not allowed that privilege as the systems that allowed the violence must be held accountable for that violence.

Next week is undecided. Let me know if you have any suggestions for what I write about. 

Until then, stay savvy. 

[roartosoar]

How I Started Writing to Prisoners

It’s been a year since uncertainty became the new normal, where human connection is maintained through zoom meetings, facetime and social distancing. If you’re lucky, you had loved ones living in your home to provide touch, talk and play. What about the humans on the inside of institutions?  How is their connection maintained? They do not have facetime, they barely have anything. In fact, during the pandemic all programs, visiting hours and external contact was cut off from incarcerated individuals. This doesn’t include the lifers who haven’t seen someone from the outside in over a decade, or the ones who have simply given up hope. If you thought being stuck at home with your kids was bad, imagine not seeing them for fifteen years, isolated in a cell, staring at cold concrete. Imagine not seeing or talking to anyone. 

If you are anything like me:

·You do not like to feel helpless

·You can relate to feeling unheard, lonely or isolated

·The mistreatment of marginalized and vulnerable communities upsets you

So what do you do? Something! Anything to give hope and build endurance to keep going. In my case, I chose to write handwritten letters to incarcerated individuals, mainly those serving a life sentence. Now, I didn’t wake up one morning telling myself, “I’m going to write to prisoners!”. It was a slow, uncomfortable process, it still is. 

How it started

It began by sending love notes to friends and family I missed. Shortly, it evolved to include communities I was actively involved in like The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) and survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. Knowing my work with AFSP, my friend asked me to write to his foster daughters. Due to unforeseen circumstances, him and his wife were no longer able to house the girls. This inspired me to post on Reddit:

“If you feel unheard, lonely or isolated and would find joy in a letter of hope, DM your address to me”. FinchWitch 

The Responses were overwhelming. Many of us were hurting but not everyone was asking for help. Myself included. I discovered writing thoughtful, tangible letters not only helped others, it helped myself.

Challenge Accepted 

What do you do when you feel good about acts of kindness? You share with a friend. Which is exactly what I did when I felt I was onto something. Feeling unheard or lonely is diverse in that it's situational but it also unifies us as humans because we’ve all felt that way at one point in our lives. Telling my writing journey to my friend Jon, he quickly replied in a daring tone, “Oh you want to write to lonely people?”. He proceeded to talk to me (something he rarely does) about his experience in prison and returning to society after. A time period of approximately twenty years. He mentioned his battle with mental health, missing the growth of this son and forgetting what a hug felt like. A letter from the outside would have given him persistence to go on. He ended his talk by challenging me to write to incarcerated individuals. While I immediately accepted the challenge, the task proved to provide some obstacles. 

Do you know how to write to someone on the inside? I didn’t either. Once I found out about websites online, I was still hesitant to put pen to paper. The websites had so many rules. Identify your intentions, whether you are willing to be a prayer partner, provide financial means or legal assistance. There was no filter for “provide hope”. Once my boundaries were established, I had to go through profiles and select someone. What was I looking for? Who was I looking for? I thought about what Jon said, so I filtered people serving a life sentence, who were not currently receiving mail and were far away from me. I also purchased a P.O. Box for additional safety. The next step was to start writing! What would you write to an incarcerated person for the first time? I chose to write about myself, tell them this story and how my friend inspired me to write to them. I made my boundaries very clear, I offer friendship and an ear with an open heart. A few letters have been returned as some institutions spam all mail from strangers, but most get a response and I have friends on the inside I write to regularly. Both of us look forward to each other's letters and have found comfort in being heard.

I know what you’re thinking or have thought about, they did this to themselves. It’s their fault they are in there. You’re not wrong, many incarcerated individuals will tell you they are not a bad person, they made a terrible mistake. Can you honestly say you’ve never made a terrible mistake? We all make mistakes, these humans are serving the harshest consequence for theirs. Does this mean they deserve to serve their crime locked alone in a cell with no connection to the outside world? Personally, this is a harsh truth I no longer want to ignore.

How can you help?

Donate for supplies: It costs about $2 per letter. https://gofund.me/4848f232 

Become a penpal: email request to sorianostateofmiind@gmail.com Requires minimum of 3 month commitment and notification of last letter. No one likes to be ghosted.

