A/N~ Hello, my beautiful behavioral analysts! It is I, your amazing purveyor of fictional goodness. Okay, enough of that. So the song scene in this chapter was inspired by the movie Lemonade Mouth. In my opinion, its honestly one of the last good Disney movies of its genre/type, but that's a completely different subject. So there's that… enjoy the chapter!
Garcia's P.O.V.
Ariel had asked me to come over to their apartment early to help set up for the party - she had planned it so that the whole team could actually get a chance to really meet her, as well as some of what she and Reid called their extended family, before she had to leave for work for another few months.
When I got there, I knocked on the door before standing there for a moment and waiting, trying to juggle the bags in my hands.
When someone finally opened the door, I was going to walk in, but luckily I looked before I did, because the woman standing in the doorway wasn't Reid or Ariel.
The first thing that I noticed about her was her hair - which had been dyed fuchsia, and cut short - followed by the fact that she was not who I was expecting.
"I'm sorry!" I said quickly. "I must have the wrong apartment!"
Then Ariel appeared behind the woman. "No, Penelope, you have the right place." she noticed the bags I was carrying, and quickly shoved her friend out of the way.
"Katerina, help us out please?" she asked, and that was what got the fuchsia-haired woman moving.
Once we were inside and had dropped the bags on the table, I took a second to look around the apartment - and to look at the people in it. I had always imagined Reid's apartment to look like a library, and was pleased to see that I was right, but that was where it ended. Nothing else looked like I thought it would. There were framed posters and t-shirts from different bands and concert tours all over the walls, and one entire wall of the living room was covered in CDs. There were several guitars in the corner of the dining room, and a large stereo system set up on the kitchen counter.
"Thanks for coming early, Penelope." Ariel said gratefully. "I wouldn't have asked, but someone is absolutely useless when it comes to helping." she finished, throwing a glare at the other woman - Katerina.
I took the opportunity to give Katerina an appraising look. I couldn't figure out how someone like her could be friends with my sweet genius. She wore a cute floral patterned dress underneath a flannel shirt, with black combat boots laced up her thighs.
"Hey," she protested, "You told me that if I came over, you would have beer. You never said anything about helping." Then she turned her attention to me, giving me a quick once-over. "So," she said, not sounding very impressed. "You work with Big Brain?"
"Kat, be nice." Ariel scolded. "Penelope Garcia, this is Katerina Simmons - she's my sister, and Spencer's best friend. Kat, this is Penelope Garcia, technical analyst extraordinaire for the BAU."
I gave Ariel a surprised look. "You two are sisters?" I asked. I never would have guessed it if they hadn't told me.
They both laughed - Katerina looked a lot less intimidating now, so I hoped that she was warming up to me. "Not by blood." she explained. "But Ariel was at my house so often when we were growing up that my parents always joked that she lived there."
I laughed at that, and a few minutes later, Reid came walking in to find the three of us chatting away happily. He walked over to the table where Katerina was finishing up making the food, and tried to steal some, only to yelp in surprise when she smacked his hand with a spoon.
"Not yet, stupid." she scolded him. I turned around, half expecting either of the Reids to get mad at her for talking to him like that, but Reid just rolled his eyes, while Ariel snorted a laugh.
Someone knocked on the door, and Ariel went to open it. There was a few seconds of silence, before she laughed happily, and Katerina and Reid looked at each other, as if having a mental conversation, before speaking.
"It's Finn." Reid said, but Katerina shook her head.
"No," she said. "It's Lee."
Ariel laughed as she came around the corner. "You're both wrong." she said. "It's Gabe."
I felt my breath hitch in my throat as a man came around the corner. He was very tall, with dark hair. He wore a gray Henley with jeans, and what little bits of his skin that was showing was covered in tattoos. "Hey kitten." he said, going over to the table and ruffling Katerina's hair, making her swat at him in irritation.
He turned to Reid, giving him one of those weird man-hugs, saying, "Finn and Lee are on their way."
He smirked. "Oh, so they finally managed to get out of bed?" he teased.
Suddenly, two more men came into the kitchen. One of them was tall and blonde, while the other was short and Asian. "Hey!" the short one said. "Enough of the hate already!"
At this point I was slightly uncomfortable - I felt like I was intruding on a private moment of some sort.
"Oh shut up Lee!" Ariel said, punching him in the shoulder. "You know he doesn't mean it like that."
That was when the first guy - Gabe noticed me standing there. "Well, well, well." he drawled. "Who's this little cutie?"
Katerina rolled her eyes. "Gabe, this is Penelope - she works with killer here." she said, introducing us. "Penelope, this is Gabriel - the worst curse on Earth."
That made me laugh, even as I gave him an appreciative look. Then I realized what she had said. "Killer?" I echoed. "Why do you call Reid that?"
