#but I adore lexi and her competitive streak and her relationship with niko

[ddagent]

To be Bee MacAvoy. To be the daughter of survivors, final girls, third-acters. To have three locks on the door and never go out after dark. Seventeen years of waiting for your parents' boogeyman to crash through the door. Yours finds you on a canyon trail; his knife finds you twice. Lucky, lucky number thirteen. But then comes the waiting. Eleven months, one week, two days of walking around in the corpse of your former self, unable to tell anyone what happened. Not wanting to hurt your family. Not wanting to bring it all back. But the boogeyman arrives and this time you are ready.

To be Bee Stafford. You've left the world of your parents behind, found a new family. A new purpose. They needed a missing piece and you fit the puzzle. But it's not too last. You're a final girl, after all, and the monsters find you again. Lucky, lucky number thirteen. But for a time you embrace it. You help people, people like you. Take on the monsters; save others from your fate. You are Bernie and, for three months, two weeks and six days, you are happy. Content. Until there is someone you cannot save and you realise it is better to lock yourself away lest those you love suffer the consequences of your curse.

To be Elizabeth Strode. To be a facade of a person, with a husband and a legal career. To have a string of interests opposite to yours. You think, sometimes, it is better this way. But then you meet the Kid. Sixteen years old, with the blood of three friends on her hands and a killer at her heels. You don't think. You intervene. This is the moment you stop being Elizabeth Strode. Every decision afterwards cements it. Saving the Kid. Reconnecting with Sam and Grayson. Going to Maine to rescue Mina. Jumping in an ice cold lake, with a broken arm, to rescue Mina. Oliva. Morgan. Lexi. You suffer, but its worth it.

You are who you are. Bernie fucking Doyle. The boogeyman is afraid of you.

To be Morgan Hull. To be constantly paying for the sins of your father, moving from town to town when anyone finds out your name, still unable to reconcile the image of your dad - the one who taught you to ride a bike and picked you up from the movies - with the monster the world says he is. To never receive sympathy when the monsters come for you, with blood on the stage and a wound in your side. Karma they say. Justice they say. Even though you were a child when he committed these abhorrent things. So you retreat. Hide behind aliases; work from home. Stay close to your mother and your brothers and the rhetoric that it wasn't your dad. It's a mistake. But it wasn't a mistake. And it's not a mistake when your brothers follow your father, rivalling his body count. But you're not one of them. You're not the boogeyman. You're a final girl and its about fucking time you accepted that.

Things change. You find people. People just like you. And all of a sudden you have friends, and a job with a purpose, and sisters and a niece and you find yourself enveloped into a family who loves you, knowing all that came before. You even meet someone. He's warm, and funny, and brings you food from his restaurant when you're working late. He wears his scars on the outside while yours are all internal, a shredded heart stapled together. But it's not too last. His monster was your first, and you suddenly realise that you will always be paying for the sins of your father.