HARRY
"Please, say something..." Cielo begs me, reaching my tight with her hand, almost to rock me out of my state of trance. I actually take a while, before saying something.
"How is it possible?!" My own voice comes out in a feeble whisper. "You told me you had been starting using birth control." I shake my head, not wanting to accept it as reality at all.
My whole life I have been firmly convinced about not wanting to have kids and now, in the span of a few days, my life has completely been turned upside down.
"Yeah, I did!" She firmly nods her head. "But it's never 100% reliable. It can happen." Cielo's eyes seem extremely disappointed at my reaction, that's for sure not what she was expecting and it's very clear to me.
"Did you take a test or you went to the gynecologist?" I immediately stand up, feeling suddenly trapped inside of this tiny room. I almost feel unable to breathe and I feel completely overwhelmed by this whole situation. It doesn't feel real and I'm not sure I want it to be.
"I took two tests and I've been feeling sick for a week now." She tells me, as she observes me walking around the room back and forth with a concerning look.
"Get dressed!" I tell her right away, not wanting to wait one more second, before finding out whatever she's telling the truth or not. Selfishly, I want those tests to be wrong. She looks at me confused, but she doesn't really protest since she can see the state I am in right now. She puts on her shoes and ties up her hair in a neat ponytail.
"I swear if we find out you tricked me on the birth control thing, I..." I stop just in time before I can say something that I'm going to regret later, but to be honest I already regret the words that have just left my mouth. She looks at me, with her mouth parted and her eyes wide open, obviously upset for what I've just said.
"Why would I ever do something like that?!" She asks me, completely shocked by my assumption.
"I don't know, because you want to get settled for the rest of your life?!" I'm pretty sure she was just about to slap me before she stopped herself, and maybe I would've deserved it. Her eyes immediately get teary and she tries hard not to cry in front of me. My madness, my shock, is probably talking instead of me but it's not enough of a justification and it won't make her feel any better.
"I'm not going anywhere with you!" She takes off her shoes, throwing them against the wall, feeling the same rage I'm feeling, obviously for different reasons, though. She sits down on the bed again and crosses her arms over her chest. "I want you out of this room!" She points her index to the door.
"Don't be a child now... you need a gynecologist." I roll my eyes, resting my hand on my waist, but my words don't really convince her.
"No, I'm tired, Harry!" She jumps to her feet. "I'm tired to be disrespected by you and to hear the way you talk down to me every single time." She shakes her head, with a single tear streaming down her cheek now. She lowers her stare for a few seconds, before glancing up at me again. "If I couldn't stand up for myself before, I can stand up now for this child." She rests her palm on her stomach while she speaks. I take my wallet from my pocket and I take out every single bill I have inside of it, resting it on her desk.
"I don't want your money!" She shakes her head, immediately grabbing them to give them back to me, but I quickly push my hand away.
"Don't be stupid... you need them for the gynecologist." I snort and roll my eyes, but at least she stops insisting for me to take my money back. "If you decide to keep it, I'll give you money to raise it but don't think I'll be part of your child's life or yours if you decide to keep it." She slightly parts her lips at my revelation and I can feel the disappointment growing inside of her. I don't know if she's ever understood the real me. I've always told her she had way too high expectations about me but she had never wanted to believe. She's probably realized now how right I was.
"Don't make me choose between you and the baby, because I wouldn't choose you." When her words, don't hurt me even in the slightest, I realize how wrong my decisions have been in the last months of my life, and maybe even before that. I almost feel relieved from the perspective.
"Then you've already made your decision." I start walking toward the door.
"Why are you acting like that?" She says, before I can open the door to leave and I turn toward her again.
"I've never wanted kids and you've never asked my opinion on this baby. You've just decided right away to keep it." I raise my voice, maybe a little too much, and I quickly regret it, when I see her frightened look in her eyes.
"I'm sorry but there's never been a doubt in my mind about keeping it and if that's you want, then you're free to go. No one is forcing you to stay." I take a step toward her, grabbing her hand and caressing it with my thumb.
"I've always told you-you deserved better than me..." I whisper in her ear, leaving a kiss on her forehead and in that exact moment she breaks down, letting the tears fall down her cheeks without being able to stop them. It really feels like an end and probably it really is and we both know it.
SCARLETT
When my father had called me and had told me that, if I wanted, I could go talking to Spencer again, I knew right away that something had happened.
