#young language ambassador

[januaryembrs]

TROUBLE ALMOST ALL MY LIFE | Spencer Reid x Prentiss!Reader

Description: The ONE time the BAU needs you + the FOUR times you need them.

word count: 24k (what on earth was I thinking)

trigger warnings: mentions of spencers addictions + use + side affects. MOMMY ISSUES thankyou ambassador Prentiss. hostage scene + injuries. mentions of forced/pressured marriage. fem!reader. reader and Emily struggle to bond.

authors note: We never meet Emily's dad nor do we see a picture so while reader is given a nickname of Bugsy, she still keeps her real name (no use of y/n) and is given ZERO physical descriptors. ALL of my fem!readers should feel included here, let me know if this is not the case! also I don't speak any language besides English however she does speak many because of her mom, so I really tried to get it right, message me if I'm being stupid!!

series masterlist | next chapter

[this] means its spoken in another language.

—

‘trouble on my left, trouble on my right,

I’ve been facing trouble almost all my life’

1. the one where you become a translator.

“I’ll make some calls, I may still have some friends in the Eastern countries,” Ambassador Prentiss announced to the room, standing from her place on the plush sofa. 

A case had landed quite literally in Emily’s lap when her mother had come by that morning asking for Hotch, a Russian migrant looking for her father with a ransom note and a sliced off finger shoved through her mailbox, wedding ring still attached. 

It wasn’t every day Emily wished she’d brushed up on her Russian, but today of all days she was struggling to keep up. 

“We don’t have much time, we need a division of labour,” Hotch’s serious face settled, the time constraints making him just that bit more dictatorial, “Morgan, someone needs to go to the Chernus’s house in Baltimore in case they are contacted again,” 

“What about the language barrier?” Derek raised, smoothing a hand over the short scruff of his beard, “We can’t have the unsub speaking with the family directly. He could say anything to them without us knowing,” 

Bugsy would hate to admit she fit the criteria for youngest daughter of a workaholic mother and distant father to a tea, but Emily would say different. 

Elizabeth Prentiss had never been a warm woman; Emily used to tell her the scowl was a side effect of the overplucking of her eyebrows, not the serious nature of her job. Her youngest girl once said her mother’s lips looked like she’d sucked a lemon. Of course they admired her work, but world peace meant jack shit to a little girl wanting nothing more than a mother’s hug. 

Despite the fact she’d pushed away her husband and both her daughters in favour of her career, the one useful thing about being the Ambassador’s daughter wasn’t just the money, but the widespread culture the girls had been crammed full of since they could so much as beg for a sippy cup. 

“Baltimore, you say?” Emily asked Hotch with a somewhat doubtful wince, “I mean you could always-”

“Absolutely not,” Her mother cut her off, rubbing the stress lines already creasing her forehead at the very notion of her other daughter, despite the fact Emily hadn’t even finished her thought.

Emily’s sigh was a reflex, the years of her mother cutting her off sparking the frustration on instinct. 

“She lives right in the city, Mother, it can’t hurt to have her just talk for them-” Emily tried to bargain, only for the sharp mouthed Ambassador shoot her a frown. 

“End of discussion, Emily,” Elizabeth snipped, her manicured fingernails twitching with annoyance, “Your sister is much too young for an assignment so serious,”

Emily rolled her eyes with a scoff, as if the two had slipped back into the role of rebellious teenager and scathing mother without much thought. 

“She's twenty-two, mom. She’s getting her masters degree for Christ sakes, she’s not ‘too young’,” The dark headed woman fought back, clicking her pen a few times as if the spring loaded ink would take away some of the temper Elizabeth seemed to flare up. 

Her mother’s lips pursed, in the way Bugsy hated, in the way that meant she was going to be mean.

“Immature may have been a better word, then,” She replied, and Emily seemed to pause. She couldn’t argue with that. “Or perhaps lazy, or puerile; callow, wild, irresponsible. Would you like me to name more?” 

“Asinine would be a good term; deriving from the Latin asinus it not only means foolish, but to be stubborn and lazy like an ass,” Spencer input helpfully to the Ambassador, only for his bright smile to fade when he saw the daggers Emily stared at him with, “Sorry, I love word games,” He muttered into his lap. 

“Asinine. Perfect, Dr Reid,” Elizabeth said, and Emily could only roll her eyes harder.

Hotch huffed, the victim’s daughter watching between the two women’s quarrel with wet eyes, the ice box with her father’s finger clenched tightly in her lap, the cold of the limb bleeding into his own gaze.

“Unfortunately, Ambassador Prentiss, despite just how asinine your daughter might be, Morgan is right. Having the Unsub possibly speaking with the family without us understanding what he’s saying could prove fatal,” He explained, ignoring the way the older woman’s mouth scrunched in bitterness. They didn’t need to be profilers to see that despite how tempered the relationship between Emily and her mother was, a tension seemed to fall between the women the moment the younger Prentiss was mentioned. 

Spencer was sure he was the only person who even knew Emily had a little sister. 

“Very well, but don’t be surprised when you find your hands full of the girl,” Elizabeth said with a shake of her head as she led the victims, a mother and daughter that seemed to cling to one another for comfort as if to rub salt in her matriarchal wound, into the break room to get away from the frosty atmosphere that now lingered around the table.

Emily sighed, picking around her fingernails the way she did when she was bothered. 

“I’m going to hate these next words that are gonna come out of my mouth,” She started with a long exhale, “But my mother’s right. Bugsy is a handful. Just try not to get her wound up, that girl smells fear,” She looked to Reid who seemed none the wiser, “I’m talking to you, wonder boy. She’ll eat you up and spit you right back out,” 

Spencer gulped quietly. 

Derek only chuckled, slapping a hand down onto Emily’s shoulder, “Relax, Prentiss. Your mom’s just got you all worried. Need I remind you I grew up with two sisters? This will be a piece of cake,”

–

Those were the famous last words of Derek Morgan. 

Loud, heavy metal music jumped through the wooden door, so loud Morgan worried his three polite knocks would go unheard as the two of them waited outside her dorm for her to answer. Morgan was about to knock again, figuring the music had drowned out the first lot, when the door swung open and a frown the spitting image of Emily’s stressed expression met their gaze. 

She looked so different to their Prentiss, but the way she seemed already scorned by the two of them told them they had the right woman. 

“Miss Prentiss?” Morgan asked formally, though he felt the warmth grow when he caught sight of a beat up friendship bracelet around her wrist amongst newer gold chains, five white blocks spelling out her sister’s name pulling tight on her skin, as if she’d quickly outgrown the thing but hadn’t the heart to remove it. 

It was then that he and Reid seemed to both reel back slightly at the fact she was standing in a large shirt, ratty around the edges, and what seemed to be a pair of men's boxers covering her bottom half, clearly not suspecting particularly important visitors. 

She looked him head to toe with a frown, a dozen piercings in her ears, her hair highlighted with streaks of cardinal red, as if he was the one confronting her in his underwear, before she moved onto Spencer, who’s face seemed to be getting hotter by the second as he forced his eyes away from her bare legs. 

“Are you guys strippers? Did someone send strippers to my door?” She asked, strawberry gum smacking between her lips as her gaze seemed to finish mulling over Spencer’s tall form and returned to Morgan.

“Emily sent us.” Reid said shortly, the music blaring in his ears making it difficult to focus on what it was she was saying, “As co-workers, no-not strippers. We’re with the FBI,” 

He hated loud noises anyway, cringed at the sound of particularly cutting rock songs, but since he’d developed his … problem, the dilaudid had him feeling like someone was clawing at his skull, tugging his brain through his ears.

“Emily sent you here?” She asked with a scoff, looking the two up and down again. They both easily caught the way her face hardened, “Are pigs flying today or something?” 

“We’re here to ask for your help on a case,” Spencer rushed through a sweaty brow, “Emily said you’d be able to act as a translator for us and some Russian citizens who are being targeted,” 

She sighed sceptically, crossing her arms and leaning against the door frame, “Any strippers or non-strippers can fraud an ID. Emily’s name was in the paper just the other week. I’m gonna need a little more than that,”

She keeps track of her sister despite the supposed distance between them. Spencer was quick to profile, his mind whirring at all the ways she reminded him of her sister down to the way she raised her eyebrows expectantly at them. 

“Emily was born October twelfth, 1970 at 7:12am, graduated from Garfield High School in 1989,” Spencer said as if reporting the weather, her eyes narrowing in on him all the more coldly, “She attended Chesapeake Bay University and speaks six languages, as I expect you do from moving so often with your mother. She coined your nickname Bugsy from your childhood love of ladybugs, which she said you grew out of by the time you turned eleven yet the name stuck, though you still like counting the spots to identify their species. Your parents split when you were five and your father moved in with his now wife, born September ninth-”

“Alright- alright. What are you, living in her walls?” She interrupted incredulously, before turning her attention to Derek who seemed to hide a chuckle with a cough. “Either you really are a stripper or you’re a terrible friend,”

“She loves Kurt Vonnegut,” Derek held his finger as if to prove her entirely wrong, although not much else came to him. Maybe he was a bad friend, he thought guiltily, or maybe he simply lacked an eidetic memory like the wonder boy next to him, who had been about to tell her how old she was when Emily’s pet betta fish died, “Slaughterhouse 5?”

Rolling her eyes, she grunted at them, kicking her door open for them to enter. 

“Everyone loves Vonnegut; only losers under a rock dislike Vonnegut,” She drawled, edging back into her room, the heavy bass rock growing in volume as they followed her in, “I’ll be ready in a second- Emily’s always bugging me about wearing pants,” She said vaguely, scanning around the dirty dorm, until she found one particular pair of jeans laying half under her bed, quickly yanking them up her legs. “Come in, come in.” 

She flicked the speakers way down to which Spencer took a breath of relief. His eyes fell to the laptop that had been set up on her desk, the five different textbooks littered around the spare space, energy drinks and empty mugs filling the cracks where he could barely see the generic white of the table top, his nose crinkling. About as gross as he’d expect from a college student. 

“Emily said your Russian was pretty good,” Derek made conversation, his eyes wandering over the various posters plastered over her walls, some fraying round the edges from where she had likely been moved from bedroom to bedroom when the Prentiss’s inevitably had to move country again. 

“Yeah,” She snarked, pulling a nicer top over her head, “Kinda tends to happen when you live in Russia,”

Morgan raised his eyebrows to Spencer who seemed to give him the same look back, though the latter was biting back a snicker at her words. 

How in the hell was she the Ambassador’s daughter?

–

“This all involves Russian Mafia, it’s really beefed up here the last ten years or so,” Agent Cramer, a tall, slim man who looked entirely overwhelmed by the workload on his shoulders reported, as she listened intently. 

She had been somewhat de-briefed in the car, Emily messaging her for the first time since Christmas, the message a simple: “Have you met with Morgan and Reid yet? Make sure to put on pants,” to which she sent her a thumbs up emoji. She didn’t have much to say to her at the moment, barely even knew her sister anymore. 

“It started off mainly in New York and LA but they send lieutenants from the old country,” Cramer went on, and she caught Reid scratching his arm beneath his shirt. She knew it was mozzy weather, and he was already under the blaring sun in a little sweater, it wouldn’t surprise her if he felt a bit prickly. 

“Pahkans,” She interrupted, the man named Gideon shooting her a glance as she dug through her purse. 

“Your Mom do much work about the Mafia?” He asked, as she produced a clear nail varnish. 

“Here and there, I had to sit with her in her office for a whole Summer once when I got caught sneaking out. Picked up a few things, though,” She said, holding the polish out to Spencer, nodding to his arm, “Here. Supposed to help bug bites,”

He looked at her as if he wanted to say something, perhaps question her sources for such an old wives tale, but he stopped himself quickly, taking the varnish out of her hand with a dejected nod. 

“Thankyou,” He muttered, shoving it in his pocket. 

Three months he’d been in this rabbit hole. She had noticed it in a matter of hours. 

“They open up branch offices in other cities. Baltimore, Saint Louis, Chicago, Dallas, the list goes on,” Cramer added, nodding at her words, “They’re mainly offshoots of the Odessa Mafia and they’re especially tough to crack from a law enforcement standpoint. I mean beside being well organised with sophisticated technical equipment, there’s Vory v Zakone to contend with,” 

“The thieves code, eighteen principles they live by,” Reid jumped in before she could, to which she nodded as Gideon looked to her for more. 

“It means ‘thief in law’, or ‘thief with code’. It's a system of repeatedly jailed convicts that have been crowned or ‘made’ with a strict list of ideals, breaking them usually means death,” She explained, kicking a stone between her feet. 

“It’s like bible to these guys. We’re not gonna be turning any of them informer anytime soon,” Cramer said. Gideon seemed to tune the three of them out however, his gaze locking on the house across the street, where a curtain twitched, and a man’s face appeared in the window, watching the crime scene with guilt. 

“Then we’ll need a witness who will talk,” Gideon replied, heading straight towards the neighbour who seemed just a little too invested in what was happening, much more than a concerned third party should be. Though, she had barely noticed, digging through her purse once more for chapstick. 

“So, you study Russian or something?” Cramer asked as she applied it gently, Spencer swore he could smell the cherry flavour from where he stood beside her. 

“I lived in Moscow until I was six, moved back to France, then back to Italy, then Algeria for a bit. Bounced around Europe for a bit longer, but I still speak better Russian than anything else,” She clarified, and she saw Cramer’s eyebrows shoot up, “Military brat except I don’t get the cool discount at the store,” 

“You must have had a lot of friends though, going to so many schools,” Spencer added, and though there was nothing teasing about his tone, she laughed sharply anyway. 

“You’re funny,” She snarked, but smiled at him anyway.

Spencer had never been called funny in his life. ���Funny looking’, ‘funny sounding’ maybe, but never funny. 

In fact he was so confused by what she had meant, whether it had been a taunt or genuine that he almost missed the sound of the whole street locking their front doors, dead bolting their lives away when a black prius, an expensive one at that, pulled through the street and swerved into park next to them. 

“Guess who,” Cramer bit, her eyes ripping away from where Gideon had the door slammed in his face. 

Detective Cramer aged by about five years when two tall men got out of the luxury car, opening the door for a shorter man in the back seat, their faces thunder. 

“You familiar with them?” She asked, shoulder brushing against Spencer as she turned to watch the men approach, entirely aware of the .9mm on each of their hips. 

“Arseny Lysowsky,” The detective identified, his voice cold, eyeing the two men who flanked the leader, towering over them. 

“Agent Cramer, how are you?” Lysowsky smiled at him, which oddly enough seemed somewhat real, as he also took stock of the three other people around him. His eyes lingered on her for a moment, noting her lack of gun and badge, trying to decipher if she was local or just a very unprepared fed. 

“Lysowsky, what brings you out?” Cramer asked, a tightness to his tone, his hand all too eager to grab his own pistol. 

“I heard Chernuses had problems,” He kept it vague, didn’t reveal too much, and looked back at the victim’s house with a scorned frown. 

“How did you hear that?” Gideon challenged, stance unwavering as the mob leader turned to meet his cold gaze. 

“And you are?” He asked, a sinister smile on his face that flipped her stomach. She didn’t like the tension that had overcome the little patch of sidewalk they took up, and she was quick to notice how Spencer moved towards her. 

He, by far, wasn’t the best shot on the team, but he was sure Hotch and Prentiss would have his and Morgan’s heads if any harm came to her. 

“Churneses said they hadn’t told anyone,” Agent Gideon ignored his question, hands firmly planted on his hips. If he was unnerved by the criminal in front of him, he never showed it, not even when Lysowsky’s grin widened horribly. 

“It is a small community. Word gets out,” He said simply, looking past him to the neighbours house that had kicked Gideon to the curb, “Are you a friend of Gorban’s?”

A second of silence passed between them, neither of them backing down from the moral standoff they’d engaged in. 

“Mr Gorban wouldn’t talk to me,” Gideon admitted, and Arseny only smiled again, flicking a look at the house behind him, as if hearing his dog had obeyed without command. 

“Would you like me to talk to him for you?” The threat was there clear as day, clear enough to have Gideon’s eyes narrow, “I can’t promise something will come of it,” 

“You!” In a second, Natalya, the victim she’d briefly met when Morgan had pulled up around an hour before, had stormed out of her house, her black kitten heels clicking against the concrete, “Where’s my father? He has my father!” 

“Wait a minute,” Derek called, restraining her where she stood, trying to pull his muscled arm from her shoulder, “Do you know he has your father?” 

“He’s responsible for all of this,” She spat, her eyes cold as she glared at the three men with vitriol hate, “Why everyone’s afraid, him and his animals,” She threw a hand up to his bodyguards that seemed barely contained by Cramer’s silencing hand. 

“I am only here to help,” Lysowsky replied, confident and calm in his words, though not as taunting as the agents would have thought, as if he truly cared for her.

A vast difference to the sadistic mob boss Cramer’s team had painted him to be. 

“Help?” She laughed woefully, tears in her eyes, “You’re a dog,” 

“Natalya,” Arseny said in a warning, the way a teacher would to a student, as her breath rattled in her chest through a weep. 

“How exactly can you help them?” Bugsy braved to speak, Gideon and Reid both flashing her a look. She’d always had trouble holding her tongue. 

Lysowsky turned his attention to her then, his eyes running down her figure, still deciphering whether she was armed; she looked much too young to be an agent. 

“In any way that they’d like me to, darling,” He replied, the disdain in her frown clearly not deterring him in the slightest, though again the act of concern held up in his own grimace, “As I said this is a small community. If one is in pain, we’re all in pain.”

Natalya weeped behind Morgan, sniffling as the boss made his way over to her, “Natalya, [you didn’t have to bring in outsiders],” 

The younger woman’s ears pricked up as he spoke in his native language, Spencer’s eyes flicking to her from behind his sunglasses. 

“[Let me help you],” He continued, taking a step towards Natalya, unthreatening yet she saw Morgan tense, his fingers twitching towards his gun. 

“[My family will never come to you for help],” Natalya hissed back, also in Russian, her face contorted in disgust, “[Get away from my house],” 

“[You are not right, Natalya],” He replied, yet again the concern in his eyes was either genuine or very well faked, “[You have made the wrong decision],” 

Taking a step away from the victim that wept with a scorned sneer, he looked back to the agents, noting the way the youngest of them glared at him hotly, before retreating to his car. 

“What did he say? Did he threaten you, Natalya?” Morgan asked, the woman watching the group of men drive away, as if Mr Chernus wasn’t still missing and they hadn’t just bumped themselves up to number one of the suspects list. “Talk to us and we can do something about it,”

“He said I made the wrong decision,” She said wetly, frustration turning on Derek as he pushed her for an answer, “I hope I didn’t,” 

With that she stormed off back into her house, the same stomping of her kitten heels in her wake, leaving the agents to all look between one another before they simultaneously turned to look at Bugsy, questions hovering on all of their lips. 

“What did he say exactly?” Gideon asked without frills, a hand rubbing his brow. Relaying the information, the men’s faces all drew into frowns as they heard Lysowsky’s parting statement. Gideon huffed, turning to Morgan and gesturing for him to follow Natalya inside. 

“Morgan, keep an eye on her, Reid and I are going to Cramer’s office to look over the files,” He looked at her then, worry lines littering his otherwise friendly face, damn near scowling as she looked over at him, “You are here to interpret, you understand? You do not speak to the suspects, that’s our job.” He growled, watching her with disappointment, the same tone a father used when scolding a petulant child, “Do you have any idea how much danger you could put yourself in? These guys won’t hesitate to take you out the second we’re not around, kid,” 

“But-” She started with a bite, though her whole fight left her when he silenced her with a raised hand. 

“Buts are for cigarettes, kiddo,” He interrupted, and Spencer winced slightly, knowing he’d heard that one a few hundred times when he’d first started under Gideon and had yet to mature entirely. Reid watched something rebellious flare in her eyes, and he worried for a moment she might just slap his boss for the patronising tone he took, “Just keep your mouth shut, you’re doing great so far,” 

She opened her mouth to protest, only to then register his words entirely and stay silent once more, appreciating his praise with a guilty smile. For once, she listened. 

–

The grandfather clock chimed to tell them it was merely 11am; two hours until the unsub would start cutting more if they didn’t get the ransom fee, two hours to figure out who wanted Natalya’s family to suffer. 

Said woman paced her living room at the sound of the hour, as Bugsy picked over the knick knacks on her fireplace, a small smile teasing her lips when she saw a picture of three small children grinning toothily at the camera. 

She had never gotten any photo’s similar, Emily being fourteen years older. The majority of their childhood photos consisted of a very grumpy teenager holding her baby sister that seemed to squirm in the tight, formal dresses Elizabeth Prentiss had forced them into, identical scowls on their faces as they were made to sit for the picture. 

There were some good memories, ones where Emily let herself be a sister and not a mom, where she would put makeup on her for fun and do her hair, let her have all the clothes out her wardrobe she thought looked nice, reading to her before bed, even letting her sister keep her pet corn snake when she left home for good. 

But now, it seemed like she was too caught up in her super serious grown up job to give a shit that her sister lived just an hour away. Still messaged each other for holidays, but the last few times she’d braved a call to the eldest Prentiss, it had gone unanswered. They argued the majority of the time they spoke, or there was an awkward long silence in between words, whichever was worse, but they each knew the other would come running if they were to ever need them so desperately. 

“Are you hungry? I could make something?” Natalya offered kindly, Derek having a poke through her collection of books that sat on the end table, though he’d have a tough job reading them as she’d already caught most of them were in her home language. 

“Oh, no thanks. I’m fine,” He replied with a small smile, putting down the books to calm the clearly on edge woman that looked to the twenty-something year old hopefully. 

She shook her head, “I’m good, thanks,” which seemed to deflate her entirely as she sat next to Derek with a sigh.

“I guess I’m like my mother. When she’s upset, she cooks,” Natalya said with a sad huff of a laugh, running a hand through her short, dark hair. 

“Yeah, mine does too. I think that’s just a mom thing,” He replied, and Bugsy felt the two of them look at her as her finger traced the old brass ornaments gently, “How about you, baby Prentiss?” 

She snorted, “You’re kidding, right?” smiling bitterly, “My mom never cooked for us, she said we needed to figure it out for ourselves rather than relying on the staff. Didn’t stop her from trying to end world hunger though,” 

It wasn’t lost to Morgan the way her eyes trained on the picture of Natalya and her mother, cuddled together with genuine love in their embrace, the snarky humour as she spoke, the same longing Emily seemed almost too good at hiding from them. 

“Your mother is a great woman,” Natalya complimented, though she missed the way the girl’s face steeled over, chewing her bottom lip as if to stop herself from snapping at the woman who meant well. She said nothing. “Where is your mother?” She turned her attention back to Derek who seemed the more talkative of the two of them. 

“Chicago. That’s where I’m from,” He replied, watching Bugsy turn away from the two of them to inspect more of the Chernus’s trinkets on their walls. 

“I’m from Dolgoprudny. Just North of Moscow.” Natalya replied. Opening her mouth to add something else, she was cut off by a knock at the door and the three of them froze in their place. 

“Are you expecting someone?” Morgan asked Natalya in a hushed tone, reaching for his gun and heading for the door. 

She shook her head, “No,” She whispered back. Morgan pulled the curtain back the smallest inch to see a small blonde boy staring back, a box in his hands and a bored look on his face. 

It all happened too fast from there, Natalya opening the door for the neighbourhood kid, opening the box to see a decapitated ear, the blood fresh and pooling in the bottom of the box. It couldn’t have been taken longer than an hour or so ago, unless they were keeping the parts on ice. 

