#like when are you going to address the allegations??? is anyone going to mention driver mcbradpitts new cereal line???

[fourtyforever]

did anyone else see that the fake f1 team for the f1 movie made a fake team instagram page to post their fake results? because me and my friends did, and our first thought was genuinely

[spicykoreantatertots]

Sleep Alone - Part One

Pairing: Namjoon x Female Reader (ft. Hoseok and Seokjin)

Word Count: 3.9k

Rating: PG-13

Genres: SFW, Soulmate AU, Angst (Future Fluff)

Summary:  The timer on your wrist is ticking away until the moment you get to meet your soulmate. You often spend time daydreaming about your him. The time remaining on the timer has fluctuated throughout your life. Each big decision you or your soulmate makes can have an affect on the timer. A week before you finally get to meet, the timer gets extended by an additional forty years.

Warnings: Mentions of drugs, drug dealing, drug lording, meth labs, death, murder, blood, scary guys being scary dudes, someone gets arrested, but there is not smut lmao. 

A/N: Proud to be part of Bangtan Scenery’s April Showers Bring May Flowers Collab! This is the first part of this fic. Part two will be coming in May! I may also do a NSFW one shot later this year. I’m excited to continue working on my soulmate series (one for each member). They are all based on songs by Waterparks, check out Sleep Alone. 

Big shout out to @megahwn and @ho-baebae​ for beta reading and thank you to @lovely-literati​ for always being supportive. Love y’all! 💜

~~~~~~~

The street is deserted, only one parked car about a few feet away. He sneaks around the corner into the alleyway. Careful not to step on any debris or in any puddles, he slinks past the dumpster overflowing with garbage. He can barely make it out in the dark, but he’s found the door with the marking. 

He reaches into his back pocket for his lock picking kit, but when he begins to work on the door he finds it unlocked. He pauses, unsure if he should continue inside, but the overwhelming metallic scent of blood floods his nostrils.

He rushes into the building. The first room is large and dim. But he can see boxes, buckets, beakers, tubing, and trash everywhere. It’s a meth lab. The smell of ammonia starts to overtake the smell of the blood. Until he sees two bodies in the next room and one big puddle of blood between them. 

As he approaches cautiously he begins to recognize one of the people. Dae-hyun. He falls to his knees. The one person he was trying to protect from all this. Before the grief strikes him, there’s a crash from the other room. And footsteps. And then his chest is on the ground, the breath knocked out of him, a knee in his back. A booming voice.

“Kim Namjoon, you are under arrest for the murders of Jung Dae-hyun and Yoo Young-jae. You have the right to remain silent...” 

~~~~~~~

It’s the same dream you always have. Following the path of rose petals up the hill. The sun is setting and at the top you can see him: your soulmate. You’ve never been able to see his face. You always wake up just before you reach him. This time as you approach the hill, he’s nowhere to be seen.

The gentle thunder from the approaching storm wakes you from your sleep. An early morning thunderstorm, one of your favorite types of weather. The gray sky and light drizzle almost lull you back to sleep. But just as you’re dozing off you see it. Your timer. 

44y:67d:54h:23m

You have to do a double take. Forty-four years? Just last night your soulmate timer was counting down from four years. It’s not uncommon for it to change. 

Each decision you make could potentially affect the timer. You changed your mind about college three times before you settled on the one that only added two years to the timer. One day, your timer went from 5 years to 3 minutes, but then quickly returned to 5 years. You had just been watching TV, so you often wondered what decision your soulmate made that brought you so close together and why he would have changed his mind. 

But you couldn’t have done anything in your sleep last night to cause this... what did he do?

~~~~~~~

It’s the story of the year. Of all the exciting cities across the world, it has to be breaking in your hometown. The sexy new drug lord, Kim Namjoon, finally caught. It’s sick, but it makes for good news. Or whatever Buzzfeed is. They’re taking it as far as possible with their quizzes and bullshit articles. 

Are you compatible with Kim Namjoon?

10 reasons why Kim Namjoon is the sexiest drug lord of the century. 

Which paradise should you and Kim Namjoon escape to?

22 things to know about Kim Namjoon’s life before drugs. 

Kim Namjoon as exoctic birds.

It’s not something you would normally be interested in, but during your morning social media scroll, one article catches your eye. 

Could Kim Namjoon be your soulmate? Click here to see his timer. 

There’s something growing in the pit of your stomach. It really really couldn’t be. The fact that the story broke the same day your timer had 40 years added means nothing... Right?

You check the comments, refusing to give into click bait. 

Kim Min-seo

President Namjoon 2020

Steven Borden

Why do we care about this? He’s a murderer and drug dealer. 

Karen Smith

prayers for the family

Jae Lee

He can murder me any day of the week. 

Julie Ann

Can’t imagine having a half empty bed for 44 years. Thank god I got my mans already.

The feeling in your stomach radiates throughout your body. It can’t be. You give in and click on the article. A picture of Kim Namjoon. A close up of his wrist. It’s not exactly the same as yours, but it was taken two days ago. At 3pm. You do the math in your head. Then you do it again on a piece of paper. Then you plug it into Google, just to be sure. 

It’s him. 

So if any of you ladies or fellas out there have the matching timer, you can find him at the 48th Police Precinct before he’s transferred to a maximum security prison upstate. Click here to stay up to date on all things Kim Namjoon. 

A gif of Namjoon being escorted into the police station plays on a loop at the end of the article. He is beautiful isn’t he? He could be a murderer, a full on drug lord. But as it begins to fully sink in, you know there has to be more to the story. Your soulmate couldn’t really be a killer. 

~~~~~~~

There was no air conditioning on the bus to the police station. The warmth of late spring is making you sweat. You might think it was just your nerves, but the overwhelming smell of body odor confirms that everyone else is sweating too. 

Looking around the bus at the other passengers, it’s hard to imagine where they might be coming from or where they’re going. Most people are probably doing normal things, shopping, going to work, visiting friends. Is anyone else on their way to face their soulmate?

Some chattering from the front of the bus pulls you out of your head for a moment. Everyone on the bus begins looking out the windows on the opposite side. You crane your neck to try to see what everyone else is looking at. It’s a crowd of people, but that’s about all you can make out. 

“Stop #27: West 12th Street!” The bus driver announces over the intercom. The bus slows to a stop, your stop, right in front of the police station. 

Fiddling with the strap from your bag, you exit the bus slowly. Soon you’re able to get a good look at the crowd. It’s mostly young women, all crowded near the entrance of the police station. They’re holding signs, it must be a protest of some kind. 

As you get closer you can read some of the signs. 

HUGS AND DRUGS

LEGALIZE

FREE KIM NAMJOON

END THE WAR ON DRUGS

PRESIDENT NAMJOON 2020

The protest signs seem... inappropriate? Especially considering he was arrested for murder and not his alleged drug lord-ing. 

“Free Namjoon!” Shouts the girl wielding the “President Namjoon 2020” sign. 

“He’s too hot for prison!” The girl next to her screams.

“Ji-woo shut up! You’re invalidating the cause.” You don’t stay to hear Ji-woo’s rebuttal, instead opting to duck inside the police station before they engage you. 

It’s a bustling place. Lots of people in the waiting room. A woman with two small children is ahead of you in line trying to reason with the woman behind the counter. She’s trying to convince her that the $10,000 bond for her husband’s DUI is unreasonable. 

“Ma’am, the judge sets the bail amount. There are bail bonds services down the street. Next!” She motions for you to step up to the counter.

“How can I help you?” She asks, not making eye contact, but instead clacking away at her keyboard.

“I’m here... to see Kim Namjoon?” It comes out as a question, without looking up she responds.

“You can go join the group of your friends waiting outside. No one can see him. Next!” There is a grunt from the man behind you in line when you don’t move immediately. 

“I think...” You start quietly. “I’m his soulmate.” The woman stops typing to look up at you. You reluctantly pull back your sleeve and show her your timer, still ticking away. 

“I see.” She stands and disappears down a hall and out of sight. You fight the urge to look around the room, not wanting to make eye contact with anyone who might have heard you. The forty years on your timer don’t change and you’re not sure what this means. Maybe they still won’t let you see him, soulmate or not. 

After several minutes of awkwardly standing and waiting, she returns with a police officer. 

“Ma’am please come with me.” The officer motions toward a door that leads out of the waiting room and the woman returns to her keyboard. The officer meets you on the other side of the door. It’s quieter than you expected. A bulletin board of wanted flyers stares back at you. 

“He doesn’t want to see you, but he was willing to add you to his phone call list.” Your stomach drops. How could he not want to see you? He’s the one who’s been arrested, it’s you that shouldn’t be willing to see him.

The officer continues down the hall to a small conference room. There are two other people in it, another police officer and a man. The officer guides you in and then leaves. 

“Hi please have a seat and fill out this form.” It’s a fairly simple form. Name, address, phone, relationship to detainee....

“Who are you?” The man next to you asks. He’s looking at you trying to fill out the form. You don’t respond to him at first, because who is he? He looks like any other guy off the street. Well maybe not quite. He’s dressed in basic dark jeans and a graphic t-shirt, but he is very handsome.

“I’ve never seen you before, why are you here to see Namjoon?” He prompts you again. He must know Namjoon. But if he’s friends with Namjoon... Namjoon the potential drug lord and murderer... can he be trusted?

“I’m his soulmate.” The words still feel awkward falling out of your mouth. But you don’t have much choice but to trust him. He’s your only line into the life of Namjoon. The man tenses up, drops his head into his hands. He says nothing, the lights in the room flicker slightly.

After too much awkward silence, you push your completed form toward the officer across the table. He tells you that you may receive calls from the station or prison when Namjoon is able to call, but the only way for you to reach out to him is to send letters to the prison. You thank him for the information and pause, waiting to see if Namjoon’s friend will say anything. He doesn’t, so you get up and leave the room. 

You manage to get out of the police station and through the crowd of weird fan girls before the tears start flowing. What are you supposed to do now? Just wait around and hope he calls? 

“Hey! Hey!” You turn and see the man from the conference room running toward you. You quickly wipe the tears away and straighten your posture. He slows a bit before approaching you cautiously. 

“I’m really sorry. I don’t know... God. I don’t really know what’s going on to be honest. I just know that what they’re saying... what they’ve accused him of. It isn’t true.” Even though he’s a stranger. Even though you have no reason to trust him. You feel relieved. 

“Who are you?” You finally ask him. He smiles a little and stretches out his hand.

“I’m Jung Hoseok.”

~~~~~~~

Namjoon’s friend, Hoseok, walks with you down the street to a cafe. He buys you a drink and tells you about Namjoon, the English, Government, and Philosophy triple major. The boy set to start law school in the fall. His best friend for years now, the friend who helped him finally find his own soulmate connection. 

And now here you are. Namjoon’s soulmate, sitting across from Hoseok at a coffee shop. 

“So, you clearly don’t think he could have done this,” you mumble across the table, “so what do you think is going on?” Hoseok is quiet for a long moment. He’s looking down at the cup of coffee, stirring mindlessly.

“I think he’s being framed.” The air between you is heavy, the weight of the situation settling onto your shoulders. 

“Namjoon has- had this friend from his childhood,” Hoseok starts again, “he got mixed up into some bad things.”

“Dae-hyun?” You ask before taking another sip of your drink. Hoseok nods.

“I know Namjoon was trying to help him. He asked me to follow Dae-hyun a few times because he wouldn’t have recognized me.” Hoseok shakes his head a bit, as if he’s wiping away some memories.

“You followed him? That was so dangerous, why would you do that?” You question. 

“I owed him one.” A faint smile crosses Hoseok’s lips. 

“Well.... Did you learn anything?” Eager to hear more, eager to figure out how to fix this problem.

“Dae-hyun was dealing something, I’m not sure what. I guess meth, they found Joon in a meth lab didn’t they?” Hoseok takes a drink before continuing. “Dae-hyun was in a relationship with the other guy that was killed, Young-jae. I wasn’t sure, but Namjoon thought they were together. He said Dae-hyun would never do drugs much less sell them, so he assumed Dae-hyun must have been trying to help Young-jae get off drugs, get out of the drug ring.”

“Why did Namjoon do all this, why not go to the police?” You ask, your head beginning to hurt. Trying to connect the dots is taking its toll. 

“If he had reported it to the police they would have busted Dae-hyun and Young-jae.” Hoseok pauses. “I think Namjoon was trying to take down the whole drug ring.”

“By himself?” You laughed to yourself. The stupidity... the guts... your soulmate is something else, isn’t he?

“Namjoon is a genius, but even more than that he’s compassionate and caring. And he must have been close, because they framed him for murder, framed him for running the drug ring himself.” Hoseok was right. The real leader of the drug ring must have felt Namjoon was getting too close to exposing them. 

“Hoseok?” You tilt your head to the side, an idea brewing in your mind. “Do you think Namjoon may have left any evidence or clues for someone to find?”

“What are you thinking?” Hoseok raised his eyebrows. 

~~~~~~~

It wasn’t difficult for you to convince Hoseok to take you to Namjoon’s apartment. It’s proving to be much more difficult to convince him to cross the crime scene tape. 

“Hoseok this isn’t even where the alleged crime took place!” You shout, tugging your hands, trying to break Hoseok’s grip on you. 

“We have to be careful about this. If we get incriminated too there won’t be anyone left to help Namjoon.” You don’t want to admit it, but he’s right. 

“This is the closest I can be to him Hoseok, please let me go in.” Your shoulders droop and you stop fighting him. He doesn’t let you go though. He’s about to speak, but before he does, both of you hear footsteps running down the hallway. 

