EternalxInsanity: Well since Connor's not around I think Cooper's cookies will be safe *nods* Souless666: Cooper blaming Mark is his natural instinct at this point of his life and given the emotional mess he is, he feels the need to take it out on someone. Does that make it right or helpful in their current situation? No. Mark is there to help, and fighting and throwing blame around is not going to do shit. NeroAnne: Oh yeah, poor Jeff just has no idea what's going on in Cooper's head. And Cooper's keeping it a secret and letting the feelings fester and grow, which is not a good thing.

…

Mindy and Cooper approached each other quickly on the day he had taken the kids to visit her in the asylum. She touched his face only for a second because Cooper's head went into the crook of her neck and it didn't come out. They embraced each other so tightly Cooper was afraid of breaking her and she kissed the side of his head.

"I love you, baby" she smiled weakly while rubbing his back, "I love you, I do." He sniffled and took a sharp breath while holding her. "You're being very brave…Daddy and I are very proud of you."

"I can't" he trembled to the point that he gripped Mindy's hair at the roots, "I can't do it, I need you. I need Dad, I can't do it I can't do it"

"Hey!" pressing her lips to the side of his head as he snuggled her shoulder she nodded, "You CAN. I know you can…Daddy knows you can…" taking a deep breath and curling her lips she rubbed his back firmer, "otherwise we would not have trusted you."

"I can't do it" he croaked while staring at all six kids watching them even after Julie went to try and keep them occupied.

"You can"

"I can't"

"I love you and I say you can" she smiled weakly while moving the wisps of dark hair out of his face, "I love you so much you're my best friend in the whole world" finally getting him to lift his head to face her she kissed his forehead before making him sit down with her and kissed his cheek.

Cooper laid on Amber's bed skimming through her massive collection of photo albums that Mindy didn't know existed with his iPod docked in her iHome pink stereo system blasting (surprise, surprise) Stratusfear. He identified with Mindy's lyrics so much they truly were two halves of the same person it made him queasy.

His mother was having a nervous breakdown downstairs and he knew it, but what was there to be done considering the circumstances? Mindy had switched sides and it was all Mark's fault; he hadn't needed another reason to despise him, but now he had plenty more. He didn't even want to imagine what was going on with her and Caroline, but he had to go out and find her once he could string an English sentence.

Though Mindy was highly against displaying pictures, she had no problem taking them or having one taken of her. She was a celebrity; pictures were a part of her life, so thankfully Amber had a massive collection of the young woman she idolized. She had three albums of simply Mindy alone over the years and even had the very very few, rare shots of Mindy when she was a kid. They were school/yearbook photos, but there was a few of Mindy when she was sixteen and brunette. Jive had just signed her so they were promotional shots, but the very next year Mindy was blonde with inflated lips, sprayed tan, breast implants, a nose job, penciled eyebrows, and donning a string bikini.

He had shifted his attention to a collection of Mindy and himself that were taken by various sources and didn't know whether to smile or be sick. They always dressed alike for the most part and could easily pass for twins.

"LOOK AT ME!" Mindy tore out of Cooper's hold and screamed, "Do I look NORMAL to you?"

"You're beautiful…!" he replied timidly, "You don't have a drop of makeup on and you're a china doll! You're beautiful"

"I'll look beautiful in a coffin too" she nodded before standing and trying to go back towards the car with Oxa, "There is nothing else…I've been dead since I was born." Though at first she didn't see, Cooper's face went in a hand and he gripped a handful of sand he wanted to knock someone's lights out. He heaved as a single tear rolled down his cheek, but it didn't get far beyond that because Mindy's arms were around him and she dropped into his lap with Oxa, clinging to his shirt with her nails and crying so hard she gagged.

"Christ, Mommy…" he shook his head and gently traced Mindy's face in a picture with the tip of his finger before standing and approaching the mirror, staring deep into it and listening to a particular portion of Mindy's song which always got to him when she came to mind.

"I look in the mirror and see your face, if I look deep enough. So many things inside that are just like you are taking over. I believe in you, I'll give up everything just to find you. I have to be with you to live, to breathe…you're taking over me!"

"FUCK!" he shouted and went to smash Amber's mirror, but stopped halfway and shook his head, whimpering in fear because it was no longer his face staring back at him but hers. And not the way he wanted to remember her either. Her porcelain skin was completely lacerated via Caroline, battered, and bruised the way he last saw her. Touching the hallucinatory reflection with the tips of his fingers he cried loudly and shook his head.

He hated Caroline he fucking hated her so much. He wanted her to die again if that could be possible, he'd do it himself if no one else could. He couldn't just allow shit to happen anymore Mindy was going to die, and then what? The death curse continues? No…without her he'd die. She made him feel alive in ways he didn't even imagine were possible and not only did fucking Caroline know it, she was twisting and contorting it against him any way she could because whatever horrible thing she tried to do to Mindy…she knew he'd come. He'd come for her and fight to the death if he had to. Nobody was ever going to hurt her again if he had anything to do about it.