Bugsy’s hand slapped over her mouth, Natalya’s scream piercing through her as she shoved the box into Derek’s hands, fleeing to the toilet, and she heard the woman retching. Part of her felt the same nausea settle in her stomach, looking away from the body part with a wince as Derek got straight on the phone to Gideon. 

“They didn’t wait, man. They sent a box with-” He swallowed thickly, “With Mr Chernus’s ear inside.”

Gideon replied, and whatever it was, it had Derek looking back to her. He agreed, hanging up the phone and rooting through his pockets, producing a set of rattling keys, holding them out for you between the tips of his fingers. 

“Gideon wants you, kid. He said they’re at the Little Kiev restaurant, they’re going to talk to Lysowsky,” Morgan said, grimacing as he held the ear away from her, “You sure you’ll be okay to drive?” 

“I’d rather be on the road than look at what’s in that box,” She said in disgust, taking the keys and heading out to the car.

She thought it best for everyone she didn’t tell him she hadn’t yet got her licence as she made her way over to the restaurant. 

-

“Reid and I will do the talking, just see if anything he’s saying connects with Vory v zakone, think you got that?” Gideon instructed her the second she got out of the car, taking the keys and handing them back to Reid who gave her a small nod. 

“We think the reason it was Mr Chernus who was targeted has something to do with the code,” Reid explained, his hands in his pockets as the three of them approached the restaurant, “You said earlier you understood the tenants,” 

“Why me, though? I thought I was just translating?” She repeated Gideon’s earlier words, almost cocky that they needed her.

“Lysowsky would feel the need to show face in front of men like Morgan and Cramer, even in front of Natalya since she lives locally. Between the three of us, he had less reputation to uphold, less so with a young woman like yourself,” Reid added, holding the door open for her to go in front. 

And so there she was, trailing behind Gideon and Reid over to where Lysowsky sipped a spoonful of borscht, as she tried not to marvel at the grandeur of the establishment inside. Clearly, Arsney had money to build a place like this, and wasn’t afraid to be flashy about it either, that much was apparent from the other clientele that tended to their beers around their own tables, Rolex watches and designer shoes adorning nearly every one of them. She hated to think of how many ears or fingers those suits had cost. 

“Would you like something to eat?” He asked, a chunk of bread in his hand dipping into the thick sauce, seemingly unbothered that they were there, “This borscht is exquisite, it’s my mother’s old country recipe,” 

“Didn’t you forsake all your relatives when you swore the thieves code?” Reid asked, which she guessed was hit foot in to get Lysowsky to talk. 

“I didn’t forsake her recipes,” Lysowsky replied with a shrug, looking to her where she seemed to be staring at his plate, “Borscht?” 

She shook her head, her nose wrinkling, “Much preferred stroganoff, mom used to force me to have borscht to make sure I ate my veggies,”  

His eyebrows raised, surprise written over his face, before he gave a short laugh. 

“[Where are you from]?” He asked in his mother tongue, gesturing for the three of them to sit down, though his eyes lit up as he watched her carefully. 

“[I was born in DC, but my mother worked in Moscow for a few years],” She answered shortly, and he seemed to find it even funnier that the near child they’d brought along on their case spoke as fluently as he did. 

Laughing with a heavy hand smacking on the table, he gestured to a nearby waiting staff to come over. 

“What are you having then, borscht for the gentle man?” He looked at Reid and Gideon, the former shaking his head while Gideon nodded with an awkward smile. 

“I’d love a taste,” He said, though any enthusiasm seemed to have drained out of his voice. 

“And what is the little lady having?” Lysowsky asked, his eyes falling back to her, as she straightened in her seat. 

She chanced a quick glance to Gideon, who nodded at her to play his game. She had not expected to be so deep in criminal territory when they’d said they needed a translator, and truly they hadn’t planned on getting her in the field until they realised she would know much more about this than they would.

“Do you have sharlotka?” She asked, returning his smile wearily as he clicked at the waiter who all but bolted to the kitchen. 

“A sweet tooth. I like it,” Arseny replied, shovelling a heap of beets into his mouth, “Our favourite was always Leningradsky,”

“Ours?” She prompted, giving a polite thanks to the waiter who returned too quickly with a slice of cake. She caught Spencer glancing at the bowl with intrigue, the hunger clear on the quiet man’s face. Gently pushing the bowl and clean spoon towards him, he flicked a look up at her, “Apple cake,” She whispered, sending him a small smile, “Really yummy with the sugar on top,” 

“Mine and my mother’s,” Arseny replied, though Gideon and Reid both caught how he paused before he replied, as if he had to think about the answer he was giving; the oldest tell that it wasn’t entirely true, “We didn’t have much when I was a boy, but that was always our dessert of choice,” 

She stopped for a mere second, missing the moment when Spencer spooned the tiniest bite of the cake into his mouth, trying to ignore the way his tongue exploded in the sweet, fruit taste. He hadn’t eaten anything properly in days, and maybe that was why it tasted so good, but more likely it was just the fact that everything sweet tasted even better when he was on his come downs. 

“We need to talk, Arseny,” Gideon interrupted, ignoring the way Spencer pined to go back in for a second mouthful, but chose to hand the bowl back to her with a small smile. 

“We are on first name basis?” Lysowsky asked, shaking his head, and she took a small bite of the sweet cake for herself, “I still don’t even know who you are,” 

“I think I understand something about this,” Gideon replied, his thumbs tapping together, the waiter returning with his borscht, “You have a problem,” 

“I do?” The pahkan titled his head at the agent, the annoyance clear on his face. 

“That’s why you came to the Chernus’ house this morning,” Gideon answered, unbothered as he began to scoop the borscht onto the spoon, the apple cake in her own mouth going down a treat. 

She kept her head down, took tiny bites of the dessert that certainly tasted like a fresh baked sharlotka. But her thoughts lingered on what Lysowsky had said, about his own favourite pudding. 

It made no sense that he would have ever tasted Leningradsky shortbread, not for the time that he was born, nor with the amount of money he claimed his family lacked. Infact, the way he fully pronounced his vowels, the akanye, the stress he put on certain parts of his words, all pointed to the same dialect you’d heard back in Moscow, more central than anything else. 

So how on earth would he have eaten the so-called ‘Royal Cake’ that had only been made eight hours from there, in the town it grew its name from. 

There was something glaringly obvious about his story missing. 

“A man like me?” She tuned back into the conversation, swallowing another mouthful down as Gideon took another bite himself, though it seemed the topic had turned sour as Arseny wiped his mouth with the corner of his napkin. 

“Four watchtowers and a convict signifies a stay in prison,” Spencer cut in, nodding towards the tattoos branded across his knuckles, “Each one of those crosses symbolises an individual sentence,” 

“Twenty three years in prison in the Ural mountains,” 

But she was still stuck on what it was she was missing. It had been such an odd thing to lie about, particularly when he’d even admitted himself that they hadn’t had much money, so he clearly hadn’t been lying to fake a reputation. 

So why lie?

She was ripped out of her stumped silence when Natalya entered the restaurant, her voice grabbing the men’s attention immediately. 

“Mr Lysowsky. You said you could help me,” She said, her purse over her shoulder and her own car keys gripped tightly in her hand as if she’d all but thrown herself out the vehicle to get there faster. 

“Don’t you already have help,” Lysowsky snapped, clearly Gideon had dug under his skin enough to garner a reaction. 

“I made a mistake,” Natalya replied, barely meeting Bugsy’s gaze as she stared at her from her seat at the table. “I talked to my father on the phone,” 

The girl frowned at her, “That’s a lie,” It came out before she could hold herself, brows furrowed at whatever it was she was trying to pull. Gideon said her name in a reprimand, though he too was looking at the woman as if she’d grown a second head. 

“Thankyou for coming, but I don’t need your help,” The woman met her confused look with a saddened expression, nodding to her solemnly. 

Leave it alone, she seemed to be saying, there’s nothing more I want you to do. 

And with that, the two of them left the restaurant, Natalya walking by his side obediently, her purse tucked in close under her arm, as Morgan and Cramer filed in from the parking lot, watching their only leads drive away without a fight. 

–

The team were quick to head back to Natalya’s home, only to find the ear missing and the finger gone too, the only evidence left of any crime being committed leaving with the victim’s daughter herself. 

“She’s not here, and the garbage was never taken out,” Morgan said with a grimace as he walked down the front steps to meet the four of them on the sidewalk. 

“Her dad just went missing, surely we can cut the girl some slack-” Bugsy words were hidden in a huff, rolling your eyes at the man who cut a glance to her. 

“No, no. When Hotch first talked to us, he said she noticed her father’s car in the driveway when she took the garbage out,” Morgan explained, his shades blocking the way the cogs turned behind his dark eyes. 

“Right?” Reid asked, his own sunglasses now covering his eyes that winced at the brightness, surrounding them.

“Garbage can in the kitchen is completely full, she never took it out.” 

“She lied,” Gideon said with finality, the penny beginning to drop for him too. 

“She could be half way back to Dolgo-whatever by now,” Morgan scoffed, his arms smacking against his side as the lightbulb went off over her head, the final puzzle piece falling into place. 

“Dolgoprudny?” Spencer asked, exchanging a glance with Cramer, “Isn’t that where Lysowsky’s from-”

“Yes, YES, of course!” She exclaimed, grabbing onto Spencer’s arm as he spoke. 

He looked at her with wide eyes, not that she could see since his shades blocked the way, only to feel her shake him harder in the midst of her enthusiasm. Part of him wanted to rip his arm out of her grip, waiting for the sickness to crawl up his throat at a strangers germs touching him, but the oddest part of him reasoned she had the same germs as Emily did, that the fifty percent DNA the women shared negated the fact she was a stranger, just as it did when he met Jack. Jack had Hotch germs. Bugsy had Emily’s. He didn’t feel so sick thinking of it like that. 

“I knew I was missing something,” She said, turning to Gideon, “He was lying before, about his favourite dessert. There was no way he could have had Leningradsky with his mother. Given his age, at that time in Soviet Russia, shortbread was incredibly expensive, only extremely wealthy families could have eaten it. That, and given the Central dialect he speaks in, I’d pinpointed he lives somewhere near or around Moscow, which means there was no way he was eating that cake considering it was only ever baked in one shop at first, one way up in Leningrad, where St Petersburg is now, like nine hours away from Moscow-” 

“What’s your point?” Cramer asked, tired of the somewhat slew of thoughts she’d been saving until she knew for sure what she meant. 

“Before when he said it was ‘our favourite’, I don’t think he was talking about him and his mother,” She explained, looking to see if Spencer at least understood what she was getting at. 

“It was him and his own child…” Spencer finished, as Morgan’s phone began ringing.

“Yeah, what?” He asked, the frustration clear in his tone that they were all still without the evidence needed to pin it on Lysowsky, “You’re sure? Uh-huh. Okay, thanks doll,” 

The four of them looked at him expectantly as he nodded to her, “Garcia just got into the bank’s system, somebody wired 500 thousand dollars into the account ten minutes ago,”

“Who wired it?” Spencer asked, though he was still reeling from the way she’d touched him, the way her voice went up about five octaves and a dozen decibels.

“She didn’t say, but the name on the account is Lyov Fulenko. She says that’s Lysowsky’s wife’s maiden name. Fulenko.” Morgan replied, and her brows furrowed. 

“Why did she bring us into this?” Gideon asked, though the solemn look on his face said he already knew, “Because she needed to put pressure on the other victim,” 

Gideon headed towards Mr Gorban’s house once more, though it was clear he had already sketched out in his head who was their unsub and Natalya’s involvement, he simply needed the confirmation. 

Morgan clapped a hand on her back, “Nice job, baby Prentiss. Those were some mean profiling skills out there,”

She frowned at him, scoffing,  “I’m not a profiler, that’s Emily’s job. It was just basic linguistics really; more a display of how I need to lay off cake for a while.”

The man kissed his teeth with a grin, “Don’t put yourself down. What’s your degree even in?”

She shrugged, picking under her nails for something to do, “Individualised genomics and health.” She said as if it were child’s play, though Spencer’s head shot to her. 

“Biotechnology?” He asked, and she glanced at him with a nod, “What’s your thesis on?” 

Gideon had returned by the time he’s asked, and began corralling the two of them back to the car, “We’re heading back to the restaurant. We need to speak with Lysowsky again,” 

But it had fallen on deaf ears as Spencer looked at her expectantly. 

“Just some new research into prenatal screening, nothing too fun,” She simpered, climbing into the back seat as he nodded with her. 

“I read a fascinating paper on the uses of hCG in a woman’s body-” 

“Reid,” Gideon cut him off with a short glance from the front seat, “Continue this conversation once we’ve found Mr Chernus alive,” 

Spencer blushed, feeling like a kid caught in the cookie jar, “Sorry, sir,” He looked over at her, only to see her hiding a smile to herself. 

He thinks it was then he’d decided Emily had been wrong about her.

-

“You paid the ransom already,” Gideon said plainly, the four of them trailing behind him as he followed Lysowsky to a small seating area in the front of the restaurant. She could tell the whole way Spencer had been itching to ask her more questions about her paper, barely contained as his fingers had twitched in his lap, but he seemed to straighten himself out once she’d reached the restaurant, “You paid all the ransoms,”

“Sit,” The boss ordered, barely glancing at them as he held his strong whiskey up.

“Are they going to kill Mr Chernus?” Morgan asked, cutting to the chase as Lysowsky spared him a bored glance.

“No,” He replied shortly, the look on his face about as grumpy as when they’d left. 

“The account is in the name of Lyov Fulenko. Lyov is a man’s name.” Spencer input, crossing his arms as the boss glared at him, “A son’s name. Vory v Zakone. Never have a family of your own. No wife. No children.”

“Lyov,” He looked at her then, gesturing to her with the glass of strong liquor, “You know what it means?”

“The Lion,” She replied gravely, steeling herself against his dark eyes. 

“No one else would be so stupid,” Lysowsky ran a hand over his weathered face, swigging his drink as if it was the only thing keeping him talking. “At first it didn’t mean much. It was a way of letting him earn his own money. I could afford it, it came from the fund. And no one questions the use of the fund-”

“Where is he?” Gideon asked, his elbows on his knees as he leaned in.

“What else could I do?” He was ignored, “I couldn’t admit I wasn’t blessing the kidnappings, I couldn’t even admit my son existed.” He huffed when he saw Gideon’s face unmoving from the glower, his question still unanswered, “Chernus will be home in a few minutes. You should be there, he will need medical attention,” He shooed them away, with his final words, drink sloshing in his hand. His face darkened, impossibly so, and the five of them looked at him, something sad and remorseful shining back. 

“What are you gonna do?” She asked, though she had a feeling she already knew the answer. 

“Vory v Zakone.” He said heavily, nodding to her, “We take care of our own troubles.”

It was a silent journey back to the Chernus’ house. 

-

Morgan and Reid pulled up to the campus, the younger girl in the back seat almost dozing off with the rhythmic hum of the engine, the evening sun much nicer on Spencer’s sensitive eyes. 

“This is you, baby Prentiss,” Derek’s voice jolted her out of the half sleep she was in, straightening herself from where she had her head pressed against the window. 

“Thanks,” She muttered, rubbing her eyes and unbuckling herself as they did the same, assuming they wanted to walk her back to her dorm since it had gotten dark, “I’ll be okay on my own, campus security should be out by now,”

“You sure?” Reid asked, flicking his watch up to his eyes to see the meagre 6:13pm staring back at him, “I thought they started at 7,”

She blinked at him, her eyebrows quirking for a moment, “How do you know that?”

“Johns Hopkins was my backup option- well actually it was my third, I much preferred Caltech’s curriculum, Yale was my second-” He started, flicking a glance to her where she waited for him to finish, “Not that Johns was bad, there were just better- alternative options out there-” 

“Don’t shit your pants, I’m hardly the dean of the university,” She chuckled indignantly patting them both on the shoulder before sliding over to open the door, “Nice meeting you both, I’ll just get back to my mediocre college with my poor curriculum, nothing like the solid gold bathrooms at Caltech-”

“I never said that!” She laughed again, with her whole chest, at his defensive tone as she stepped out the car, hand on the door to shut it behind her. 

Leaning down to give them both a wave goodbye, Derek’s voice stopped her again, “Baby Prentiss, do us all a favour and enrol yourself into forensics, we need more people on our team,”

Smirking at him, she shook her head, “Very funny. Never gonna happen. I like my little slides and samples, thankyou,” 

Slamming the door on the two of them she headed for the front gates, swinging her purse over her shoulder. She was stopped by a hand on her shoulder, and she quickly realised she’d been too tired to even realise a set of footsteps jogging after her. 

Maybe she should have taken that walk home after all. 

Whirling around, her eyes widened as Spencer had clearly not been leader of the track team as he was half out of breath just from the few feet he’d covered, though she reckoned she could have guessed that seeing his lean ribs beneath his shirt.

He shoved a business card in her face as he caught his breath, though it was more just his name and credentials followed by a phone number. 

“I-I don’t have email otherwise I would-” He huffed, scratching his forehead as she frowned and looked at him.

“I’ve never been hit on via business card before,” She bit her lip with a smile, reading over the card again as he choked on his words even more than before.

“N-no, I-” He spluttered, ignoring the way Morgan beeped the horn for him, seemingly in a debate with a ticket metre that had caught him parked on yellow, “If you needed us for anything, or if you needed a second pair of eyes for your thesis, I’m happy to help,”

“You don’t have faith in the dummy that got into Johns?” She asked, and his head couldn’t shake fast enough, though he seemed to catch her teasing and shared her smile, “Thanks, Dr Reid,” 

“Spencer’s just fine,” He said, giving her a small nod and a wave as Morgan’s palm bounced on the horn a dozen times. She flashed him one more smile, pocketing his number and heading back to her dorm, wondering what the doctor would think about the paper due in tomorrow she’d yet to get started on.

+1. The one where you get arrested.

The case had been heavy. They’d felt it in the car on the way back to headquarters. A little girl, molested and groomed by her own uncle, his own wife covering for him. 

His mother always told him love makes you do crazy things, but Spencer hoped that whatever part of him worth loving would at least stay sane by the time he found the one. He was loyal to his team, to his mother, but that was where he drew the line. He was loyal to his family, undoubtedly so. 

Yet so was Emily. 

The call came to the second SUV, her phone set up to hands free mode, quickly flicking to answer the call on speaker, the other half of the team ahead of them on the freeway. 

“Prentiss, speaking. Who is this?” She spoke clearly to the unknown number, her knuckles going white at the wheel when she heard a nervous laugh.

“It’s me,” Her sister mumbled through the speaker, “You wouldn’t by any chance be near DC would you?” 

She huffed, cursing the knack Prentiss women had for showing up at the worst times. 

“Can’t this wait, I’m on the clock,” Emily hissed, her finger edging towards the ‘End Call’ button, “I’ll call you after,”

“Wait, wait, don’t hang up!” As if sensing her movements, she all but screeched, “This was my one phone call, they won’t let me have another,” 

The car went silent for a moment, Spencer’s eyes narrowing on the dash from his place in the passenger seat, JJ also leaning forward from the back with a frown. 

Emily grit her teeth, her upper lip twitching the way it did when she was mad. 

“What do you mean by one phone call? Where are you?” She bit in a cautious tone, though knowing how reckless Bugsy tended to be, she had a pretty good idea. 

The hesitation on the other end of the line was palpable, as was the way she awkwardly cleared her throat. 

“Fairfax County Jail,” She murmured sheepishly, “But it wasn’t my fault, these assholes don’t know what they’re talking about, I swear-”

“Stay there and keep your mouth shut,” Emily ordered, her expression furrowing into a sneer, “And for the love of god don’t antagonise the officers,” 

The agent didn’t even wait for a response, knowing it would probably be something snarky, her mind already racing at what the hell her sister could have done this time, every worst possible explanation jumping to the forefront. 

“I’ll call Hotch and tell him to turn around,” JJ offered, her fingers already searching her contacts for their boss, as Emily sighed through her nose. 

“Tell him not to worry, I’ll drop you guys back to headquarters, make my way there myself,” She said, picking the skin of her nail softly with her thumb. 

“By the time we’ve reached Quantico, visiting times will be over and she’ll have to stay the night,” Spencer pointed out, his own surprise evident. Sure, she had certainly been a personality when they had met, but a criminal seemed a stretch. 

“Maybe it would teach her a lesson,” Emily mused, shaking her head to herself, “Who am I kidding, that psycho would Shawshank her way out of there by dawn,”

“You don’t actually think she would hurt anyone do you?” JJ said, the dial tone ringing out from the phone she held to her ear. 

“Wouldn’t put it past her. She once cut a girl's pigtail off for wearing the same dress as her on her birthday,” Emily winced as Spencer’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. 

“I thought getting swirlied was bad,” He muttered, watching out the window as Emily made a U-turn at the traffic lights. He and the now twenty three year old had been bouncing research papers back and forth for a few months, the odd one every week, Bugsy even once joking it was much more interesting and riveting than foreplay, which had his face red hot at his desk.

She was like that, he’d quickly realised, had a vulgar sort of humour about her, yet he couldn’t help the snigger that came out whenever he’d receive one of his papers back through the mail with pink writing scrawled all over his ideas. The little hearts that dotted her exclamations whenever she wrote “AMAZING!”, the odd time she’d written “sexy ideas, doctor Reid” which he’d come to understand meant it was really good. He’d even gotten back the drawing at the end of the paper of a stickman of the two of them, his hair a curly scribble and a purple tie which told him immediately who was who, her line of a hand pointing at his caricature with the speech bubble, “everyone point and wave at the smart man,” which had made him laugh. 

She was odd, toeing the line between childish and witty, nothing like the scholars he usually worked with, and the writing he usually sent back on her papers were all in standard black ink, his own pharmacist handwriting staring back at him as he crammed in his every thought of her research into the margins. If she couldn’t read it, she hadn’t said, but he liked to think she took notice of it all, even if it wasn’t strewn with stars and doodles and the occasional flirt he knew meant nothing. He knew her from her writing, knew her from her ideas that sometimes kept him up at night thinking more about them, but the two of them hadn’t spoken directly, most certainty hadn’t seen one another since that day with the Chernus’.

Emily hummed, fingers drumming on the wheel, entirely unaware of the thoughts rattling around in Spencer’s head, then again that’s how it always was, “I just pray to god she’s listened to me for once in her damn life and keeps quiet,”

-

“Fucking bitch. The nuns in Moscow hit harder than you,” She spat, blood dribbling from her split lip. She wasn’t entirely lying, but god did her mouth sing with pain as she tried to muffle a moan. 

“You got jokes, pig lover?” The other woman asked, a tattoo covering half her cheek, her nose crooked from the shiner the Prentiss girl had already given her. “Won’t be fucking laughing when I’m done, bitch,” The woman was quick to tackle the girl around her stomach, slamming her into the hard concrete of the holding cell. Bugsy felt her skull rattle, the wind whooshing from her chest as rough hands grab her shirt and pin her down harder. 

The younger girl reached the nerve under her opponent's armpit, the soft of her ribs, twisting until the woman gave a bark of shock, and she took the opportunity to shove her off, climbing on top of her as they both scrambled for some sort of control.

“I got one for you. What’s got a broken nose, a black eye and doesn’t know what’s good for her?” She swung twice as hard, the other women in the cell rattling against the bars as if watching a matador taunt a bull, the air thick with excitement as the two of them cursed eachother out.

Emily’s sigh was audible across the room as the wardens separated the cat fight, the largest of the officers all but grabbing her sister by the scruff of the neck like a feral beast, dragging her over with stubborn feet to where the BAU stood in the lobby, eyes widened at the state of her. 