A tall man wearing a baby pink sweatshirt is running toward the two of you. Hoseok drops your wrists and puts his hands on his hips with a huff.

“Jin what are you doing here?” Hoseok greets his friend with a hand slap and a bro hug. 

“I don’t know exactly. My fiance sent me here to see if I could find anything helpful. She’s headed to Namjoon’s hometown to be with his family. They were close growing up.”

“Oh yeah... does that mean she was friends with Dae-hyun too?” Hoseok questions.

“Yeah she’s really upset about it.” Jin turns to you finally. “So who are you?” 

“She’s Joon’s soulmate.” Hoseok says before you can answer. 

“Bad timing, huh?” You laugh a bit to stave off the uncomfortable feeling. 

“Yeah, well. I know a thing or two about bad soulmate timing. I’m Seokjin.” You shake his hand. He laughs a bit, not bothering to tell you about his soulmate story. The focus is back on entering Namjoon’s apartment. 

Hoseok stands in front of the door, still wanting to weigh the options. Without hesitation Seokjin begins furiously tickling Hoseok’s underarms. Hoseok doubles over in laughter and then dead weights himself, sending both of them toppling to the ground. While both of them are laughing, you decide to reach for the door. 

The door is unlocked, so you swing it open. You step through the tape, trying not to break it. Silence breaks over the three of you. The boys scurry to their feet and enter the apartment behind you.

“Don’t leave your finger prints on anything.” Hoseok whispers. It takes a moment for it to set it in, but the more you look around the room it’s easier to see. 

Someone has been here. The place has been completely trashed. Drawers are open, couch cushions thrown about, pictures and decorations knocked down and smashed. You reach down and pick up a framed picture of Namjoon and his family. The glass falls out, so you remove the picture and slip it into your pocket. 

Before anyone can say anything, there’s a sound from the back of the apartment where the bedroom must be. It sounds like a drawer slamming and then someone curses. Someone else is in the apartment. 

The hair on the back of your neck stands up and you look back at Hoseok and Seokjin. They’re both frozen. Footsteps are coming from the hallway and a figure comes out of the shadows. Hoseok grabs your arm and pushes you back behind him. 

It’s a man, yet another person you don’t recognize. He’s wearing all black and a leather jacket. Hoseok seems to tense further upon seeing the man’s face. 

“What the hell are you doing here Min-jae?” Hoseok demands. The man stills upon seeing the three of you standing there. He puts his hands up and slowly continues walking toward you. 

“Probably the same thing you are. I just need some answers man.” Min-jae stops about ten feet away and puts his arms down. Hoseok turns to you. 

“Young-jae’s brother.” Hoseok mouths this information to you, trying to hide what he knows.

“I need to know what happened! Why would this guy kill my brother?” Min-jae shouts. He kicks a chair over in the kitchen while tears begin to fall down his face. 

“Listen, we came here to figure something out too.” Hoseok continues, cautiously approaching the man. “Namjoon didn’t do this. He loved Dae-hyun, he was trying to help them. Dae-hyun was on drugs, your brother was probably trying to help too, but just got caught up in the mess.” 

Hoseok was intentionally sharing the wrong information. He must have a reason to not trust Min-jae. Seokjin looks over at you and you shake your head once, so slightly as to not let Min-jae see. 

“Well good luck because I haven’t found anything.” Min-jae let out an exasperated sigh. 

“You’ve never been here before, so maybe we should give it a once over. We’ve all seen this place before.” Hoseok says, again, not the truth. You’ve never been here. You play along with Hoseok’s ruse. 

The four of you search the house for anything that might be helpful. It’s more difficult than you thought because you don’t know what you’re looking for. But you are learning about Namjoon. 

In the kitchen you learned that he seems to eat a lot of take away and instant ramen. In the bathroom you learned that he has a full skin care routine and that he uses cinnamon toothpaste. In the bedroom you learn that he probably misses the hamper when he’s in a hurry, and based on the polaroids taped to the wall, he enjoys traveling. Back in the living room, you learn that Namjoon is an avid reader. You’ve parked yourself in front of his book shelf, scanning each title carefully. 

“He’s always got a book with him.” Seokjin says as he comes out of the kitchen. He reaches past you to grab a book from the shelf. It’s leather-bound and has his name printed across the cover. 

Seokjin opens it and the two of you stand there, silently looking through the notes scrawled throughout the pages. Except, they aren’t notes. They’re song lyrics. 

Your phone begins loudly ringing in your pocket, causing both you and Seokjin to jump. You excuse yourself into the hallway. It’s an unknown number, your heart skips a beat. 

“Hello?” You answer quietly. 

“A detainee at the 48th Police Precinct is attempting to contact you, do you accept?” An automated voice is on the other line. This is it. Namjoon is calling. 

“Yes.”

“I’m so sorry.” Kim Namjoon on the other end of the call, it sounds like he’s crying. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“Oh I know sweetheart.” You coo into the phone, it feels strangely natural to comfort him.

“Where are you?” He sniffles.

“I’m with Hoseok at your place.” You continue speaking in a hushed tone.

“Okay that’s good. Stay with him until this is over. You can’t trust anyone else.” The words send a chill down your spine, reiterating the seriousness of the situation. 

“Seokjin is here too.” Your voice is trembling now, your hands shaking. 

“Jin is safe.”

“A guy named Min-jae was here when we got here.”

“Son of a bitch.” Hoseok seemed to be suspicious of him and Namjoon’s reaction confirms that he is bad news. “Listen to me. Listen carefully.” Namjoon takes a deep breath.

“I can’t say much, I don’t know who is listening. There is a small flash drive taped to the back of the painting above my couch. Jin will know who to take it to. Get away from Min-jae as soon as you can, don’t let him see the flash drive.”

“Namjoon I-”

“You don’t have to do any of this, you can leave now and I won’t blame you-”

“No!” You almost shout it, probably getting the attention of the boys back inside the apartment. “No, I’m in this now. We’re in this together.” Namjoon takes a deep breath.

“Thank you. Please get yourself out of there.”

“I’ll see you soon, Namjoon.” You say firmly. It’s not an option. You will get him out. 

“See you soon.” He chuckles lightly before hanging up the phone. 

You take a moment, pressing your back against the wall. You try to catch your breath, but instead you cry. The tears silently roll down your face.

Back in the apartment, the three boys seem to be in the back of the apartment continuing their search. You tiptoe toward the couch and reach for the painting. It comes off the wall easily and you set it down silently on the couch cushion. 

It takes a minute to spot it. It is actually very small and painted to be the same color as the back of the painting. You carefully remove it and stick it in your front pocket. You put the painting back up and turn to go find Hoseok and get the hell out. 

Min-jae is there behind you, staring at you. 