When we had arrived in Washington I didn't feel ready, or strong enough, after the long flight, to go with them, but I knew that Harry had something to say. Maybe what he had told us had actually helped, or maybe it's just another lead that is going to take us nowhere. The worst fact is that I don't know which possibility scares me the most.
However, I had expressly told my dad that I didn't want to talk to Spencer, I wanted to talk to him, if there was something he had to tell me and he had told me to go to his office.
When I get there, there's more movement than usual around, but I walk straight to my father's office. He had been waiting for me, because his door is open and he's sat behind his desk. As soon as he hears my steps, he glances up at me and softly smiles.
"What happened?" I ask right away, sitting in front of him. I can tell, by the traits on his face, that he's nervous.
"I have some good news." His lips curve into a tight smile and I feel my heart starting pumping inside of my chest. "Thanks to Harry's help we have found one of the two unsubs. Her name is Joanne Johnson." He shows me a picture of a girl I've never seen before in my life. It's actually weird to think that I have spent the worst period of my life with this girl and I don't even recognize her. She doesn't seem familiar, I've never seen her before. She's a no one to me, if I passed her on the street I would've never known who she was and that's what scares me the most.
"She's the stalker?" I ask, printing that faces in my mind, because I don't want to forget it. I need to remember the face of the person that killed my sister and my baby and I need to picture it behind bars. My father nods his head.
"How do you feel?" My father asks me, stretching his arm toward mine and resting his hand on mine, to give me some kind of comfort that I so deeply need right now.
"Mad, mostly..." I sadly smile at him, removing my eyes from the picture in front of me. "Do you have anything on her partner?"
"Not yet, but we're working on it." He tells me, without giving too much away on what they're working on right now. Before I can ask him anything else on the matter, a knock on his door quickly takes my chance away.
"Clark, hello!" A man in a suit tells my father, coming him once my father has given him the ok.
"Parker... what can I do for you?" My father stands up and I do the same, knowing that it's time for me to go. He shakes my father's hand and then he remains on his foot, making clear that he won't be stopping by for long.
"I'm here for my client, actually... Joanne Johnson." He must be a lawyer. The lawyer of the person that almost killed me and made my life a living hell. Suddenly, I want to hear what he has to say. "She retains that she has some information that would be extremely useful to you and your team."
"She's already told us and we've already told her that we're not interested." My father says, hiding his hand in the pockets of his pants while he talks to him.
"It's a different kind of information and, trust me, you would definitely be interested in this one." The lawyer grins at my father and gives him a pat on the back, before turning toward me and giving me a stern look, to make me understand that is time to leave for me. That I can't keep listening.
When my father insists to make me leave too I don't have any other choice. I slam the door closed and walk down the corridor to leave, until I'm found face to face to Spencer. He wasn't expecting to see me here, he seems quite surprised.
"Oh, hi..." he says, softly smiling at me, maybe with a bit of embarrassment thinking about the last time we've seen each other, in a very much different situation.
"Hey..." I nervously adjust a lock of my hair behind my ear while I glance up at him. "My father has told me the good news." He nods his head at my words and his smile grows bigger.
"Yeah... and we'll get her partner too." He reassures me, nodding his head with a promising smile.
"Yeah, I know. You guys are the best." And I really mean it. I never had one single doubt in them and I don't have a single one this time either. Spencer just smiles at my words, not really knowing what to say next. "Do you feel like sitting somewhere for a bit and talk?" I decide to ask, needing an advice more than anything and I feel like he's the right person to give it to me. He nods his head and then moves his eyes around, looking for somewhere more private to sit down.
"We can go to my desk." He starts walking, taking a chair for me and adjusting it right next to his, before sitting down and I do the same.
"What's wrong?" He asks me right away. He obviously knows there's something. I miss the times when he used to just be my therapist when things used to be simple... before I ruined everything with my inappropriate behavior. Things didn't feel this awkward before between us.
"Everything went wrong in the last week..." I chuckle and shrug my shoulders, feeling a sense of aching and anxiety growing up in my chest all over again, the same feeling I've been running for during the last hours. It works when I don't think about Harry, but it's not that easy.
"Your father has told me about Harry and Elle." He tells me, probably understanding then it won't be that easy for me to talk about it. "For its relevancy to the case." He immediately adds. The truth is that I'm just glad that I don't have to talk about it myself. Considering what happened between us, I wouldn't feel comfortable anymore telling him about me and Harry.
"Yeah, it's ok... I'm glad he did if I have to be honest." I lower my stare and softly smile.
"How do you feel?" He asks. Even if I don't want to talk about facts, he knows that I can talk about feelings.