“You better start acting your age, little girl. Mommy’s not gonna be around forever to save you,” The officer hissed in her ear, manhandling her over to where Emily glared daggers into the side of her head. She knew that look, it was eerily similar to mom’s that time she’d been caught sneaking out of the house, something in the warm brown of Emily’s eyes frosting over into a cold blackness. Fury. 

She chewed her words for a moment, waiting until the man had turned around with a grunt of acknowledgement to the badge Emily had flashed to get his attention, before she spoke. 

“She’s not my mom, she's my sister, dumbass-” Emily slapped a hand over her mouth, gripping her shoulder with the bear-like strength her jagged nails possessed when she was mad, the scoff of disgrace leaving her mouth as her team trailed behind the two of them. 

“What the hell happened, baby Prentiss?” Morgan asked, ignoring the way Emily’s heated gaze turned on him, “What’s got you so worked up?”

“Don’t entertain her, Morgan,” Emily seethed, all but shoving her into the back of the SUV. She looked up at her sister with an open mouth, the guilt flashing in her eyes as she wavered under the pointing finger Emily jabbed in her face, “Don't you even dare,” 

“But-” She stammered, cut off when she saw the glare intensified, if that had even been possible. 

“I don’t want to hear another word from you for the rest of the day unless you’re prepared to give me a good explanation why I’ve dragged my team out here to save your sorry ass,” Emily hissed, and the girl’s mouth bobbed a few times, feeling the rest of the team watching as she got thoroughly chewed out. 

“Wait-” Emily’s hand lingered at the car door, ready to slam it in her face as she rubbed her cuff over her chin, mopping up the damage. Her head tilted for a moment, hoping her sister had something good to say, only for it to be; “He just called you old, I hope you realise that,”

Emily’s gaze darkened, slamming the door shut with an anger she imagined her mother had kept warm for the past twenty three years, whirling around heatedly when she heard a snigger from one Derek Morgan. 

“Damn, mama, hear the girl out.” He said, slapping a hand on the woman’s shoulder as he passed, heading back to their own SUV, “Maybe she’ll surprise you,” 

If Emily was going to bite anything back, she didn’t. Instead she ran a hand over her brow, the group disbanding to their cars now the problem child had been picked up from daycare, except for Hotch who watched the older Prentiss with a scowl, despite the worry in his eyes. 

“Hotch, I’m so sorry, just take it off my timecard, I’ll cover all the costs,” She said shakily, her own frown adorning her face as she felt herself blush from embarrassment under her boss’s gaze. 

“I understand she’s your sister, but this was a gross misuse of agent time and resources, Prentiss,” He said, his gaze drifting to where Spencer sat next to the girl, pulling a packet of tissues and hand sanitizer out of his satchel while JJ rooted through her own purse for a plaster, “Don’t let it happen again,” 

Emily nodded vehemently, flushed with anger, her palms sticky as she wiped them on her jeans. 

“Absolutely sir. Believe me, this ever happens again, she’s on her own,” She replied, though they both knew she didn’t mean it. Emily would never. 

He nodded stonily, deciding quickly that it was punishment enough that she felt so ashamed, he knew from his years of arguments with Sean what it was like to have a sibling stray so far. 

“We can fill out reports in the morning, just get Reid and JJ home,” Hotch said, putting a tentative hand on her shoulder as he passed her to head towards his own vehicle, “And try not to kill each other in the company car. It doesn’t look good on paperwork,” 

She beat off the smile on her lips as she got back into the driver's seat, the air that engulfed the four of them foul as she glared over her shoulder and into the back. Spencer twitched in his seat uncomfortably, his hand still passing over tissues to the bloodied girl. 

“So, you gonna tell me what that was about?” Emily asked, her tone brittle and warning, not in the mood for any snarky response she could give, “Or is this old lady going to have to lay into you some more,” 

The smell of strong ethanol engulfed her nose as she held the soaked tissue to her face, frowning into her lap silently and avoiding the burning stare as Emily stuck the keys in the ignition and started the car.

“Let’s start with why you were there,” JJ input, the same tone of voice she used as when talking to victims, calm and motherly, unlike the pissed off snarl Emily gave, “You wanna tell us why you were arrested?”

“You two really gonna pull the good cop, bad cop on me?” She snapped, her lip swelling around the wound, tongue grazing it softly despite the heavy taste of the sanitizer.

Emily said her name in a warning, her last warning, and she knew better than to push her luck even more, the SUV pulling out of the station and onto the road. 

“I was just shopping for groceries,” She started, fiddling with the bloodied tissue, wincing under her tongue stroke, “Store clerk made a pass at me, I told him I wasn’t interested. So he put a pack of smokes in my handbag while I wasn’t looking; the alarms went off. I didn’t even know what was happening until security grabbed me at the door,” 

JJ flashed a glance at Emily, like two parents deciding an appropriate punishment, the brunette’s lips straightening out into a line. 

“You’re telling the truth?” She asked cautiously, glancing in the rear view mirror to see how her sister balled the mess of paper between her palms. 

Rolling her eyes, she gladly accepted the other packet of tissues Spencer slid over the leather seat between them. 

“I went out for milk and oranges, I was not looking to get picked up, Em,” She bit back, groaning when she felt it jostle the cut, “And certainly not for cigarettes, you know I only smoke on New Years,” 

Spencer looked at her with a frown, and she caught his confusion quickly, pulling another leaf of paper from the packet. 

“Emily and I had a rule after she caught me smoking when I was like fourteen, that we could have one cigarette between the two of us on New Years eve,” She explained, JJ also perking up to hear it, “So that by the time morning came around, it would be last year’s mistake, and it would be like it never happened,” 

JJ smiled to herself, remembering the time she caught Roz sneaking one of her dad’s cigarettes on the back porch back when she was just ten. She remembered the little secrets the two of them kept back then, held them even all these years later. 

“So how did that lead to, well,” JJ gestured to her lip, “That,” 

“Yeah, didn’t I specifically tell you to not antagonise anyone?” Emily chimed in, signalling she was changing lanes as they headed down the freeway for a second time that day.

“Technically you said not to antagonise the officers,” She pointed out, before Spencer had the chance to, shutting his mouth as he caught the glare Emily shot through the mirror.

“Keep talking,” The older Prentiss ordered, as Bugsy sighed and blotted her lip some more. 

“That woman, Mira I think her name was, anyway, she recognised me from that picture mom had us take on Independence Day, the one they put in The Hill, and she asked me if it was true my sister was a fed,” 

Emily’s fingers twitched at the wheel, knowing the status agents and even people associated with agents held in prisons; knowing just being a Prentiss in a jail cell held a big, dazzling price over her head that said ‘kill me, kill me!”

The air sucked out of the car, a look passing between JJ and Reid as they thought the same thing, waiting for her to go on. 

“So then you hit her?” Emily guessed, the bitterness slowly ebbing as she understood maybe her sister wasn’t as unruly as she thought. 

“No, I told her to leave me the fuck alone, but she said you guys sent her brother down for something a while back, and she asked again if my family were all Pigs,” She picked her nails, the blood stain on her sleeve staring back at her, “I told her if she didn’t stop calling you a Pig, I’d make her squeal like one. And then I hit her,” 

Emily tried to pretend she didn’t smile hearing that, her cheeks tightening, lips pulling down as she fended it off. 

“Is that good enough, officers, or will you be needing fingerprints?” The girl chimed after a moment, a weight seemingly lifted from the car as Emily quickly realised she had, for once, not been entirely at fault. 

“I want a handwritten apology to my boss for wasting his time,” Emily demanded, her unforgiving gaze softening when she saw her smile, “And you owe my team coffee,”

“I can do coffee, coffee coming right up,” She agreed, shoving the used tissues into her purse with a crooked smile, “It’s a date,”

Spencers ears turned red, looking over the seat at where she dabbed at her lip gently. She didn’t look much older for six months, but she had gotten her nose pierced since the last time he’d seen her, unless he just hadn’t noticed it before, and the streaks of red were slowly fading out into a blush pink that said it was old, and he wondered if she’d done it herself in that tiny little cubicle bathroom of hers she shared with the four other girls in her block. 

“You finished your stats papers yet?” He made polite conversation, though part of him was dying to know out of curiosity if she could crunch numbers and equations as well as she could in her own labs. 

“Got two more this week, they’re kicking my ass man,” She replied with a huff, and he didn’t think he’d ever been called ‘man’ by a woman before. He knew if he’d known her in college, ignoring the fact he would have been twelve, he would have thought she may just be the coolest person alive, “I miss my labs with my microscopes and watching all the little baby cells move around in the ethanol. Stats are like, just not sexy,” 

He smiled at her as she stared out the window, unaware of the way she’d managed to make DNA sound like a play pen full of kittens. He held off from telling her he found stats really quite sexy, knowing it would never sound the same coming from his mouth.

He pulled a leaf of the tissues from the packet, producing his own pen from his pocket and began doodling carefully so as not to rip the delicate canvas. 

Sliding it over to her after five minutes as Emily and JJ made conversation in the front seat, she didn’t care that the grin tugged on her split lip, the reaction was instant, she couldn’t stop it if she tried. 

Two stick men stared back at her, her hair a close match in texture and a childish triangle drawn as means of a dress, a very tall stick figure next to her patting her metaphorical head, a speech bubble coming from his mouth. 

“Maths is fun!” It said, and she flicked a glance at him, her smile the most genuine he’d seen yet. He just smiled back. 

+2. The one where you graduate

Emily felt the looks on her the moment JJ had mentioned Maryland. The case was a little under their pay grade, nothing more than a stalker, no bodies or bloodshed, but one very rattled woman that had turned to the communications liaison with fear for her life. 

With Hotch and Rossi in Boston helping a case of their own, the rest of the BAU had been twiddling their thumbs waiting for something to come across their desk. 

“This case is in my hands now, and if we do nothing and something happens to her,” JJ took a heavy breath, her eyes lingering on the three names Keri had given her in case of her untimely death, “I’ll be the one notifying her family,”

Derek, despite his own hesitations about using their time for a case like this, caved the moment he saw the guilt on the blonde’s face. 

“Okay,” He shuffled the papers into a pile, Emily and Spencer gathering their own resources on the case and standing from the round table. 

Luckily, one government SUV was more than enough to carry the four of them for the hour drive North, all of them well aware Hotch would flip if they used more funds than necessary.

JJ piled into the front beside where Morgan climbed into the driver’s seat, leaving Emily next to a particularly fidgety Reid. It took all of fifteen minutes of the man flicking a glance at her, his mouth quirking as if he were about to use it, before he thought better and looked out the window, and the whole thing would start again. 

Derek, the less shy about his thoughts of the two men, even glanced at her through the rear view mirror, before he too returned his gaze out the window silently. JJ shifted in her seat, knowing she had to tread carefully around mentioning Bugsy to Emily, particularly after the last time they’d seen her. Emily had said they’d grabbed coffee once or twice since then, but that was all she spoke about it, which left her team walking cracked eggshells at the thought of bringing her up. 

It seemed the three of them were bursting at the seams with the same thought, and it wasn’t until Reid cleared his voice, his puppy eyes stuck in his loop, that she had had enough. 

“Does anyone here have something to say?” Emily huffed, Derek immediately reaching to turn the radio up the same time that JJ flicked the AC on for something to do. Realising they weren’t easily broken, she turned to Spencer who already looked slightly guilty, thumbing at his sweater, “Reid?”

“Did you want to see your sister?” He asked without hesitation, as if the words had fallen out of him, “You know, since we’re so close on this case. It would be a good excuse to-”

“You did say she owed us a coffee,” JJ pointed out, spurred on by Spencer’s nerves, “Wouldn’t mind cashing in if we’re coming all this way.”

“Morgan, do you have anything to add?” Emily asked with raised brows, though she already knew what was coming.

Derek chewed over his thoughts a second, “I’m just saying, you only get to see your baby sisters grow up once- you know, and it couldn’t hurt to see her even if she runs rings around you with that smart mouth-”

“Shouldn’t we be focusing on the case?” Emily cut him off incredulously, but received three knowing looks back. She met JJ’s gaze where the woman had swivelled in her seat to talk to her, and Prentiss was fast to catch the buried grief in her best friend’s eyes. She knew it pained her to even bring up sisterhood, let alone watch Emily throw hers away for the sake of a decade and a half between them. It was the desperation in JJ’s face that did it, knowing she would give anything to spend just an hour with Roz one more time, that had her drawing her cell out her pocket and calling the contact with the little ladybug next to it, “Fine,”

As a profiler she would have been tempted to ignore the way Spencer smiled into his lap; as a sister, her eyes narrowed at him.

The phone rang surprisingly only once before she answered, and she heard an unnaturally tame version of her sister answer.

“Emily?” She asked, her voice hushed, worried almost, “You okay?”

Her brows furrowed, “Yeah, I’m fine. Are you?” She got no more than a hum in return, somewhat agreeing though Emily could tell clear as day she was holding something back. “Look, we’re gonna be in Silver Spring, I was thinking tomorrow we could grab lunch-” 

“Can’t, I’m busy, it’s an all day thing,” Her sister cut her off, yet it wasn’t rude or demeaning like usual. Nervous almost, sad, “Sorry,”

“What’s an all day thing?” Emily asked, the concern matching her words. 

Her sister swallowed on the other end of the phone, before she found her words, or maybe even the balls to actually speak, “I’m graduating tomorrow,”

Emily’s face lit up, the smile spreading fast on her face, ignoring the way Morgan’s words seemed to ring true in her ears; she was growing up too fast. 

“Graduating, why didn’t you say!” She asked, the joy in her tone unmissable, “How’d your papers go?”

Spencer held himself off from correcting her that she’d only done five papers, that the rest of her results had come from theory and labs, thinking better than to interrupt the one conversation they’d had where there was no underlying argument brewing. 

“Full honours, obviously.” Bugsy drawled with a snicker, and Emily shook her head, the smile never dimming. 

“Look at you, y’little superstar,” Emily bit her lip, ignoring the guilt that tore at her when she realised she barely knew what Bug spent her days doing, “Did Mom and Dad get good seats? Oh god, dad’s not bringing Stephanie is he?”

The silence on the other end had her halting, the light in the conversation wavering for a second, before she understood the nerves, the quick defence her sister had been on the moment the call had been answered. 

“Bug-���

“They’re not coming,” Her heart ached in her chest hearing it, “I sent Mom the details, she said she’s in Ukraine this week settling some papers. Didn’t even get a chance to ask Dad before he and Stephanie were off on their fifth honeymoon in the Bahamas until October,” A painful laugh echoed down the line, as if she were holding back the gravity of the situation. 

“Bug,” Emily tried again, picking her thumb viciously, punishingly, hating herself for being so blind to her sister’s troubles, “Why didn’t you invite me?”

“I figured you’d be busy,” Came the reply, sad and tender, the most honest she’d heard in a while, “You’re always busy,” 

“Never too busy for you,” Emily’s guilt tripled when her sister didn’t answer, knowing if she were to counter the statement with hard evidence it would only hurt both of them, “Look, I have some time today, probably,” She didn’t, not even a few minutes, “Why don’t we get that coffee, you don’t even have to pay,”

Bugsy gave a sad laugh, “Sorry, Em, I gotta get my dress fitted today, and some of the lab techs invited me to a party later. Maybe some other time,”

“A party with biology nerds?” Emily asked with false excitement, the air turned stagnant between them now, “Well, rock on, science freak. Don’t leave your drinks with strangers, and don’t walk home alone, and for god sake use protection-”

“Bye, Emily,” She said with a chuckle, the older of the two gracing her with the same, as they put the phone down. 

The car was quiet, waiting for Prentiss to speak, none of them missing the way her lip pulled between her teeth, a bitterness on her face that told them she was holding in something close to sadness. You’re always busy. It echoed around her head, stabbing at her chest to think her sister was graduating alone, no one to congratulate her, no one to pat her on the back and tell her how clever she is despite the fact Bugsy would happily tell anyone just how smart she was on her own. Never too busy for you. 

“She’s graduating tomorrow,” She said to the three people waiting for an update, Spencer’s brows shooting to his hairline. He hadn’t heard from her since her last paper got sent off, and why would he? They had exchanged a few little anecdotes and doodles, sent each other research papers to be graded like teachers exchanging lecture notes, “She didn’t even tell me. She’s gonna be alone,” 

JJ grimaced, “What? What about your mom- or, or your dad, an uncle, someone-” 

“Mom and dad are out of the country, Mom’s brother lives in Mexico with his seven kids, he can barely get a night’s sleep let alone a day off to travel up to Maryland. Dad’s sisters passed away when I was a kid,” Emily explained, running a hand over her face, “I can’t let her go up there alone,”

“So we don’t,” Spencer said, as if he’d never been more sure of anything in his life, “We don’t let her do it alone,”

-

“Graduating with Masters in Biotechnology; Jasper Adams, Tom Adamson, Kristen Afkins, Gavin Agriths-” 

The dean read off the names of the students as she fiddled with the hem of her dress. 

The dress fit beautifully, her make up done to near perfection, her hair styled neatly, she was graduating with full honours for christ sakes. Why couldn’t she just be happy with what she had? Why had she got to be so spoiled? 

Lots of peoples parents missed their graduation, lots of people her age didn’t even have parents anymore, she ought to be grateful her mother was increasing famine aid in foreign countries, all the lives she would save, or even be happy her father had found a pretty, rich new wife to tour every known vacation destination with. Or even that her sister had called her just yesterday and told her in a few words she was proud of her. 

But none of them quelled the feeling of loneliness that blossomed inside Bugsy. The kind that had always been there, the kind that just wanted someone in her corner, telling her she was doing pretty good for a kid who raised herself in all those big houses they’d moved to, who saw the au pair more often than her own mother. 

All those rooms were so empty, the houses so quiet besides for her. It was like living in a cemetery. 

“Robert Lewsinsky. Marcus Linford. Tara Lorence. Katie Macauley.” 

P would be up soon. Each name of her classmates drew an applause, some whoops and screams, one family she swore there must have been ten of them in the back row cawing and howling like monkeys at a zoo, proud of their son for making it. 

She willed a smile on her face, hearing Orla Parkins get called up, and she knew just by the steward that directed her where to stand in line she was close. 

“Kenneth Patterson. Joshua Perriman. Harriet Pimms. Lauren Pintons.”

She held a rattled breath as Renly Prackett walked ahead of her, strolling over the stage to collect his degree, flashing the crowd a wide smile and a fist pump. She had always liked Renly, having been his experiment partner for a year, despite the fact he never washed up after himself in the lab. 

Then it was, her name was called. The one no one but her mother and Stephanie ever called her, she solely went by Bugsy courtesy of Emily. It was a family name, a nice one at that. Maybe it had been the fact she had been eight and her cool big sister crowned her the new name, or maybe it just rolled off the tongue better, made her feel less like a Prentiss, that she chose to go by her monika. 

She tried not to think about where or what Emily was doing, only hoping she was safe, as she began walking over the stage, her heels clicking loudly with her hesitant steps. 

To her utmost surprise she heard a loud whistle echo through the auditorium, a group of jeers and screams of her name, even an air horn signing off that had her almost tripping over her own feet turning to see who it was. 

Surely it was a joke, a cruel prank, she barely had any friends in her class. Acquaintances sure, but no one so bold as to make such a fuss over her. 

Squinting down at the audience, her cap nearly slipping off her head as her head turned to the source, she felt her chest burst when she saw the dark hair and bangs, her sisters butchered fingertips in her mouth with a loud cattle whistle, screaming like a firework right to the stage where she graciously accepted her award, despite the fact she barely paid any attention to the dean anymore, more to her sister who smiled at her widely as she clapped. Behind her, her team she’d met on the off chance, the pretty blonde, JJ, who pressed the air horn a few more times, cheering just as loud for her. Morgan, the handsome one who had stood himself on top of his chair, cupping a hand over his mouth to scream “Kicking ass, baby Prentiss!” at her, ignoring the way other people stared wide eyed at them. 

And Spencer, tall enough to be seen over the crowd even without the help of a chair, who smiled at her, clapping those big hands of his loud enough to reach her, his own whoops never ceasing even as she stepped off the stage to head back to her seat. 

The rest of the ceremony dragged, a speech from one of the alumni and the exit music playing, but she simply grinned into her hand, where her degree smiled back at her, counting down the moments she would be allowed to stand. 

And then she was fast walking down the stairs, amongst the bustle of students, the black gowns flurrying around her as she burst out into the square where parents, fiancees, brothers, sisters, cheered their loved ones, pulling them into tight hugs. 

Her eyes scanned the wave of black hats, landing on two dark eyes, the thick sable hair framing the dazzling smile that awaited her with open palms. All but shoving her way through the crowd, she stopped in front of her sister, the urge to jump at her with a hug shying the moment she got close. 

“Told you. Never too busy for you, Bug,” Emily said, pulling her in by her shoulders for a tight hug. She knew her sister wasn’t one to beg for affection, wasn’t one to let her guard drop so soon, but she also knew she’d needed it by the way she melted against her, the way she chuckled into her hair, pulled her closer. 

“Do I owe your boss another letter of apology for this or do I get you guys for free?” The girl asked, as her sister pulled away, keeping an arm around her shoulder as they turned to the rest of the team. 

“No, this one is entirely on us, promise,” JJ said with a smile as she saw Emily beaming maternally over at the girl, the flat of the cap knocking against her cheek as she squeezed her in once more, “We’re very proud of you,” 

She heated under the woman’s words, wriggling in her shoes as bad as Emily did when she felt awkward, Derek chuckling and taking the degree out of her hand. 

“Alright, lets see the creds, Prentiss,” He held it up next to her face as she shrugged, the ‘4.0’ clear as day next to her name, “Good looking, and smart. Those boys in the lab ought to watch out,”

She grinned under his teasing, “What can I say, I got the deep end of the gene pool,” She teased, feeling Emily swat her ear, her eyes falling to where Spencer held a plant pot with a poorly wrapped bow of twine around it, the soil a little displaced from the journey.

“This is for you,” He said, handing her the small green sproutling, his cheeks blushing as her face lit up, reading the small inscription on the front, “It’s-”

“Dionaea muscipula,” She said, biting her lip as she smiled at him, “This is so cool! Where on earth did- I had a paper last semester on the ways to study their electrophysiology you just have to read- oh thank you!”

“English, please?” Emily asked, though the warmth flooded her chest when her sister threw her arms around a very rigid Spencer. 

Thinking she should grab her and warn her the man disliked touch almost as much as she does, she was surprised to see him give her a small embrace back, smiling proudly the way he did when he’d made someone happy. 

“Piège à mouches Vénus,” Her sister responded cockily, tugging herself away from the tall man, to inspect her new plant, well aware that Emily rolled her eyes at her use of French, “Venus Fly Trap. I’ve never seen one so young, still I should be able to pull some slides on the Rhizomes in the soil-”

Emily put a hand to her temple, JJ smiling widely as she saw for once Spencer be the one on the receiving end of an earful, chuckling to himself when she began dishing out name ideas for the sapling. 

“Holy shit, there’s two of them,” Morgan grumbled, nudging his shoulder into Emily who simply sighed, her migraine already starting as Reid began jumping in with his own thoughts, which didn’t take much effort.

“Don’t even,” 

+3. The one where you’re taken hostage

“Tell us about the 911 call,” Spencer requests, flicking through the file himself beside her in the back seat. She had her own set of paperwork in front of her, her pen attached to a clipboard the lanyard around her neck reading her real, honest credentials, unlike the fake ones Emily and Reid were given. She’d been to one of these sects before, invited kindly as part of her research on the effect isolation has on cultivation of crops, knew one of the mother’s well from her last research paper, and had managed to get the group a foot in the door to entering the Separtarian Sect with little fuss. 