“Find anything interesting?”

~~~~~~~

Thank you for reading! Part Two coming soon! Check out my Not Warriors Soulmate Series Masterlist! 

Want to be added to the tag list, let me know!!

[myheartrevealedocs]

Untouchable Ch 25: Minimal Loss (S4E3)

[TW!!] Warnings: (This is the same content as found in the episode, so if you’ve seen it, don’t worry too much, but I find this one to deal with multiple sensitive topics at once, and I don’t gloss over it all, like I often do, so be careful) mentions of rape and pedophilia, depictions of torture, cults, murder-suicide

Ch 24 | Ch 26

A/N: Okay, so I’m four days late on posting this, but this is quite possibly the longest chapter I’ve posted, so hopefully that makes up for it?

~ ~ ~

Lydia’s family stayed for about a week, attached to Lydia at the hip the whole time. She loved her sister dearly and was glad to have some time with her father, but she could barely breathe by the time she was taking them to the airport. As she explained to Spencer, she was merely frustrated they didn’t give her any heads up.

Luckily, they left before her teaching schedule came back into full swing at the university. It was nice to get back into her routine and see some of her students and coworkers who were worried about her. She didn’t realize how close she’d gotten to the people there until the letters, phone calls, emails, and gifts started flooding in, telling her to take it easy and get back soon.

And then, in October, Hotch finally gave her a call for a case.

It was small, but she wanted to get out of her apartment so bad.

Hotch was sending Lydia and Prentiss to Colorado where there was a claim against a separation church leader raping young girls.

Spencer wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear Lydia was leaving, but the whole thing was fairly straight-forward: interview the kids, determine what they could about the cult itself, then see if there was reason to shut them down. Hotch knew that there wasn’t going to be any extraneous activity, so it was a perfect start to reintroducing Lydia to the field. Not to mention, she was very perceptive and a master manipulator.

“Tell us about the 911 call,” she said as she flipped through a file on the people of the church.

Emily was in the front seat with Nancy Lunde, from Child Protective Services. She was the head of the case and had the most prior knowledge on the group itself. “I believe the ‘he’ that they referred to is the church’s leader, Benjamin Cyrus.”

“Benjamin Cyrus,” Lydia mumbled, flipping to his page. “No criminal record. No record at all, really. I doubt it’s a real name. Correct me if I’m wrong, Emily, but Cyrus is a biblical name. A monarch. I’m seeing some subtle messages in there.”

“It translates to ‘sun’ in persian,” Emily agreed. “What else do you know about him?”

Lunde shook her head. “It’s rumored that he’s practicing polygamy and forced marriages,” she said, but it sounded more like a question than a statement.

“Any idea who the caller is?”

“Uh, Jessica Evanson is the one who the age fits, but… we can’t be sure. So I negotiated interviews with all the children. It wasn’t easy.”

“Well, considering their view on outsiders, it would be best if you didn’t identify us as FBI,” Emily explained and Lydia got to work on their covers. She took their guns, holsters, and badges, hiding them in the door of the car and handed Emily two fake IDs. “Just use our real names and introduce us as child victim interview experts.”

The Bureau had made them brand new drivers licences and CPS badges with Colorado addresses to complete their cover stories.

All too soon, they were approaching the front gate. The sign read ‘Liberty Church Ranch’ with a large cross beside it.

It was hot outside and Lydia could feel the dust coating her nose and throat as she exited the car, approaching a set of stairs leading up to the church.

“I’m looking for Mr. Benjamin Cyrus?” Lunde called to a figure on the steps.

“You found him.”

Cyrus wore a light flannel and jeans, with reading glasses perched on his nose and a book in his lap. Lydia had to hold herself back from calling him out on framing the scene. Oh, look how kind and relaxed we are. Our leader sits outside and reads books all day blahblahblahbl-

Open mind, Lydia.

“I’m Nancy Lunde. We spoke on the phone regarding the allegation.”

He got up and approached the three of them. “‘Savages they call us. ‘Cause our manners differ from theirs.’”

“We didn’t come here to hear you cite scripture, Mr. Cyrus,” the red-headed woman huffed.

“Actually, that’s Benjamin Franklin,” he sneered.

Nancy ignored this, and began introducing them. “Emily Prentiss, Lydia Ambers. They’re child victim interview experts.”

“How far from God’s word must we have strayed for there to be the need to invent a job called child victim interview expert?” Cyrus wondered.

“We wish we didn’t have to be here,” Emily said.

“So do we. But you are welcome, nonetheless. The children are in the school as I indicated.”

“Thank you.”

Lydia nodded and followed Emily off to the school building.

~ ~ ~

Jessica Evanson was not the kid they were looking for. Lydia could tell the moment she walked into the interview room. She was completely calm, the perfect child. Her hair was neatly brushed back, her polo shirt well ironed, and her hands folded neatly in front of her.

Her mother, Kathy, stood beside her, petting her hair gently, as if to reassure her, but Jessica clearly didn’t need it. She wasn’t intimidated by their presence at all.

“We go to school. We do our chores. And we treat ourselves and each other with the respect God demands.”

Emily sat across from her, conducting the interview, and Lydia stood beside her.

“But you’ve never been off of the ranch?” Emily asked.

“I brought Jessie here when she was two,” Kathy explained.

Jessica clearly was not having any of this. “You’ve talked to lots of children in your work. Tell me, are their lives somehow better than ours?”

“We devote ourselves to God,” Kathy continued. “That doesn’t mean we’re not devoted to our children.”

“We are not here because of your religious beliefs,” Emily reasoned.

“Why are you here?” Jessica demanded.

She was starting to become hostile. She grew up in a cult that taught her to hate outsiders, so Lydia couldn’t blame her for her behavior. But her mother was clearly a peacemaker, so where did she learn it from? It wasn’t defiance from her family, because that would put her against the group, not for it.

“We received a phone call alleging that an adult male member of your church was having inappropriate relations with the younger women here.”

“You’re talking about Cyrus,” she responded, almost immediately.

“What makes you say that?” Emily asked.

Her mother immediately became defensive, trying to get her daughter to be quiet, but Jessica was still determined to make a point.

“Is it inappropriate for a husband to share a bed with his wife?”

Lydia’s eyes shot open. His what?

“You are married to Cyrus?” Emily spoke slowly, as if worried that the question would escalate the situation, but Jessica stayed proper in stance, if not in tongue.

“Yes. Cyrus is my husband and a prophet. It’s an honor to bear his children.”

It took everything in Lydia not to look disgusted by the thought and keep the interview going. “Jessica, you aren’t old enough to get married without parental consent.”

Emily nodded at the mother. “She gave consent.”

Before anyone could continue, a loud sound from outside got their attention. There was some yelling and suddenly Cyrus and a few other men were rushing in, machine guns in hand.

Lydia let her shock show on her face. Not just that they had the weapons, but that they would carry them around a school where CPS workers were present.

“Get up!” Cyrus demanded, turning on her and Emily. “Get up! Move!”

On the other side of the room, Nancy was entertaining the other kids. “What’s going on?” she asked softly.

“We just got a very strange phone call from a news reporter,” Cyrus began and a man walked around Emily and started to pat her down for weapons.

They were both unarmed, but Lydia was starting to regret that. These men were clearly threatened by their presence. What the hell had happened?

Another man walked around to check her and unceremoniously smacked her in the side, causing her to wince involuntarily. Cyrus clearly noticed this, but said nothing, continuing on with his point.

“Is there anything you want to tell me? About a raid, maybe?”

She and Emily exchanged a concerned look. A raid? They weren’t prepared for that. They had checked in with the state before joining child services to the ranch, there shouldn’t have been a raid on this church.

Luckily for them, Cyrus took their concern for fear and nodded. “They don’t know,” he determined. “Bring them along.”

A man grabbed Lydia’s arm and dragged her across the room, where another armed man was opening a hatch in the wall. A tunnel. A few guards went first, then they started ushering the people in. Women with their kids, Nancy, Emily, and Lydia all surrounded by machine guns, leaping into a dark hole underneath the church.

The passage underneath the buildings was too thin to walk side by side, so the guards let them go on by themselves.

“What’s going on?” Nancy whispered to the two FBI members ahead of her.

“We’re not sure yet,” Emily hissed. “Just stay calm.”

As they reached a large opening directly underneath the chapel, they could hear gunfire from above ground.

Prentiss pulled Lydia aside, trying to get as far away from the crowd as possible. “If this escalates, Cyrus is going to put this place on lockdown. The FBI is going to be in charge of negotiations as long as we’re inside. Do you know the Critical Incident Response Group handbook?”

Lydia shook her head quickly. God, it would be helpful if Spencer were here. He probably knew that book front and back. Lydia didn’t know what she was doing.

“Okay.” Emily fumbled, trying to determine what was important for Lydia to know before they had to revert back to their covers. “CIRG will bug all the windows and anything else they can get to. So, anything you need them to know, find a way to say it out loud. Keep the inside members talking. We won’t be able to know what the team already knows so tell them everything. If there are blinds on a window, they might be blocking the sound, so try and get them out of the way before speaking.”

“Best hope it doesn’t come to that,” Lydia argued, but the sound of the gunfire overhead was diminishing her hopes of getting out any time soon. She just hoped Spencer didn’t know what was going on.

At the sound of Cyrus’s voice, the two girls stepped away from one another, trying to blend in with the crowd.

“Alright! Move quietly! Quickly, go to the left! Everybody stay together!” he ordered, pushing his way through the room. “Children, listen to your parents. Have faith.”

“Where did these guns come from?” Emily whispered hurriedly and Lydia glanced around her to see what she was looking at.

Wooden crates lined the walls, each labelled as bullets or magazines. Leaning into the corners were more machine guns. Buckets of them.

“I thought Garcia checked with the state police to see if they were involved in…” Lydia trailed off, not sure how to frame the inquiry, but luckily Emily was on the same page.

“Someone lied to us. You don’t just lose track of these weapons, not when you’re already watching this group.”

“At least the raid is unrelated to the FBI,” Lydia reasoned. “Our cover is still intact. But you’re right… someone from the Colorado government just ruined their career. Once we’re back in Quantico, Hotch is going to lose his shit.”

Lunde approached the two of them once more. “This is ridiculous,” she sneered.

“It’s okay,” Emily tried again. “Just calm down.”

Cyrus continued to reassure his followers, telling them that God would look out for them as long as they stayed calm.

Once he had disappeared, Nancy was arguing with them once more. “It’s the state police. I’m an officer of the state.”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do right now.”

“I can talk to him.”

“No!” Emily rushed after her but Nancy was already halfway through the crowd of people. “You can’t. It’s dangerous. Nancy, stop!”

The woman rushed out of the room and before the two of them could follow, one of the guards blocked their way. The other went after Nancy, but she was booking it back up to the ground level of the chapel.

Shit. This was starting to look… bad.

She stood next to Emily at the front of the group, anxiously waiting for the battle to cease, but the hail of bullets above them never slowed. After a minute or two, Cyrus came stumbling back down the stairs.

“Do not fear! We are on the side of the righteous.”

Behind him was the guard that went after Nancy, but no Nancy herself.

“Where’s Lunde?” Emily asked him.

“It wasn’t us.”

“What?!” Lydia screeched, then quickly lowered her voice, seeing the attention she had attracted. “You can’t shoot it out with the cops! You have children here!”

“I didn’t start this,” Cyrus argued back.

Emily was clearly distraught watching him reload his gun, then take off with the rest of the men to the roof.

“The BAU is coming,” she whispered.

~ ~ ~

“Reid!”

JJ’s voice reached Spencer from the center of the bullpen and he looked up from his email curiously. “Hm?”

Her eyes were on the TV she was in the process of starting up and he noticed that Morgan was also looking up at it intently. It lit up in the middle of a news report.

“...a routine questions and answers meeting by Colorado child services-”

Colorado… that’s where Lydia and Prentiss were…

“-has turned into a violent and deadly standoff between Colorado authorities and a fringe religious group known as the Separtarian Sect.”

Spencer jumped up, joining Morgan and JJ in the middle of the room, his mind still not coming to terms with what was happening.

“JJ,” Morgan breathed, standing up, his eyes not leaving the TV, “That’s not the ranch where Prentiss and Ambers-”

“They’re still inside,” she said, softly.

Spencer’s legs almost gave out underneath him.

“HOTCH!” Morgan screamed.

The unit chief was rushing out a moment later to see what was going on, but Spencer didn’t pay him any attention. His eyes were glued to the screen in front of him. Where’s Lydia? Where’s Lydia? Where’s Lydia???

“...While no one knows for sure how many people are inside, it is believed that at least three of the child service members are still trapped within the compound.”

~ ~ ~

Spencer sat on the couch of the jet, his head in his hands, listening intently to the ongoing news report on Morgan’s laptop.

“...turned deadly when the Colorado state police officers tried to serve a warrant. Colorado Attorney General Jim Wells says the reclusive cult has been the subject of a 6-month weapons investigation.”

“Six months,” Morgan repeated. “We didn’t check?”

“No. We checked,” JJ argued. “I had ATF call Wells. He told ATF there were no pending state investigations. He lied.”

“Why?” Rossi demanded.

“Wells is challenging the governor in the next election. He thought that ATF was about to poach his big election-launching weapons bust,” JJ explained. “Now, it’s clear he didn’t know there were FBI agents there. He just thought the best time to serve a state warrant was when the kids were safe inside the school being interviewed.”

“Agent,” Spencer corrected quietly, his head finally lifting from his own grasp.

“What was that?” JJ asked.

“There aren’t ‘FBI agents’ in there. There’s only one.”

It seemed to slip everyone’s mind that Lydia wasn’t an agent. They looked around nervously, noticing the edge in Spencer’s voice as he corrected them. Hotch was the first one to speak up.

“Ambers may not be an agent, but she’s not a civilian, Reid. She can look out for herself.”

“The FBI only worries about their own,” Spencer hissed.

“She is one of our own,” Morgan fired back. “We’re going to get her out of there, just like Prentiss.”

“Just like all of the hostages,” Hotch continued.

Not wanting to argue more, Spencer nodded at him, then jumped up from his seat and walked to the back of the plane, unable to listen to any more. The media wouldn’t be able to tell him what he wanted to know, anyway.

“Hey, Spence,” JJ called as she approached him at the refreshment table. “I know you’re worried about Lydia, but we need your help on this case. You gotta stay focused, okay?”

“JJ, she’s in the middle of a deadly standoff and she’s still recovering from getting shot last May. Injured tissue takes months to repair itself and it’s going to take even longer for her to regain abdominal strength.”

“I’m sure that she’s safe inside the church with the other hostages.”

“Even if that’s true, I-” He shook his head. “I always seem to be away from her when she needs me most. When that bomb went off in Annandale, when Sonia had a stroke, when Frank got her… Why does it always feel like I can’t reach her?”

JJ sighed, contemplating his question. “I don’t know, Spence. I wish I did.”

~ ~ ~

Once the police had fallen back, Cyrus brought the two of them into a seperate room. Clearly he wasn’t sure how to deal with outsiders being barricaded in with his people. As him and his men tried to assess the damage done to the church and get people back inside, Emily was prepping Lydia for the worst.

“Don’t antagonize them,” she tried to reason. “I know you’re not a fan, but we need to know everything we can. They won’t tell you anything if they don’t think they can trust you.”

“There are two ways to find things out, Em.”

“What are you talking about?” Her voice was sprinkled with annoyance. Emily knew that Lydia tended to be very blunt. She didn’t need to worry about Cyrus killing Lydia when she was supposed to be helping the team get these people out.