"It's a joking nickname, of course." Reid explained. "But, when I first met Ariel, she said that I didn't look like I could hurt a fly, let alone stand up to Katerina."
The last comment confused me a bit, but I brushed it off for the time being. That was when the rest of the team started to show up - first Morgan, followed by JJ, Gideon, and finally Hotch, Haley, and Jack. The only one who didn't come was Elle.
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Spencer's P.O.V.
As soon as Haley and Jack got there, Ariel went over and started cooing over the baby, leaving me to introduce the two halves of our family to each other - all of them except Elle. I wasn't sure why she hadn't come, I had called and invited her a few days ago. I hadn't told her why I wanted her to come over, though - I wasn't sure if she would believe me about Ariel unless she saw her.
My team - other than Morgan and Garcia, who were both talking with Lee and Katerina, respectively - was standing on one side of the kitchen, just staring at the band. I was just left awkwardly standing inbetween the two groups - three, if you counted Ariel and Hayley, who had gone into the living room to play with Jack.
"So, big brain." Katerina said after a bit, stopping her conversation with Garcia. "Are you gonna introduce us, or are we going to just stand here and stare at each other all night long?"
I blushed slightly, but was silently thanking Kat for breaking the ice a bit. "Right. Um, this is my team - you already know Derek Morgan and Penelope Garcia, and then this is Jason Gideon, Jennifer Jareau -" the woman in question gave me a Look, and I quickly corrected myself. "-sorry, JJ, and Aaron Hotchner - Ariel took his son, Jack, and wife, Haley, into the living room." Then I turned to my family - and that's what they were. While my team was slowly becoming like a second family to me, my real family was Gabe, Finn, Kat, Lee, and of course Ari.
"This is my family - Finn Ryan, Lee Voss, Katerina Simmons, and Gabe Geissler." I said, pointing to each of them in turn.
Garcia, unsurprisingly, was the one who broke the silence first. "So how did you guys meet?" she asked, and both Kat and Morgan started laughing, while I groaned. "What?" she asked. "What's so funny?"
"Okay, so you're gonna want to sit down for this story." Kat began, while Finn started to pull glasses down from one of the cabinets. "So our story begins about ten years ago…"
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Ariel's P.O.V.
Haley and I were playing with Jack in the living room, when there was a huge burst of laughter from the kitchen. We were both confused for a second, before JJ walked into the room, wiping tears from her eyes.
"Did Katerina really get those guys to leave Spence alone by threatening them with a Nerf gun?" she asked, as everyone else started to come into the room behind her.
I nodded, laughing. "Yup." I confirmed. "But that's nothing on how we met." I told them.
"Yeah, little lady." Morgan said, taking a sip of his beer. "You two never did tell us how that happened."
I sat down on the couch next to Spencer, and he wrapped his arms around my waist. "I guess you're right." I said, turning to look at my husband. "Do you want to tell them, or should I?" I asked him.
"You tell them." he said, and I sighed.
"Fine." I teased him, before turning to our friends. "So, our story starts about ten years ago, when we were fourteen…"
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"I was running late for my job - I was working at a local music store, giving lessons under the table - but I had spilled orange juice on my shirt, so I had to run upstairs and change first. By that point, I was basically living at the Simmons' house full time, sharing a room with Katerina. So, without even thinking about it, because I had thought that I was the only one home, I was taking off my shirt as I walked into the bedroom… only to stop about a foot into the room when I realized that there's this really geeky-looking kid with these huge glasses on his face sitting in my room and staring at me in horror."
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That was when both Haley and Morgan - along with the rest of the band - burst out laughing. "You've got to be kidding me!" Haley said, and I was a bit surprised. My first impression of Haley was that she was a bit more stern - kind of like her husband. But she proved me wrong fairly quickly.
"So you walked into your room, half naked -" Haley could barely get the words out, she was laughing so hard. "- and he's just sitting there, staring at you?"
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Spencer's P.O.V.
"Hey!" I protested, feeling the need to defend myself. "I was a fourteen year old kid who had barely even talked to girls, let alone seen one half naked! Then she walks into the room, hair flying, looking angry as hell, and without a shirt. And then Kat - who was the reason that I was even there in the first place, because I was tutoring her - walks in the room, and goes -"
Kat said the next part with me, even though she was nearly in tears from laughing so hard. "Hey, Ariel, have you met - holy crap, why are you naked?"
By that point, every single person in the room was howling with laughter - even Finn, Gabe, and Lee, who had heard the story a million times by now.
"You two are ridiculous, you know that?" Morgan said, shaking his head. "Coming from anyone else, that story wouldn't have been believed for a damn second."
"Oh trust me, I know." I said, rolling my eyes even as I pulled my wife in closer.
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It was hours later, and the party was just starting to wind down, when Penelope started to mess with the music. I thought about stopping her for a moment, then decided against it.
I regretted that decision when she found one of our songs.