Hotch, usually hesitant to allow outsiders in on the job, especially as young and spirited as Bugsy, had to admit it would calm any potential unsubs and make them see the team as unthreatening if they had a friendly face there. He’d signed the papers with a frown that morning, and they were on their way to the little apartment the girl occupied just outside Baltimore, sample tubes stuffed into her pack ready. 

“I believe the he that they refer to is the church’s leader, Benjamin Cyrus,” Nancy, a woman from child protective services, replied from the driver's seat, Emily thumbing through her papers as they neared the compound. 

“Benjamin Cyrus, no criminal record; no record of him at all actually,” Reid replied, watching Bugsy scribbling notes into her lab book, perfecting her report before she had even begun, “What else do you know about him?” 

“The sect I spoke to before, the one in Utah, said he was rumoured to be practising polygamy and forced marriages,” The younger woman said, looking back at him with a frown, “They were much more modern in their beliefs than these guys. Last time I spoke to Marina she was happy there, I can’t see why she would want to move here,” 

Spencer looked as if he were about to answer, perhaps to tell her he was sure her contact would be just fine, when Emily shrugged and turned to Nancy. 

“Do we know who the caller is?” She asked, sipping her now lukewarm coffee out of the disposable cup. 

Nancy’s head tilted in a so-so motion, “Uh, Jessica Evansen is the one who the age fits, but we can’t be sure.”

“Well given their view on outsiders, it would be best if you didn’t identify us as FBI.” Emily instructed, handing Reid his new, fake credentials and his gun she’d kept in her bag through customs. “Just use our real names and introduce us as child victim interview experts.” Nancy nodded, the compound coming into view, the dust flurrying under the car wheels as the road turned into nothing more than a sandy path. 

A guard seemed to be expecting their arrival as he stood, unarmed at the main gate, unlatching the bolt in the middle and opening it wide for their vehicle to pass through. She nodded in thanks, her eyes flicking out the dirty window to see a collection of mobile homes surrounding a large church, a few smaller outbuildings dotted around the compound. It was quiet, not full of laughter like the last group she had been to, the children nowhere to be seen, only a few of the handier members of the flock that were either fixing up walls, trimming trees besides a man sprawled too casually on the steps of the chapel, a bible in his hands he seemed to be catching up on. 

The car pulled to a stop in front of the man that barely batted an eye at their arrival, the safety locks flicking off each of the doors, Nancy collecting her briefcase and exiting the car first. 

She had all but reached for the handle when Emily stopped her, swivelling in her seat to look her dead in the eye. 

“Your job is mediator, you got that?” Her sister had never looked more serious, but then again she did know her almost too well, “You and your field research are a… buffer between our investigation and the unsub. Just try to take the focus off what we’re doing, but do not provoke anyone,”

She raised her hands in innocence, “Got it, jeez, what could I possibly do that could ruin this investigation?” 

Emily stared back at her blankly, unnamused, as if they both knew there was a lot she could, and would, do that would blow the whole thing. 

“You look like mom when you give me that look,” She bit back, leaving the car, as Nancy spoke to the man laying on the steps, “It’s terrible,” 

“I’m looking for Mr Benjamin Cyrus?” Nancy reported, her tight, knee length skirt and blouse entirely out of place amongst the dirt track. 

“You found him,” The man replied, still not so much as granting them a glance of interest as he flicked through his passages. 

“I’m Nancy Lunde, we spoke on the phone regarding the allegation,” She replied, which was the only thing that garnered his attention as he looked up at them behind slightly bent reading glasses. 

“Savages they call us; because our manners differ from theirs,” He said, though it was clear it wasn’t entirely his own words, more likely a segment of his preach he’d repeated a handful of times. Bugsy tried to hide her disgust behind her hand tightening around her lab books she kept tightly to her chest. 

“We didn’t come here to hear you cite scripture, Mr Cyrus,” Nancy snipped as he approached the group, pocketing the glasses though he kept hold of the bible in hand as if it was part of his own arm. 

“Actually it’s Benjamin Franklin,” Spencer murmured to the woman, which had Cyrus’ cold brown eyes narrowing at the tall man, assessing for a motive.

“Emily Prentiss, Spencer Reid. They’re child victim interview experts,” Nancy introduced them quickly, the two of them flashing their badges, the unofficial ones at least. Gesturing to the youngest woman, she introduced her with her real name, his gaze flicking to her as he seemed to recognise it.

“Marina’s friend? The plant lady?” He asked, face half amused as she fought her lip from twitching into a sneer. Instead she smiled, holding out her hand. 

“That’s what they call me,” She said, shaking his hand, ignoring the way he flashed her a cheshire cat smile, “Hope you don’t mind me dropping by, Marina said I could take some samples for my research,”

He laughed, shaking his head, looking at Spencer, “Women and their flowers, right?” Spencer swallowed back a retort, shrugging his shoulders, though Bugsy’s eye twitched. Benjamin patted her on her shoulder, “Of course you can honey, I’ll find Jared, our head gardner, and you can run along for your research,” 

He said it as if she were lying, that her degree and endless hours of work would only ever chalk up to a few doodles in a notebook, or a garden full of hydrangeas, or tulips, or roses, because she couldn’t possibly care about anything else but pretty flowers. 

Nodding her head graciously, choking back the hateful response she wished to spit in his face, she gave him a polite thankyou, feeling Spencer’s eyes burning into the side of her head. 

“The children are in the school as I indicated,” Cyrus said, turning back to the other three, Emily and Nancy taking off in the direction he pointed, the former knowing her sister was at risk of blowing a fuse if they were here for long. 

Spencer hung back, partially because he had a plan of distraction in mind to allow the women a chance to speak with the children whilst Cyrus wasn’t around, partially because he didn’t want to leave Bugsy anywhere on her own. Sure, Emily had said they were both trained in self defence when they were kids, but with no weapon of her own, he was reluctant. 

“You're using solar power?” He prompted, gesturing towards where the eight blue panels warmed under the Colorado sun.

“We’re completely self-sufficient,” Benjamin nodded along, catching the impressed look on both their faces, “Electricity, food, water. Ben Franklin said ‘God helps those that help themselves,’ you look surprised,” 

“No, impressed actually,” Spencer replied, and he wasn’t entirely lying. The system was incredibly complex, particularly if they received no help from outsiders, for as many people as there were in the compound. 

“Thankyou; for admitting that,” Cyrus said earnestly, flicking his gaze back to Bugsy who studied the solar panels, “I’ll go find Jared, he can take you to the greenhouses,”

Thanking him again, he led the way towards the school where Nancy and Emily had headed, as the two of them exchanged a look, Spencer smiling half piteously, wishing he could shake her and tell her just how smart she was and that Cyrus knew absolutely nothing. 

He didn’t miss the way she walked closer to him, or how she thumbed the corner of her notebook, or how she looked back at him, biting the inside of her cheek. He thinks he might get slapped if he pointed it out, but Emily had the exact same tell when she was nervous, which is why he bumps their shoulders together in means of reassuring her he was still there. 

It was only then she gave him any sort of smile back. 

-

Jared, as expected, had been just as condescending and patronising as Benjamin whilst she slipped on her latex gloves, scooping no more than a handful of homemade fertiliser into one of her test tubes. It had been a partial cover, their story, but she had been telling the truth when she’d contacted Marina and asked if she could drop by. She’d been meaning to expand her field research in hopes of stumbling on a job opportunity since she spent most of her postgraduate days reading while her cat pawed at her leg for more treats than he deserved, the odd phone call with her sister much more common than it had been before. 

She didn’t miss the way Jared’s hand fell into the small of her back as he led her back towards the school, after having noted down a few more readings, fussing over the state of the carrots that seemed to grow entirely naturally thanks to the systems they’d been smart enough to set up. He seemed rather bored by the whole thing, for a head gardener, more interested in staring at her legs as she leaned down to identify the fat black beetle that crawled along the rockery. 

It wasn’t until they were halfway to the school that the sound of tyres on a dirt path met her ears, and she saw five armoured SUVs out the corner of her eye. 

She hadn’t even the time to question what was going on, before Jared’s face dropped, the hand gently holding the soft of her back grabbing on her forearm hard enough to leave bruises, as he was dragging her to the chapel they had seen when they had pulled up.

 Emily had said the rest of the team stayed in Quantico, if it wasn’t them, who was it. 

“Whats going on- who is that?” She asked him lamely, her feet stumbling as she half fought his heavy hand off. 

That was when the shooting started. 

She thinks it came from the compound first, she’d seen two men stationed on top of one of the outbuildings, thinking nothing much of it, until she saw clearly now the assault rifles they bore, pointing it straight at the vehicles that drew closer. The whistle of bullets, bangs of the chambers emptying their artillery, and it wasn’t until she heard the doors to the SUVs start opening, more gunfire began hitting the wall ahead of them that she started running. Running fast, for the cover the church provided until she figured out just what the fuck was happening. 

Jared all but threw her past the chapel door, where Cyrus and four other men were waiting, a heavy barricade in their hands, her chest pounding with adrenaline, she couldn’t help the yelp that left her as Cyrus whirled on her, grabbing her shoulders firmly and looking her dead in the eye. 

“Did you know anything about this?” He asked, his calm demeanour cracking when she scrambled for a response, “ANSWER ME,”

“No-no not at all.” She shook her head, voice weaker than she’d like, but the sight of more guns in the men’s hands twisted any resolve she had, “Where are the others- the- the experts-”

“Take her into the tunnels,” Cyrus ignored her question, nodding at one of his men to grab her as Jared armed himself. She felt another callused hand yank on her upper arm, and part of her wondered if that was how men handled all women here, as if they were herding cattle, as she was dragged down into the catacombs below the church. 

They’d made plans for a day like this to come, she realised. 

Her heart constricted at the sound of bullets rattling above them, she hadn't been able to tell in that last moment whether Cyrus believed her or not as, nor whether she was being taken to the tunnels for her own safety or to be questioned harder about the gunmen. 

She could only hope Emily was safe. 

She felt her tongue too big for her mouth as the man all but shoved her into the bunker, the nervous chatter of women and children, some of the more elderly men, as they clung to one another for safety, the scathing remark she would have usually made about his heavy hands failing her as she scanned the room for her sister. 

Emily was faster however, and she nearly yelped again as two bony arms yanked her into a hug, a rare one, and she knew by the blazer and the sigh of relief in her ear it was Em.

Usually she would bat her off, tell her to stop fussing like a mother hen, but today she embraced her right back, trying to note if her sister had any bullet holes in her before she allowed herself the same relief. 

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Emily asked, the whole thing coming out in a slew of worry, and she nodded, pulling away as if she needed to see the proof in person. 

Bugsy’s eyes were wild, as if she were a doe in a meadow hearing a rifle cocking near. No scratch that, she was a doe being chased and shot at and hunted, narrowly escaping being mounted on a wall. 

“They were all shit shots,” Bugsy said, through a laugh she didn’t quite mean, “You would have done much better.” 

Patting her sister on the shoulder, Emily finally released her when she realised the humour meant she at least had her head on her shoulders. Spencer watched her with meticulous eyes, knowing the shock that registered on her face, knowing it was the same one he wore when he first had shots fired at him. He saw her own eyes quickly check him over, satisfied with a breath of relief when she saw they were both fine. 

“Where’s Lunde?” Emily asked, and she realised then Cyrus had followed her down into the shelter, two of his men grabbing handfuls of guns she had never seen before, likely imported out of country, and returning to the ground level, preparing for more shooting. 

“It wasn’t us,” Cyrus replied, as if that negated the fact their recklessness had gotten the agent killed. 

“What? You can’t shoot it out with the cops, you have children in here,” Emily seethed, her voice harsh and incredulous.

“I didn’t start this,” Cyrus bit back, looking towards his men as they grabbed boxes on boxes of ammunition, “I’ll take the front, you take the roof,” 

And with that they stormed their way back through the tunnels, leaving the three of them to look between each other, knowing this could only end badly. Knowing the only people that could figure out how to get them out of this mess was the BAU, all 1,700 miles away. 

–

They’d been in the bunker for fourteen hours when there was finally movement. The shooting seemed to have quietened down, in which Spencer whispered it was around 11pm and it was likely neither party had a clear shot. She’d managed to fall asleep leaning against the wall, Emily’s blazer draped over her legs. She’d regretted wearing cropped pants, despite how the shade of green complimented her eyes nicely, and she’d been shivering by the time she fell asleep, Emily’s hands stroking her hair gently as if she knew she was struggling to relax. 

She hadn’t realised she was staring at her little sister, frowning even as she slept, which made part of her want to laugh, until she caught Spencer’s tired eyes looking between them, something knowing and warm in his gaze. 

“You know, she’s always scowled in her sleep, ever since she was born,” Emily said, quiet enough it didn’t interrupt the hum of small snores, the odd baby cry that filled the bunker, but loud enough for him to smile at her, “She used to sleep walk terrible too. I’d find her in the kitchen trying to make pancakes with a cheese grater. It’s like that big brain of hers doesn’t know how to shut off,” Emily shook her head with a fatigue, rubbing her eyes. 

“Was it weird? Being fourteen years older?” Spencer asked, his own hands shoved into his sleeves to try defend from the draught. Emily thought for a moment, her hand slowing for a second on her sister's hair, before she answered. 

“I felt guilty leaving her in that house with my mom when I went to college,” Emily answered, Bugsy unconsciously tucking her face closer into the jacket, “I think part of her kind of hated me for it for a while.” She went quiet, the shame in her voice thick as the silence that encompassed them, “She’s never been very affectionate you know? Before her graduation I don’t think I’d hugged her in twelve years,”

Spencer held himself back from pointing out that she had been just as touchy with him since they’d met, and that maybe it was Emily’s own regret that seemed to shut the both of them down. He wasn’t one to rub salt in the wound, not since he’d gotten this job and learned to watch what he said. 

He didn’t know what to say, didn’t want to give her advice, knowing the whole subject of their slowly repairing relationship was a sore one. He had no siblings of his own, had a mother who loved him despite how much she grappled with her own mind, and he had only known the girl briefly enough to consider her a friend at a push. 

“I always thought the two of you were similar,” Emily chose to continue, offering him a small smile. He returned it, his face blushing at the fact that was a huge compliment to him, “Granted, you roll your eyes at me less and don’t act like I’m dumb, but you remind me of her,” 

“Thankyou, I wish that were true,” He replied, eyes flicking to her sleeping form, the way her eyebrows were indeed scrunched in a permanent frown. He wondered if she was actually angry, or if she was just thinking hard, perhaps her dreams were full of equations or labs she needed to sort through. Either way, he wanted to know. “She’s much cooler than I’ll ever be,” 

Emily snorted, shuffling against the wall to cosy herself, “That’s one way to put it,” She said, smiling over at him as he did the same, his head resting against the wall, Bugsy’s legs stretching out to knock against his feet, and he didn’t mind that she scuffed the bottom of his already dirty trousers. “Get some sleep,”

And so they did. 

–

Cyrus had corralled the whole flock into the church, where the shooting had stopped and the bodies had been removed, stating at the break of dawn that there was a hostage negotiator coming in to make sure everyone was safe before they made any deals. 

She sat next to Spencer, the three of them stiff from their sleeping arrangements, and her stomach churned with hunger. It had been over 24 hours since they’d gotten here, and besides the small bit of bread and water Cyrus gave everyone for breakfast, she was starving. 

“Remind me to never leave the house, ever again,” She grumbled, as everyone waited in the pews for the negotiator to arrive, “My cat is gonna be pissed I’ve not fed him,” 

“Since when did you get a cat?” Emily inputted from the other side of Reid, keeping one eye on the door in case any agents start shooting again. 

The girl shrugged, “I got lonely, there’s not much to do now I’m not studying anymore,” 

Reid watched how she clutched her stomach, feeling his own complaining at the lack of nutrition, “Morgan wasn’t lying when he said you should sign up for the academy. We could always use the help, we wouldn’t have solved that case in Baltimore without you,” 

She snickered, nudging his foot with her boot, “You’re being modest, you would have done it just fine,”

He was a little, wasn’t surprised she called his bluff either. “Okay, so probably yes- but it would have taken us a whole lot longer. Mr Chernus likely would have died,” 

She shook her head, glancing at Emily who watched her carefully, “That was all you guys. I just translated.”

Emily and Spencer exchanged a glance, leaning back in their uncomfortable seats calmly. 

“You’re probably right,” Spencer said, dusting the dirt off his trousers, “Probably couldn’t handle it, high intensity mind games and such,”

She blanched, looking at him as if he’d grown a second head, not knowing him to be so brutally honest, realistic yes, but not bordering on rude. 

“And it’s a lot of work,” Emily jumped in, her mouth a straight line, “I don’t know if you’d be dedicated enough,”

Bugsy scoffed, indifferently. “I have a masters degree, I was offered a scholarship to do a PHD, asked to be an assistant professor at Yale, I can work hard, Emily,” She snipped, and perhaps she was particularly just hangry or they had struck a nerve with their doubt, “and I could do it if I wanted to, I’d have the best shot they’d ever seen, guaranteed- mom made me take lessons when you left- trust me I could do it-”

She shut up when she saw their small smile exchanged, as if she’d told them a joke, or moreso they’d had the same identical thought and that alone was hilarious. 

Scowling at them, she looked from where Spencer looked almost, almost, guilty at making her the butt of the joke, to where Emily had a ‘told you so’ smirk, and she kissed her teeth at their childishness. 

“Are you guys reverse psychology-ing me? Seriously, so original guys,” She snapped, crossing her arms and straightening herself in her seat, ignoring the snigger that passed between them. 

“You’re not wrong though,” Emily replied quietly as Cyrus walked past them, his eyes falling to them with a frown. Bugsy kept her head down, heeding Emily’s warning of not provoking anyone, and Spencer eyed the way she leaned closer to him.

If she was going to retaliate, whether agreeing or not, she stopped herself, the doors the church opening and an older gentleman walking through the doors, arms full of supplies she’d figured must have been part of the negotiation. He was patted down by an armed guard, searching for his own weapons do doubt, or a wire perhaps, as he handed the box over to another who took it without a thankyou. 

“Rossi,” She heard Reid whisper beside her, and from the look he shot Emily and Spencer she gathered he was from the BAU, just as they’d expected. His eyes fell on her, softening as alot of Emily’s team did when they saw the two of them, as if they were picking her face apart for the tiny ways in which she resembled their Prentiss, or maybe it was the way she curled up in her seat, tired, hungry, on the defence. He just looked sorry for her. 

 “The children,” Cyrus said with no greeting, the air between them particularly frosty. He gestured towards the three of them, though Rossi had already clocked their tired faces staring at him with worry, “And our guests,”

She saw him trying not to react, guessing they had not let it slip to Cyrus he worked with the two undercover FBI agents, looking away from them as if the sight of their forlorn figures was enough to turn him sick. 

Judging by the way Cyrus and he spoke quietly, tensely, Bugsy just hoped they had a plan to get them out of here soon as he soon left with a rigid handshake to the man keeping them hostage. 

–

The three of them had been moved to a backroom a few hours later. Her stomach ached, the little sustenance Rossi had brought being distributed to the community before they’d been offered anything, which hadn’t left much. Reid and Emily had tried to get her to take some of their sharing, and despite how her insides cried out for it, she declined, stating they would be more use than she would; that they needed their strength more than her if they were going to get out of here alive. 

The two of them hadn’t liked that answer judging by the frowns on their faces, but they sat in their seats with little fuss as they waited for things to quieten down after Cyrus’ staged “mass suicide” that had turned out to be nothign more than a test of loyalty and grape juice. 

They had been sat in silence, aside from her foot bouncing on the floor impatiently, as she picked at the threads on her pants, the material uncomfortable on her skin after a day of wearing it. The door slammed open, Cyrus entering the room with nasty scowl. She didn’t know what had changed in the man in a matter of hours as he stormed over to them, two of his men behind him, loaded rifles in their arms. 

This was not good. 

“Which one of you is it?” He asked almost too calm for his demeanour, his eyes flicking between the three of them, where Emily attempted to brush her hair using her fingers, Reid played with the hem of his cardigan, an she sat beside him, resting against the cold stone wall behind them, her eyes narrowing at his furious expression. 

The three of them remained silent, waiting for him to explain more, though clearly it was not the answer he was looking for as he threw his jacket open, revealing a loaded pistol tucked into his jeans. Drawing it into his dominant hand, her body tensed up, her back straightening like a rod as she looked up at him through fear. 

“Which one of you is the FBI agent?” He repeated in that same calm tone, and her heart fell through her stomach. 

She opened her mouth to say something in retaliation, though the way she saw his hand shaking with fury, she knew it was better to stay quiet in case her voice would be the final straw that made him trigger happy. 

“Why do you think one of us is an FBI agent?” Spencer replied softly, and if he was panicking even a fraction amount she was he held it back, though his eyes flicked to Emily. 

But it was a tell. The smallest movement alone was a tell he was lying, or perhaps it was the fact he’d answered a question with one of his own, distracting from the attention on them with the unsubs own answers. Maybe his quiet and calm showed how trained he was for a situation like this, showed he had gone up against bad guys before and won. 

Whatever it was about him, it had Cyrus cocking the barrel of the gun straight at Spencer’s temple. 

“God forgive me for what I must do,” The preacher murmured, his finger moments away from the trigger, when she lurched forward in her seat, hand shooting out to grab his wrist deathly tight. 

“It’s me,” 

She hadn’t realised she’d said it until the room went quiet. She thought for a moment it had come from Emily, Emily had always been the braver of the two of them, but it wasn’t until Cyrus’ unforgiving, dark gaze fell to her where she froze in her spot, that she understood her mouth had been the one moving. 

Emily looked as if she was about to vomit, Spencer looked dumbfounded, but all she could do was stare back at Cyrus as if to will herself not to back down, knowing all three of them could fall victim if she gave them reason to doubt her; he could kill all three of them just to be sure the mystery agent was dealt with.

“It’s me,” She repeated, voice stronger this time, and she felt her chest relax just the tiniest amount as he turned the gun away from Spencer’s head. 

He stared back at her for a moment, before the weapon smacked across her face in a sharp whip, her cheekbone crying out in a sting she knew was going to bruise. 

He grabbed her hair at the nape of her neck, yanking her into a stand hard enough she yelped, despite not wanting to give him the satisfaction of the torture. 

“Watch the other two,” Cyrus barked, dragging her out of the room as she squirmed under his hand, feeling it only tighten into an unforgiving pull. 

She barely caught Emily bolting out of her seat to yell at the other men, all but fighting in their heavy grasp to follow wherever it was he was taking her, only for the door to be slammed shut behind them. 

It was only then she realised how fucked she truly was. 

–

She struggled to breath through the blood clotting in her nose. She didn’t think it was broken, not that she could check where her hands had been tied to the bedpost, tape over her mouth to stop her calling for help, her feet bound. She’d done nothing but give him hell as he’d been laying into her, keeping her cries and groans of pain silent as he’d kicked her in the ribs hard enough to know he’d damaged something at least. 

She’d not made it easy for him to tie her down, worried about what they were planning next, she’d managed to headbutt him in the mouth, and the way he clutched at his jaw when he’d left gave her a sick satisfaction, though her temple now hurt more than she’d like to admit. But they’d only covered her mouth after she’d screamed obscenities at them for an hour or so, hoping to attract attention, hoping if the BAU were on their way, Emily and Reid would be able to find her fast before they could dispose of her. 