“You keep Cyrus’s favor. But someone here doesn’t believe him, or else we wouldn’t have gotten that phone call. They’re going to seek us out.”

It wasn’t a terrible plan, she realized. One of them learn from the higher ups, the other speak to the underdogs. “You want to play two different sides?”

Lydia nodded. “For the time being.”

“Okay. That means we have to distance ourselves, though. Act unfamiliar with one another.”

“Brief me faster, then.”

She was on top of it from that point on. “The hostage negotiator’s job is to slowly get the women and children out. They want as few innocent people inside when they raid. But if they think anyone inside is in danger, they’ll come in, no matter what. We can speak to them through the mics on the windows, but they have no way of talking to us. So if we need to know anything, they’ll tell us through other means. Look out for signs from them. They’ll be listening to our every word…”

~ ~ ~

Hotch had put Rossi in charge of being the lead negotiator, in the hopes that he was both objective enough to not be blinded by his care for Prentiss and Ambers, but also knew them well enough to predict how they’d react while still inside.

Frankly, Spencer wasn’t sure he could do either. He hoped that Lydia would play it safe, but a part of him knew that she was just too impulsive.

The entire team gathered around as Rossi made his first call to the church, waiting to find out what happened to their friends.

“You killed my mommy and daddy. Are you going to kill me too?”

A kid. A little girl had answered the phone. It wasn’t surprising that Cyrus had set something like this up, but it was frustrating nonetheless.

“No one is going to kill you, honey,” Rossi said calmly.

Then, there was a shift. A new voice. “This is Benjamin Cyrus. Who am I talking to?”

“David Rossi. I’m an FBI agent. We sent the state police away. There’s just us and the local sheriff. All we wanna do is resolve this before anyone else gets hurt.”

“Then leave us alone.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that, Benjamin. One of the police bled out on the way to the hospital. So let’s just stop this before things get worse. Please, just put down your guns and come out.”

“We’re believers, Dave. We believe God says what he means and means what he says. His laws don’t depend on what state you live in.”

“I have no issue with your beliefs.”

“You don’t, but the state does.”

This was taking too long. Spencer needed to make sure they were okay. He needed to make sure Lydia was okay.

“I can’t answer for other people.”

“Oh, God will answer for everyone in the final battle I’ve foreseen.”

“That’s why I’m here. To make sure that this is not that battle.”

“We shall see.”

“Now, the three child service workers...” 

“One of them is dead.”

Everyone’s heads shot up. Dead. Dead…

“It wasn’t us.”

Rossi leaned away from the phone, trying to take in a deep breath before continuing. “I need a name to inform the family.”

“Her name was Nancy Lunde.”

The relief between them was almost a solid entity, letting their eyelids hang heavy as they realized neither of their friends had died. But someone had.

“Okay. Now, please, Benjamin, send out your wounded. I promise you they’ll be well taken care of.”

“With enough supplies we can tend to our own.”

“Okay. I need a few hours to put it together. I’ll bring them up myself at first light.”

With news that supplies was coming, Cyrus hung up the phone and the rest of the team was left to ponder what to do now.

~ ~ ~

Lydia and Emily didn’t know much about their situation until the next morning. Everyone was assembled in the chapel to pray. Cyrus had sent the two of them to the end of a row of chairs, trapped in by the wall. Not that there was any point in running anyway. There were men at all exits, guns at the ready.

A soft knocking came from the church entrance and to Lydia’s surprise, Cyrus opened the door. It was difficult to see at first, with all the armed men surrounding him, but after a moment of discussion, Lydia was able to make out Rossi walking through the front door, a box of bandages in his arms.

Despite everything Emily had told her, Lydia could feel a twist in her heart. The BAU was right outside. Spencer was here.

Dear lord, he was never going to let her leave their apartment again.

Lydia reminded herself to steady her facial expressions. Cyrus had no suspicions of their connection to the FBI yet and she wasn’t about to give him any. She silently prayed that whatever Rossi was bringing in was bugged, so that she wouldn’t have to make sure all the important dialogue happened by a window.

They took his supplies, patted him down, and then Cyrus walked him down the center isle. Lydia couldn’t make out much of their conversation, but it seemed like Rossi was trying to convince Cyrus to let some people go.

Their discussion took all of about 30 seconds, then Cyrus was ushering him back out the door. With Rossi gone, Cyrus started giving instructions to his right hand man, Cole, then indicated for Lydia and Emily to get up.

The two of them exchanged a look before standing and walking to the back of the chapel.

“We’re going to have communion,” Cyrus informed them. “Feel free to stand and watch for the time being.”

They nodded politely, noticing Cole at the front with a jug of wine and stacks of plastic cups. A few of the men went around, passing them out while Cyrus poured each person a sip of wine.

“We are celebrating,” he announced. “Everyone drinks. Everyone rejoices. Because today we are one day closer to being with Him.”

“Look at Jessica’s body language,” Emily whispered. “The way she looks at him.”

Lydia nodded. “She literally worships him. There’s no way she made that 911 call.”

“Trust in God with all your heart. Lean not on your own understandings. Trust in mine.”

As Cyrus kept talking, Kathy stood up and walked over to the row her daughter was sitting in, leaning over her and speaking quietly. Jessica tried multiple times to nod and turn her attention back to Cyrus, but her mother kept talking.

“Look at how she comes between Cyrus and her daughter,” Emily continued. “She’s inserted herself between them.”

“Acknowledge Him in all things and He will guide your way. Drink to acknowledge him and I will guide our way.”

Everyone lifted their cups together and followed Cyrus in raising it to their mouths. Men, women, and children alike drank the entirety of their share and watched him intently.

“We will be with him soon. We have drank the poison together.”

Lydia was almost too distracted by the audience's reactions to comprehend what this meant. Some seemed completely calm, maybe even relieved. While others gasped or looked around wildly. It was easy to see a line between the diehard believers and the… less-so believers.

“Mothers… Fathers… Children… Though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we fear no evil. For thou art with us. And God will wipe the tears from their eyes, and there will be no more death nor sorrow nor crying. And there will be no more pain. For all of the former things have passed away.”

Some families grouped together, mothers holding tight to their kids. A few of the loners cried silently while the rest nodded to Cyrus in admiration. It was a wild array of people he’d collected.

“What do we do?” Emily hissed.

Lydia blinked, beginning to realize that the team was probably thinking the same thing. They wanted to save these people. If the bugs were working, they could hear Cyrus announce their imminent death.

“I don’t think he’s telling the truth,” Lydia admitted, looking Emily in the eyes.

She looked frantic. Her instinct to help was kicking in, but there was no way for her to act on it. “What makes you so sure?”

“Look at Cole.” She nodded up to the stage. “He’s writing in a notebook. I think Cyrus told him to make note of the people who had a bad reaction to the news.”

Emily’s gaze followed that of Lydia’s. At that point, both Cole and Cyrus were scanning the crowd. “They’re writing down the names of the people who are crying,” Emily realized.

“It’s a loyalty list,” Lydia finished out. “He wants to know who will follow him to the end.”

“Be still.” Cyrus’s voice broke through their conversation just in time to confirm their theories. “There was no poison. Instead a test of faith. Because your adversary, the Devil, walketh about as a roaring lion! Choosing whom he may devour. Watch each other for signs of weakness. You are your brother’s keeper.”

“What’s he going to do with those that the Devil has devoured?” Lydia asked slowly, but Emily shook her head, not ready to consider it yet.

~ ~ ~

“You exhausted yet?” Emily asked jokingly as the two of them lay up against the stone walls of the basement. Cyrus had brought the two of them back down there a few hours ago and left them on their own.

“You’ll excuse me if I didn't get much sleep last night,” Lydia shot back. “A cement bomb shelter isn’t exactly my idea of comfort.”

“No kidding.” She was on the opposite wall, one leg propped up on the wooden bench she had taken. “You should try to get some sleep now. We don’t know how long we’ll be here. I’d rather have you well rested when the raid starts.”

“I would try, but-”

They swiftly stopped their discussion as the sound of footsteps echoed through the halls. Cyrus was at the door and he looked pissed.

“Ambers. Stand up.”

Her and Emily shared a curious look, but she did as he said and got up from her bench.

“Lift up your shirt,” he ordered.

“What the hell?” she demanded, but Cyrus had already stepped between her and Emily, reaching for the hem of her shirt and pulling it up above her waist. “Hey! what are you-?”

“That’s what I thought,” he grumbled. “Child interviewers don’t often get shot, do they?”

Lydia glanced down nervously at the bullet wound on her side. She had seen the weird look he gave her when his men had searched her and hit it painfully, but she never would have thought it would lead to blowing her cover.

“I don’t know why you…”

Dropping the front of her shirt, he reached up and grabbed a chunk of her hair, pulling her head back painfully. “We just got word that there was an undercover FBI agent in our midst. Care to explain that?”

Lydia hissed through gritted teeth. “What do you want?”

“You’re not CPS, are you?”

His grip was getting stronger by the minute. She didn’t like the idea of blowing her cover, but he already knew it was one of them. Might as well let him think it was only her.

“No. You were right,” she admitted. “I work for the FBI.”

Now, Lydia didn’t expect him to thank her for her honesty and let her go, but it still came as a shock when he walked off, while still holding her hair. Her feet were immediately yanked out from underneath her, not prepared enough to steady herself, but Cyrus just kept going, not deterred in the slightest by her weight.

Lydia groaned, her hands wrapped around his wrist in an attempt to alleviate some of the pressure, but it did very little. Luckily he didn’t take her very far, throwing her down on the ground inside a nearby supply closet.

“I told you not to put me in this position!”

She moved to look up at him, but he was faster, swinging an arm up to her chin and knocking her down onto her back. Upon her next attempt to stand, she received a swift kick in the stomach.

“Ugh.” Her left side lit on fire in an instant and she stayed on the ground, her arms and legs wrapping protectively around her abdomen.

“Get up!” Cyrus sneered.

He reached for one of her arms and pulled her to her feet. Lydia flinched away from him as he threw an arm above his head and brought it down against the side of her face. There was a mirror on the wall behind her which shattered as her right arm moved to steady herself.

“Proverbs 20:30 tells us blows and wounds cleanse away evil.” As he said this, he held her still against the broken mirror so that she could see herself.

It wasn’t until she physically saw the blood dripping from her nose that she could taste its warmth on the edges of her mouth. The temple that he hit was tinged pink, but from the way it ached, Lydia knew it would be a dark purple by evening. And her right arm, which was still lodged in the remaining pieces of the mirror was staining the white sleeve of her shirt.

She shrieked as he threw her backwards again, running into the shelf of canned goods against the opposite wall.

The BAU is listening, she remembered. And Emily said that if they thought someone was in danger, they’d begin the raid.

They needed to prepare. They hadn’t gotten any of the children out yet. If the team could hear her and decided to come in prematurely, a lot of people would die. Lydia wasn’t about to let that happen.

There was a window towards the back of the closet she was in. She could only hope that Spencer was listening.

“Careful.” Her voice was shaky and unconvincing, but she made sure Cyrus saw the anger in her eyes. This message wasn’t for him. “Hit me too hard and everyone will see the bruises on your knuckles.”

“No one is going to care,” he replied calmly. “You came here to shut us down! I’m protecting them!”

“From me?” Her laugh came out almost maniacal with her bruised stomach and battered jaw. “I’m fine! I got bruises on my knuckles too! I can take it!”

“Pride comes before the fall.”

His next blow sent her into the metal shelf again, this time her skull ricocheting against one of the sides and knocking her to the floor. She was just able to see a few drops of blood land on the ground below her, though she couldn’t identify where exactly on her face they came from, before her arms shakily gave out and her cheek hit the cold cement.

She prayed silently to whoever may be listening that Spencer understood. She really hoped she didn’t face all that torment in vain.

~ ~ ~

“We’ve got audio!” Morgan called from across their tent set up.

Spencer ran as fast as he could to the panel controlling the microphone feedback, throwing on a set of headphones.

Hotch hadn’t let him do anything for the past day, claiming he was the most emotionally involved in the situation. And although he couldn’t argue with that fact, it killed him to sit and listen. Lydia was right there. She was in the building just over that hill. And he wasn’t allowed to see her, talk to her, call her, save her.

When the fact that an FBI agent was in the church hit the news, Spencer felt an anchor drop to the bottom of his stomach. She wasn’t even an agent. There was nothing to suggest Cyrus would target her. But his instincts screamed that Emily wouldn’t be the one in danger.

And unfortunately, he was right. When he set those headphones over his ears, he immediately recognized Lydia’s voice. She was moaning in pain.

“We gotta go in,” Hotch said, but Rossi stopped him from throwing off his headphones.

“We’d be risking the lives of everyone in there.”

“Get up!” Cyrus’s words were followed by a crashing noise, like glass shattering.

Please be okay. Please don’t let it be as bad as it sounds.

“Proverbs 20:30 tells us blows and wounds cleanse away evil.”

There was more struggling over the line and Spencer threw off his headphones, unable to bear it any more. She was in pain. He knew this would happen.

“How could you let this happen?” he demanded of Hotch. “We have to go in! She’s not-”

“Sh! Sh!” Rossi hissed, one hand over his earpiece, the other between the unit chief and the boy.

Both looked at him confused, but he just kept listening silently.

“Everyone will see the bruises on your knuckles,” he finally recited. “Does that mean anything to you?”

Spencer didn’t answer, but put his headphones back on swiftly.

“-protecting them!”

“From me?” Lydia’s laugh sounded more like a wail over the mic. “I’m fine! I got bruises on my knuckles too! I can take it!”

“She’s antagonizing him!” Morgan exclaimed, frustratedly.

“She’s not talking to him,” Rossi argued.

“Pride comes before the fall.”

There was one more grunt, then the line went quiet. When Spencer finally breathed in again, all eyes were on him.

“She gets bruises on her knuckles when she lets off steam on a case,” he explained quietly. “I always worry for her, but she says she’d rather hurt her hands for a little bit then do something rash or detrimental on a case.”

“So what she’s saying is-”

“Don’t come in,” he finished begrudgingly. “She’s telling us not to go in.”

~ ~ ~

Cole had to basically carry her to one of the upstairs bedrooms. Every breath was agony for her lungs and a violent sting for her nose and mouth. And she figured it was psychosomatic, but her bullet wound hurt as if she’d just been shot yet again.

Who would have thought this whole hostage thing could get ten times worse?

Cole tied her arms to the sides of the bed, though frankly, she didn’t think she’d have the abdominal strength to sit back up anyway. And she didn’t want to try.

Kathy Evanson came by with a washcloth to clean the blood away from her nose, mouth, and temple. She tried to warn Lydia against lying to Cyrus, to which Lydia snapped back, “Do you speak from personal experience?”

Kathy didn’t say another word before standing up and leaving. It was a clear sign that she was hiding something and Lydia could only hope Emily caught onto that too. ‘Cause Lydia… she wasn’t going anywhere fast.

Downstairs, Cyrus had pulled Emily into his office, using some of his only medical supplies to disinfect the tiny abrasions in his hand from his fight with Lydia.

“Did you know she was FBI?” he demanded, as Cole shut the door behind the three of them.

Emily quickly shook her head, but her heart was in her stomach with fear for Lydia. Lydia was strong. She could take a lot. But she was also far too defiant to make this easy on herself. Emily silently wished she’d been smart.