"I feel mad and I'm always scared when I feel so." I giggle, thinking about the last time that I've felt this way. "Not even just for him, but for everything. For that psychopath that is now behind bars too." I bring both my hands to my face and I rub it with nervousness and exasperation. That's exactly how I feel right now: Exasperated.
"You don't have to be scared... it's human to feel like that after everything that has happened." He sadly smiles at me.
"Things were supposed to go back to how they were once. We were happy again and he was supposed to break things off with Cielo and..." I stop in the middle of my sentence when a particular thought suddenly hits me. Now that things have changed between us he probably won't even tell Cielo about everything that has happened, about what he did behind her back and the rage I feel in my chest just grows and grows, expanding through my whole body. He's a coward and he won't have the courage to do something this big, as telling her the truth now. "And now he probably won't do anything at all," I say out loud, giving voice to my thought.
"Maybe he just needs his time..." Spencer shrugs his shoulders and glances up at me. "You shouldn't worry about it."
"No, he'll just do it over and over again. He'll keep the truth from her and she'll end up like me." I bitterly giggle. "I can't let it happen." I immediately stand up, feeling my whole body tingling with adrenaline, while I think about the next things to do. I can't let him walk away with it. That's not how it works.
"You would just hurt her if you get involved and I'm honestly scared that's your actual target." He stands up too, trying to stop me from walking away. "You shouldn't do that!" Something deep inside my chest tells me that maybe he might be right. Maybe I just want to hurt Harry, or maybe I just want to hurt her. Maybe both. What I know is that I don't want to be always the only one suffering.
"She deserves to know!" I firmly say, starting to walk away.
"You should know better than anyone that revenge will make the world blind!" He raises his voice and follows behind me. I'm too blind by rage and my own pain to actually listen to him and maybe, this time, I don't want to either. He just gives up, once I get inside the elevator to leave the building. The last thing I see when the door closes is the disappointed look he gives me.
*
I hadn't thought at all about coming back here. I didn't even know if I could do that. I still feel shivers running through my back while I walk through these familiar walls. I remember how my life has completely changed the last time I've been in the small wood, right behind this building. The fact that right now is very crowded helps me with my anxiety. I've never liked crowds and I would've never thought that I would've gotten to love them with the passing of time, or better just because it's actually better than being alone, on my own.
While I walk through the campus, everybody's eyes are on me. I know what they're thinking and what they're whispering about. The dead girl that has come back to life is surely a big object of gossip around here. I let them look and I let them whisper, maybe my story can help them understand what they should never do or become.
When I get to the door of my old room, I take a deep breath before knocking on the door. I have to wait a couple of seconds before I see Cielo coming to open my door. She looks different from what I remembered and she definitely seems surprised to see me here. Her face is strangely pale and it looks like she's been crying. I wonder if he's told her, after all. But I doubt that she would be this calm seeing me here if he had told her.
"Scarlett... hi." She furrows her eyebrows while she looks at me.
"Hey," I fake a smile. "Can I come in?" I ask right away and she nods her head, stepping aside and opening the door more to let me in. Once I'm in, she closes the door behind me. During the ride in the car, I've thought a lot about what I wanted to tell her and I'm going to tell her straight away, I won't be here for too long.
"I came here to talk to you," I tell her and she immediately nods her head, letting me understand that she'll listen. She sits down on her bed and points at the chair in front of it, inviting me to sit down and I do.
"What did you want to talk me about?" Her voice comes out almost in a whisper. She doesn't look too fine. Her eyes are red and puffy and as I've said, her face is extremely pale. She keeps her stare low, almost scared or too tired to meet mine. On her bedside table, there are also various medicines.
"Are you sick?" I decide to ask before actually telling her what I've come here for. She glances up at me and waits a few seconds before answering. There's a weird look in the eyes, it looks like hesitation and when I hear the words that leave her mouth I understand why.
"I'm pregnant..." I feel many stabs at her words. I feel them in different parts of my body. I feel my heart being ripped out and my stomach being hit over and over again with a knife's sharp tip. I feel it burning and stinging deep inside of me.
"And it's Harry's?" I need to know. She chuckles and then nods her head but a tear immediately starts streaming down her left cheek and she quickly dries it up. The confirmation, even if I already imagined it, hurts me even more. I feel like crying and screaming, but it feels like I don't have any more tears to cry or enough air in my lungs to muster a scream. I feel my stomach aching, thinking about what I've lost because right now, that's all I can think about.