Bugsy didn’t want to go like this. Tied up like cattle, gagged and beaten, the spirit kicked out of her as the dehydration gnawed at her limbs, making her too weak to even try wriggling out of the binds. 

She felt herself dropping off to sleep, or maybe it was a concussion, he’d slammed her face into that mirror quite viciously, she wouldn’t be surprised if it had rattled her head around. Fighting with her eyelids to stay open, she jumped in her battered skin as the door unlatched, and she thrashed on the rickety bed to get away from the impending second beating. 

But it wasn’t Cyrus. A fawn haired woman entered, her eyes falling on the girl on the bed, where blood trickled down her cheek, pouring from her nose like a thick liquor. Frowning, she was on high alert as the woman approached, a small, damp cloth in her hand. 

“Relax, I’m not going to hurt you honey,” She hushed, approaching the young girl. Bugsy didn’t believe her for one second, her head pulling away from her as far as it could, her eyes wild and distrustful as the woman kneeled down beside the bed. “I’m Kathy,”

Bugsy debated jabbing an elbow in her face then and there, telling her in few words to stay as far away from her as possible, that the moment she was free she didn’t care who she hurt; she was getting out of here even if she had to crawl. 

“That woman’s your sister right?” The blonde said, and the words stopped her heart for a moment, giving the woman the chance to run the cloth over the dribble of blood, “Emily,”

“Where is she?” She tried to ask, but the gag made it little more than a muffled cry, the woman’s eyes turning down in sadness. Pity. Bugsy hated every second of it.

“She’s okay, she’s worried about you though,” Kathy said, wiping under her nose, making her wince at the feeling, “Put up a hell of a fight after they took you away,” 

She must have rolled her eyes, or perhaps it was just telling on her face that that didn’t surprise her as the older woman wiped over the superficial cut on her forehead she hadn’t realised was deep until the cloth went over it and she yawped like a dog having it’s tail pulled. 

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Kathy cooed, and she seemed genuinely guilty as she did. She tutted, shaking her head, fighting the urge to smooth the girls hair down the way she did when her own daughter was upset, “Emily said they’ll be coming for us at 3am, Cyrus has a mass suicide planned but they think they can stop him, you just have to hold on a little longer honey,” 

“I want to see her,” Bugsy tried to talk again despite her mouth being covered, only for it to come out unintelligible once more. Huffing, she resigned herself to glaring at the ceiling, biting back frustrated tears. Kathy seemed to want to say something else, but thought better of it as the twenty something year old turned away from her to stare out the window, as if she were being dismissed. 

Sighing, she rose from the bed and headed for the door, praying the FBI would get them out in time, before Cyrus put his plan into action. 

–

Bugsy didn’t start panicking until it hit 2:50. She’d managed to kick the small analogue clock on the beside into working, the red numbers seeming to take a millenia to change over. 

Yet it wasn’t until 3am neared, and the hallways remained silent, did she start to wonder if Kathy had been telling the truth at all. What if they had found out Emily and Reid were FBI and not her? What if they’d already been caught?

She really had wanted to see Emily, wanted to scream at the woman, who had meant well, to bring her sister to her or she would make every damn bible basher in this compound regret the day they were born. She felt helpless. She despised feeling helpless. 

It was only when she heard shots rattling from outside did the cold fear set in. 2:52. Any minute now. 

It was then an even worse thought struck her. What if they didn’t bother to come for her? Reid and Emily were safe downstairs, at least that was how Kathy had made it seem. If they got the women and children, the agents out first, she wondered if they would leave her for last since she wasn’t their top priority. 

2:53 stared back at her. 

At least Emily would make it. She was more important, had more going for her. She was supposed to be an only child anyway, mom had said it herself. Bugsy was the product of a failing marriage and a shared bottle of 1896 Bourbon that had been a wedding gift they’d never opened. 

2:54.

She could have sworn she tore something the way her head snapped to the door as it swung open on its hinges, as if two large men had thrown their weight into it. But it wasn’t two men at all, just one frantic Derek Morgan with an FBI grade assault rifle. 

The relief in his eyes was immediate, and he pulled a pocket knife from his boot, rushing over to where she lay, almost in shock, wondering if he was real at all, her heart pounding as she heard shouting in the corridor. 

“I’m gonna get you out, kid,” The man promised, slinging his gun over his shoulder as he sliced through the rope on her ankles, her eyes trained on the 2:55 that watched them as if to laugh at them. 

She whimpered, cursing behind her gag when she heard footsteps pounding through the hallway, and she was sure they were going to get caught. She thought then it would have been better if they’d forgotten about her, that at least Derek would have been safe, and he could have made sure the children got out safely, could have gotten Spencer and Emily medical. 

Derek whirled on the doorway the same as she did as a tall figure all but skidded around the corner, his legs weak as hers felt, too long and not at all built for running. Clumsy almost. 

Spencer. She should have known from the way he looked white as a sheet the moment he saw her it was him, but maybe she really did have concussion, as it seemed within moments he was fussing over her face, tearing a little too sharply at the tape over her mouth. 

She thinks she groaned, or maybe cursed him out, as he started apologising immediately, his eyes a puppy kind of sad as she stared up at him, Derek handing him the knife to cut her arms free. 

He was talking, but she couldn’t make a lot of it out, just that he was really sorry, it was 2:56 now. It was like her brain switched itself back on when she realised she was free, and the two of them were trying to haul her to her feet. 

“Come on, princess, we gotta get out of here,” Derek said, as Spencer looped an arm around her waist, helping her limp across the room where her weak limbs did little to hold her upright, her ribs throbbing with every step, “We managed to stop Cyrus from detonating it manually, but the circuits are all still live,”

Morgan took the lead with the rifle, knowing some of Cyrus’ men had stayed to look for them, that they would go down with the building even though he’d already shot their leader the moment they’d breached the front door, because that was how loyal they were. They’d proven so already with the wine. 

She kept her groans behind tight lips as they made it down the stairs, knowing Spencer didn’t mean to hold her bruised bones so tight, that he was just worried and her legs were doing the bare minimum to keep them both moving very fast. It wasn’t until they made it within a few feet of the door that they seemed to pick up the pace.

And she saw why. 

Jesse, Cyrus’ child bride that had been the reason they’d come here in the first place was holding the detonator, her face tear streaked at the sight of her husband and prophet dead on the floor, the people responsible all but dragging a lame girl through the foyer and to the doors as if they hadn’t killed a handful of her flock tonight. 

Bugsy saw the moment Jesse decided she wanted vengeance on them, but then, she guessed Spencer had already acted as he slung one of her arms over his shoulder, yanking her out the front door in a matter of seconds as Morgan pulled up the rear, and the two men shoved her down behind the small wall outside the church steps. 

Bugsy expected the bang to be louder as the rubble flew over their heads, the floor shaking with the impact of the bomb detonating, and it was then she realised one of Derek’s large warm hands held her head into his shoulder, protecting her already rattled skull as best as he could. Spencer had done the same, throwing half his body over her back as he covered his ears, the two men tucking into the wall tightly and waiting for the dust to settle. 

Spencer started coughing first, though his position over her never faltered, and she heard his chest wheezing, and knew they needed to move away from the thick smog that blew into their faces. Morgan released her ear, tipping her head back to check her over once more. 

“Kid! You okay?” He fretted, noticing the way her nose had started bleeding again from all the movement; the way the bruise had already started blotching her cheek from where Cyrus pistol whipped her. 

“I didn’t think you’d come for me,” Was all she could say, and Derek thought it was the saddest he’d ever heard her. 

Reid was pulling her to her feet then, where he was still hovering over her, despite the fact the blast had already cleared,  still sputtering and hocking up a lung, but it didn’t stop her from throwing herself at his middle, burying her face in his dusty sweater, not caring one bit if he jostled her aching ribs. 

He was trying to be gentle with her as he squeezed her back, but she knew by the way he pressed his face into her hair he needed it just as badly. 

“You saved my life,” He said, his long arms wrapping around her waist, hauling her whole body against his. 

She laughed through a cough, their cheeks brushing past one another as she pulled him in tighter, thankful, relieved. 

“You saved mine,” 

And then she heard Emily. Emily, who sounded frantic and heartbroken as she called for her, her voice breaking as if she was crying, or atleast on the verge of, and as comforting as Spencer’s long arms around her cracked ribs were, she needed to see her sister was okay. 

Ripping herself from his embrace immediately, she tore off after the sound, and there she was. Her older sister, who had always seemed immovable, like she wouldn’t so much as budge for a bucking horse, like water couldn’t drown her, or however many unsubs she’d faced could stop her from catching them. Her older sister, who looked like she’d taken a few punches of her own, judging by the blood on her blue blouse, that looked around the crowd of fleeing people with watery eyes and a shaking bottom lip.

“EMILY,” She yelled, her voice a bleat, a lamb calling for its mother, as she sprinted down the steps, whatever strength she had left carrying her to where Emily was rushing towards her, taking the stairs in threes, “EM-”

She crashed into her sister’s chest, and it was only then she started crying. 

“I swear I’ll never give you trouble again, I’ll never talk back, I’ll never be a bitch ever again-” It was all a slew of mumbles against her sisters shirt, that was beginning to wet through at the rate the tears were coming, “I thought he was going to shoot you-”

“I was so scared, Bug, oh my god,” Emily murmured into her hair, squeezing the life out of her baby sister that sniffled and sobbed, “You don’t ever, ever do that to me again,”

Bugsy shook her head, clawing at Emily’s back as she pulled her closer, feeling Emily stroking her hair softly to calm her even in the slightest. They stayed like that until she managed to wrangle her sobs into little sniffs, the fire burning her eyes where it burned the rest of the church to ashes. 

She stayed with Emily for a month after that. 

+4. The one where you leave the altar. 

She knew she was turning heads, walking down the street of a drizzly day in Virginia, hair wet and sticking to her face, makeup running down her cheeks, and the sodden, dove white wedding dress clasped in her hands as she paced towards the government building. 

Whether the guards recognised her as the Ambassador’s daughter, or whether they really didn’t want to get into it with a bride looking like that on her day, she didn’t know, but they opened the door for her nonetheless, exchanging raised brows as a trail of wet followed her gown over the marble floors. 

Heading up the desk, she flashed her driver's licence, which was enough to gain her a visitors pass she didn’t bother putting to use as she headed for the elevator, her ballet pumps squeaking under the body of the dress. Waiting for the doors to start closing when she finally let a few tears slip, burying her face into her cold, drenched palms, undoubtedly making the mess of mascara even worse. 

Her heart gave a leap when she heard someone stop the doors, hoping she could get to her sister with little delay, and she quickly wiped her face with whatever was left of her pretty, dobby cloth shawl she had yanked on before she’d ran. 

Whatever excuse she was about to give, whatever one liner she was about to drop to clear the awkwardness this agent was about to walk in on was sucked out of her when she saw Spencer staring at her, his briefcase in his hands he’d used to hold the doors, a wide eyed look plastered on his face as soon as he saw her state. 

“Bugsy,” It was somewhere between surprise and sadness, jumping into the elevator before the metal could shut again, the button for the sixth floor already lit up in a ring of red, “What are you- I didn’t even know…”

“Spencer!” As seemed to be a common occurrence between them now, she threw two very cold arms over his shoulders, tugging him for a hug he quickly reciprocated, feeling like she needed it in the moment, “It was so awful, I just couldn’t all those people staring at me, and he- I just feel so-”

“Hey slow down,” He soothed, slipping his favourite cardigan off his body to put over her shoulders, ignoring the way he cringed as it quickly got sodden, “Let’s get you to Emily, I’m sure we can fix this,”

She nodded, though he could tell she was still shaken up, the elevator dinging to a stop on the fifth floor where an agent looked ready to step in, his face dropping when he saw the sight. 

“Sorry, we’re full,” Spencer said, with little room for discussion, pressing the button to close the doors once more, and taking her by the elbow as she began shivering, “We’re gonna be just fine, you look beautiful,”

She laughed sadly with a roll of her eyes, the tears sticking to her cheeks. She knew she looked no better than a drowned rat, windswept and disgruntled, her dress full of muck from the street. 

“Thankyou, Spencer,” She mumbled, the door sliding open to the sixth floor, where Penelope and her everlasting smile greeted her favourite boy genius. 

She almost dropped her glitter pen when she saw the woman stood next to him looking like Dorothy dragged through the twister. 

“Oh you poor little lamb, what has happened to you honey!” She all but cried, the cute little pom poms in her hair bouncing as she brought Bugsy closer, taking her hands tightly. “Your hands are ice! You’ll catch cold with that wet hair, and your gorgeous dress-” 

“Garcia,” Spencer cut her off, though the woman didn’t seem to mind being manhandled into the kind grip, he guessed her state had her letting her guard down, “This is Bugsy, Emily’s little sister.”

Penelope gasped, her ponytails swishing around some more, the gems on her glasses as bright as the light in her eyes as she yanked the younger girl in for a tight hug. 

“It is so nice to meet you! Emily talks about you all the time,” She said, pulling away and fumbling through her pockets for her fresh pink handkerchief she always carried around, mopping up the girl's eyeliner. 

“She-she does?” Bugsy asked, sniffling, her body trembling as the AC beat down through the water ladened on her body. 

“Of course she does, come on, let’s go get you coffee, I have a new machine in my office that makes the best espresso-” Garcia grabbed her hand as if they were kids in the playground, as if she’d known the girl years, which she sort of had. She had, of course, stalked every single one of Emily’s known relatives, even a distant cousin that never left Europe, and that had thrown up the quiet corner of the internet that Bugsy took up.

“I needed to talk to my sister, if that’s okay,” Bugsy braved enough to say, the swishing of her dress on the carpet making her wince, practically hearing the gallon of rain that soaked the expensive fabric. 

“Ofcourse! How silly of me, I’ll bring it out right to you, little bug. You just go with Spencer,” Handing him the handkerchief, she set off towards her ‘bat cave’ in search of a hot beverage for the shivering woman, “Spencer, clean her makeup!” 

He did as he was told, dabbing the water off her face as he led her to the BAU, where Emily and Morgan sat on their desks, chatting as they finished off lunch, Emily flicking through photos on her phone of baby Henry that JJ had sent over to her that morning from maternity leave. 

“He’s just the sweetest little boy, he’s got the biggest blue eyes just like Jayj,” She said through a smile, “You know Will even said-”

“Holy shit-” Morgan cut her off, and she glanced at him, wondering about his use of a curse. Following his eyes over her shoulder, she swivelled in her position to see where Spencer led a very wet, shaken version of her little sister through the doors of the BAU, a snowy ball gown hanging off her, a veil clinging to her hair that had seen much better days. 

“Holy shit,” She agreed, immediately darting for the girl that tugged Spencer’s cardigan tighter to her body, “Bugsy,” 

“Emily, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t take up too much time- I just couldn’t do it- and I know mom’s always saying ‘Bring home a doctor, bring home a rich man,’ but I just couldn’t no matter how rich his daddy is, he wasn’t even too bad-” It all came out in a slur, not making too much sense, and she didn’t stop until Emily held up her hands, as if easing a wild dog. 

“Woah, take it easy, kiddo,” Morgan hushed, as Emily brought a hand over her sister’s cheek, wiping away the last of the mascara, “What happened?”

Bugsy took a deep breath, looking between Emily and Derek, feeling the rain drip down her back. 

“So a few weeks ago, Mom made me go to that stupid debutante ball,” She started, rolling her eyes already as Emily winced, knowing Elizabeth loved any excuse to dress her youngest up like a Barbie doll. 

“I hated those things,” She confessed, shaking her head, “I thought you’d agreed you didn’t have to go to them anymore,”

“That was while I was in college, she said at least I could focus on my studies,” The girl explained, as Garcia tottered back through the office, a steaming cup of coffee in her beloved Bratz mug. Taking it from the chirpy woman, she took a deep gulp, not caring if it burned her mouth as she wished for the damn chill to go away, “Thankyou- But she made me go to this one on the condition she would pay off some of my college loans, and I was dumb enough to fall for her bribe,” 

She huffed, taking another sip, her stomach warming with the hot liquid settling through her throat. 

“You know how she is at these things, she knows everyone, and everyone knows her. I had four guys asking for my dance card within minutes of arriving there, it was like trying to walk through a dog pound wearing a meat suit, all the hand holding, trying to touch my waist- one guy even called me Madam Prentiss,” She grimaced, shuddering at the thought of it, “Madam? No one even calls mom that-”

“Focus,” Emily reminded gently, and she seemed to nod to herself, setting back on track.

“Right. And then he was there. Byron Hastings.” Bugsy said, wrapping her hands around the mug some more. 

“Oh, isn’t he that super yummy bachelor that just inherited his fathers business?” Garcia jumped in, not noticing how it made her wince, “I hear his dad totally owns a bunch of shares in Facebook and as like just signed a deal with a new company that will change the future of computing-” 

“Not now, baby girl,” Morgan said calmly, patting Penelope on her shoulder when she saw the bride’s crestfallen face.

“Right, sorry. Your turn, little bug,” She said, shaking her head and fiddling with her dozen rings. 

“Yeah, that’s him.” She replied, running a slightly warmed finger over her eyelash where rain even collected there, “And you know, I wasn’t complaining, he was certainly easy on the eyes, and he smelled nice, like he just smelled rich, but man alive he was so boring,” She sighed, “I like computers as much as the next girl, no offence, but he didn’t once ask me what I was into or, and when I tried to bring up my degree he just patted me on the head and said ‘That’s nice’ like I was some child that had brought him a pretty colouring or something,”

“Ouch,” Emily grimaced, rubbing her arms over the cardigan to warm her up a little more, “And then?” 

“And eventually, his dad and my mom cut a deal that we’d make a good pair. He said we could be married within the season, and suddenly everyone seemed up for it, and it was like no matter how hard I tried to dig my heels in, no one would listen, and mom just seemed so pleased with me-” She spluttered, sipping her drink to catch her breath, “I just let it happen and just thought, you know, maybe we could learn to like each other, or we could just be like mom and dad and separate in everything but paper,” 

“It’s your life, who is she to tell you how you’re gonna live it,” Emily was outraged, the tip of her nose pink, her dark eyes stormy as her hands fell to her hips, huffing as if it had been her backed into a corner, “I can’t believe she would do this to you,” 

“I was fine with it, really. It's not like its the fifteenth century when I’d be forced to consummate- anyway,” Bugsy rubbed her face, “I just got there, and mom put on my veil and told me I’d make a lovely Mrs Hastings, and just the sound of it- I couldn’t-”

“What on earth is going on?” A new voice cut through the BAU, and the group disbanded like kids caught trading answers to the homework. Rossi and Hotch stood by the unit chief’s office, brows furrowed at the wet bride and his team that tended to her as if she were a princess. 

“Should we be expecting four wet bridesmaids too?” Rossi asked, the two of them making the steps down to the floor, approaching the guilty faced woman, noting Spencer’s cardigan wrapped over her shoulders. 

“Nope, just me,” Her joke fell flat as she met the stony face of Aaron Hotchner, who looked thoroughly unimpressed, “Nice to see you again, Mr Hotchner, sir,” 

His gaze slid to Emily, mouth opening to share whatever scathing remark bounced around his mouth, but the younger girl beat him to it, everyone’s eyebrows raising when she all but cut him off. 

“This wasn’t on Emily, sir, I just showed up out of the blue, I can go- I’ll go- I just need to figure out where I’m staying since I left my purse at the church- don’t you worry I’ll be out of your hair, Aaro- sir,” Bugsy stammered, plonking the mug onto Emily’s desk, backing away to the doors of the office, clutching her visitor pass tight in her fist. 

Maybe it was because she looked so hopeless, or maybe it was the way his team shot him the same look of horror he would be so regimental, or maybe even it was the fact part of her reminded him of Sean, only his brother wouldn’t have had the courtesy to apologise for his mess. 

Sighing, he gestured her to come back, “Wait,” He said her name, her government name because the other one didn’t fit right in his mouth, “Reid, get her some clothes out your go bag. Emily, tell your mother she’s safe and will be staying in Quantico until you can figure something out,” 

Heaving a sigh of relief, she launched her still sodden form at the chief, wrapping him in a stiff hug, bolder than anyone else on the team had ever dared to be. 

“I swear to god, Mr Hotchner, the next letter you're getting will be the best one yet,” She mumbled into his hard chest, and he fought off the way the corners of his lips twitched upwards. Patting her on the back gently, he ignored the way his dress shirt wet through. 

–

let me know what you think! mAYBE A FEW MORE PARTS COMING UP ??

Edit: This is a part one of 3 or 4 I have planned, thankyou so much for all the love on this I did not expect the reaction 🥺🥺

SECOND EDIT: part two and three are out now!! Have a look at the top where it says ‘next chpt and it’s there bbys!!

THIRD EDIT: we are now balls deep into this universe here's th link for the masterlist

[bethanydelleman]

I was looking at poetry that Jane Austen might have read and I came across Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She sounds like an amazing woman. She thought her governess was dumb, so she hid in the family library and, "She taught herself Latin, a language usually reserved for men at the time. She secretly got a hold of a "Latin dictionary and grammar" and by the age of thirteen, her handling with the language was on par to most men. Furthermore, she was also a voracious reader."

She married an ambassador to the Ottoman empire and brought smallpox inoculation back to England. She was also a poet and important writer. In addition, she laughed at poet Alexander Pope (he is quoted in Austen's works) when he declared his love for her. (pictured below). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Mary_Wortley_Montagu)

The fact that someone heard about this proposal and then painted it is *chef's kiss*

(Edit) Here is the poem I used in a story:

A Hymn to the Moon

Written in July, in an arbour Thou silver deity of secret night, Direct my footsteps through the woodland shade; Thou conscious witness of unknown delight, The Lover's guardian, and the Muse's aid! By thy pale beams I solitary rove, To thee my tender grief confide; Serenely sweet you gild the silent grove, My friend, my goddess, and my guide. E'en thee, fair queen, from thy amazing height, The charms of young Endymion drew; Veil'd with the mantle of concealing night; With all thy greatness and thy coldness too.

[wwillywonka]

i just. imagine outliving every single person you've ever loved. every. single. person. not only that, but because of the simple fact that you're in the goddamn space navy, a lot of these people die pretty tragically. your father, overcome with a disease that strips him of his dignity as the ambassador to a race that relies on calculated pride. your mother, always so warm and caring, falling to memory loss until she doesn't recognise you, her favourite person in all the galaxy. your first captain, your first friend, disfigured until he's near recognisable and it's your responsibility, yours, to get him to a place where he can die at least a little more happy than he otherwise would have. your two best friends, the only two people in your entire almost 200-year-long life that you trust completely, are only around for less than a quarter of said life because they're human and you're not (well, half) and you knew the whole time they would die way before you. and one of them, the one you call soulmate, brother, lover in your native language, disappears and dies far before his time, without any time for you to prepare for it. and the other? you rely on him for so long and then, without warning because he was healthy until the day he died because he's a doctor goddammit, he's gone.

and now what? what else do you have? so you dedicate the rest of your days to saving a planet destined to die. all of your hard work, and still, romulus falls to political destruction anyway. and in your attempts to save it, you go to the one place the universe thinks you need to be, but it hurts, it hurts so damn much because they're all back, and they're all so young, and things aren't quite right, and even though part of you is happy to help them along the same wonderful path you experienced, part of you also grieves for the repetition of the losses you have faced. you don't want your younger counterpart to have to endure it, but he does because that's just the will of the universe, and you are powerless to stop it.

imagine that.

[killshotchaos]

Aespa’s NingNing x M!Reader choking, squirting, creampie. 1,488 words You’re assigned to be her bodyguard for the night.

