Ground Zero

"A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead."
~Graham Greene.

September 11, 2001. Potomac High School, Dumfries, Virginia.

"The Twin Towers have fallen!"

Seventeen-year-old Benjamin Fuller's head snapped up at the pronouncement, borne by his history teacher, Mr. Simon, who'd burst into first-period Chemistry with such frenzied terror that no one could even imagine he was joking.

Ms. Offerman, the science teacher, froze, hand in mid-air, fingers still curled in an almost beatific gesture. She blinked once. "What?"

"They've—planes, I don't know how—have crashed into the towers!"

The class of high school juniors kept silent, their eyes wide with uncertainty as they watched the two adults, trying to garner clues—what did this mean, how should they act?

"What…what do we do?" Ms. Offerman's voice was still quiet, the small tremolo at the end of her question that only indication of her emotional state—her face was still blankly pale, her hands still suspended, as if she were a marionette that had been hung incorrectly, the strings to her arms still looped over or tangled up, keeping her fixed in place.

Now, Mr. Simon's panic and dismay settled into something deeper—something far more frightening. His voice lowered to meet her tone as he quietly admitted, "I don't know."

What had started as a perfectly ordinary day would continue in a daze of disbelief—yet despite the dream-like, hazy feeling, Benjamin Fuller would remember every minute of it.

It was the day he became a true patriot—a true warrior for his nation, his country, his beloved and beleaguered homeland. He would dedicate his life to defending her from enemies—without and within.

He'd been given a destiny. He'd fulfill it, no matter the cost.

"The ending is nearer than you think, and it is already written. All that we have left to choose is the correct moment to begin."
~Alan Moore.

*Author's Note: And so we begin! Just wanted to take a moment to address a few things. One, which I can't stress enough: if you are going to leave a review that is critical (please understand that is not necessarily a bad thing) or otherwise requires input (i.e. you ask a question), please don't do so as a guest. We are each other's editors on this site—and a vital part of the editing process includes making corrections and asking questions. However, it is equally vital that the writer is allowed to answer those questions and either make the correction or defend/clarify their original position. When you review as a guest, you cut the process off at the knees. As writers, we need the chance to receive AND respond to feedback. Please do not steal that from us. For the most part, guest reviews aren't that big of an issue for me, but when it is a final review on a completed project, there is no way for me to actually respond to you, and I know I'm not the only writer on this site who has experienced this. So I'm asking you to please think of this next time you leave a review on a completed work that would generally require feedback. We give our voices to tell stories for you, please don't silence those voices. Please.

Having said that, I wanted to address a few items that came up in final guest reviews for this piece's prequel.

Let me start all of this by being very clear: I'm not trying to bash anyone or be in anyway negative or aggressive in these responses. I have a very dry sense of humor, and I feel like sometimes it doesn't translate well. But please keep that in mind.

Someone mentioned that having JJ wake up in handcuffs would have been more original—and I have to admit, when I read the suggestion, I was like "whoa, that would have been a total twist!" and even felt a twinge of wishing I HAD done such a thing—but for this particular story and my intention in telling it, such a move would have also been disingenuous. In my opinion, it would have turned the whole story into one of those who-dunnits where the clever detective pulls the proverbial rabbit out of his hat at the end, revealing clues and events that we readers did not get to see—and from my own personal point of view, it's not a technique that I like reading, so I try not to write in it, either.

There was also the term "unoriginal" thrown out there—to which I wholeheartedly agree. But then again, we are writing about a show that already exists, so…technically everything on this site is unoriginal. No offense, but the show itself is unoriginal. All this has been and will be again. But being unoriginal does not automatically equate to being untruthful, and truth is where I try to live as writer (emphasis on the word "try"). If that means doing a few things that seem too predictable but also inevitable, then so be it.

There was also a comment that Reid's arrest wasn't probable. I'm just going to point back to the actual show itself—you do know that the BAU doesn't have its own private jet in real life, right? There are so many other points of this show that I could use as an example as well. However, we viewers engage the "suspension of disbelief", as we do anytime we read a book or go to the theatre or watch a TV show. I'm asking you to extend that technique to this fic as well, for just a little bit longer. When you take a peek at all the things in this next chapter, you'll understand why the arrest wasn't only probable—but also very logical. I don't have the right to demand you continue reading, but I am asking you to simply trust me. Trust me for about 17 chapters, and it'll all make sense (I know, SEVENTEEN chapters...but hey, you made it this far, right?).

A few seemed to think that the ending was too predictable. That was the point. I'm going to safely bet that about 95% of the readers knew how this was going to end by about chapter 5 (or whenever Reid lost his phone). The story did not "fail" because it did exactly what it was meant to do. The entire thing was like a trainwreck—you saw it coming, you hoped it wouldn't end exactly how you knew it would, and you couldn't look away, even though you *knew* what would happen. It wasn't really about having a "cliff-hanger" or "surprise twist"—the story I really, really wanted to write was this one, and in order for it to happen, I had to tell the story in 'The Way the World Ends' first. I promise, if you hang in here for about six chapters more, you'll understand why (I know, I keep asking you to keep holding on...).

Another mentioned that the build-up to the UNSUB Benjamin Fuller seemed rushed—and it was. There are two parts in 'The Way the World Ends' that I'm unhappy with (I won't mention the other, but it required some rushing, too, at least in my opinion and I wish would've had more time to build up to that event). But I will also add that in some ways, the rush was intentional (even though I wasn't entirely happy with the final executed product). You'll see why, in this story—my intent was to have you spinning about dizzily at the new information and the new suspect (though, technically, Agent Fuller has been a part—albeit very small—of the story for many chapters), hoping that it meant the BAU was in the clear. You were given the sparsest of details about Fuller, so that you could be left with questions of who he was and how he fit into this. Obviously, these questions are going to be answered in this story. I wanted an ending that was a bit frayed and messy—and also, with so many different threads in this story, I couldn't follow every single one in great detail. So in a way, I did have to go back to the who-dunnit formula, of having our investigators see and learn things "off-screen" from the readers, as it were. But we're going to see some of those things in the upcoming chapter, so sit tight.

Again, I ask: if you are going to leave a final review on a completed work that requires feedback, please do so under an actual account. Unless of course you're simply trolling—at which point, please just don't. It's not good for your karma.

I write people as they are. I put a lot of time and effort into accurately recapturing the personalities of characters whom we have fallen in love with—because they aren't mine. They're someone else's babies, and I (as well as all other fanfic writers) have an obligation to treat them well and treat them truthfully. That's not to say that I don't sometimes wiggle the boundaries or that I don't mess it up—but I refuse to put them in unfathomable situations or show them in an uncharacteristic light. However, sometimes, in order to get them into whatever space I want my story to take place, I do have to create a very specific set of circumstances, which in turn would create a very specific set of reactions from those particular personalities with their particular histories.

That set of circumstances was the entire story of 'The Way the World Ends'. And this, my dears, is the actual story. Everything you've read before was merely a very, very long prologue.*