“Nancy told me the woman was a child abuse interview expert from Denver.” Emily hated to put the blame on someone else, but Cyrus couldn’t hurt Nancy anymore. Nancy was gone. Lydia was still here and if Emily made her sound worse, it could fuel Cyrus’s anger towards her. “In the 4 years I worked with her, Nancy had never lied to me before.”

“As far as you know,” Cyrus replied. “Their law says that a 15-year-old girl is a child. Fifty years ago, that same law said a 14-year-old was an adult. Have children changed so much in 50 years?”

No, but people have, Emily thought. It was frustrating. Hotch had chosen Lydia because she was so good at acting calm. At least… in the workplace. She could have any unsub they met trust her entirely, or keep them constantly on their toes. Now, Emily could act, but she couldn’t do that.

If anyone’s cover should have been blown, it should have been hers. Emily knew more about CIRG protocols. She could diffuse a situation. Acting like she wasn’t totally disgusted by Cyrus’s morals was not in her skill set.

“I think it’s a matter of trust. People have stopped believing that kids can make good decisions, they’ve stopped believing in selfless acts, and they stopped putting their trust and faith into God.”

Her appeal seemed to work. Cyrus looked intrigued. She hoped it would hold long enough to make a good argument in her favor. Now was the perfect time to build up Cyrus’s trust with the FBI, because he had brought in the medical supplies Rossi had given them. There was absolutely no way that the BAU wasn’t listening.

“On your next call, you should test them. Test the negotiator. Make him prove that he isn’t a liar.”

“How would you suggest I do that?”

“Ask for the identity of the FBI agent.”

Cole looked unamused. “No. We already know her identity.”

Emily opened her mouth to respond, but Cyrus beat her to it. “They don’t know that.”

“Yeah. But the FBI would never tell us.”

“They keep asking you to release people,” Emily argued. “Tell them you’ll release a kid and you won’t harm the agent. If they really care about the children, they’ll have to tell you.”

“You’re trying to get us to release a child!” Cole accused.

“It’s one kid! If they don’t hold up on their end of the deal, then you know they can’t be trusted!”

“She has a point,” Cyrus conceded much to Emily’s relief. “What is it, Christopher?”

Emily glanced over her shoulder to find Cole pacing the room.

“Some people have been talking about… leaving.”

“Leaving?”

“Yeah.”

Cyrus glanced at his hands. “Wake the baby. Let’s let them meet the orphan that they’ve made.”

~ ~ ~

Cole held onto Lydia’s shoulder’s firmly as he led her back to the chapel. She’d been dozing for most of the day, unable to move from her bed, so her ability to process the situation was hazy.

Cyrus had everyone gathered in the pews. “It has come to my attention that some of our brothers and sisters have lost their faith in God. That they no longer love us. They want to abandon us. So, when I call out your name, please stand.”

Cole left her leaning up against one of the back walls as he went to usher the last of the people in and that’s when Lydia noticed Emily eyeing her, slowly creeping closer and closer while still looking as if she was listening to Cyrus.

“He looks pissed,” Lydia whispered to her when she was close enough. “He’s choosing the people who failed the loyalty test.”

“I’m so sorry,” was all Emily could say.

“Em, I’m okay,” she snapped, more forcefully than she meant. She knew she wasn’t okay. “You need to stay focused and tell me what to do. What does this mean?”

Emily cleared her throat quietly. “He’s releasing these people, because he knows it’s over. He’s getting rid of any possible threat to his mass suicide plan. I’ll try and figure out when it is and get word to the team. Be ready. There’s going to be a raid tonight.”

~ ~ ~

“Drugging the food’s not an option because of the children,” Hotch was saying as they passed around tubs of fried chicken. “We have to go in.”

“Best time to hit ‘em is when they’re least mentally prepared,” Rossi added.

“3 AM.” All eyes turned on Reid. “Biorhythms are at their low point then.”

“Reid, I told you to stay with JJ,” Hotch argued, already on his way to lead Spencer out of the room, but he stood firm.

“Please let me help. I can’t just sit here and pray that she’s going to walk back out of there. I need to do something.”

There was a moment of silent tension between the two of them. Hotch didn’t want him to go. Technically, he shouldn’t let him go. But he didn’t have the time to argue, and Spencer would no doubt be helpful when it came to setting up this plan.

“The plan depends on Ambers and Prentiss separating the diehards from the followers,” Hotch continued, turning back to the group.

“And delaying Cyrus’s diehards from reacting to our assault,” Morgan said.

“No, that’s not my main concern. Ambers and Prentiss know what they need to do. I don’t know how to tell them when we’re coming. This whole thing hinges on them being ready for us at 3 AM.”

“Reid? What the hell are you doing?”

Hotch and Rossi followed Morgan’s gaze to the young genius who was covering the top of one of the food trays with red sharpie.

When he stepped back, the tray read, ‘New owners! New hours! Open ‘til 3 AM!’ The time was underlined multiple times.

“They’ll recognize my writing,” he promised. “Just write this on a few different plates so that there’s a better chance they’re near someone with a sign.”

“Let’s just hope it’s that easy,” Morgan grumbled.

~ ~ ~

Lydia watched curiously as Emily slipped into her room and carefully shut the door. She wasn’t sure how Emily had gotten away from Cyrus’s men, but she was positive something big was happening, else she wouldn’t have taken such a risk.

“3 AM,” she said, reaching the bed and helping Lydia sit up. “We need to get all the women and children down to the basement before 3.”

Lydia had no clue what time it was, only that the sky was completely dark and their time frame was getting shorter. “Find Kathy,” she told Emily. “I’m pretty sure she made that 911 call.”

“Pretty sure?”

“She’s hiding something,” Lydia admitted. “But no, I’m not positive that that’s it.”

The unease was more than a little scary, but there wasn’t much else for them to do. These people wouldn’t trust her or Emily. The only way to save them was to find someone they trusted.

“Stay here. I’ll be back for you before 3.”

“Don’t get caught.”

~ ~ ~

“They’re setting the place to blow up,” Kathy said as she ran into Lydia’s room.

Lydia’s heart fell. “Where’s Emily?” she demanded.

“I told Jessie that Cyrus wanted the two of them to gather the women and children. She’s leading them to the basement now,” she explained, untying the ropes on Lydia’s wrists.

Oh, thank god. Lydia thought for sure when Emily didn’t come back that she’d been caught.

“It’s 2:45. We’ve got to hurry.”

Kathy pulled Lydia along by her arm, Lydia’s other hand wrapped around her waist. Her entire torso burned as she ran down the stairs towards the basement. Almost out. This was almost over.

The sound of gunfire was muted through the walls and Lydia didn’t have time to place where it was coming from.

Get out. Get out.

As they were reaching the door, Lydia could see Emily leading the group into the basement.

“Let’s go! This way!”

“Let’s go, kids!”

“This building’s going to blow up!”

There was shouting in all directions. Lydia’s legs barely held her steady as she ran alongside Kathy. The only thing that was keeping her from passing out was Spencer. He was just outside. She needed to see him.

“Lydia!” She looked up as she passed through the door frame and found herself face to face with Morgan. She didn’t have time to open her mouth before he had pulled her into his shoulder. “I’m going to kill Cyrus.”

“You don’t have long,” she said, almost jokingly, but the timing was badly placed. Not a moment later, the ground and walls began to shake and a deafening sound filled the basement.

Everyone still inside hit the floor, protecting their heads from possible falling debris, but the ceiling was solid. Lydia had been through earthquakes before, and she’d survived an explosion, but this was somehow worse than both. She felt so claustrophobic she didn’t even try to breathe, out of fear she’d find herself unable too. For many seconds, she stayed on the floor, unable to tell if the rumbling had stopped.

“We’ve got to get out of here.” She didn’t realize it was Emily who was talking until Morgan and Rossi were helping her off the ground. “That was the explosives. If Cyrus planned a second round, the basement might crumble too.”

The four of them made a run for the secret door in the school, Lydia now holding onto Rossi for support, so that Derek could lead the group and make sure the rest of the kids got out.

“How’s Spencer?” she asked as they climbed back into the school building.

“I imagine Hotch has got at least seven guys holding him down right now to keep him from running into the rubble to find you. How are you?”

Lydia didn’t want to answer that. Not only was she in a lot of physical pain, but after that explosion went off above her, her heart rate had been soaring.

Everyone’s eyes were on the smoking ruble that was the chapel, amazed by the destruction. Many kids were crying and women were no doubt waiting to see if their husbands had survived. Rossi kept pulling Lydia along, not letting her stop to watch. They walked through the barricade of armed men with ease.

“Lydia! Lydia!”

It was Spencer. He was looking for her. Lydia tried to yell back, but Rossi could tell she didn’t have it in her.

“I’ve got her, Reid!”

Not too long after, she saw her boyfriend pushing through the crowd, his eyes looking around frantically.

When their eyes met, it was like Lydia’s whole world muted to a dull roar. Three days. Three days she’d been trapped in that building, trying to reach the team and getting the shit kicked out of her. Three days she’d been quiet, accepting Cyrus’s blows. All to see him again.

She wanted to run to him, but she just didn’t have it in her. Luckily, he was eager enough for the both of them.

His arms were so tight around her that she felt like all her ribs would break at once and her nose was so deep in the side of his neck that the bruises burned. She couldn’t care less.

He pulled away all too fast and she was about to protest, when she realized why. As she looked up at him, a breeze hit her cheeks, making the wet trails going down her face apparent. She took in shuddering breaths.

She was crying.

“I’m sorry,” was all she could think to say, the back of her hand reaching to wipe them away, but for some reason, it didn’t feel like they were gone. “Sorry, I can’t-”

Before she could finish, he leaned down and kissed her. He kissed her in front of the whole team. In front of everyone. He’d never done that before. PDA was a very rare thing for him. But all her shock died on her lips, suffocating between his own.

“I love you,” he whispered, barely moving an inch away. “I love you so very much. You don’t need to apologize for your tears.”

Such kind and affirming words should have quelled her tears, but she just sobbed harder. “I love you too. Please don’t ever leave me.”

Tags: @kris-stuff​, @wooya1224​, @bispences​, @anotherr-fine-mess​, @eddysocs​

[savedbystyle]

the man (t.s.)

pairing: tony stark x reader

summary: You’re furious of the double standards between you and Tony Stark

warnings: some curse words, nothing much its just frustration no angst, secret dating

a/n: hi again! i really hope this does well because lately the interaction with my posts have been going down since ‘i forgot that you existed’ but this is my first tony fic! i really hope you guys like it and PLEASE comment if u like it and want to be tagged:) i also dont really touch on her actual job but just mention that shes a ceo so please keep in mind this is more about double standards not her job! 

(gif credit to creator!)

i would be complex i would be cool they'd say I played the field before i found someone to commit to

“Y/n!” “Y/n, look here!” “Is it true you broke up with Justin Hammer?” You blocked your face as bursts of light showered your figure. You tried avoiding the paparazzi as you made your way to your car. “Is it true you dumped Hammer for Tony Stark?” “Why are you always moving on so fast from your ex boyfriends?” 

You successfully made your way into the car and your driver quickly started driving to your penthouse in New York. You were rubbing your head when you decided to call your childhood best friend James Rhodes. “Rhode pick up” you muttered to yourself. 

“Hey y/n” “Rhodey I just came out of Per Se and the paps bombarded me, they know about Hammer” “Y/n, darling, it’s fine it was bound to get out at some point. I think you should go home and get some rest Marla (your publicist) will deal with it” “Yeah you’re right” “When am I not?” You laughed at his sassy remark “Bye James, love you” “Night y/n/n, love you” You ended the call and rubbed your temple, annoyed at the circumstances. 

and that would be okay for me to do every conquest I had made would make me more of a boss to you

You scrolled through instagram whilst sitting on your couch, waiting for Marla to get to your house. You stumbled on a video of Tony Stark. You watched it and were confused “Im a genius, playboy, billionaire, and philanthropist. I can get anyone I want and get whomever I want” 

You were angry, not at Tony but the fact that the paparazzi demeaned you for moving on too fast when in reality you only ever had two public boyfriends with a year gap in between them. But when Tony Stark does it, it’s powerful and seen as a sign of winning? 

You were waken from your thoughts by the knock on your door signaling that Marla was here. You opened the door to your friend who looked exhausted. “I’ve been up all night containing this mess the paps started. Everyone knows that you and Hammer broke up, and he even had something to say. Y/n, this is bad” 

You took her phone and watched the video on the screen of your ex boyfriend “Me and y/n broke up earlier this month, it disgusts me that she moved on so fast, I mean come on! That’s not her character. That’s mine and Tony’s! Y/n, stay in your lane darling” 

You were shocked at the false allegation and the fact that your ex attacked you for ‘moving on too fast’. “I need to speak up or do something about this Marla! What is this double standards for us, because i’m a women i’m not able to get as many deals as Stark and everything I do is scrutinized! I need you to schedule a press conference” “Alright y/n but if things go bad then,” “I know Y/l/n Tech will crash and burn but thats a risk i’ll take Marla. This is ridiculous” 

i'd be a fearless leader i'd be an alpha type when everyone believes ya what's that like?

“James, if I was a man i’d be a fearless leader and the alpha type. I have always been attacked and multiple times been taken down because i don’t know what it feels like when everyone believes you, whats that like James? Really? I don’t know simply for the fact that i’m a women” “You’re holding the press conference right? You tell them this exactly Y/n, don’t hold back. It hurts me too that you don’t get enough credit for being the CEO of one of the most influential tech company in the world” 

You sighed taking a bite of your hagen daz ice cream anticipating the conference tomorrow where you decided you were finally going to give the public a piece of your mind “I better sleep Rhodes, i’ll catch up with you later” “Bye y/n/n” You hung up the phone, with a pit in your stomach. 

i'm so sick of running as fast as I can wondering if I'd get there quicker if I was a man and I'm so sick of them coming at me again 'cause if I was a man then I'd be the man i'd be the man i'd be the man

You saw the mass amount of press waiting for you inside the room and adjusted your suit before walking on the stage. “Wait y/n” Marla stopped you and showed you a video of Tony Stark commenting on you, “What do you think about Y/n’s recent allegations?” “Well I think none of you pricks should be inserting yourself into her business. So what if she’s dating someone? Why can’t she? Me and Hammer can but not her? Go do something better with your lives, please” You watched as the video ended, appreciating your competitor commenting on you. You felt a little better knowing you had the Tony Stark on your side. 

“I’m here today to address the several rumors going around. First and for most, I am in fact not in a relationship with anyone but that shouldn’t matter in the first place. Please explain to me why I can’t be in a relationship or go on dates with someone after i’ve been broken up with? Second, I’m so sick of running as fast as I can simply to keep up with men because I get less opportunities and jobs because i’m a woman, and I truly wonder if i’d get there quicker if I was a man. We all know that if I was a man, then i’d be the man.

they'd say I hustled put in the work they wouldn't shake their heads and question how much of this I deserve

I run one of the most influential and highest grossing tech companies in the world and I that is what I want to be focussed on! Not the double standard and constant prying into my private life which will forever be private unless both parties come together and agree to talk about it. I hustled and put in the work, and I don’t need any more men shaking their heads and questioning how much of this power I deserve because I know I deserve it. So please, treat us as equals to men and have the same respect that you give men to women” 

You finished with a big sigh, and looked up and asked the press who were in shock “There will be no questions, I said what I needed to say” You walked off the stage feeling the power surging around you as you hugged Marla “That was brilliant Y/n, i’m so proud of you!” “Thanks Marl, I actually need to go somewhere before I go back home so you can go” Marla smiled and nodded before heading out as you walked towards your car, “Go to Stark Towers. There’s someone I need to meet” 