The song started to play, and Garcia turned to me, saying, "I thought that I was the only one who still knew that this song even existed!"
Before I even had a chance to respond, I was already back on memory lane.
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It was 1998, and we were playing at the one place where we had a regular gig going - a tiny little restaurant that made great pasta and had us play every Tuesday night. Unfortunately, we weren't doing as well as we normally did, but we all knew why.
Kat had finally gotten up the nerve to break up with Joel, her last boyfriend, and he hadn't been happy about it. We had all known that something was seriously wrong with their relationship, but we hadn't realized just how bad things were until the next day when Kat showed up at school the next day looking more depressed than we had ever seen.
That was when we all learned the hard truth that not all abuse is physical. And that sometimes people can hide the truth until its almost too late.
That was also when she had started to wear darker colors - nothing like what she would wear in her future, but less of the bright pink dresses and things that Joel had had her wearing. It was her first small rebellion against Joel - the guy who had decided everything for her, from what she wore to how her hair was styled, to how long she could practice with us. The one other major change she made was that Kat retreated - not physically, but emotionally.
We had all known that something was wrong, and now we were all plagued with guilt for not doing something about it. Our previously confident and shining star of a friend - the girl who had gotten Around Mars together in the first place - was gone, and replaced by a fractured shell of her former self.
It took us several weeks, but she had slowly started to return back to her usual self, with a lot of help from us. Everything was looking up, until that night, when Joel decided to show up at our gig with some new girl on his arm. Things had started to go downhill as soon as she noticed him in the audience.
So we were pleasantly surprised when, after an attempt at one of our latest songs had failed miserably, Kat turned to us with a gleam in her eyes that we hadn't seen for far too long.
"Guys, I kinda want to try that new song that Ari and I just finished writing. Are you up for it?" she asked. We all agreed almost instantly, mostly because we were just happy to see even the tiniest hint that our girl was going to eventually be okay.
So Kat put down her guitar and walked towards the mic, brushing a lock of her long dark brown hair behind her ear as she went.
She gripped the microphone tightly in her hands, taking a deep breath before exhaling loudly, then signaling to us to start playing.
I picked up a guitar to back her up, and we started playing.
Insecure
In her skin
Like a puppet, a girl on a string
I could already see some of my best friend's confidence returning - she was playing to the crowd, performing the song. But most importantly, she was completely ignoring Joel.
Broke away
Learned to fly
If you want her back, gotta let her shine
So it looks like the joke's on you
'Cause the girl that you thought you knew
She walked off of the raised platform that we used as a stage, and started to walk around the resturaunt then, trying to get the audience involved. It was working - people were clapping along and dancing in their seats.
She's so gone
That's so over now
She's so gone
You won't find her around
You can look but you won't see
The girl I used to be
'Cause she's
She's so gone
As Kat sang the chorus, she hopped up onto the counter and just sat there for a minute, before jumping down, fixing her hair, and continuing on. I had never seen her like this before, and it puzzled me for a moment before I realized why. She was putting everything she had and then some into this performance because Joel was there - because she wanted him to think that he hadn't affected her at all.
Here I am
This is me
And I'm stronger than you ever thought I'd be
Are you shocked?
Are you mad?
That you're missing out on who I really am
Now it looks like the joke's on you
'Cause the girl that you thought you knew
She's so gone
That's so over now
She's so gone
You won't find her around
You can look but you won't see
The girl I used to be
'Cause she's
She's so gone away
Like history
She's so gone
Baby, this is me, yeah
She's so gone
That's so over now
She's so gone
You won't find her around
You can look but you won't see
The girl I used to be
'Cause she's
She's so gone
(That's so over now)
She's so gone
(You won't find her around)
You can look but you won't see
The girl I used to be
'Cause she's
She's so gone
So long
She's so gone, she's so gone... gone, gone, gone.
That night, Kat was happier than she had been for a long time, and we knew that everything would turn out right in the end. The next day, she showed up at school with most of her hair cut off, in the same style that would one day be her trademark look - all she needed was the hair dye.
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I snapped out of the memories as the song came to an end, which was lucky for me. Another few seconds and she would have been asking why I had spaced out, which was definitely a story that I did not want to share. Looking around the room, I could see that the rest of the band had just taken the same trip.
"I wonder whatever happened to them?" she asked. "One day they just disappeared - they were never really all that big, but they still had their fans."
Kat smiled. "They grew up." she said simply, shrugging her shoulders. "After a few years, they came back out with a new sound and a new name, but they're still around."
"Oh really?" she asked, intrigued. "What are they called now?"
This time, Lee answered. "Undiscovered Nemesis."
A/N~ Thank you so much to tannerose5, ahowell1993, ToTheStarButPickMagic, Wild Rose 900, raspberry dreams, KirkSauber, and ripon for their reviews! You are all brilliant people!