Share 

I’m hoping by sharing my story with you I have given you something to think about that you probably haven’t before. I know I didn’t. Bonus if you choose to take action, may it be my suggestions above or your own. All that matters is your intention. I intend to speak for the unheard with a smile on my face and love in my heart. 

Love & Light,

xxxBeckz

Research to inspire helping

Spending money on others improves your quality of life. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18356530/ 

Studies show people who engage in charity organizations have higher levels of life satisfaction, physical health and self-esteem. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1693420/ 

Criminal justice Facts

https://www.sentencingproject.org/criminal-justice-facts/ 

There are 2.2 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails.

Changes in law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of the 500% increase over the last 40 years.

One in nine people in prison is now serving a life sentence, nearly a third of whom are sentenced to life without parole.

If you currently feel unheard and would like to receive some hope to keep going please mail request to:

Rebecca Soriano

P.O. Box 14481 

Long Beach, CA 90853

[ranaeissance]

rating: 4.5/5 stars

hey everyone guess who finally finished if we were villains!! here’s a review that no one asked for and because i've nothing better to do :D i read iwwv simply because it’s a dark academia book and this aesthetic is slowly consuming me. at first, i thought the actual story would fall flat compared to its expectations but i’m very glad to say it did not by any means!! if you were following my sporadic live blogging then you’ll know how this book broke my heart into pieces :’) the following post i’ll be long but

TLDR: i loved the book for its characters and realistic portrayal of their dynamics + how the book satisfied my dark academia heart. though i did not understand the shakespeare references it did not impede the story in anyway. loved loved the story and would highly recommend it!

synopsis

Oliver Marks has just served ten years in jail - for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he's released, he's greeted by the man who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened a decade ago. As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless. 

thoughts (spoiler free)

THIS BOOK  IS AMAZING I HAVE NO WORDS I CRIED LIKE A LOSER BY THE END BC OF THE INJUSTICES AND UGHHHHHH.

i’ll start with a short list of things i wished happened but didn’t stop me from reading; i wish the crime aspect / detective colborne played a larger role? to me it seemed the crime aspect was rushed though that’s u derstandable given that it’s more about the dark academia aspect and the characters’ relationships,,,

there are so many things right with this book. the prose, the interesting layout that suits the theme of the story, Oliver’s voice as a narrator, the characters and their dynamics and relationships with one another i could go on!!! however, i will make sure to explain to justify why it's so <3333

firstly, the prose and Oliver’s voice was so well-written? i didn’t want to punch him for being an unbearable pretentious prick and was grateful for not making me suffer through long monologues?? i loved the way things just flowed well from establishing the setting and aesthetic, which btw was *chef’s kiss* but also when it came time to introducing the characters??? nothing felt jarring or out of place — every description was purposeful.

speaking of the characters. i loved every single one of them and would die for them :( i loved how oliver made readers feel welcome and included, not as if we were intruding on a tightly knit group, even though they were. their dynamics and interactions were so real and it made me laugh at times how snarky and sarcastic they were with each other. i was actually rooting for them but by the end... </3 nearly all of them were pretty fleshed out and i loved how details of their personality / past / appearance / self was revealed slowly throughout ( :)))))) ) overall, their personalities, dynamics and relationships all felt realistic and 10/10,,, that maybe this dark academia fantasy could actually be real?

on another note, why the 4.5 stars? it is by no means the book’s fault but im deducting that little bit because my pea sized brain could not understand the Shakespeare excerpts and references being thrown around whoops. probably missed on some crucial foreshadowing but that’s on me. which i loved regardless of how much i understood the words the recited. it always kept me constantly guessing and picking apart oliver’s reminiscent attitude.

this book was just memorable with a few quotable quotes here and there and scenes i’ll keep replaying in my mind. i would have loved to read more on each character but like i said earlier, they were all well written and i’m only wishing for more because of how much i adored them. it’s a great book, truly.