-

Donatella Versace knows how to pick the faces of her luxury brand.

Nearly four years of being a bodyguard for her young and gorgeous ambassadors at high-end fashion shows has opened the window for you to spectate the A-list celebrities that the fashion powerhouse personally brought on. You’ve had the pleasure of guarding these gorgeous, charismatic women—some who are nearly untouchable.

But as striking as they are, Ning Yizhou is indescribable.

A rising performer of a big girl group, Yizhou’s sharp confidence—a contrast to her soft features—commands the attention of everyone in the room. She is meek at first glance, but treads through the red carpet with sultry eyes for the camera and a charming smile for those who greet her. She is no less of a beauty than any other model you’ve worked with, but you have yet to be at a loss for words.

Versace’s look for her tonight is simple: a sequined little black dress that barely falls to the top of her thighs, strappy black heels, and a simple handbag. The gold accents on the straps of her dress and buckle of the handbag brings some dimension to the look. Though her styling isn’t over the top, Yizhou still has you frothing at the mouth.

Conversations with her are fleeting due to language barriers and your job. You’re paid to guard these celebrities, not befriend them. 

You extend a hand in the direction of her seat on the first row, indicating that you have completed your job with her for now. She turns her head for a second before looking back at you, her lower lip tucked between her teeth.

“It’s still early,” she addresses the many unoccupied seats.

The attendees are still scattered around the premises socializing and conducting interviews. Some have already taken their seat, but Yizhou’s gaze grants the inability to turn her away. As uncomfortable as she may be without her group members, she seems comfortable enough to remain with you until it’s almost time for the show to start.

She tries her best to communicate. Her giggles, blushing, and eye contact makes you forget about the distance that’s supposed to be between you two. 

She is the star, and you are just her bodyguard for one night.

You’ve fooled around with women before, but you’d caught word of kpop celebrities being impossible to hook up with. Korean paparazzi may be small in numbers compared to western paparazzi but fans (or “fansites”) might as well give paparazzi a run for their money. 

Every corner they turn is a fan calling her name. The severity of an idol being caught with someone is catastrophic and would put their careers at risk—which you didn’t want to do. Despite all that, you somehow manage to sneak away into the bathroom where you break all the rules and become the handsy, invasive guy that you’re supposed to guard her from.

But Yizhou doesn’t want distance.

You prop her up on the marbled counter, lips entwined with hers and her fingers tucked through your hair. You can afford to have it messed up, and you have to stop your hand halfway from going through her silken, well-styled tresses. It finds purchase on her hip instead where you tug her closer to the edge of the counter and give yourself better access to her.

She clings to you, desperate and whiny. There are no words needed to tell you what she wants, though that doesn’t stop you from teasing her.

You can’t mark up her neck and you can’t ruin her dress too much. You want to inflict more damage on her but you have to be cautious with her appearance, leading you to redirect your pent up frustrations through your palm kneading between her legs.

She instantly bucks against you. You shift from your palm to the tips of your fingers, centering the pressure on her clit through her panties. The damp patch on the cotton grows as the kiss is more heated with her whimpers morphing into profanity.

She breaks away from you with a huff—lips swollen, gloss smeared, and the corners of her mouth turned downwards. 

You chuckle. “What’s the matter, my pretty girl?”

She pauses. “Stop being funny.”

“Yeah?” You raise a brow as you slip a finger under the soiled panties and feather over her slick folds. “You want more?”

She nods.

“Use your words. Talk to me, pretty.” You encourage her as you dip past her folds and press on her clit.

You earn a swift reaction. Her lips part slightly, her eyes hooded as you continue circling her sensitive clit. She teeters between small whimpers and incoherent muttering. You only desire to ruin her more, to tease her until she’s pushed to the edge—but you’re losing your own game. You give her what she wants to satiate your own pleasure of hearing her pretty little noises.

You slide a finger inside her. The waters are tested with a shallow thrust, and you quickly enter a second digit to pry her open. Something in your brain tells you to be gentle first but she squeezes your wrist and meets eyes with you.

“Please. More. I can take it.”

I can take it.

Yizhou is bent over the counter, proving that she can really take it. Her moans fall from her open mouth in intervals as she struggles to stay quiet. Your hips are relentless now that she encourages you to not stop, your cock perfectly sheathed in her aching pussy.

Her panties are pulled to the side as you fuck her. Just as you intended to tuck it in your pocket as a souvenir, you decide to keep it on her as her reminder of their rendezvous during the show.

You pause with a shallow thrust, forceful enough to shove her hips against the counter, and her thighs tremble. She shudders at the whirlwind of euphoria suddenly coming to a stop, but she’s taken aback when you wrap a hand around her throat and drag her off the counter. With her back flushed against your chest, you resume your pace with twice the force.

She certainly can’t hold back her moans now. The reflection of the mess that she’s become turns you on more. Her strap has fallen down her shoulder, exposing more of her tit than you’re supposed to see, and you eye her chest through the mirror as each thrust makes them bounce.

“You’re doing so good, pretty.”

She grunts when you squeeze her neck. You’re driven by her brief struggle to pound her harder, polluting the bathroom with the stench of sex and a hint of fragrance. You kiss behind her ear as praise, though you demean her through your hands as they commit sin. With one focused on her neck, your other hand slips between her thighs. You stroke her pulsing clit and she promptly clutches the counter with a cry.

“Right there, huh?,” you smirk.

“Yes,” she breathes. “Yes, please.”

You only have so much coordination when you’re also that close. Nonetheless, you work through it for her. She trembles and thrashes, but you reinforce your grip on her and stroke her clit in tandem with your sloppy thrusts. You ignore the ache in your wrist and bask in the moment she squirts all over you. You hear her arousal spilling onto the floor, but you don’t stop.

You can’t.

When you let go of her, she slumps over the counter heaving and gasping for air. Though you let her catch her breath, her walls squeeze your cock in random tangents. You try to hold back from her recovery but you’re in desperate need of release too. 

The silence is broken once again by her cries and the sloppy squelching of your cock pounding her overly sensitive cunt. With your hands secured on her hips, you resume your pace and watch yourself ruin her pretty little pussy. You force your way through the resistance of her walls, groaning as she takes you that much closer to orgasm.

She shudders as you unload inside her. Isolated thrusts push your cum in deeper, and she’s greedy for every last bit of it. 

The post-coital clarity eventually settles in and you realize you’d done the impossible: hooking up with a kpop idol.

How can someone still look so pretty after being thoroughly fucked?

You pull away and straighten yourself up. Yizhou does the same, tucking her panties back in place, but her refresh takes more effort than yours. She has just minutes to do so, however, as the show is about to start. But all your eyes can focus on is her thighs because she’s holding your cum inside her.

That alone makes you hard again.

She notices your gaze through the mirror and looks at you over her shoulder with a cheeky smile. “It will be okay.”

For her? Who knows.

For you? … Who knows either.

[stay-dazed]

a simple stray kids guide (for baby stays) ✨

overview: stray kids, or skz for short, is an 8-member korean boy band that debuted on march 25th, 2018 under jype ent. they were formed through a survival show in 2017 with originally 9 members, but one member left the group a year after debut for unknown reasons. there are three subunits to the group: 3racha the rap/producer unit, danceracha the dance unit, and vocalracha the vocal unit. of course, though, all of them do a bit of everything.

stray kids were considered an “experimental group” since the leader of the group was tasked with choosing all the members himself, and coming up with the name, logo, and fandom name of the group. as a group, they produced all their own music as well. they were relatively small for a while but by the time they released their song god’s menu, they were growing in popularity.

now stray kids have had many accomplishments, including: performing at lollapalooza 3 times now, being the first k-pop group invited to the met gala, becoming ambassadors for brands like versace and gucci, winning around 82 awards, and producing an ost for the deadpool movie. they've also recently set a guinness world record for the first ever group to have #1 albums 5 times in a row over the course of only 8 months!

while they are incredibly talented and successful celebrities, they’re also very down to earth, and very connected with their fanbase. they’ve shown openness and vulnerability with their fans by releasing songs with serious topic matters, crying on stage, and talking about their emotions/experiences. personally, they’re the only band i’ve ever seen who feel genuine love for their fanbase.

name: chan bahng

english name: christopher

stage name: bangchan, cb97 in 3racha

age: 27 (october 3rd, 1997)

nationality: australian-korean

languages: english, korean

positions: leader, producer in 3racha, dancer, rapper, vocalist

skzoo: wolfchan

instagram: gnabnahc

basics: chan was born in korea, but moved to australia when he was about 3 or 4 years old. he remained there with his two younger siblings, hannah and lucas, and their cavalier king charles named berry, until he was 13 when he went back to korea to become a k-pop trainee. he trained for about 7 years until he was finally able to debut as stray kids’ leader. chan is very reliable as the leader and dad of the group, but he’s also australian, so he adds to the chaos very well.

fun facts: chan has hypermobile arms and legs, and can turn his hand 360°. he sometimes wears wrist and knee braces due to overextension. chan won many medals in swimming growing up and could’ve gone into that career. along with that, he’s also good in many other sports like soccer and track. chan's hair is naturally curly!

name: minho lee

english name: rhino (yes i’m serious)

stage name: leeknow

age: 25 (october 25th, 1998)

nationality: korean

languages: korean and basic english

positions: lead dancer in danceracha, vocalist, rapper

skzoo: leebit

instagram: t.leeknowsaurus

basics: minho was born and raised in korea as an only child, aside from his cat siblings soonie, doongie, and dori. he moved out of his parents’ home at a fairly young age in order to be closer to his university, where he was said to have studied dance and comp-sci, as well as worked as a waiter for some time. he was called in to train under jype in 2017 and he ended up passing the dance test in only 2 weeks, the shortest period among jype trainees. minho is considered to be a “tsundere” since he’s very blunt, loud, and a bit rough generally, but is very kind and caring inside.

fun facts: minho toured in japan with bts as a backup dancer when he was in highschool. minho has acrophobia, the severe fear of heights, and he cannot swim. minho is well-trained in taekwondo, boxing, and bodyguard martial arts. minho said that the reason he isn’t comfortable showing his abs like some other members do is because he has a scar on his stomach from a surgery he had as a child.

name: changbin seo

english name: lewis

stage name: spearB in 3racha

age: 24 (august 11th, 1999)

nationality: korean

languages: korean and intermediate english

positions: producer in 3racha, main rapper, vocalist, dancer

skzoo: dwaekki

instagram: jutdwae

basics: changbin was born and raised in korea, along with his older sister, in a fairly wealthy family. he originally joined jype as a trainee at age 17 to debut as a vocalist, but was convinced to debut as a rapper by a counselor. unfortunately i don’t know much about changbin’s trainee days, other than he trained for about 2 years, and he was part of 3racha who uploaded their first rap song on soundcloud in 2017. changbin is a pretty silly and loud person, but has been described by his members as someone they can approach and who will notice/remember the smallest things about them.

fun facts: changbin prefers plants as he’s allergic to both cats and dogs. changbin is a blackbelt in taekwondo, and he named his own pecs "jut" and "dwae". changbin has said he would like to own his own gym or be a tattoo artist. changbin is the shortest member at 5 '6. changbin was named the fastest male rapper in the k-pop industry with 11 korean syllables per second, i believe.

name: hyunjin hwang

english name: sam

age: 24 (march 20th, 2000)

nationality: korean

languages: korean and advanced english

positions: dancer in danceracha, vocalist, rapper

skzoo: jiniret

instagram: hynjinnnn

basics: hyunjin was born and raised in korea as an only child, along with his long-haired chihuahua, kkami. he was approached by two k-pop company scouts at a young age, one of which while he was out shopping with his mom. and, of course, he chose jype. he trained as a dancer, and admitted he had hated dancing at first due to the emotional toll it took on him, but now he says dance is like another language he can speak. unlike minho, he attended university online, all during his busy career as an idol. hyunjin is introverted, but very silly and dramatic at the same time.

fun facts: hyunjin has a fear of sudden loud noises, like balloons popping. hyunjin is the tallest member at 5 '11. hyunjin was going to be an interior designer before he became an idol. hyunjin is an artist in multiple forms of media, but he’s most interested in sketching and painting. hyunjin had a live called “counseling center” where he would read his fans’ comments and give them advice/encouragement. hyunjin once broke his hand and now he can't really bend his right pinky finger.

name: jisung han

english name: peter

stage name: han, and j.one in 3racha

age: 24 (september 14th, 2000)

nationality: korean

languages: korean and advanced english

positions: producer in 3racha, rapper, dancer, vocalist

skzoo: han quokka

instagram: _doolsetnet

basics: jisung was born in korea like his older brother. his family moved to malaysia when he was about 8, where they stayed for a while before coming back to korea. his parents weren’t particularly supportive of his desire to become a trainee at first, but they made a deal with him that if he could be accepted into a company before a certain amount of time, they’d let him continue. if not, he’d have to go back to school to get another job. luckily he made it into jype, and became chan’s very first member of choice. like hyunjin, jisung is an introvert, but he’s very loud and energetic at the same time.

fun facts: jisung started learning english in malaysia, which may be why his accent when speaking english is faintly british. jisung has been open with his fans about his struggles with social anxiety and depression. he also supposedly has trypophobia, the fear of clusters of holes, but that isn’t proven. jisung has a bichon frise named bbama. jisung and hyunjin were the real enemies to besties.

name: yongbok lee

english name: felix

age: 24 (september 15th, 2000)

nationality: australian-korean

languages: korean, english, basic french

positions: dancer in danceracha, vocalist, rapper

skzoo: bokkari

instagram: yong.lixx

basics: felix was born and raised in sydney, australia, with his older sister rachel and his younger sister olivia. he was 17 when he moved to korea to become a trainee at jype, where he studied korean at the same time, as his parents didn’t raise him to speak the language very much. it’s been said by chan that he was particularly hard on felix during their time before debut because he saw potential in him, and he wanted him to do his best to succeed. felix is known as the sunshine of the group, for the fact that he’s incredibly sweet and happy.

fun facts: felix debuted his runway model career at a louis vuitton fashion show. felix is a 3rd degree black belt in taekwondo, which he won 63 medals in over the course of 12 years. felix has a very deep voice that doesn’t match his face, and he will occasionally make his own asmr content. felix donates often to children in need, and has even volunteered in laos with unicef. felix is so afraid of scary things, he’s admitted to reading his bible after watching a horror movie. felix cries easily.

name: seungmin kim

english name: sky

age: 24 (september 22nd, 2000)

nationality: korean

languages: korean and advanced english

positions: lead vocalist in vocalracha, dancer, rapper

skzoo: puppym

instagram: miniverse.___

basics: seungmin was born and raised in korea, along with his older sister. he moved to LA as a child for only about 3 months, but that’s where he started his study in english and where he got his english name from a teacher. he trained for one year after winning 2nd place in jype’s 13th open audition, before debuting with stray kids. seungmin is basically an ambivert (it’s not conclusive if he’s introverted or extroverted), and tends to playfully bully his members. he can be pretty random and silly.

fun facts: seungmin wanted to be a baseball player before becoming an idol, and he actually pitched a strike at a game for the second time recently (the first time he was about 9 years old). seungmin was into boxing, although i’m not sure if he is anymore. seungmin and felix have a live called “cat puppy school” where they just mess up recipes constantly. seungmin is the only idol i’ve seen that seems to have autistic traits, from my own autistic prospective. although, i’m not diagnosing him of course!

name: jeongin yang

english name: bobby (i refuse to call anyone under the age of 60 bob)

stage name: i.n

age: 23 (february 8th, 2001)

nationality: korean

languages: korean and intermediate english

positions: vocalist in vocalracha, dancer, rapper, maknae

skzoo: foxi.ny

instagram: i.2.n.8

basics: jeongin was born and raised in busan, korea, along with his older brother who’s in the military, and his little brother yoon. he was a trainee for about 2 years, and was only 17 when they officially debuted. he bonded especially with hyunjin, who basically took him under his wing at the time. jeongin is introverted, but follows his hyungs’ lead into chaos. he’s very clumsy, and he’s known as the spoiled maknae. the “baby bread” of the group.

fun facts: jeongin wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, social worker, or priest before becoming an idol. jeongin has a more nasally voice, so he’s particularly good at the trot singing style. jeongin has claimed he was a naughty child, running away from home and laying down in the middle of stores when he couldn’t get what he wanted. jeongin is incredibly good with fashion, so his members come to him for advice, and he often posts ootd’s on his instagram.

[rougerave]

Hear me out, okay. Damian is a very casual person. Like he knows slang and swears like a sailor (Jason's fault) and knows memes like he knows his colour pallet, but not in English.

You can't tell me that the first language Talia spoke to Damian was English. No you fool! It was Arabic, then Chinese, then Persian before English.

Because his whole life was surrounded by these three languages, he learned to have more casual conversations in them.

The only reason he speaks so formally in English is because Jason would read him classical literature, and that's the problem. Classical literature if formal and old. Jason never bothered to talk to Damian in English for him to know how to converse in casual conversation, and this being the case Damian grew up thinking this is how people talk.

This being said this is the only reason the family knows Arabic and Persian (they all knew Chinese). The only way to have a casual conversation with him is to talk to him in these languages, and this is how the family leard that Damian is a comedian. Like he can make Bruce and Alfred belly laugh at the most inane, sexually explicit and cras things at the drop of a hat (just like Jason).

He is the only one rivaling Jason in the swear jar, Dick was so shocked he actually cried. This gets worse when he hits 19.

Like that one time he and Tim were walking to the office when they were approached by paparazzi. Like Damian went from cussing their ancestors to dissing their appearance, to saying Joker thinks their joke all in one breath, all with a straight face that it had his 26 year old brother rolling on the floor. Bruce seeing this from the lobby - Where he was talking to a very important ambassador-, comes out to drag both of them inside by their ears. Damian is still going off and Tim is still clutching his stomach.

And the paparazzi is so confused because one: they know Damian to be a very formal young man, if not a little dry and sarcastic, and two: They didn't understand shit. This whole thing has Gotham shocked. Jason and Talia have never been so proud.

[bottombaron]

you know, i can handle a little bit of fun "Nandor is dumb" talk, but i have a net-zero tolerance for any implication that Nandor is not educated.

Nandor would have been incredibly educated in his lifetime.

even (or especially) as a soldier in the Islamic World. being a soldier was more like getting sent to boarding school that's also a military camp. they weren't just concerned with creating loyal fodder for war. they were building the next government officials, generals, accountants, advisors, etc. it was important that young men knew how to read, write, speak multiple languages, learn philosophy...sometimes even studying art and music was mandatory.

if he was nobility (and its most likely he was), take all that shit and multiply it exponentially. Nandor would have been reading Plato at the same age most people are still potty training. he would have been specifically groomed in such a way to not be just a brilliant strategist and warrior, but also diplomate and ambassador of literally the center of scientific and cultural excellence of the age.

so like yeah, he can be a big dummy sometimes, sure. but that bitch is probably more educated than any of us will ever be.

[inkmonster21]

Hahaha jealous Caesar when he spots you talking to an ape or human and he just scares them away with his imitating look making reader confused on why the human man isnt talking to her and then she sees Caesar do it. Making her tease him for being jealous.

I hope you're doing okay and that you remember to drink lots of water and refresh when needed, so you're not pushing yourself.

Jealous Ape

Caesar x Reader

A/N: thanks so much! I am feeling so much better today! Finally finished my antibiotics and I’m feeling like myself again! ❤️

~o0o~

Caesar observes you from afar, his gaze always watchful and observant. He sees the way you greet everyone with a kind smile, the warmth, and friendliness that radiates from you. There's something about you that intrigues him, that draws his attention and keeps his gaze on you. As you move through the colony, you can feel his eyes following you, studying you from a distance.

As you take a seat next to the female apes, the young chimps hoot in excitement, their eagerness to be groomed and fussed over by you evident. You offer them a warm smile and a friendly greeting, "Morning." The female apes greet you in return, the familiarity and comfort between you all evident. The young chimps chatter and clamber towards you, eager for your attention and grooming.

Caesar observed the scene before him, watching silently as the young chimps clambered and chattered around you. There was something about the way you interacted with them, the gentleness and care in your touch, that stirred something within him. He found himself growing fond of you, the way you engaged and played with the young ones, the way you handled them with patience and affection.

As Caesar watches you, he can't help but admire the way you seamlessly integrate yourself into the flock. Despite being a human, you had quickly become an accepted and respected member of their community. Caesar sees the way the other apes look at you, the way you handle yourself with confidence and dignity, and he cannot help but feel a sense of grudging respect for you.

You and your group had come to the apes months ago, offering a barter. Goods and materials for protection and access to the land that the apes lived on. But as part of the agreement, you had also offered something else - yourself. You had agreed to stay in the colony, to live among the apes, as a way to ensure that the humans would never turn on them again. Over time, you had become a permanent fixture in the colony, and the apes had come to accept and respect you as one of their own.

You had earned your place among the apes, slowly gaining their trust and earning their respect. Your calm and respectful demeanor had helped you integrate into their community, and you had come to feel like you belonged there. You had learned their customs, their language, and their way of life, and they had accepted you as one of their own. In many ways, you had become an unlikely ambassador between the worlds of humans and apes, straddling both worlds and finding a place for yourself in the middle.

Over time, Caesar began to spend more and more of his free time with you. At first, it was just occasional conversations or exchanges of pleasantries, but gradually, he began to seek you out more frequently. You found yourself enjoying these moments, the time spent in his company, and the conversations that flowed easily between the two of you. As the days passed, you grew more comfortable with one another, a strange and unexpected friendship developing.

Despite the growing bond between you and Caesar, you knew that pursuing a romantic relationship with him was not possible. The differences in your species made it impossible, even if you had felt differently. So you chose to remain silent on your feelings, keeping your heart locked away and hidden, despite the longing and affection you felt for the ape king.

You knew that Caesar could never feel the same way you do. The gulf between human and ape was too vast, and the idea of him returning your affection was simply wishful thinking. So you resigned yourself to silently pining after him, knowing that your love would forever remain one-sided and unfulfilled.

Caesar would occasionally leave small gifts at your door or give them to you during meals, simple gestures that showed he was thinking of you. You never failed to gush over the gifts, and he couldn’t help but smile as he watched your reactions. He was pleased to know that you appreciated his thoughtfulness, even if it was more out of friendship than anything else.

Caesar had spent several days gathering shells and twine, working carefully to braid them together into a necklace for you. The necklace was beautiful and delicate, the shells a beautiful array of colors and shapes, woven together elegantly with the twine. Despite the simplicity of the materials, Caesar was pleased with his work, knowing that you would love it.

As you pick through your food, you notice Caesar approaching. You look up and smile, greeting him with a simple "Hi, Caesar." Your eyes linger on him for a moment longer than necessary, taking in his stature.

Caesar was always vigilant, always on guard, but around you, he found himself able to let his body relax. He trusted you, deeply. Over time, he had grown to care for you, his feelings developing from mere trust into something more intimate.

Caesar moves closer to you, sitting down beside you with a gentle rustle of leaves. He holds out a small, crudely wrapped bundle, the gift he had promised to you. His voice is soft and a little hesitant as he speaks, "I brought you...a gift."

You smile as you extend your hand, ready to receive the gift. Caesar gently places it in your hand, and as he does, your soft skin brushes against his calloused fingertips, a brief but charged moment of contact.

As you both smile at each other and gaze into each other's eyes, there is a moment of connection, a spark of something more than friendship. The air between you seems to crackle with tension, the silence speaks volumes.