i'm so sick of running as fast as I can wondering if I'd get there quicker if I was a man and I'm so sick of them coming at me again 'cause if I was a man then I'd be the man i'd be the man i'd be the man

You got off the elevator and walked in the direction of Tony’s r&d lab. “Hi Tony” You said smiling at the man in front of you before setting down your bag and keys, going to sit next to the man. “Hi y/n/n, I was watching it live. You were amazing out there” You got out of the embrace and looked lovingly into your lovers eyes “Thank you for what you said Tones, it gave me what I needed. I love you so much” Tony smiled at you pulling you closer to him, wrapping his arms around you, “Always darling, cause if you were a man then you’d be the man” 

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

I hope you guys enjoyed this! I wrote this in an hour with the prompt in my mind for a couple days. I really hope it resonated with some of you, because all of you are bad b!tches!!! For all my females out there, this one is for us! We are just as powerful as men and right now we don’t need anyone telling us were not. 

[lastsonlost]

A woman says she was sexually harassed by presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden when she was 14 years old.

The woman, Eva Murry, told Law&Crime that Biden complimented her on the size of her breasts at the First State Gridiron Dinner & Show in 2008, a long-running roast of and party for politicians, journalists and prominent business figures held each year in Delaware. Murry says she remembers the event occurring sometime around May of that year.

One friend and her sister said that Murry told her details of the alleged incident more or less immediately after it happened. Four other friends of Murry’s said they were told about the incident, with the same details, between two and three years after it originally occurred.

Law&Crime interviewed Murry, her sister, and those friends over the course of multiple days. Murry is the niece of former Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell and said she occasionally received school credit for attending such political events. O’Donnell was running a long-shot campaign against Biden at the time that the alleged sexual harassment incident occurred.

The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Biden is currently under fire over allegations that he sexually assaulted former Senate staffer Tara Reade in 1993 by penetrating her with his fingers without her consent. Biden’s campaign has denied it and Biden went on MSNBC Friday morning to strongly refute that allegation himself.

According to Gridiron Dinner Secretary Cathy Klocko, the roast is held the first Saturday of every May, which would place the 2008 event on May 3 of that year. Klocko went on to note that until recently the event was secretive and did not release information such as guest lists or photographs of the event.

“I remember walking into the lobby and being in awe of all the people in such fancy clothes,” Murry said in an interview. “Our two parties of people gravitated towards each other and everyone started saying their hellos. When it was Biden and my aunt’s turn to say hello he quickly turned to me and asked how old I was. I replied with my age and he replied with the comment ‘Fourteen? You’re very well endowed for 14!’ I was confused but it was definitely weird, he looked me up and down and hovered his eyes on my chest so I had some clue [about] the notion of his comment but didn’t fully understand at the time. We quickly separated from his area after the encounter.”

Murry, who is 26 now and engaged with a son and daughter, was in middle school at the time Biden allegedly made the comments about her breasts. She said that she attended a few additional campaign events with her aunt after Biden made the alleged remarks and she described being anxious and feeling sick to her stomach around him or upon learning that he would also be attending any such future events.

“I feel his comments were verbal sexual harassment,” Murry told Law&Crime. “I think I was too naive to realize exactly what it meant at the time but I vividly remember the uncomfortable feeling I had in the pit of my stomach during the whole encounter. It wasn’t Biden’s words alone that made me so uncomfortable, it was the look, the tone, the whole general vibe was off.”

Murry acknowledged the timing of her allegation would likely invite accusations that she was acting politically but she insisted that was not the case.

Murry said that she was personally motivated to speak out because she began seeing Biden’s name and face appearing all over Facebook in early April after Bernie Sanders dropped out of the Democratic primary. She said that many of her friends started posting about voting for Biden. So, Murry started off by telling each of those friends her story. She says she did this over and over.

“It got overwhelming repeating myself on everyone’s post,” she said. “So I made a master thread with the intentions of informing my friends and family who I care very much about, just what kind of man Biden is.”

Murry told Law&Crime she was upset about what Biden said to her rather than anything having to do with his politics.

“No man or woman should get away with acting that way and that is what this boils down to,” she said.

Four of Murry’s friends say that they were told about the incident. One said she was told about it around the time it happened. Two more said they were told about it in 2010. Three of those friends agreed to speak on the record.

“She was telling me about the event and explained what happened,” Murry’s friend Victoria Anstey told Law&Crime. “I remember being so shocked. I didn’t know who Biden was or anything. Just [that] she said he was an ‘older man’ was enough for me to not like the situation.”

Law&Crime verified Murry’s and Anstey’s identities by obtaining their driver’s licenses.

“Eva is telling the truth,” she added.

Anstey, 25, describes herself as a feminist, animal lover and a Democrat. She confirmed that Murry told her about the comments in 2008 when they were both teens. Anstey said Murry identified the man as Biden and said that hearing about the incident left her feeling angry.

“She told me he looked at her chest and she was well endowed,” Anstey said. “She looked very uncomfortable. I asked how old he was. She said like an older man. I said like old like a teacher or elderly and she said old like a teacher. I remember myself getting mad.”

Anstey also commented on the political dimensions of Murry’s allegation.

“I can’t stand Trump,” she said. “This isn’t politically motivated. This is about men in power using their status to silence victims.”

“She was 14 and any man to think that those comments are appropriate are on the wrong side of history,” Anstey continued. “We can’t let men (and females) keep getting away with these sexual comments. It’s past due that society stop turning a blind eye. People seem to only care when it’s someone they know, which is ridiculous. I want the next president to be a Democrat more than anyone but I can’t overlook this. It’s not justice for 14-year-old Eva. It would be doing her a disservice.”

A second friend, Katielynn Weaver, told Law&Crime that Murry first told her about it “over ten years ago when we were younger.”

“I started going to Delaware with her and her family so it was pretty fresh for her dealing with it,” Weaver said.

“The year was 2010 because I was 17 and just graduated and got my first car and that’s what we would take back and forth trips to Delaware,” she told Law&Crime. “The incident happened before I met Eva but she told me about it prior to our first time arriving in Delaware.”

Eva Murry’s older sister, Jenna Murry, also says she was told about the alleged incident “within a week or so of the dinner.”

The elder Murry said she previously had “a similar arrangement” with O’Donnell, “going around with her to political events” when she was also 14. Jenna said she kept up with Eva though the two didn’t talk much at the time because she was attending The College of New Jersey (TCNJ).

“I remember my mom mentioning at some point soon after that that Eva had met Biden and he’d made a weird comment,” Murry told Law&Crime. “The next time I was home from TCNJ Eva told me about the comment in detail from her perspective, specifically that he looked her up and down and stared right at her chest and made her feel really uncomfortable. I remember being really pissed off on her behalf and thinking that she was probably more upset than she was letting on and trying to be light hearted by that point, but seemed shook. I told basically all my friends about it at the time.”

Aileen Callaghan, another friend, said she first heard about the incident when she and Murry were teenagers. “It was probably 2010 when she told me,” she told Law&Crime. “She mentioned that he was at an event she was with with her aunt and that he was a creep and was looking at her chest the whole time.”

“I remember she said that Biden was a pervy old man, and was like laughing but looking down when she told us,” Callaghan continued. “When she got to the details, she was clearly pissed that it had happened, and clearly hadn’t known how to do anything about it.”

A fourth friend said that Murry told her about the alleged sexual harassment incident in 2010 or 2011 when both attended high school at the New Hope Academy in Yardley, Pennsylvania. The friend recalled Murry telling her Biden had made the comment about her body and that the two had nervously described the incident as “creepy” and wrong. The fourth friend spoke to Law&Crime on the condition of anonymity to protect her safety and career.

Murry originally detailed her accusations in a Facebook post on April 8.

“Back then I didn’t know the meaning of this” she wrote about Biden’s alleged comments. “[F]or those of you that still don’t [know], it means Biden was telling me I had very large breasts for a 14-year-old. I learned shortly after what he meant and felt uncomfortable every time I met him afterwards.

Several additional friends of Murry’s commented on the post noting that they recalled hearing about the incident and said Murry was courageous for speaking out. Attempts to reach one of those additional friends by Law&Crime were unsuccessful at the time of publication.

Murry addressed the support she received for speaking out in a later comment on the thread to that initial post.

“I’ve told friends [and] family for years but I’ve never publicly put it out there,” Murry wrote. “I vividly remember the anxiety I would feel going to these types of functions after that encounter, it sucked the excitement right out of it for me.”

“I’m worried about the internet bullies so I never put it out there but I went on to Facebook after putting my daughter down for a nap and Joe Biden’s name was everywhere!”  she continued–describing the events of early April. “I had to say something.”

Murry also noted that she encountered Biden “about three times after that” at similar such events and that “his eyes never were on my face.”

Can this nigga just keep his hands to himself for one second?

[inbonobo]

So #CEO #Kalanick argues with a #Uber #driver and Bloomberg takes that further (starts at 4:10).

See also:

Uber is a Scam

Why Uber Is Terrible - cracked

Uber pay stubs

Family Guy

Jimmy Kimmel

When Uber Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick takes an Uber, he prefers a black car, the high-end service his company introduced in 2010. On this particular night in early February—Super Bowl Sunday—Kalanick is perched in the middle seat, flanked by two female friends. Maroon 5’s “Don’t Wanna Know” plays, and Kalanick shimmies. He clutches his smartphone as the three make awkward conversation. The two women ask when his birthday is, and marvel that he’s a Leo. One of his companions appears to say, somewhat inaudibly, that she’s heard that Uber is having a hard year. Kalanick retorts, “I make sure every year is a hard year.” He continues, “That’s kind of how I roll. I make sure every year is a hard year. If it’s easy I’m not pushing hard enough.”

There’s no question that it’s been a hard year for Kalanick and Uber—or really, a bad year compressed down into an awful three months. And it keeps getting worse. That pleasant conversation between Kalanick and his friends in the back of an Uber Black? It devolved into a heated argument over Uber’s fares between the CEO and his driver, Fawzi Kamel, who then turned over a dashboard recording of the conversation to Bloomberg. Kamel, 37, has been driving for Uber since 2011 and wants to draw attention to the plight of Uber drivers. The video shows off Kalanick's pugnacious personality and short temper, which may cause some investors to question whether he has the disposition to lead a $69 billion company with a footprint that spans the globe.

In an email to staff Tuesday after publication of this story, Kalanick apologized to Kamel for treating him disrespectfully. “To say that I am ashamed is an extreme understatement,” Kalanick wrote. “My job as your leader is to lead…and that starts with behaving in a way that makes us all proud. That is not what I did, and it cannot be explained away. It’s clear this video is a reflection of me—and the criticism we’ve received is a stark reminder that I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up. This is the first time I’ve been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it.”

In December, Uber pulled its self-driving cars off the road in San Francisco after the California Department of Motor Vehicles said they were operating illegally without an autonomous vehicle license. In January, more than 200,000 people uninstalled their accounts, and #DeleteUber trended on Twitter, after the company was accused of undermining a New York taxi union strike protesting President Donald Trump’s refugee ban. On Feb. 2, Kalanick reluctantly left his spot on Trump’s business advisory council to appease the company’s liberal-leaning employees and users—not to mention its many immigrant drivers. On Feb. 19, a former software engineer at Uber wrote a blog post alleging that she had been propositioned for sex by her manager and that when she’d taken the issue to human resources, an HR rep had said that he wouldn’t be punished, in part, because he was a “high performer.” On Feb. 23, Alphabet’s autonomous car company Waymo sued Uber and its self-driving car company Otto, accusing an Uber employee of stealing trade secrets by downloading 14,000 files onto an external hard drive. On Monday, Uber’s head of engineering resigned after the company said it learned that he had faced a sexual harassment complaint at Alphabet, his former employer. He denied the allegations.

“Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own shit.”

The company has responded to the former engineer’s allegations by hiring the former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder to investigate the female software engineer’s claims. “What’s described here is abhorrent & against everything we believe in. Anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired,” Kalanick wrote on Twitter. On Waymo’s claims that Uber has stolen trade secrets, an Uber spokeswoman said, “We have reviewed Waymo’s claims and determined them to be a baseless attempt to slow down a competitor, and we look forward to vigorously defending against them in court.”

Despite it all, Uber’s business is growing, week after week. This is the service that Kalanick and his friend, Garrett Camp, dreamed up. Get a car in an instant, just like James Bond. They weren’t the first people to have that idea, but they were the ones who won—or at least the ones who have gotten the furthest. Camp stepped back and became chairman of the board, while Kalanick turned Uber into a global endeavor that operates in more than 400 cities. The company, which has its headquarters on Market Street in San Francisco, has more than 11,000 corporate employees. It has many more drivers—millions of them, scattered all over the world, working as independent contractors, without the health care and other benefits typically provided to full-time employees.

And the gig has gotten harder for longtime drivers. In 2012, Uber Black cost riders $4.90 per mile or $1.25 per minute in San Francisco, according to an old version of Uber's website. Today,  Uber charges $3.75 per mile and $0.65 per minute. Black car drivers get paid less and their business faces far more competition from other Uber services.

“That’s kind of how I roll. I make sure every year is a hard year. If it’s easy I’m not pushing hard enough.”

Kalanick has a reputation for being ferociously competitive and hard-charging. He’s the guy who has bragged about having earned the second-highest rank on Nintendo’s Wii tennis game. He’s still dogged by the fact that he once referred to Uber as “Boob-er” because it improved his dating prospects. Current and former employees say he can be empathetic when the mood strikes—or tyrannical when it doesn’t. Kalanick loves fighting over a good idea, which sometimes means admitting that his isn’t the best one. “Toe-stepping” is one of Uber’s cultural values.

Kalanick is trying to be a better listener. He met with more than 100 of Uber’s female employees at a meeting last week meant to address the morale crisis that followed the former software engineer’s blog post. Kalanick sounded some of the right notes, standing in front of the crowd. “There are people in this room who have experienced things that are incredibly unjust,” he said, according to a recording obtained by Buzzfeed. “I empathize with you, but I can never fully understand, and I get that. I want to root out the injustice. I want to get at the people who are making this place a bad place, and you have my commitment to make that happen, and I know it doesn't end there.”