He didn't know how he felt it, but she had to feel what he did too. The way they touched each other before he was stabbed with a screwdriver was something so real it shocked him all the way to his core. He was still trembling from it because of how long that lasted and how badly she needed him. His mother and Mark didn't understand it, no one could understand it. He sure as hell knew Jeff would be confused, and didn't have the heart to tell him. Mindy would take what they did to her grave as would he, but before he let his crazed thoughts go any further he had to stop moping for a minute and figure out a way to get both Annabelle and Mark to search for both Caroline and Mindy so he could save her and they could deal with the hag. She needed to die. He didn't care how, but it was going to happen.

…

Silent tears streamed down her face as Mindy gazed at what had become of her in a bathroom mirror. Her porcelain skin was completely lacerated, bloodied, battered, and bruised. The ugly burn along the side of her face didn't help things either; she looked like a complete ugly monster.

"It's a sin, isn't it?" James said while appearing behind her and glancing at his reflection compared to hers, "That face was all you had going for you…" looking in the mirror at the same time as her, he sighed, "now you're truly nothing." His sadistic expression morphed into a scowl as he gripped her arms and hissed into her ear, "Now you know EXACTLY how it feels to be just like everybody else! They say vanity kills, my darling…" he lifted her chin and forced eye contact, "did you know that?"

"No" she shook her head quickly and flinched incase he tried to hit her. Instead though, he stared at her and took a deep breath.

"Well…now the only thing about you that's even halfway extraordinary is how fucking pathetic you are."

"I know" she croaked and looked him in the eye drearily. "Is there anything you wanted to do here?" they were still in the house James had occupied with Annabelle, and hadn't really done much of anything besides burn Mindy's face and get it established that he hated her. "If you want to get Annabelle back…" she began awkwardly, "she's in the other house with Mark. If you want them both back they are there."

"Oh yeah?" Caroline raised an eyebrow, "And what the fuck do I do with YOU in the meantime?" Mindy just shrugged too numb to even care at this point.

"I don't care…" she whispered hoarsely, keeping her eyes to the ground and shaking her head, "whatever you want."

"Excuse me?" James laughed dangerously and ripped her towards him by a handful of hair, "What did you just say to me?" Her eyes dropped to the ground and she shrugged.

"I said I don't care what you do with me"

"But of course you do…" he snickered and shook his head with a mocking frown, "Is Miss MPD switching things up for me, huh?" he leaned in her face and slammed her back to the wall, "Who am I talking to now, huh? How many fucked-up people are living in there?" She cried and shook her head before throwing her arms around his waist, and he slammed her to the ground.

"You know how I got this scar?" he tilted his neck back for her to see, and drearily she nodded. "Tell me what you know then, little girl." Mindy sniffled before trying to regain her balance and see his face.

"Caroline tried to cut your throat with a wire hanger when you were three."

"What a good little librarian" he teased before grabbing a handful of her hair and dragging her towards the closet, "Wanna see how she did it?" Mindy didn't even struggle when he lifted her and threw open the closet door, pulling out an old hanger and using his teeth to straighten it out while holding her hair with one hand. Her eyes weren't even looking at the hanger; she was just so focused on him that the reality of what he was doing was beyond her. "You see…I was a little shit when I was younger and needed to be taught a lesson…" he sighed while getting the hanger straight and tilting her head back so she could actually see her neck, "so my mother did the only thing she could and attempted to knock me off the face of this fucking planet. It would have given her one less whiny little brat and possibly have kept her alive in the long run. Why she didn't get to finish was beyond me…though now I wish she did"

"No, Jamie…" Mindy shook her head and grabbed his wrist with her little hands, "you can't want to die"

"Being married to YOU gave me enough of a reason to look forward to it" he did catch how her heart stopped but didn't care. Her heart was going to stop anyway once he was through with her. "Now…" he finally finished with the hanger and began to dig it into her throat, already catching the blood spilling gleefully, "I finally get to take my life back once your retarded brain is gone for good. Do you have any idea how fucking miserable you've made me?" she nodded and Caroline stopped to grab her chin roughly, "Then why the fuck didn't you leave me alone when we met, huh? Why were you so up my god damn ass if you knew I couldn't fucking stand you?"

"I love you" she choked before inhaling sharply, and before anything he completely snapped her left ring finger and broke it, screwing the wedding and engagement rings off her hand and discarding them.

"You have my stoic answer to that" he nodded before digging the hanger into her throat and slicing right across for her jugular when he was grabbed by the back of the neck and had the hanger turned on him, being actually slashed across the face with the sharp end of it and thrashed to the ground. Mindy fell and immediately started gagging, the blood oozing from her throat like a river as she gagged. "What the FUCK" Caroline gagged and tried to lunge for the young woman clasping her halfway-slit throat when something large stepped on James's hands and it hurt like hell.

Caroline hissed in pain and looked up to be met with two glowing red eyes towering in front of the dying young woman. With a single kick Caroline's head was driven into the open closet door and knocked unconscious. No words came from the completely shadowed red-eyed figure, but Mindy was scraped off the ground and taken out of the house with a plain black shirt tied around her neck at choking pressure to keep the blood at bay until she was stabilized and stitched together at the hospital.

…

Mindy forced her eyes open after being passed out for hours with a bag of blood shooting into her left arm, her throat completely stitched and bound together, and Cooper holding her hand as Annabelle and Mark stood by.