As you look down into your hands, you can't help but gasp at the sight of the necklace in your hands. It is beautiful, the shells a riot of colors and shapes, the twine woven together elegantly. It's obvious that Caesar had spent time and care crafting the necklace, and you can't help but be touched by his thoughtfulness.

"Caesar," you hum as you look at the necklace, admiring it with reverence. You could feel your heart swelling in your chest, touched by the thoughtfulness and care he had put into crafting this necklace, just for you. It was a simple gesture, but it spoke deeply of his feelings for you.

"It's so beautiful," you say, the words a whisper as you admire the necklace. The shells glimmer in the light, their colors and patterns creating a mesmerizing display. The twine is expertly woven, its thinness almost invisible as it holds the shells together. You touch the necklace reverently, tracing a shell with a fingertip.

"Thank you." The words come out as a soft murmur, filled with gratitude and warmth. Your heart is full of feelings you can't fully express, and there's an urge to reach out and embrace him. But you hold back, uncertain about crossing a line. You don't want to ruin this moment or risk losing the friendship you had so carefully built together. So instead, you simply look up at him, meeting his gaze with a look filled with emotion.

Caesar could sense your desire to embrace him but could also see the hesitation in your eyes. He understood the conflicted feelings that were churning within you. The line between friendship and something more was a delicate one, and he didn't want to force you to cross it if you weren't ready.

Caesar's voice is gentle and soft as he urges, "Put it on." His fingers wrap around the necklace, and he moves your hair gently to the side, revealing your bare shoulders. The movement of his hand is tender, his touch gentle as he positions the necklace against your skin.

You can feel your breath catch in your throat as Caesar's fingers brush against your skin. The touch is like a spark against a dry tinder, setting a fire within you. His hand is warm and strong, and the sensation of his fingertips against your skin sends your heart hammering in your chest.

The shells of the necklace rest gently against your chest, their smooth surfaces rising and falling with each breath you take. The feel of the necklace is almost intimate, the shells cool against your skin, a constant reminder of Caesar's thoughtfulness and care.

You found yourself grappling with conflicting thoughts and emotions. Was this necklace simply meant as a gesture of peace, a way to strengthen the bond between apes and humans? Or was it something more, a display of affection or care from Caesar to you? The line between friendship and something deeper was becoming increasingly blurry, and you couldn't quite make heads or tails of Caesar's behavior.

You look back at Caesar, the sight of his fond smile bringing a flicker of uncertainty to your heart. His expression is soft and affectionate, his gaze lingering on you for a moment longer than usual. It's a sight that both warms and confuses you, leaving you questioning the true nature of his feelings.

This wasn't the first time you had gone to bed feeling confused about your feelings for Caesar, and it certainly wouldn't be the last. The tumultuous emotions swirling inside you, the uncertainty and longing, kept you awake at night. The necklace he had given you remained on your bedside table, a constant reminder of your complicated relationship with the ape king.

The sun had barely risen when your group finally emerged from the woods, looking tired but satisfied. You quickly stood up from your perch on a log and hurried over to them, your heart filled with relief and happiness to see them all unharmed and safe. Without hesitation, you embraced your friends, wrapping your arms around them in a tight hug of greeting and affection.

You were eager to hear all about their journey, wanting to know what they had seen and experienced in the days they had been gone. "So," you say as you pull away from the hugs, "tell me everything. What happened on your journey?"

James, the former military officer who sat next to you, began to weave an embellished version of the story, describing their adventures with exaggerated bravado and humor. You found yourself giggling at several points, easily able to recognize the embellishments but finding them amusing nonetheless.

As James continued his story, you couldn't help but feel eyes on you. The sensation of being watched from a distance was unmistakable, and you glanced around, trying to identify the source of the gaze.

You turn around, trying to see who might be watching, but everyone else in the colony seems occupied with their own business. You absently toy with the necklace at your throat as you listen to James's story, your fingers tracing the smooth shells, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling.

You can't help but laugh at a particularly amusing moment in James's story, your eyes sparkling with mirth. Even as you chuckle, however, you still can't shake the feeling of being watched.

James, just as he was telling the next part of the story, turns towards you, a question on his lips. He looks at you for a moment with curiosity, as though he wants to ask something. Your anticipation for James's question is interrupted as he suddenly looks past you, his gaze drifting away. You turn to follow his gaze, your eyes falling on Caesar, who is standing nearby, watching the two of you intently.

Even without looking, you can sense the intense gaze of the ape king, and you turn to see Caesar's expression, his eyes narrowing at James. The look on Caesar's face is one of possessiveness and anger, and it becomes even more apparent as James leans slightly closer to you.

The sight of James being so close to you bothered Caesar, the possessive gleam in his eyes growing more intense. Caesar's body seemed to tense slightly, and his eyes flicked between you and James, his jaw clenching slightly.



James, perhaps feeling the intensity of Caesar's glare, leans back, creating some distance between the two of you. He looks slightly uncomfortable, and there's a subtle flicker of fear in his eyes as he glances at Caesar.

For the rest of the night, it was as if Caesar was constantly watching you. His eyes tracked your every movement, and any time a male human approached you, his glare would harden, warning them silently to keep their distance. It was a territorial display, a silent declaration of ownership.

You felt your limbs growing weary and your mind weary, ready for respite. "I'm going to head to bed," you finally say, getting up slowly from the log.

James stands up as well, his expression casual. "I'll walk you," he offers. "My tent's close by, so I'm headed there anyway."

You nod in agreement, and together with James, you begin walking towards your abode. The path is dimly lit by the flickering of distant fires, casting dancing shadows on the trees. The night air is cool and quiet, the sounds of crickets and nocturnal creatures filling the air.

You and James continue down the path, and soon you arrive at your house. Its simple structure is made of sturdy branches and leaves, and it blends well with the surroundings.

"Here's my stop," you say, gesturing to your house. "Would you like to come in for a moment?"

As you invite James inside, he looks like he's about to accept, but the sudden change in his demeanor is unmistakable. His gaze turns fearful, and he gulps, shaking his head. "No," he stammers, "I'll just... see you tomorrow."

With a swift sidestep, he walks off, his steps quickening as he leaves. You're left standing there, bewildered by the sudden shift in his behavior.

As you turn around, you find Caesar. He stands, glaring at James's departing figure, his eyes fixated on the human male as he scurries away. You cross your arms and look at Caesar, a mix of curiosity and slight irritation in your expression.

"What are you doing?", your tone is a mixture of annoyance and curiosity. Caesar's attention snaps back to you, his intense gaze meeting yours. There's a moment of silence as he regards you with an almost guarded expression.

"I was making sure you were safe," Caesar finally replies, his voice slightly gruff. As you look back at James's retreating figure, a small smirk tugs at the corners of your mouth. "Pretty sure I can take him," you remark, your tone light and almost challenging.

Caesar huffs in response, a sound that seems both amused and jealous at once. He regards you with a mixture of admiration and protectiveness, his gaze holding a hint of possessiveness.

Caesar's eyes linger on James for a moment longer before he looks back at you, his gaze focused and intense. His question, "Do you... care for him?" hangs in the air between you, the weight of his concern tangible.

Your eyes widen with surprise as the nature of Caesar's question hits you, and you exclaim, "James?"

You study Caesar's expression, trying to discern the true meaning behind his words. Is he worried that you have feelings for James? The thought is both shocking and confusing.

Caesar's gaze remains fixated on you, his expression a mix of concern and vulnerability. He's waiting for your answer, his body tense as if anticipating your response. There's a sense of anxiousness about him, a fear of what your answer might be.

Your curiosity piqued, you press further, asking, "Why?"

Caesar's gaze intensifies as he processes your question. He takes a moment to gather his thoughts before speaking. "I just want to know," he replies, his voice tinged with a hint of defensiveness.

As you shake your head and quietly admit that you care for someone else, your gaze averts away from Caesar. A mixture of emotions flits across your face - trepidation, vulnerability, and a hint of uncertainty. You swallow hard, the truth laid bare in your admission.

Caesar's expression softens slightly as he absorbs your words. The knowledge that you care for someone other than James seems to lift a weight from his shoulders, and his gaze warms a bit. However, there's a slight flicker of disappointment and longing in his eyes. He nods slowly, a quiet acceptance in his gesture. "Who?" he asks softly.

Your hand instinctively grips your necklace, your fingers tracing the smooth shells as a soft smile graces your lips. It's a subtle, unconscious gesture that speaks volumes about whom you care for.

As Caesar takes in the sight of your hand on the necklace he gifted you, his expression softens even further, understanding flickering across his face.

Caesar's tone is tinged with a mixture of disbelief and uncertainty as he points to himself. "Me?" The word hangs in the air between you like a question mark, his eyes searching your face for confirmation. Despite his doubts, there's a spark of hope in his gaze, a glimmer of belief.

You release a nervous breath, a mix of vulnerability and resignation coloring your words. "Don't act so disappointed," you say, your voice tinged with a hint of sadness. "I know it wouldn't... work out."

Caesar watches you, his expression shifting to one of realization and acceptance. He knows the truth, the reality of the situation, and yet... there's a part of him that yearns for it to be different.

Caesar steps closer, his movements deliberate and filled with a newfound determination. "No," he says firmly, his voice laced with conviction. "I am not disappointed... at all."

The distance between you shrinks with each step he takes, and his eyes search yours, filled with a mixture of hope and longing.

Caesar’s smile grows as he steps closer, his body now inches away from yours. "I am… glad," he says, his voice soft and sincere.

The proximity between you feels charged, the air thick with anticipation. Caesar gazes at you, his gaze affectionate and filled with tenderness.

Caesar's hand comes to rest gently on your cheek, his touch warm and tender. He then slowly, almost reverently, leans his head forward to bring his forehead against yours. The press of his skin against yours is intimate and affectionate, an unspoken gesture of affection and care.

As you stand with Caesar, forehead to forehead, the world around you fades away. There are no colony members, no humans, and no dangers to worry about. At this moment, it's just the two of you.

Your heart beats in time with his, and in this quiet, intimate moment, a silent declaration is made. You are his, and he is yours. The bond between you feels palpable, like a tether that can never be broken.

[whereserpentswalk]

You're the personal subject of a vampire. You have been since you were young. You were taken from human lands as a child, before you had any memories. Whoever your birth parents are they're not alive now.

Your only job is to give your vampire blood. Other than that you're almost entirely free. He takes blood around once a month, it hurts a bit but it's not like when other humans have it happen because you don't struggle. You're always a bit pale and weak, and you have trouble putting on weight, but you're mostly ok. He's always so nice to you, he pets your head, and let's you live in his castle, and buys you cute clothing and pretty things.

You know you're not undead like most people in the place you live. But you've been here so long you don't really think of yourself like the normal mortals undead kill. You don't scream or struggle, you don't speak a strange language or follow strange gods. You're technically below things like wraiths and ghouls and revenants when it comes to your rights, but your vampire is a lot richer than most of them so you're treated so much better. You even have some ghoul servants who take care of your needs.

You feel closest to other mortal subjects of vampires. Humans and orcs and dwarves and all sorts of mortal races who are in similar arrangements to you. But even amoung them you're pretty high status. You are allowed to walk around the city without an escort, and see all it's wonderful things on your own. Your vampire tells you nice things, and is so sweet to you.

A lot of the other subjects are hit or slapped or worse by their vampires but you never were, or at least you never disobeyed in the way that would make him want to. Like most subjects he had you neutered, it was a quick and painless process, before your first period. Because of how your neutered body developed and how your vampire treats you, you kind of felt like you never stopped being a kid.

You've seen human ambassadors negotiate with your vampire. They look so strange, wearing clothing, and speaking words you don't understand. You saw one with a sword, it's so weird to think of a human as having a sword. Part of you wants to want to be them, but you can't anymore, even they'd see you as strange and other to them.

Of course there will always be things subjects can't do. Even though he let's you walk alone in the city you have to be home by sunrise. Nomatter how loyal you are it's dangerous to be outside when everyone is supposed to be asleep. You're expected to dress as not to expose your skin especially around your neak, so no undead are too tempted to want your blood, there's a lot of things you aren't supposed to do because you don't want undead to try to eat you. And you can't own land or weapons of course, and can't pray to human gods or learn human languages. And of course you have to obey him, you never disobey him, but you know that you can't.

But for the most part it's nice. You get to draw and study and write. You even have a few books published. You're in your mid-twenties, it's been so long it all feels so normal. You have a safe comfortable life. But part of you secretly hopes you'll be turned into a vampire someday, as strange as it sounds, you'll see vampiric red knights, or wealthy vampire traders, and you'll wish you could be them. You could do it, you'd just need to grab your master for a few seconds, and let him bite you for longer than he's supposed to. You'd be on the streets when it was over but you'd have the rights to not be punished for it, for nearly anything.

[magz]

This one of many way to help disabled people. Can "donate" voice through Vocal ID so that those not able reliably speak can have more variety Text-To-Speech voice in their AAC devices (Alternative Augmentative Communication). Can also "donate" to preserve own voice for future.

Recording can take 2 to 3 hours total, which can be done bit at a time. If done outside a voice donation clinic or recording booth - what needed is a headset with microphone, a quiet environment, and google chrome.

Can make Voice Contributor account or if want to make voice charity drive so more people donate voice, can visit VoiceDrive Ambassador page for more info how to do it.

Quote:

Rapel Patel speech scientist and founder of VocaliD says, “Millions of people rely on synthetic speech to communicate everyday. Yet, they’re given a limited set of generic, robotic sounding voices. Voices that don’t fit their body or personality.” Voices are a part of our identity. If you never met me but spoke to me on the phone, in just a few words you would likely deduce that I am a young woman from New York. Our voice showcases our age group, region we come from, our physical size, our gender identity etc. and our vocal output expresses our emotion, thoughts and ideas. If you donate your voice, vocaliD can mix your vocal recordings with the vocal recordings of an AAC user to create a custom voice for the AAC user.

Of other side, instead of donating...

For using Vocal ID for yourself, there are two main options.

"Vocal ID Legacy" where you preserve the voice for yourself - which end up cost $1499 u.s. dollars (if insurance not cover it).

And "Bespoke Voice" where you choose a voice from recordings, with option to 'blend' the voice with your own if still have some ability to - with varied cost.

[pedripics]

Pedri via Residency - August 8, 2024

Pedri had a double training session today 

How is your knee doing? - “Much better. Looking forward to getting started with the team soon”

How are you after starting your workouts? - “Tired, as it is normal in preseason, but happy with the recovery”

Does it feel weird without having your hair? - “A little 😜 but it's not the first time and I had to keep the promise. My mustache didn't last that long 😝”

What are your expectations for the season? - “The maximum. At Barça there can be no others, and on an individual level I hope everything is going very well”

How is your mum? - “Veryyyy well. Thank you ❤️”

How many sessions did you do to recover? - “I've been training practically every day on vacation”

Who is your best friend in the locker room? - “I say it a lot of times, I get along well with everyone but if I have to say one, well Ferran”

Nice vacation? - “Quiet, in Tenerife”

How was training with Gavi after long time? - “Very good! I am happy to see him do better”

“Barcelona is a great city without a doubt”

How many football games did you play growing up until you were 16? - “Well, I couldn't say... one a day, or more, if they count the games on the court and with friends hehe”

Did you watch the Olympics? - “Yup… a lot”

He really wanted to see USA-Serbia in a bit 

How do you deal with hate from others? - “I try to stay away from bad comments, as well as from high praise. The best thing is to be calm and listen to the advice and comments of the people close to you”

Would you like to retire at Barça? - “Do you want me to retire already? you already know that I have been a culer since I was a little kid”

When are you returning? - “There is little left. Let's see how the next training sessions are going”

Do you recommend me to visit your familys restaurant? - “l always do... and I always will. Delicious and homemade food”

I hope to see you next year at the new Camp Nou - “Have no doubt, my friend!!”

How did your friends/family react to your haircut? - “A little bit of everything. Jokes but also people who told me it looked really good on me 🙃”

Pedri are you going to let your hair grow? (Say yes please) - “Yesss. It's not the time to go bald yet”

Do your think a lot about the climate change? - “Well, it worries me. Like all young people. It is important to think about the future of the planet and that’s why i am ambassador with Kick Out Plastic”

A lot of people give their opinion about your beard, either to let it grow, or to cut it, but what do you prefer? With or without? - “I liked seeing myself with a beard, but without it l'm very comfortable. Maybe in the future I'll let it grow again”

Best part of football? - “Enjoy doing what I like doing the most”

Do you want Quevedo to return to music? - “Quevedo is a phenomenon... and above all canarian 🇮🇨” (admin agrees)

One of his friends named his dog Pedri 😂

Do you recommend visiting the Canary Islands? - “I am obliged to do so! My land is incredible”

How many kids do you want in the future? - “Well, more than one... but it's too early for that”

Pedri do you want in the future come to Poland? - “Why not? Let's see when Lewy invites me 😁”

Are you excited for your birthday??? - “Well... there's still a lot of time left”

Do you have pets? - “No. Maybe in a few years, a dog”

How is learning English going for you??? and what other languages would you like to learn? - “Let's see if I improve my level in September”

Do you go on TikTok a lot? - “Quite a lot, yes. I laugh a lot at some videos and I also find out a lot of things out  on there”

How do you feel about the new Barça kit? - “I love it”

Prove that you’re not AI - “In the previous chat they already told me something similar. Pedri 1-0 AI”

Who can cook best in your family? - “My mother… without a doubt”

Can you cook? - “It’s better if i don’t… It’s a good thing that my mother and brother are cooks”

People confuse him and his brother sometimes

Thiago? - “We barely met, because he was on tour and I was in Barcelona… I am looking forward to meeting him”

Do you like Olmo’s hair? - “😂😂😂 That question would be for my hairdresser. I like that he came to Barça, because we get along very well and I am sure he brings a lot of things to the team. We’ve already seen it at the Euros” (personally I think Pedri should announce all new signings)

Will Barça win a sixtuple again? - “Hopefully soon… Although it’s very difficult…”

Did you celebrate Gavi’s bday with him? - “Well I congratulated him and not much more because he had a day off in his recovery”

What did your day look like? - “training in the morning, eat, rest and train in the afternoon”

What do you think of Fermin at the Olympics? - “I am following the Olympic Games because I like to watch almost all sports… Fermin is being the key and I hope he will come back with gold”

How do you go shopping? Is it difficult because of all the people? - “It is very complicated, yes. Sometimes with my parents and brother, or with my teammates… but I also shop online”

If you could choose a football legend to play with, who would you choose? - “Iniesta obviously, because he is my idol. But for a little change, for example Pele”

How did you feel to reach the Olympics final? - “It was a great joy… Although I am envious of these Games because there couldn’t be fans there in Tokyo because of the pandemic”

Hidden talents? - “Not that I know…”

Are you playing on Monday? - “No, not yet”

If you weren't a footballer, what would you probably be? - “Firefighter... or waiter in my parents' tavern. Although one day I helped them and I realized that it wasn't my thing”

He hasn’t trained under Flick yet (duh)

Movie/ series recommendation? - “I'm finishing Game of Thrones. This is nothing new, but the truth is that it is very good!”

What do you like to do in your spare time? - “Being at home, mainly” (same)

How was your childhood? “Very happy! In Tegueste, with my family and friends, like any other normal boy”

Do you ever go biking? - “No. We are not allowed to either”

What do you think of Duplantis, have you watched it? - “What he did was crazy”

Your mum is the best she is such a cutie  - “Siii”

Tomorrow will you watch the men's olympic final ??? - “Yes, of course... and if I can, the women's match for Spain too”

Would you like to be the captain in the future? - “Of course I would like to”

What do you think about Asia? - “I know that they support me a lot from there and I would like to visit  in the future... now it's not easy, because the seasons don't give a break and on vacation I prefer to rest close to home”

It's not too complicated to be famous I mean do people always have to stop you for photos? - “It's not easy, but it's not something that bothers me. I try to give photograph and sign autographs, because I remember when I was little and I asked for it”

Is your favorite food bananas? - “My favorite fruit. I love food a lot, although some of them I can't eat now because of my diet. For example, I really like sushi”

Does your brother annoy you sometimes?? - We get angry, like all brothers... But he's a very important person in my life”

Favourite sport other than football? - “Basketball or padel, for example”

Do you look forward to the next World Cup? - “Of course... Although there is still a lot of time left. Now we have to fight to win the maximum with Barça”

[mrsoftthoughts]

Nico di Angelo headcanons

- He was very confused the firts time that someone called him "Emo"

he doesn't have a clue of what the fuck is that, he just bought up the clothes and accessories that he looks at and thinks "cool"

It was a karen who say that btw, the fact that she only was saying nonsense prob was guilty of Nico confusion too

- both Acts of service and Gifs are his way to show affection to others

He often helps his close friends and Hazel with anything they need, he also would get whatever thing that they expressed to want or need even in the slightest way possible, it doesn't matter if it's expensive af or hard to obtain for any reason, he's getting that thing for later wrap it in pretty paper .

He also buys whatever that he sees and reminds him to someone he loves, New rome postal service is tired of getting packages of the pluto ambassador for the praetor Levesque atleats 3 times at week ( that's not all the things that he gets for hazel, it's just the ones that he doesn't give her face to face)

- He's a polyglot ( i kinda talk about it here)

It was a part of his education back in the 1930s so he doesn't remember a lot of how he learned most of the languages he spokes, or even remembers that he actually spoke that especific language until he is in a situation were is needed

Something funny it's that one of the languages he taked longer to realize that he spoke it, it was greek, like, modern greek, he doesn't know how to feel about that

He also has a inherent understanding of dead languages so he's really good at read ol text of any kind

He also it's kinda a nerd about etymology

- He has a lot of beauty marks

Like, a lot of them, the most noticeable ones ofc are the in his face ( one at the bottom/side of his left eye and above the right eyebrow and two at the left side of his nose and bottom of his lips) but those things are everywhere in his body

- A lot of people feels that his appearance seems out of place, like, something ood to look at without an apparent reason

The things starts to make sense when you put his hair back with a bit of gel and give him a suit, then you realize that he looks like one of those pictures of grandpas when they were young

It can be a bit eerily because, in fact , he is actually from the same generation of those grandpas, that's why he looks like them but due the Lotus he's a teenager instead of an old man

the fact that his appearance it's the definition of a haunting beauty contributes to all that, he's beautiful, there's no a sigle appice of doubt about that, but you can compare the feeling that he evokes to the feeling of looking at a gothic church or the one of being at one of those old and Rich graveyards full of angel's scultures but cover in moss after years of abandonment , beautiful and stunning but also imponent and bone freezing

But hey!! It's also cool, and you can say that he's the antitesis of an iphone face

- Kinda related to the previous one, but his eyes are always changing colours.

It's not like piper tough, her eyes are literally a multicolor spectrum, Meanwhile, Nico's are more like his eyes being shallowed by the deep and dark waters full of misery of the styx, deep ebony black but in constant movement and little forms that looks like ice sublimation

Still, sometimes in moment of pure joy or when hes relaxed his natural color is visible, being a mostly brown iris with little details of grey and deep green like the bark or the fruit of olives

- Has a large collection of silly bands ( you know , the 2000s elastic bands with form of anything you can imagine?) think about any collection of those things and he has it

He also knows how to do those bracelets of bands btw, he uses his fingers for it and as a result he always has the strangulation marks or bruces

- He and Drew ended up being friends

He had that little hunch Drew's attitude having more behind that she just being a Bitch without reason, he was totally right

They aren't attached to the hip or something, there's a lot of things about each other that they don't know or they didn't bothered to ask, but they thrusts each other and are close enough to talk about their life and things they feel can't talk with anyone else every once in a while

Nico's is also drew personal manikin/ken doll for her fashion design projects, he isn't complaining tough, all the clothes are stunning

- Other of his friends is Clovis from hypnos cabin

A lot of people doesn't understand how they have a lot of anecdotes about things they did together, because Clovis is always half sleep or straight up in another world or something during the day

The last part is they key, they literally are in other world, or something like that, dream magic has potential to take the phrase "live your dreams" to another level

- Full grown up , He isn't tall or short, he's just (technically )average

He's 5'9... It taked a time for him to grow up to that point though, he was stuck in 5'5 for a while until he was around 17/18yo

Still, he looks a bit short at the side of most people around him, it's not his fault 90% of the people he knows are fucking giraffes

The fact that a lot of the boys he falls for are... Well, pretty tall ( Solace, Torrington, Grace, yk that you're the ones im talking about) isn't helping neither.