Like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg before him, Kalanick is trying to learn how to empathize and communicate. But Kalanick at 40, compared with 32-year-old Zuckerberg, is having to change his ways later in life, and he’s often reluctant to tread too far from his intuitions. Even when Kalanick tries to empathize in his own way—which often means jumping into a dialectical argument of sorts— his temper can occasionally flare.

In Kamel's car, for example, Kalanick is seemingly at ease as the ride ends and his friends hop out of the car.

“You have a good one,” says the driver.

Kalanick says with an air of familiarity, “Good to see you man.”

Kamel replies, “Good to see you, too.”

Kalanick thinks the ride is over. But having the CEO in his car is an opportunity Kamel has been waiting for.

“I don’t know if you remember me, but it’s fine,” Kamel says. The pair begin talking shop, and Kalanick explains that they’re going to cut down on the number of black cars, which will reduce competition and should be good for Kamel.

Then Kamel says what every driver has been dying to tell Kalanick: “You’re raising the standards, and you’re dropping the prices.”

Kalanick: “We’re not dropping the prices on black.”

Kamel: “But in general the whole price is—”

Kalanick: “We have to; we have competitors; otherwise, we’d go out of business.”

Kamel: “Competitors? Man, you had the business model in your hands. You could have the prices you want, but you choose to buy everybody a ride.”

Kalanick: “No, no no. You misunderstand me. We started high-end. We didn’t go low-end because we wanted to. We went low-end because we had to because we’d be out of business.”

Kamel: “What? Lyft? It’s a piece of cake right there.”

Kalanick: “It seems like a piece of cake because I’ve beaten them. But if I didn’t do the things I did, we would have been beaten, I promise.”

The two bat that idea around, and Kamel brings the conversation back to his losses.

Kamel: “But people are not trusting you anymore. … I lost $97,000 because of you. I'm bankrupt because of you. Yes, yes, yes. You keep changing every day. You keep changing every day.”

Kalanick: “Hold on a second, what have I changed about Black? What have I changed?”

Kamel: “You changed the whole business. You dropped the prices.”

Kalanick: “On black?”

Kamel: “Yes, you did.”

Kalanick begins to lose his temper. “Bullshit,” he says.

Kamel: “We started with $20.”

Kalanick: “Bullshit.”

Kamel: “We started with $20. How much is the mile now, $2.75?”

Kalanick: “You know what?”

Kamel: “What?”

Kalanick: “Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own shit. They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good luck!”

Kamel: “Good luck to you, but I know [you're not] going to go far.”

The door slams. Kamel drives away. Later, the Uber driver app prompts him to rate Kalanick, as he does all his riders. Kamel gives him one star.

(via bb)

[gokul2181]

Exclusive! Sandip Ssingh: I stood with my friend Sushant Singh Rajput’s family unlike others who chose to stay indoors. That is not a crime! | Hindi Movie News

New Post has been published on https://jordarnews.in/exclusive-sandip-ssingh-i-stood-with-my-friend-sushant-singh-rajputs-family-unlike-others-who-chose-to-stay-indoors-that-is-not-a-crime-hindi-movie-news/

Exclusive! Sandip Ssingh: I stood with my friend Sushant Singh Rajput’s family unlike others who chose to stay indoors. That is not a crime! | Hindi Movie News

Taking off from our last conversation (published on June 28/29), you had said that Sushant and you go back a long time. You even went and visited his father in Patna. However, after that, the narrative has changed. His family has come forth and said that they don’t know you. Most people have not bought the point that you and Sushant were close friends. What is the truth? Sushant was a popular TV star. We met in 2011 and I had offered him the show ‘Saraswatichandra’. He said he does not want to do shows and wants to get into movies. I liked his honesty and he liked the fact that I told him to focus on making a career in films. That is how we became friends. We travelled together, we had meals together and several of them over the years. But there was no occasion in his family where he took me and introduced me to his folks. There was never a time when they were down in Mumbai and he introduced me to them. We had never been introduced, so how will they know me? Is it necessary that if we are friends with a star, their entire family has to know us? I just want to say — my friendship was deep, and it dates back years. People have been questioning it so badly that I was forced to put out my private chats with Sushant on social media, to just tell people that we were friends. My silence has been misconstrued as my weakness; people have pointed too many fingers at my family and at me. I didn’t want to put up with it anymore. Hence, I am breaking my silence. I thought shayad kuch din mein yeh sab rukega, lekin log thamne ka naam nahi le rahe…Main bheed ka hissa banne gaya tha Sushant ke ghar. No one had personally called and told me that he’s no more. I also saw it on TV, then, Mahesh Shetty and I travelled together over there in my car. I thought many people, including his friends from the industry will come. It was just Mahesh and me. If I saw a sister alone in this situation, when the family was scattered all over, should I have thought of my career, my body language, how I look or how I gesture someone with a thumbs-up? Should I have fled from the scene? What wrong did I do by helping a family that was grieving a severe loss? I don’t know them, and they don’t know me, but is that a crime? Is that important? Main to uss maiyyat mein bhi kaandha deta hoon jisko main nahi jaanta, yeh to mera yaar tha… I don’t understand what is the problem if I arranged for his funeral and took on responsibilities while his family was away? Are we now implying that if we see someone in trouble, we should scoot, because trying to help someone can land us in trouble? Insaniyat ki nahi, kamzori aur buzdili ki haar honi chahiye.

In the last 20 days, you were captured on a news channel dodging the camera crew and fleeing the scene in a car. It was also said that you wanted to leave this country for good. News channels were chasing you and you kept yourself away from everyone. Your colleague, Shekhar Suman even said that if you are honest, you must not hide… When did I try to run away? I spoke to you right after his funeral. Even before the family could speak, I spoke to the press openly about as much as I could. Even before debates happened. Main kahan bhaaga bhai? If I had done something wrong, I would not have spoken out. I am a filmmaker, and I have a zillion other things to attend to apart from giving media bytes. The times are such that people are unwell, friends have been facing troubles on the health front, I have responsibilities to tend to. I was asked for interviews, I gave them. But eventually, people started accusing me, people started questioning everything I had said, usko todke marodke uske meanings nikaalne shuru ho gaye… Am I here to answer every Tom, Dick and Harry on what they think of how I sat in the car, how I looked at them…News without proof is being shown on TV. It seems the ED had summoned me. Who has seen the summon? Where is it? I just helped his sister who was alone tending to paperwork in the city. The police and the ED would have called me if they had found something to question me over. I stood with the family through thick and thin for three days. There are visuals of that, and people are busy questioning me about it? Gunehgar maan liya mujhe? Show me another person who did what I did for his family? I was shocked that no one from the industry showed up at his house or at the hospital. Some people came to the funeral. People have been targeting me to get TRPs, views, likes, followers.

After your interview, Rhea Chakraborty, Samuel Haokip and several others have stepped forward to say that Sushant never mentioned you to them in the time that they were with him. In one and a half years, I was busy making films and so was he. He had his projects that kept him occupied, I had my own production ventures to look into. The PM Modi biopic required a lot of effort and my 100 per cent focus. Friends go out of touch when they have work. Are you perpetually talking to the same set of friends who you were with in class 10 or in college? Are you regularly in touch with everyone? Perhaps, no! Practically, it’s not possible. Just because we had not been in touch for a year or more, and he had not told me things, should I not have gone to his house when I learnt of his demise? Should I have forgotten our good old days and thought about…log kya kahenge? Police pooch taach karegi? Should I have chickened out thinking about social media pressures? Should I have rehearsed my body-language and other things before going there? I kept quiet to see how far people go!

Why did you wait for so long to address the allegations against you? I spoke, didn’t I on the last two occasions? Main sehm gaya! My friends, mom and family reprimanded me for being there for Sushant’s family. They said, “You have made a mistake by going there. You should not have gone there. Tune to aa bail mujhe maar wala kaam kar diya. Baaki industrywale, his friends are intelligent, but you are an emotional fool to go and help.’ I got scared, darr gaya main. I want to make films and I have a career ahead. So, I became quiet. But for the last 20 days, there are media people with cameras outside my building, as if I am some fugitive. I am trying to lead a normal life, I continued with my movements, but people have crossed their limits. They are showing footages of my car and asking …main kahan bhaag raha hoon! Kahan bhaag raha hoon, batao?

But speculations are that you were planning to flee the country… Am I some most wanted criminal, some sort of a fugitive that I will run away from here? I have given 20 years to this industry. I have studied in a Hindi medium school, I have sold ice-creams before becoming a journalist, a company CEO and eventually, an independent producer. Mira Road mein raha, CEO ki naukri ki to learn filmmaking because I did not have the resources to go and formally learn it. Uske baad, I have worked on my own and started my company and made four modest films on my own steam. Should I let it all go? Why should I? Why should I flee the country? I stood with my friend’s family, unlike others who chose to stay indoors. That is not a crime!

The ambulance driver has been in the news for being in constant contact with you. Your CDR has been accessed and now he is being questioned by the CBI… Meri toh izzat tak ko nahi baksha gaya! When people started writing nonsense about my mother is when I could not take it and I decided to speak up. Social media has been so unkind. I am breaking my silence because of that. Did anyone ever think that mujhpe aur Mahesh Shetty pe kya guzri hogi? People who didn’t know him, and, are not his friends or associates are screaming on national debates that I should be arrested. My question is for what?

You were handling all the procedures around his funeral, and out of the blue people saw you there. Since then, people have gone from calling it a PR activity to raising suspicion over your role in his life and his sudden demise. It’s said that after the ambulance driver, it’s your turn with the CBI… Please tell me, when have I not made myself available to any officer from any department to answer their questions? I am ready to face anyone to get justice for Sushant. I was demanding a CBI probe in my interviews. A parallel media trial is working like it’s above the Supreme Court and the CBI. I am ready to face the CBI. Why not! I have already gone through a round of questioning. I cannot disclose the conversation, but they have been asking all the questions that people have been asking me anyway and I have not hidden a thing from them.

You are also being connected with Disha Salian’s death… My last chat with her happened in 2017. She had come to my office – as a cornerstone employee – to discuss a project for an actor she was representing. The meeting was coordinated by my office staff. Then, I heard she has died by suicide on June 9. That is all.

When was the last time you spoke with Sushant? It was a normal chat, 1.5 years ago before I started making the PM Modi biopic. Yes, we used to chat on messages a lot prior to that. Even Vande Bharatam was being planned around that time.

With the drugs angle and the mental health angles being probed, did you know that Sushant consumed any substances or that he had a mental health issue? We had a respectful friendship. He never did such things in front of me. If he did anything behind my back, I wouldn’t know. The Sushant I saw and knew was a sharp, intelligent actor, a great dancer, writer, reader and someone who enjoyed learning new things. If you read our chats, you would know that we met over meals, not drinks. That was not the tonality of what we shared.

Now, in hindsight, was the silence worth it? If you ever step into my shoes you will know how it feels to keep hearing one allegation after another and to digest it before another one comes flying at you. Today, I do feel that maybe going and standing with the family was wrong. Maybe, I should have acted selfish and not gone there to stand with them in their time of need.

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[touristguidebuzz]

Uber CEO’s Year Gets Worse as Leaked Video Highlights Conflict With Drivers

A still from a leaked dash cam recording of a black car driver getting into an argument with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, who tells the driver to take responsibility for his own financial problems. Bloomberg

Skift Take: Uber's CEO took a ride with a driver, who told him, “You’re dropping the prices.” The CEO gruffly replied that Uber doesn't owe drivers a living. That's true. But the company also shouldn't mislead drivers into thinking their net income will typically be higher than the minimum wage.

— Sean O'Neill

When Uber Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick takes an Uber, he prefers a black car, the high-end service his company introduced in 2010.

On this particular night in early February—Super Bowl Sunday—Kalanick is perched in the middle seat, flanked by two female friends. Maroon 5’s “Don’t Wanna Know” plays, and Kalanick shimmies. He clutches his smartphone as the three make awkward conversation. The two women ask when his birthday is, and marvel that he’s a Leo. One of his companions appears to say, somewhat inaudibly, that she’s heard that Uber is having a hard year.

Kalanick retorts, “I make sure every year is a hard year.” He continues, “That’s kind of how I roll. I make sure every year is a hard year. If it’s easy I’m not pushing hard enough.”

There’s no question that it’s been a hard year for Kalanick and Uber—or really, a bad year compressed down into an awful three months. And it keeps getting worse.

That pleasant conversation between Kalanick and his friends in the back of an Uber Black? It devolved into a heated argument over Uber’s fares between the CEO and his driver, Fawzi Kamel, who then turned over a dashboard recording of the conversation to Bloomberg [below]. Kamel, 37, has been driving for Uber since 2011 and wants to draw attention to the plight of Uber drivers. The video shows off Kalanick’s pugnacious personality and short temper, which may cause some investors to question whether he has the disposition to lead a $69 billion company with a footprint that spans the globe.

Uber declined to comment on this video.

In December, Uber pulled its self-driving cars off the road in San Francisco after the California Department of Motor Vehicles said they were operating illegally without an autonomous vehicle license. In January, more than 200,000 people uninstalled their accounts, and #DeleteUber trended on Twitter, after the company was accused of undermining a New York taxi union strike protesting President Donald Trump’s refugee ban. On Feb. 2, Kalanick reluctantly left his spot on Trump’s business advisory council to appease the company’s liberal-leaning employees and users—not to mention its many immigrant drivers.

On Feb. 19, a former software engineer at Uber wrote a blog post alleging that she had been propositioned for sex by her manager and that when she’d taken the issue to human resources, an HR rep had said that he wouldn’t be punished, in part, because he was a “high performer.” On Feb. 23, Alphabet’s autonomous car company Waymo sued Uber and its self-driving car company Otto, accusing an Uber employee of stealing trade secrets by downloading 14,000 files onto an external hard drive. On Monday, Uber’s head of engineering resigned after the company said it learned that he had faced a sexual harassment complaint at Alphabet, his former employer. He denied the allegations.

“Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own shit”

The company has responded to the former engineer’s allegations by hiring the former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder to investigate the female software engineer’s claims. “What’s described here is abhorrent & against everything we believe in. Anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired,” Kalanick wrote on Twitter. On Waymo’s claims that Uber has stolen trade secrets, an Uber spokeswoman said, “We have reviewed Waymo’s claims and determined them to be a baseless attempt to slow down a competitor, and we look forward to vigorously defending against them in court.”