[if anyone would like to discuss the book with me pls don’t hesitate to reply, ask or drop by the dms 💌😔]

[olreid]

I get that patrol cops should be gotten rid of and that in almost all situations no one should have a gun on them when responding to an emergency call. Few crimes actually warrant jail etc. But aren’t police necessary when investigating murders and stuff like that? I mean that’s still something that needs to be done even if you got rid of most of what police do now right?

there are a couple of things i want to say here ! first, police are notoriously bad at investigating murderers. their solve rates are dismally low -- this 2018 article puts the odds of getting away with murder at 40%. and as you might expect, those low rates are even lower for marginalized groups. ghettoside by jill leovy is a book whose framing i think is in many ways racist and whose conclusions i ultimately don’t agree with, but it DOES clearly show that the LAPD’s murder solve rate in cases where the victims are black men is egregiously low, and lots of times it’s because they don’t care to investigate, and even in some cases because officers are racist and don’t want to get in the way of black people dying. this washington post article examines that trend on a national level and finds that over 75% of the unsolved murder cases in the u.s. in the past decades were cases in which the victim was black. 

another example of this disparity that you might have heard about is the very high number of missing and murdered indigenous women in canada, whose families rarely get closure or justice because the police frankly don’t care about solving their cases. so even in an environment where murder is something that’s happening -- and it disproportionately affects people in certain demographics and zip codes -- police are not really helpful in addressing it. there have been a couple documentaries made about the missing and murdered indigenous women in canada and about the indigenous people who had to teach themselves how to investigate murders because the police weren’t doing it. so murder investigation is not something that only police officers can do; it’s something that marginalized communities have been teaching themselves because the police don’t serve them. 

that’s actually how a lot of serial killers become “serial” -- they prey largely or exclusively on populations whose murders police tend not to investigate, like women, people of color, and gay people. if you watch any of those weird serial killer documentaries or listen to true crime podcasts, you learn that a lot of serial killers’ secret to success was figuring out that the police wouldn’t come after them as long as they killed within very specific demographic groups. 

i would also be remiss if i didn’t say something i’m sure you already know, which is that police abolition in and of itself would cause murder rates to lower drastically. one third (ONE THIRD!) of all americans killed by someone they don’t know is killed by the police. the existence of police forces gives people the power, the tools, and the legal authority to kill people with no fiscal, legal, or social repercussions. we are unable to hold police accountable because they are more powerful than us, and so they become serial killers. i have lost count of the number of times it comes out that a police officer in the news for murdering a civilian had done so in the past and yet was not disciplined or removed from the force but instead allowed to continue murdering people with impunity. 

the other thing i would say, which i think is getting a bit lost in the conversation about abolition right now, is that addressing harms through alternative means is only one side of abolition; abolition is also really interested in preventing those harms before they even occur. fundamentally, police and prisons are reactionary systems -- they do not prevent harm from occurring, only administer punishment to the perpetrator after the fact. and even if they do solve a murder, they can’t get that person’s life back. so we want to figure out ways to create a world with less murders and other types of harm that the police supposedly address. that means working to dismantle violent ideologies like white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, etc. etc. which drive people to commit murder or to otherwise harm people. we want to meet everyone’s emotional and material needs so that no one feels the need to fight with others over resource disparities. we want an end to imperialism and a defunding of the military so that people in other countries aren’t killed in endless wars. we want to increase our collective capacities for conflict resolution so that disagreements don’t escalate to the level of serious harm or death. so even though there will still be murders in a world without police, we’re committed to really getting at the root causes of situations like that so that we don’t just replace police with some other institution that investigates murders but actually build a world with significantly less violence. this is difficult and long-term work but is really central to abolition as a movement. 

[kyndaris]

2020: Unprecedented Times

Most people, at the start of the year, had high hopes for 2020. For many, it was the start of a new decade (though, ask anyone on the street and the start of a decade is open to debate). Here in Australia, the start of 2020 merely carried on the disasters of 2019. Beset by bushfires all along the Eastern coast, we watched as our tourism numbers slump as the denizens of Sydney wore masks as a means to fight the harmful effects of smoke inhalation. Many small businesses, particularly in small towns, felt the brunt of the natural disaster. Homes were destroyed by the thousands. Worse was the fact that livelihoods that were dependent on visitors from all around the world (in particular, China) were also badly affected.