"He wants me to abort it..." she confesses, lowering her stare while a couple more of tears fall down. Now I know why she's been crying. "But I can't..." She adds, bringing her hand to her stomach and tightening it. She looks fragile and tired and for the first time ever I feel bad for her.
"Then don't do it... he's not worth that much," I try to light up her mood, as much as I'm hurting right now, but I seriously mean it. It seems like it works because she looks up at me and softly smiles.
"You know what?! Now it all makes sense..." She softly giggles, keeping her big green eyes on me. I furrow my eyebrows, not really understanding what she wants to say.
"What?" I ask.
"My unrequited love for him..." she chuckles. "I've always known he loved you but I was convinced I could change that and in that case, then, it would've made sense. But he still loves you." She shrugs her shoulders and looks at me in the eyes. There's no rage or bitterness in her words, just a crude realization that makes my heart rush. I'm astonished by it. I'm stunned to see how we can both react differently to stuff and the way she reacts to it is definitely the one that amazes me. "Maybe this baby is what will give this love a sense." She sadly smiles, but at the same time, I see hope in that smile and bravery.
"I've been alone my whole life... I can't abort it." She shakes her head and giggles, before looking up at me. I just stay silent, not really knowing what to say now. I would like to tell her how admirable is that, but I just feel my mouth drying up. Not even in this situation, I manage to be on her same level. I still feel jealousy and bitterness burning inside of my chest, no matter how much I try to deny it to myself.
"So... what did you want to tell me?" She asks all of sudden, making me go back to the reason why I came here. I part my lips, not really knowing what to say right now.
"Uhm..." I take a deep breath, trying to reorder my thoughts. "To apologize. For everything." I decide to say, after thinking about it. I can't do it to her. Spencer is right, it's going to take me nowhere. She doesn't deserve it. She doesn't deserve more pain. That's the only noble thing I can think about doing, that can at least repair for all the wrongs that I've done to her. I know that I still have a long road to go, but it can be a start. It can be a start to turn down all the hate, rage, jealousy and bitterness hidden inside my chest.
"I'm sorry about the slap..." She giggles and lowers her stare again, before taking a deep breath. When she raises her eyes again, I just smile at her. A little by little, it can go better.
AARON
I would be lying if I said that I didn't feel concerned at all when Joanne's lawyer told me she had some new information to give us. So I didn't waste any time. I wanted to face her this time and see whatever she has to tell us.
Spencer is right, she's a sociopath and they're compulsive liars but we've pushed her to the corner and she'll probably play her biggest assets this time, or pretend to. Ted Bundy used his superficial charm, once that was condemned to the death penalty, trying to postpone his execution by giving out new details on his crime, but nothing was ever found.
When I get inside the room, she's sat there again, with the same kind of grin and look in her eyes; she knows she's something big between her hands. I sit down in front of her and fold my hands on the table between us. I stay silent, I don't give her the chance to play mind games, I show her that I'm just here to hear what she has to say and leave.
"You're a man of many words, I see, Aaron..." she rolls her eyes and smirks. She wants to show us that she knows us, that she has information on all of us. "So you're all business and no play... I already had this feeling looking at you." She giggles.
"You can either talk or I'm going to walk right out of that door and by then not even your lawyer is gonna help you," I tell her quite clearly, not wanting to waste a minute more here inside with her. At my words, I see her stare hardening on me, but just for a few seconds, before it gets back to its cold, empty self.
"I think there's something you might want to know about my partner..." she starts and immediately a smirk compares on her lips. "She's done it before me, many times... and she's still doing it now."
"You're talking about a serial killer?" I ask to make sure and she nods her head with the same smirk present on her pink lips.
"While we're speaking she's out there drugging another girl to death and when she'll die you'll have her blood on your hands, just because you're too stubborn to send a stalker behind bars." Ted Bundy had tried to postpone his execution by giving out new details on his victims but his need to remain in total possession—the only person who knew his victims' true resting places was way too strong. He didn't want to lose his power over them, but with Joanne is different. She doesn't have any kind of bond to her partner or to her victims; they're nothing else than a simple tool for her to walk out of jail, so I don't have a doubt in my mind she would say the truth.
"I need more details. To know you're not making it up before we can make an agreement." I tell her and she nods her head.
"I don't know exactly for how long she's been doing this but she can't stop. She needs to have her doll. Once they die she buries them and until now you've never found one of her victims." The original target of this kind of serial killer is not the act to kill itself, but to possess a human doll. The killing is just accidental, that's not what she wants or needs. What she needs is a doll, so I do believe she's unable to stop.