- He has a transatlantic accent ( alongside with a slight Italian accent)

Is a result of learning English as a second language and having both american and British people like reference and not something made on purpose

Is almost vanished after being living in America at the XXI century for the past few years, but you can still hear it in the way he say some words and the fact that his idiolect mix indiscriminately British and American words

Btw, something funny of that is that if you let his guy at the Uk for enough he would totally turn into the other side of the coin and now he picked up the accent of the region were he is at the moment

- He has a wii and a DS ( he later got a 3DS when it was released), nobody knows how the fuck is that he isn't chased by monster 24/7 using that thing

He also end up with a insane amount of amibos once they were released in 2014

- For some reason his collections of anything are in those vitrines that the grandmas uses for the pretty dishes

- He got the standar lobe piercing

usually he just have a pair of black diamons studs ( kinda looks like the diamons by the yard earring of Tiffanys) but sometimes he uses a bajoran or a pair of drops

- Even whe he is older his job is basically being his father second had and ambassador, but a general concense is that he is also a really god tourist guide

Probably he would be turned into a god after he passes away for just be doing exactly what he already was doing as a demigod, just with immortality.

-Despite being Italian and the stereotypes, he was a disaster in the kitchen, the kind of person that you say them to boil 2 glasses of water for the rice and the next thing you now is that 2 cristals glases are straight up in the stove

in his defense, he at best can remember see his Nanny doing something or being with her sister and mother doing some kind of dessert ( his only contribution to that was eating the chocolate)

Now he may not be a five stars chef but he can do pretty good stuff sometimes, he's trying

- He can make pretty concerning "old fashioned" coments sometimes

Alright, he is not an asshole ( at least non on purpose) or something like that, but sometimes while talking he would say things that are the daily reminder of the fact that this guy over there is a white ass boy raised in the 30's decade with the addition of being Born in a pretty much wealthy and probably Noble family and who's whole social interaction with other people that aren't hundred of years old beings has been limited,and that leads to his perspective of society being a bubble of privilege and old high society ethics.

Like, the most of the time if he say something really... Questionable, is because he really never has stopped to think about it and he is just saying what they teach him ,was normal at the time, or is just a comment made of pure ignorance mouth-is-fasther-that-the-brain-tipe.

Sadly for him ( and luckily for the rest of the people that have to hear him) 90% of the times hazel is close when he say that kind of stuff and two of Three times he ends up being hit by the closest thing that was at her hand or for one of her shoes if nothing else is available, the other time its a 50/50, he realizes that he just said something that isn't right or hazel just look at him in full deception mode.

[canisalbus]

I just recently started following you so i don't have the full lore of your murderous gay religiously traumatized doggos, BUT, from my understanding, they are Italian and i don't know what part of Italy they are from, yet i can't help headcanoning Vasco as Tuscan, while Machete is probably from some part of Veneto. And as an Italian who has heard Tuscans and Veneto dialet, well it's an hilarious mental image.

Vasco is indeed Tuscan, Florentine to be specific. He comes from a wealthy and influential noble family that has lived in Florence for centuries. He's proud of his roots, and it's usually easy for strangers to tell where he's from. He's a resonably successful politician and has worked as an ambassador and representative of Florence on numerous occasions.

Machete is originally Sicilian (ironically about as far from Veneto as possible), although he was taken to mainland at young age and has lived in several places since then, before ending up in Rome. The way I see it, he exhibits very little local color, his demeanor and (even though Italian hadn't become a standardized language yet) way of speaking are formal, neutral and scarcely give away any hints about his personal history, at least in the 16th century canon.

[ocean-armin]

THUNDER

Armin x Reader

Synopsis: Armin and reader attend an Ambassadors gala together after the war, inspired by…ANOTHER Lana song :)

Tags: armin arlert x reader, post-canon, post final season/ch 139, alluding to death, shameless fluff, fem!reader if you squint (mentions of being his ‘wife’), language warning?

enjoy <3 glad to be back!

When someone says that ‘they’ll only be a minute’, do they ever really mean it?

From what you’ve experienced, the answer is no. After the Rumbling, remaining society has subscribed to thinking that they have all of the time in the world. Whether it be lingering too long in the grocery line, or goodbyes that entail chatting in the doorway when all you want to do is shut the door. Time is no longer a luxury.

You wish it was. You and Armin were supposed to have left the Ambassadors’ gala about thirty minutes ago. Armin told you that he’d only be a minute, as he had to wish everyone a formal goodbye. Placing a soft kiss to your temple and a squeeze to your hip, he rushed back to the group of other ambassadors to shake their hands. You were dismissed from your duty of ‘Commander’s Wife’ for the night; and were left to observe the long winded formalities of politicians and world-leaders, when they could just say ‘goodbye’ instead.

Now, you’ve found yourself against the doorway with your heels in hand, still nursing a glass of champagne. If there’s anything you’ve gotten good at as a commander’s wife, it’s observing your husband.

How could you not observe him? Armin Arlert has always known how to light up a room. You watch the familiar way in which his bright eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles, golden strands of hair cascading into his eyes as he laughs. His cheeks still rosy with liquor, you smile to yourself. Such a lightweight. How lucky you were to call a man touched by Midas your own.

Armin’s ability to flip a switch in order to charm became evident at a young age, when you both served time in the Survey Corps. Even as a young commander, his charisma and implied innocence allowed for strategies of manipulation to come easy to him. Now, as his wife, you could distinguish this strategy from a mile away. You knew he was forcing his allure.

“Goodnight everyone, I’ll see you again at the leadership summit. Have a wonderful spring,” Armin beamed, offering firm handshakes and a final wave before he finally strode over to the doorway.

“Ready to go?” You asked, knowingly, placing your empty glass on a table. You stepped closer to loosen his tie, he nodded in response.

“More than ever,” Armin quietly murmured, taking your heels from your hands, and placing a firm hand on your lower back in return.

****

The crisp cut of the rain plummeted onto your skin as you two stepped outside, the chill aiding you to cut through Armin’s facade.

“…I know you were upset back there,” you mentioned quietly, taking his hand in yours as you walked.

“God, I thought I was better at masking it,” he groaned, giving your hand a squeeze.

“You’re pretty damn convincing, but not to me. You know that.” You smiled wearily at him.

“I know…those people are just…” he inhaled sharply, “so ridiculous.” His anger became apparent, clearing his throat as his voice wavered. “God, as much as they talk of peace and how ‘lucky’ they are, they’ll never really know, will they? They’ll never know what we went through. To lose so many people…to lose our families, to lose him.” Armin stammered.

You stopped your forward pace, standing on the cobblestone sidewalk in front of Armin to properly listen.

“They don’t, and they’ll never understand. It’s hard to watch you be so nice to them…but you’re always good at it,” you said softly, squeezing his hand in yours.

“Even worse, they’re all so fucking old! I’ve been a commander and politician since I was nineteen, fighting since fifteen! These people have been comfortable their whole lives, and they act like they’ve suffered? I’m just so fed up with being so jovial with them,” Armin’s voice cracked, wiping his eyes with the hand holding your heels.

“You don’t always have to be nice to them, Armin. They should know what you went through. For fuck’s sake, you’re a commander and ambassador at twenty-two. You shouldn’t have to be,” you hugged him. “I know it’s hard, I know I’m not the one to tell you that it’s easy to do, either. But respect and kindness aren’t the same.”

Armin’s back shook, body racking with sobs as he hugged back tightly.

“I miss him too. God, I can’t believe that people are so privileged to not experience what we have. But god, I’m the luckiest, so lucky for both of us to be alive. To love you, and to be your wife,” your voice cracked with tears. “To be able to see you actually happy, and not just the ‘Commander Arlert’ charm. To be with the real you tonight. All dressed up…sopping wet.”

Armin chuckled, hiccuping through his tears, pulling away to look at you.

“I love you, so so much. And I’m freezing out here…” he laughed, wiping his eyes.

“I love you too. Let’s go dry off, warm up a little. No more wasted time tonight,” you reach to cup his cheek, rubbing your thumb along it.

“No time with you is wasted.”

****

You act like fucking Mr. Brightside when you're with all your friends,

But I know what you're like when the party ends . . .

You roll like thunder, pouring all your drinks

The party's lit and you, my friend, half-cut when it begins

You roll like thunder, you're tryna catch that wind

That lightning in the bottle, that moonbeam in your hand

And you try to see the bright side when each new day begins,

But you're not satisfied at the rainbows end.

[mariacallous]

Lithuania’s Jews and Yiddishists around the world are mourning the passing of Fania Brantsovsky, the last surviving member of the Jewish underground in the Vilna ghetto and a keeper of the flame of the city’s once glorious Yiddish past, who died at the age of 102 on Sunday in Vilnius.

Brantsovsky escaped the ghetto in 1942 and fought against the Nazis and their local collaborators in the Rudninkai forest with a group of Jewish partisans under the command of Abba Kovner. 

In the years after the war, she became a lifelong advocate for the memory of Lithuanian Jewry and their Yiddish language, serving as the librarian and beloved teacher at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute and an ambassador to visitors she brought to view the landmarks, many vanished, of a city that had once been known as the “Jerusalem of Europe” for its rich Jewish culture. 

It was a role that brought her world-wide acclaim and eventually local hostility, when Lithuanian nationalists began to equate her Soviet liberators with the Nazis, and tried to discredit partisans like her who had once considered the Russians their allies.

For all these roles, Brantsovsky was hailed by Yiddishists around the world who consider her death the end of an era.

“She lived so long that she came from a completely different universe than ours, like out of a history book,” Alec “Leyzer” Burko, a Warsaw-based Yiddish teacher, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“We’ve lost the last exemplar of interwar Yiddish Vilna, someone who could impart the spirit of the Yiddishist movement of interwar Vilna and its secular circles. We lost our last active veteran of the Vilna ghetto and the Jewish partisans,” said Dovid Katz, an American-born Yiddishist and co-founder of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute.

“And on a personal level,” he added, “we’ve lost a dear friend whose warmth, enthusiasm, encouragement, and desire to help, show and teach was a huge inspiration.”

Brantsovsky was born Feige Jocheles in 1922, in the then-Lithuanian capital of Kaunas but her family moved to Vilnius, then a part of Poland, when she was just five years old. 

As a young girl, she was active in the rich Jewish life of Vilnius. At the time, Vilnius was home to more than 60,000 Jews and boasted over 100 synagogues, the largest of which had seating for more than 2,000. With a Jewish community that had been flourishing when Napoleon passed through the city in the 18th century, Vilnius was more than just a religious center. It was home to a rich cultural and political scene, all in the Yiddish language. 

While she hailed from a secular family, which Brantsovsky noted kept neither kosher nor Shabbat, she completed her entire traditional education in Yiddish-speaking schools, and as a teenager was active in Jewish political youth movements

That world was shattered in 1941, when Vilnius fell under the control of the Germans and Brantsovsky, along with Vilnius’s tens of thousands of other Jews, were herded into the cramped conditions of the Vilna ghetto. 

From the first days of the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, they began taking Jews from Vilnius to be killed in the nearby Ponar forest. Over 100,000 people would be killed there, including 70,000 Lithuanian Jews and 8,000 Roma, making it the second-largest mass grave in Europe after Babyn Yar in Ukraine.  

“Our life was more of existence, really,” Brantsovsky once described the ghetto in an interview with Centropa, a European Holocaust memorial organization. Every day was a struggle for survival, and one slip-up or turn of fate could mean starvation, or deportation to Ponar.

Brantsovsky recalled hearing of a resistance movement forming in the ghetto and quickly requested to join. 

“The underground organization of the ghetto united all parties and trends such as communists, revisionists, Bund etc. Their common goal was to fight against fascists,” she told Centropa. 

That group would be remembered as the United Partizan Organization, or by its Yiddish initials, FPO. 

The FPO had considered instigating an uprising in the ghetto, as would later take place in Warsaw. After the capture and execution of it’s leader Yitzhak Wittenberg by the Gestapo, the movement’s leadership decided instead to take its fighters out of the ghetto and into the nearby forests where Soviet-backed partisans were harrying the rear and supply lines of the German army. 

Brantsovsky bid farewell to her family and was smuggled out of the ghetto on Sept. 23, 1943. She would later learn that on the same night, the Germans began their final liquidation of the ghetto, killing most of its inhabitants. None of her family would survive the Holocaust.

In the Rudninkai forest, which has been immortalized in partisan literature under its Yiddish name, Der Rudnitzker Vald, she joined up with a partisan unit composed of Jews under the command of Abba Kovner, known as the Nokmim or Avengers.  

In the forest she trained with weapons and explosives and took part in military operations against the Nazi occupation. 

“We blasted trains and placed explosives in the enemy’s equipment. We shot and killed them,” she told Centropa. “Yes, I did, I killed them and did so with ease. I knew that my dear ones were dead and I took my revenge for them and thousands of others with each and every shot.”

In the forest, she also met her future husband Mikhail Brantsovsky. Nearly a year after fleeing the ghetto, Fania returned, rifle in hand, as the Soviet Red Army captured the city. 

Less than a month after returning she and Mikhail married. 

“We were intoxicated by the victory, our youth and love,” she recalled. 

After the war, her commander Abba Kovner would gain fame as one of Israel’s poet laureates, and infamy for an aborted plot to kill 6 million Germans in vengeance for the Holocaust. 

Brantsovsky took part in none of that: She stayed in Vilnius where she and Mikhail built a life together and had two children. 

In the years after the war, it quickly became clear to Brantsovsky that the world of her youth had been lost. 

“There were hardly any Jews left in Vilnius. When I saw older Jews, or they looked old to me considering how young I was, I felt like kneeling before them to kiss their hands.” she once recalled. 

Fania quickly went to work, helping to document what had been lost, and assisted Soviet Jewish writers Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman in the “Black Book of Soviet Jewry,” a 500-page document that recorded the Nazis’ crimes in the occupied regions of the Soviet Union. 

While it was first published in the USSR by Der Emes, the Yiddish-language arm of Pravda, the book would later be suppressed as the Soviet policy towards the Holocaust shifted to present the genocide as solely an atrocity against Soviet citizens, not one that specifically targeted Jews.  

Though Mikhail and Fania had been present and honored in Moscow’s Red Square during the victory parades of 1945, their enthusiasm towards the Soviet regime dulled after experiencing the antisemitism of Stalin’s later years. 

Mikhail passed away in 1985, and Fania retired from her job as a teacher in 1990 just before Lithuania gained its independence. 

In retirement, Fania found a new purpose: In an independent Lithuania, there was renewed interest in recording Vilnius’s Jewish past and studying the Yiddish language of its Jews. 

In the early 1990s, Fania and a group of other survivors, including another former partisan, Rachel Margolis, worked to establish a Holocaust museum in Vilnius known as the Green House. 

In 2001, Katz, a professor of Yiddish who had previously worked at Oxford, relocated to Vilnius and established a Yiddish institute at Vilnius University. 

“When I founded the Vilnius Yiddish Institute in 2001 my first executive act was to hire Fania as librarian and that choice was a success from day one,” Katz told JTA.

Fania, who worked as a teacher much of her adult life, originally trained to do so in Yiddish for students in the city’s Jewish school system. The Nazis shattered that future, but decades later, the Vilnius Yiddish Institute represented a return to her roots. 

“She understood that she was the carrier of so much of the living Yiddish culture of the interwar period, especially its secular Yiddishist incarnation,” Katz explained.  

The Institute lasted for 17 years, until it ultimately closed down in 2018. Every year it ran a summer program attended by students from around the world, and Fania became a fixture of the experience, telling students about the city of her youth, the experience of the ghetto and bringing them out to the remains of her partisan camp in the Rudninkai forest well into her nineties. 

She is remembered fondly by nearly everyone who passed through.

“I feel really blessed to have had an opportunity to work with her,” Indre Joffyte, who helped run the program, told JTA. “Fania’s energy, determination and passion in everything she did was an inspiration to everyone around her. I will always remember her caring nature, our girly conversations, her preparedness to help, and her inner youth despite her age and tragic life experiences.”

In independent Lithuania, Fania became a prominent figure in its Jewish community as well as in diplomatic circles, guiding visiting leaders on tours of the former ghetto and Ponar where so many of her relatives were killed.

But the increased attention also invited trouble. 

In the years since the fall of the Soviet Union, a nationalist narrative arose in the Baltic states that equated the actions of the Soviets with the Nazis.  

Known as the “double genocide” theory, it has been largely rejected by Jewish and western Holocaust institutions, but has become the standard presented in Lithuania and the other Baltic states. 

It resulted in a smear campaign directed against Brantsovsky and other surviving Jewish partisans, such as Margolis and Yitzhak Arad who was the director of Yad Vashem from 1972 to 1993. 

For fighting in units allied with the Soviets, they were accused of being war criminals on the same level as Lithuanians who collaborated with the Nazis. 

“I agree completely with all the anti-Communist pronouncements. What I disagree with is, of course, the equalization of the people who committed the genocide at Auschwitz and the people who liberated Auschwitz. They’re simply not the same.” said Katz.  “As much as one should hate the Stalinist Soviet Union between 1941 and 1945, we were in the American-Anglo-Soviet alliance, and the Soviet Union was the only force fighting Hitler in Eastern Europe. So of course, Fania’s partisan union was aligned with the Soviet partisans in the forest who were fighting.”

For Brantsovsky, the issue came to head in 2008, when Lithuania’s chief prosecutor publicly demanded that she be questioned over her alleged connections to a massacre of Lithuanian civilians during the war. 

Katz believes that the demand was in retaliation for increased pressure from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and other Jewish institutions for Lithuania to investigate its own wartime collaborators.

The charges were dropped that same year, but the incident had a notable effect on Brantsovsky, resulting in her receding somewhat from public life in Lithuania. 

She didn’t stop teaching Yiddish, however, and was active in working with students and guiding tours until her 99th year, when she had a fall on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

With her passing, another thread connecting Eastern Europe’s Jewish past and rich Yiddish culture has been severed. 

“She was one of the last witnesses of prewar Jewish life in Vilna, a proud graduate of its Yiddish school system where everything from chemistry to Latin and Shakespeare was studied in the Jewish community’s native language,” Jordan Kutzik, a former deputy Yiddish editor at The Forward, said in a memorial post on Facebook.

“After nearly her entire family and cultural milieu were murdered and then her native language suppressed for 50 years, she wasn’t wasting any time in helping to document her city’s history and encouraging others to explore it.”

[sam-keeper]

The Vourdalak (2023)

The metatextual commentary on the horror genre looms large when people talk about Funny Games (1997), and understandably so. It doesn't take long after the first literal wink to the camera for meta stuff to take over, and for the commentary on horror fans to get pointed. But I was struck, while watching, by a different aspect of the film: politeness and middle class social convention setting traps as diabolical as any Jigsaw ever designed. The characters sleepwalk their way into their gruesome torturous deaths in part through politeness and forbearance. indeed the serial killing duo that torments them seem almost like an infection spread from one household to the next via the same social niceties, polite introductions transmitting them from one group to the next.

So: The Vourdalak.

The titular monster in The Vourdalak is a puppet, and an almost muppet-esque one at that. Like, we're not talking near-naturalistic animatronics here, we're talking a puppet that can flare his eyes open, and open and close his mouth, and otherwise acts through the body language artistry of puppeteers. It's incredible to look at, and totally not even remotely a little bit believable as a person. And yet, the entire family that Ambassador from the King of France Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfe encounters in the wilderness of (maybe) Serbia seems paralyzed by the apparition of the household's patriarch. Despite the man's own firm warning not to trust whatever comes back from the woods wearing his guise, they sit this grotesque, obviously dead puppet down at the table, offer it food, and force the family closeted transsexual to shoot the family dog at its behest, all while Jacques Antoine Saturnin d'Urfe sits there in his poncy white makeup and blush and wig all but looking right at the camera helplessly. It's horrific, and also completely ludicrous.

The absurdity of it is part of what makes it horrible: even though everyone involved (except perhaps the drunken, pathologically devoted son Jegor) can see something has gone catastrophically wrong with grandfather Gorcha, their filial duties render them powerless to halt what's happening. They're also profoundly vulnerable: Piotr is at minimum a cross dresser, Anja is cowed by her husband Jegor and must look after her young son Vlad, and Sdenka is trapped in a futureless morass after the murder of the stranger who promised to take her away from the village. Also, the village has been seemingly wiped out by bandits, making the Vourdalak's presentation of the bandit leader's head impressive but pointless, and rendering the cast profoundly isolated.

Even Jacques Antoine Saturnin d'Urfe is hampered by being just the wettest protagonist. The man is a floppy noodle in period accurate caked on makeup. Wildly out of his element, he summons periodically the gumption to chase after Sdenka (she responds by nearly tricking him into falling off a cliff) but otherwise just minces about rather aimlessly, too out of his depth and paralyzed by social convention to put up much resistance to the blood sucking revenant. I didn't hate him, mind--part of the humor and horror of the story comes from watching this high society guy bumble around in the 18th century equivalent of a backwoods hick horror film. It's clear he wants to do the right thing, and shows the Vourdalak's prospective victims sympathy alien both to the monster and to Jegor. He just happens to be about as effectual and plausible an opponent to the undead as a peacock dipped in a particularly muddy puddle.

This year we also watched the 2001 French adventure horror period film Brotherhood of the Wolf, and it's interesting that for all its attempts to feel contemporary to 2001, it mostly feels… very contemporary to 2001, if you get me. I mean, credit where it's due, it CLEARLY inspired a significant part of the look of Bloodborne, but in trying for a modern glitz it winds up embodying not just a bunch of aesthetics (ZOOMS! FAST CUTS! THE MATRIX JUST CAME OUT EVERYBODY LET'S SPEED UP AND SLOW DOWN THE ACTION SCENES!) that are very locked into their time, but a bunch of tropes that feel similarly dated (the Wise Native American Sidekick, the love interest menaced by a disfigured and incestuous brother, sssssome sort of position on the French Revolution that's kind of hard to figure out?).

The Vourdalak, in embracing an already "outmoded" form of puppetry, and cleaving closer to the alien high class aesthetics of the 18th century that Brotherhood replaces with their more hip take, feels like it's destined to age a bit better. The strength of the fable helps. When in one of the most truly wretched scenes of the film the Vourdalak picks up a shotgun and blasts a hole in poor Piotr's skull, it feels discordant that this gothic horror should be wielding modern weaponry. But it also feels perversely fitting: the patriarch simply makes use of whatever tools are at his disposal to keep the family disciplined. The Vourdalak is said to prey first on its closest loved ones. Jacques Antoine Saturnin d'Urfe does such a good job of being a polite guest who doesn't make waves that the Vourdalak can't help but see him as one of the family. I don't expect this narrative of being sucked (hah) into complicity losing its bite anytime soon.