Why would anyone come to Australia, after all, when there was smoke in the air and the air quality was teetering on dangerously toxic?

Many hoped that once the fires had petered out, however, life would return to normal. Little did they know that by March, the world would be caught in the grips of COVID-19. After all, though there were the occasional news headlines of a new disease plaguing China in early January (which resulted in me warning my grandmother that maybe she not go over to celebrate the Year of the Rat), most people were focused on Donald Trump’s impeachment.

Then, of course, there was the assassination of an infamous Iranian general:  Qasem Soleimani. Once again, the world’s attention was arrested by the acts of the United States of America. Most were worried that the tension between Iran and the United States of America would boil over. At the time, it almost felt like a repeat of Trump’s antagonism towards North Korea.

In the United Kingdom, Brexit was well underway. After his re-election in December 2019, Boris Johnson continued his negotiations for a way that Britain could leave the European Union.

On a more personal scale, Australia was wracked by sport club funding scandals and climate change protests.

As for me, I was more concerned about the video game delays. Now that I write this, in December of 2020, I look back and think that perhaps it was appropriate for Cyberpunk 2077 to have been delayed until next year in order to fix the bugs that have the plagued the title ever since launch. Still, I was also vastly disappointed that Vampires the Masquerade II would not be releasing anytime soon. And saddened to hear that The Last of Us Part II had been pushed back.

After COVID-19 swept across the globe and taken hold in most countries and continents (which now extends to Antarctica thanks to a few Chileans testing positive), I watched as stupidity rose to the fore. Lockdown protests, the politicisation of the wearing of masks and the attacks on East Asians. Despite the severity of the virus and how infectious it was, I was disheartened to see so many people flout social distancing rules and break lockdown requirements. Most notably among the rich and famous such as politicians and NRL (National Rugby League) players.

Of course, being in Australia, our bid to ‘flatten the curve’ proved incredibly effective. Articles I’ve read indicate that this was mostly due to Australian’s observance of laws and regulations, as well as our trust in science. In fact, I’ve heard the refrain, ‘at least we’re not America’ spoken quite a few times this year. And honestly, after looking at the statistics, with the Land of the Free having upwards of 18.5 million cases with 326,000 (and counting) deaths, I couldn't agree more to the sentiment.

The whole ‘do as we say, not as we do’ approach by its President further served to fracture society and gave rise to conspiracy theories that served no purpose but showcase the height of people’s ignorance and distrust. It didn’t help that most Western countries also placed more importance on the ‘economy’ than people’s lives. Many global leaders were of the opinion that the ‘cure should not be worse than the disease’ and that a few deaths to keep the budget afloat was a necessary evil. 

Well, to that, I say, ‘Bah! Humbug!’ Without acting decisively and quickly, many nations have ruined their economy AND seen their people die in droves. When people are falling sick and suffering from long-term effects, they’re hardly likely to spend money. Nor will they be able to contribute to society and be able to continue working. Instead, you’ll be saddled with additional welfare taxes. By going hard and fast, closing down the economy for two months, maybe three, you can bounce back harder and stronger without fear of contagion.

Now, many countries are struggling with high numbers of new infected each day AND an economy that’s in tatters. Good job. 

It also doesn’t hurt to give back to the community and help struggling businesses. Schemes such as Jobkeeper and Jobseeker (at least in Australia) were able to alleviate some of the stress for many workers. And honestly, perhaps if the world had implemented a universal basic income, this would also enable people ensure their basic needs are met without sinking into poverty.

The fact that so many only see the short-term rather than long-term is astounding. And as for Sweden’s model? The less said about it, the better. ‘Herd immunity’ without a working vaccine? Madness. Utter madness. Particularly when the virus is airborne.

After enjoying a decent summer, numbers rose again in Europe and much of it was back under lockdown. A new strain, that has proven much more infectious, was discovered in the South of England! Trump tested positive for COVID-19, but to the dismay of many, he recovered quite quickly.