"How did she know Elle?" I try to understand.
"She didn't. It was a pure case. I saw she had her and then I thought about the whole plan involving Scarlett." Celine had told me that Elle had moved in New York, but she had never mentioned Washington. I wonder how she got her.
"I can tell you who she is, where she is and where she buries her victims. You would give peace to so many families..." she grins, knowing exactly how to push my buttons. But in this case, if what she's is true, I can't waste much more time. I need to do an agreement with her. "C'mon... I might not have a conscience but I have a limit and I've never passed that limit. I've never killed anyone." She insists, trying to convince me.
"If we decide to do an agreement then don't think you're walking out free," I tell her right away, not wanting to lie. She furrows her eyebrows and glances at me. "You're still serving jail time for stalking. What I can do is not to including aggravation in contest in abduction and attempted murder."
"And how many years would that be?"
"A maximum of 5 years." She looks up at her lawyer, to see whatever she should accept or if she could dream to get more, but he slowly nods his head at her.
"Fine." She snorts and captures her lower lip between her teeth.
"And you're not getting no deal until we make sure the information you gave us are reliable, so don't make mistakes." She rolls her eyes again and then nods her head.
"What's her name?" I insist and after the first seconds of hesitation, she finally decides to give us the information we need.
"Alice Cooper."
SCARLETT
"Is the water boiling?" My mother asks me, so I quickly turn my head toward the cooker to check.
"Not yet!" I go back to chop my vegetables. Since I've come back home, she's been trying to make me busy for the whole day. I don't know if she's actually understood that there was actually something wrong with me or if there's just something that I don't know. The second option definitely scares me the most.
"Have you heard from dad lately?" I ask her. The last time I heard from him has been this morning at his office, when he had to talk to Joanne, to listen to what she had to say. At my question, Annalise's expression completely changes. That's definitely how I know that there's something I don't know. "Mom... what's going on?" I ask her, letting the vegetables go and walking toward her. She glances up at me and just shrugs her shoulders. "Can you use words?" I roll my eyes and she just takes a deep breath.
"They've found the second unsub too." My mother smiles, but it doesn't seem too honest. I can tell that there's something worrying her.
"By making an agreement with that girl?!" I say, remembering what happened this morning in my father's office. To say that I feel appealed and upset is definitely reductive.
"She's still getting 5 years, Scarlett!"
"That's not enough!" I raise my voice. "She's made my life a living hell. She was the one to make me these." I move the fabric of my shirt, to show her the scars she already knows I have.
"She had another girl that would have died if he didn't make the agreement. And there have been more girls before you." At her words, my rage and incredulity slowly decrease. I had never thought about the possibility. I had never thought about all the girls that were there before me and about the ones that came after me. I can't imagine how much pain she must've provoked to so many girls, just like me.
"Did they get her?" I decide to ask.
"They've found the girl and the place where they used to hold you. She's still alive and she'll be fine..." My mother smiles at the thought and I feel an incredible relief too. "They've also found a lot of bodies in a specific... she's been doing it for years."
"But did they get her?" I insist. Apart from the agreement, that must be the part she was worried about too.
"Not yet, but they're looking for her." My mother sighs and brings her hand on her hip.
"Did I know her?" I dare to ask and she gives me a worried look again.
"She was a professor at your university... but I'm not sure if you know her." I furrow my eyebrows, trying to think about which one looked like a serial killer from them, but I can't really think of anyone. As if, it would be that obvious. "Alice Cooper." At her words, I immediately bring my eyes to her. I remember this name and I vaguely remember her. I had met her when I was already unstable when I used to get high the majority of the times, but I still remember. I remember the first time I smoked a cigarette and I remember her. The fact that you knew the person doing bad things to you, hurting you, is even worse. I can't even think about it without feeling a huge mix of rage, pain, and hate inside my chest. All mixed together and expanding through my whole body, making me feel anything else but that. I knew the person that almost killed me, that killed my sister and my baby.
"I suddenly don't feel like cooking anymore, sorry..." I say in a whisper, turning around and walking straight toward my room. I take my backpack, ready to leave, but I stop in my father's office first. I try not to make any noise, closing very carefully the door behind me. I walk straight toward his desk, knowing well what I am looking for. Since I was a little girl, I've always known where my father keeps his guns. I found with easiness the one behind his desk and before hiding it in my backpack I make sure it's loaded.
This time, when I go out, I take the window in my room, making sure that my security won't follow me around. I know what I have to do.