Despite it all, Uber’s business is growing, week after week. This is the service that Kalanick and his friend, Garrett Camp, dreamed up. Get a car in an instant, just like James Bond. They weren’t the first people to have that idea, but they were the ones who won—or at least the ones who have gotten the furthest. Camp stepped back and became chairman of the board, while Kalanick turned Uber into a global endeavor that operates in more than 400 cities. The company, which has its headquarters on Market Street in San Francisco, has more than 11,000 corporate employees. It has many more drivers—millions of them, scattered all over the world, working as independent contractors, without the health care and other benefits typically provided to full-time employees.

And the gig has gotten harder for longtime drivers. In 2012, Uber Black cost riders $4.90 per mile and $1.25 per minute in San Francisco, according to an old version of Uber’s website. Today,  Uber charges $3.75 per mile and $0.65 per minute. Black car drivers get paid less and their business faces far more competition from other Uber services.

Kalanick has a reputation for being ferociously competitive and hard-charging. He’s the guy who has bragged about having earned the second-highest rank on Nintendo’s Wii tennis game. He’s still dogged by the fact that he once referred to Uber as “Boob-er” because it improved his dating prospects. Current and former employees say he can be empathetic when the mood strikes—or tyrannical when it doesn’t. Kalanick loves fighting over a good idea, which sometimes means admitting that his isn’t the best one. “Toe-stepping” is one of Uber’s cultural values.

Kalanick is trying to be a better listener. He met with more than 100 of Uber’s female employees at a meeting last week meant to address the morale crisis that followed the former software engineer’s blog post. Kalanick sounded some of the right notes, standing in front of the crowd. “There are people in this room who have experienced things that are incredibly unjust,” he said, according to a recording obtained by Buzzfeed. “I empathize with you, but I can never fully understand, and I get that. I want to root out the injustice. I want to get at the people who are making this place a bad place, and you have my commitment to make that happen, and I know it doesn’t end there.”

Like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg before him, Kalanick is trying to learn how to empathize and communicate. But Kalanick at 40, compared with 32-year-old Zuckerberg, is having to change his ways later in life, and he’s often reluctant to tread too far from his intuitions. Even when Kalanick tries to empathize in his own way—which often means jumping into a dialectical argument of sorts— his temper can occasionally flare.

In Kamel’s car, for example, Kalanick is seemingly at ease as the ride ends and his friends hop out of the car.

“You have a good one,” says the driver.

Kalanick says with an air of familiarity, “Good to see you man.”

Kamel replies, “Good to see you, too.”

Kalanick thinks the ride is over. But having the CEO in his car is an opportunity Kamel has been waiting for.

“I don’t know if you remember me, but it’s fine,” Kamel says. The pair begin talking shop, and Kalanick explains that they’re going to cut down on the number of black cars, which will reduce competition and should be good for Kamel.

Then Kamel says what every driver has been dying to tell Kalanick: “You’re raising the standards, and you’re dropping the prices.”

Kalanick: “We’re not dropping the prices on black.”

Kamel: “But in general the whole price is—”

Kalanick: “We have to; we have competitors; otherwise, we’d go out of business.”

Kamel: “Competitors? Man, you had the business model in your hands. You could have the prices you want, but you choose to buy everybody a ride.”

Kalanick: “No, no no. You misunderstand me. We started high-end. We didn’t go low-end because we wanted to. We went low-end because we had to because we’d be out of business.”

Kamel: “What? Lyft? It’s a piece of cake right there.”

Kalanick: “It seems like a piece of cake because I’ve beaten them. But if I didn’t do the things I did, we would have been beaten, I promise.”

The two bat that idea around, and Kamel brings the conversation back to his losses.

Kamel: “But people are not trusting you anymore. … I lost $97,000 because of you. I’m bankrupt because of you. Yes, yes, yes. You keep changing every day. You keep changing every day.”

Kalanick: “Hold on a second, what have I changed about Black? What have I changed?”

Kamel: “You changed the whole business. You dropped the prices.”

Kalanick: “On black?”

Kamel: “Yes, you did.”

Kalanick begins to lose his temper. “Bullshit,” he says.

Kamel: “We started with $20.”

Kalanick: “Bullshit.”

Kamel: “We started with $20. How much is the mile now, $2.75?”

Kalanick: “You know what?”

Kamel: “What?”

Kalanick: “Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own shit. They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good luck!”

Kamel: “Good luck to you, but I know [you’re not] going to go far.”

The door slams. Kamel drives away. Later, the Uber driver app prompts him to rate Kalanick, as he does all his riders. Kamel gives him one star.

©2017 Bloomberg L.P.

This article was written by Eric Newcomer from Bloomberg and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

[themindfulword]

PSYCHOLOGICAL & SPIRITUAL THERAPY: Post-election imperative to become vessels of peace and communication

In our new weekly Psychological & Spiritual Therapy column, therapist Jack Surguy is offering professional advice to The Mindful Word readers for all those questions and problems you have wanted to discuss with someone qualified and caring. If you would like Jack to assist you in any areas of your life and relationships, fill out this form. He will respond to your questions through this column, normally published every Tuesday.   On November 30, I received the following question, and I thought I'd like to add to this and provide more information, since we just witnessed further acts of violence and mass arrests in the United States. The question was from Delphine in NZ and the response titled, “Fearlessness will aid you when dialoguing with others being driven by fear”:  

QUESTION

How do I navigate in the craziness that's going on around the world since the U.S. election? I watch the social media and have friends on both “sides,” I have friends who are being hurt—or perceive the smallest possibility of being hurt—and no matter what I say (I refuse to take sides) I'm attacked. I watch how they treat their friends, and if anyone tries to show the slightest bit of understanding for the opposite view, there's a mini-war declared. It's ridiculous. If I remain neutral, I'm told I'm clueless and attacked for that. If I try to show understanding to both sides, I'm called a traitor to one or the other. I tell them to be calm and try to put themselves in each other’s shoes; I'm told I don’t know what I'm talking about. There's so much fear going on right now, I can see absolutely no solution. I find myself withdrawing more and more. I'm struggling to come to terms with the energy that the constant fear and loathing—yes, loathing—and intolerance is causing around the world. It feels to me as if it's in the air I breathe. I suppose it is. I do meditate, I'm a naturally positive person. Nothing usually gets me down, but what's going on in the world now is making me withdraw more and more from contact with others. It feels as if anything that even looks like happiness or joy isn't acceptable anymore. And I wonder if it ever will be? What do I do?  

ADDITIONAL RESPONSE

It appears that race relations have unfortunately declined within the U.S. over the last few years. This is very disheartening, especially in light of the fact the U.S. had twice elected Barack Obama as President of the United States. I can still recall the speech that former President Obama delivered during the 2008 election. His words on race and racism inspired me and gave me great hope that perhaps, under this person's leadership, the racial divide could finally be truly addressed. The following are excerpts from that speech: "This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this presidential campaign—to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for president at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together, unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction—toward a better future for our children and our grandchildren." "But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America—to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality." "Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist between the African-American community and the larger American community today can be traced directly to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow." "Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race and racism continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or the beauty shop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings." "That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity within the African-American community in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful. And to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races." SIMILAR ANGER WITHIN THE WHITE COMMUNITY A similar anger as mentioned above exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they've been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience—as far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything. They built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pensions dumped after a lifetime of labour. They're anxious about their futures, and they feel their dreams slipping away. In an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity has come to be seen as a zero-sum game, in which "your" dreams come at "my" expense. So when these people are told to bus their children to a school across town, when they hear an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed, or when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighbourhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time. Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they've helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers on unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or even reverse racism. WE'RE FURTHER AWAY FROM THE IDEAL THAN IN 2008 During this past election year, accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and Islamophobia were hurled as political hand grenades on an almost daily basis. References to Hitler and Nazis became more and more frequent. This past election wasn't an election focused on policies; it was one focused on identity politics and group divisions. If people supported one candidate over another they were accused of not being American, of being ignorant or uneducated, or worse, of being morally defective. What many found very insulting was that even after electing Barack Obama for two consecutive terms, the nation was called racist and it was alleged that white supremacists and sexist individuals had come out to vote because of their hatred. Those statements just don't reflect reality and only cause further division and animosity within our communities. MTV even put out a video telling "white guys" what they needed to do better in the coming year. "White guys" were also told that just because they have minority friends, that doesn't mean they're not racist. This ad basically declared that white males, who make up roughly 36 percent of the nation's population, or around 223 million individuals, are racists and need to "do better." Again, this type of politics and rhetoric isn't going to bring any healing or reconciliation. In fact, according to a controversial psychologist and professor at the University of Toronto, Jordan Peterson, things are probably going to get worse before they get better. I truly hope this isn't the case. However, you could make the case that our government and media are pushing the nation towards a civil war of races. Paul Schrader, an American screenwriter, film director, and film critic who wrote or co-wrote the films Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Bringing Out the Dead said the following words: I have spent the last five days meditating on Trump's election. Upon consideration, I believe this is a call to violence. I felt the call to violence in the '60s and I feel it now again. This attack on liberty and tolerance will not be solved by appeasement. Obama tried that for eight years. We should finance those who support violence resistance. We should be willing to take arms. Like Old John Brown, I am willing to battle with my children. Alt-right nut jobs swagger violence. It's time to actualize that violence. Like my Civil War Michigan predecessors, I choose to stand with the black, the brown and the oppressed. A protester stated on CNN, "If we don't fight, who is going to fight for us? People had to die for your freedom where we're at today. We can't just do rallies, we have to fight back." Said Lily, the same Latina woman from Los Angeles, "There will be casualties on both sides. There will be, because people have to die to make a change in this world." Jesse Benn, a journalist for the Huffington Post, wrote an article in June of 2016 entitled, "Sorry Liberals, a Violent Response to Trump Is as Logical as Any." In this article the author stated, Violent resistance matters. Riots can lead to major change.... And when those who hold that privilege dismiss the potential validity or logic of violent resistance, it's effectively an effort to dictate the rules under which oppressed peoples respond to existential threats, and to silence forms of resistance disagreeable to privileged sensibilities. Even more disturbing was the undercover video of Scott Foval, the National Field Director of Americans United for Change, when he described the practice known as "bird-dogging." This is, essentially, when one party sends people into the opponent's rally with the intention of inciting violence to discredit the opposition. Except for one instance above, these quotes come from people considered among the social elite, or in positions of power and prestige. The goal here, however, isn't to say that one group is innocent and the other is the offender. The goal here is to point out that people who are known, are respected, and have a voice in the media are calling for violence against fellow Americans—this should cause us all great concern. A HEALTHY AMOUNT OF SKEPTICISM But what are we ordinary citizens supposed to do? More specifically, what are we, as practitioners of mindfulness, to do to help correct the course this nation is heading onto? Mindfulness is about being in touch with the present moment, here and now, and isn't about escaping reality. Mindfulness isn't about sitting on a pillow and experiencing bliss and feelings of peace. Mindfulness is about seeing and experiencing reality as it is, and doing our best to limit the obscuration within us that distorts and twists reality. While I support standing against tyranny and oppression, all I can see at this time is that all this rhetoric is turning Americans, including those who I know are good people, into enemies. We're not clearly seeing each other. Instead, I believe that often, we're projecting our own fear and hatred onto the "others." This isn't to say that awful, despicable things don't occur, but I don't believe these events represent the majority of Americans. The Founding Fathers of America were rather intelligent men. One piece of wisdom I take from them is to have a healthy amount of skepticism when it comes to believing everything reported to me by the government and by the media as well. Thomas Jefferson stated in a letter to Joseph C. Cabell, The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many.... What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and power into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate. VESSELS OF PEACE AND COMMUNICATION In other words, it doesn't matter who's in charge, the Republicans or the Democrats; a person should always question what's being reported as truth. If I maintain some skepticism in the back of my mind, then I'm unable to fully convince myself that those on the other side are enemies worthy of violence. Through mindfulness, we can become vessels of peace and communication. Understand that this mindfulness practice may not entail you specifically dealing with issues of intolerance or anger within yourself, but will perhaps influence how you'll respond if others project their own anger and intolerance onto you. We're standing at a crossroads today in America. We need those who are well-grounded in the present moment, who are able to see reality quite clearly, and who can refrain from projecting their feelings onto others to lead us into the future—mindfully into the future. Read more about American politics in U.S. ELECTION: Bringing awareness into our political winter of disconnect» Jack Surguy has an MA in both Theological Studies and Counseling Psychology, and is currently completing his doctorate in Clinical Psychology. He has spent years studying and practicing mindfulness meditation and finding ways to effectively implement the teachings and practices into his therapeutic intervention philosophy. His main area of practice focuses on the effects of trauma and childhood maltreatment on overall psychological/emotional and spiritual functioning. He currently works in a facility that specializes in treating traumatized adolescents and families. image via Pixabay Click to Post