But 2020 did not end there. Once again, the struggles between ethnic minorities were brought again to the limelight. The death of George Floyd saw the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and served to highlight the disproportionate number of those living in poverty and in prison. As a person of colour myself (being of East Asian descent), I tried to explain some of this to my colleagues. But some of them saw Black Lives Matter as a predominantly American issue - and disregarded the fact that many Indigenous Australians were also in prison, caught in a vicious cycle of crime and violence.

It wasn’t long, however, that Australia experienced its own second wave in Melbourne, due to breaches in hotel quarantine. And honestly, it came as a surprise when it also happened in Adelaide and we learned that they weren’t testing hospital workers or those in high-risk workplaces on a REGULAR basis. You would have thought that all workers that transported aircrew or worked as security for those quarantining in hotels would be temperature-checked and given a swab every few days (or at least once a week). But no.

This is why we can’t have good things. 

Christmas in Sydney has also been somewhat neutered by the fact that there has been another sizeable outbreak in the Northern Beaches local council. And, of course, many people in Greater Sydney have been barred from other states. Gotta love those hard state borders where we treat each other as separate countries. Still - if it protects the people, the Premiers will stop at nothing. Even if it means families can’t be together. But better that than seeing Australia become the United States of America. 

Jumping from COVID-19, 2020 also saw an explosion in Beirut due to the storing of large amounts of ammonium nitrate at the port. Approximately 178 people were killed and more than 6,500 were injured. Locust swarms in Africa  descended upon crops, threatening food supply and livelihoods for millions of people. The West Coast of the United States of America suffered from catastrophic wildfires. Meanwhile, in south-east Asia, countries were hit by flooding and typhoons. As a side note, Armenia and Azerbaijan  restarted their ongoing feud. 

And to cap it all off, 2020 decided to further traumatise the future generation, a suicide video was uploaded to Tiktok. 

And oh, the US election. Where our favourite President tried to delay and impede mail-in-votes. In the days following the 3 November 2020 election, the world eagerly watched as the votes were counted and each state was certified. Trump, as is always his way, attempted to claim victory in the early hours of the morning of 4 November 2020, before deriding voter fraud with no evidence to substantiate his claims.

The weeks that followed saw a number of lawsuits that were lodged. Most, of which, were simply dismissed out of hand. And while his supporters have continued to claim that fraud was evident in the 2020 election, there has been no substantial pieces of evidence provided. Affidavits and hearsay, fortunately, do not a case make.

In Australia, our once promising relationship with China took a turn for the worse. While instances of racism, after the initial COVID-19, did not help, it also seemed that the finger pointing among government officials and demands for inquiries into wet markets only served to fuel the fire between the two nations. After initiating a trade war with the United States of America, China then saw fit to put significant tariffs on Australian beef, barley, wine and coal (to name but a few). 

The spat between Australia and China also took on a more insidious tone when several Australian journalists were forced to flee.

And with the unveiling of alleged war crimes committed by Australian troops in Afghanistan, the relationship between the two nations have come to an all-time low. China’s tweet of a doctored image that had an Australian soldier about to cut the throat of an Afghan child saw our Prime Minister taking to social media to demand an apology. 

All in all, 2020 has felt like both an incredibly short and long year in equal measure. For an introvert, such as myself, it’s been mostly the same. In fact, I can’t believe that it’s already at an end. Though my gaming has continued, as has my writing, I felt like I hardly interacted with any of my friends or did anything conducive to my social skills. While I’ve been made permanent at my place of work, it’s also felt a little stagnant. For a good long while, particularly in March, it felt like we were on the cusp of something huge and terrible. As the numbers climbed, I desperately wanted a hard lockdown to be called when leaders vacillated. 

2021 does not promise to be much better. While vaccines have rolled out in several countries, it’ll be a long time coming before the world manages to attain a sense of normalcy. For this blogger, I look forward to just kicking back and finally getting my hands on a PlayStation 5.

As for anyone that has worked on the front lines during this pandemic, I just want to say a big hearty ‘thank you.’ All of  you have sacrificed so much and seen so many terrible things. I wish that we all listened to your warnings instead of inundating emergency rooms thinking COVID-19 was a hoax.

Remember: keep at least 1.5 metres away from another person, wash/ sanitise your hands regularly and wear a mask if you can’t socially distance or are in an enclosed space.