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12 Monkeys Theories

Under the cut cause it’s long and with spoilers for last night’s episode.

#12monkeys #12monkeysthemeweek #Sam is the witness #Cassie created herself

“Give me yellow and I could paint you the world!”-Jennifer Goines

#12monkeys #Jennifer Goines #12monkeysthemeweek #Fanart

12 Monkeys Theme Week Day 5 - Finale Wishlist #4

Did I say I didn’t know what I wanted from the finale?

Insurance

“We have to at least try!” Cassie threw her hands up in the air and did her best not to throw something, but he was being stubborn and it was scaring her. He’d never turned that wall of solid denial against her before; it was always for her, with her. Against everyone else.

“It won’t work again.” He said, his voice low and calm and unarguable. “It’s already done its work. I’m healed. It almost killed me. There’s nothing more it could do.”

“Don’t say that. You’re still the same person, he’s still the same person. You’re still from different times. It’ll work again.”

Cole moved closer, hunkered down to look her in the eye, and she lifted her chin defiantly to make him readjust. She loved when he got close and intense like this, but not when he was being an idiot. “You never went back, Cassie. I’d have remembered that.”

“I can go back now. Following the script has gotten us nowhere.”

“Cass. Don’t.”

And in that moment, she decided to lie to him, for the first time. “Fine,” she said. “Fine, I won’t. I have to go to work.” She brushed past him, grabbed her coat and her bag, tried to leave without looking at him, because he’d see the lie if she did, but he caught her hand and pulled her back. It sent a tingle up her arm–he so rarely took her hand; it was like he didn’t know how.

“Cass. It’s for the best. You know that.”

He swallowed, schooled her expression. “I know.”

Cole’s face softened, and he brushed her hair out of her eyes, let his fingertips linger on her jaw, behind her ear. A whole new constellation of longings and trembles curled through her stomach and her heart. They were together now–or soon would be. She shouldn’t be lying to him.

But she also shouldn’t be letting him kill himself. There were no do-overs these days.

It must’ve shown on her face. She never did have a good control over things like that.

“Cass–”

“I have to go.” And she did, quickly, before he could stop her. He stood in the door, watching her leave, scowling until she was out of view, but he didn’t chase her down or anything. He could have.

As soon as she was on the road, she called work an told them she’d be a little late, and detoured to the orphanage.

They’d had the prethought to have her and Jones listed among the few people who were allowed access to Cole-the-child; she got strange looks–she could practically hear them all wondering “why doesn’t she just adopt him?”–but no one stopped her.

“I don’t want to go with you again,” he said, so young and small, but already developing that scowl his older self had perfected. “I’m staying with Ramse.”

Her heart chipped a little. But she wasn’t going to bother him with that particular story. “I just need to take some more blood. Then you’ll never see me again.”

“That’s not true,” he said. “Don’t lie. I can tell when you lie.”

She tried to smile. The scowl was still there, but he held out his arm. “Okay, I’ll leave now, and it’ll be a long time before you see me again.”

He didn’t answer. She filled two vials, and gave him a snack so he wouldn’t feel dizzy.

“Goodbye, James.”

“I’m Cole now.”

“Cole.”

She went to leave, but he moved suddenly and wrapped his arms around her waist, squeezing tight. “I’ll see you soon,” he said.

She almost fell apart right there.

Work was a blur of cataloging and testing, notating and researching, an she couldn’t keep her mind on any of it. She dreaded going home. But she couldn’t not–she had to. They were a team.

Cole, the adult one, met her at the door, opening it before she could get her key in the lock. He didn’t look mad–and her heart turned over in relief and shame–but he also didn’t smile or hug her.

“You went. I remember now.”

“I had to.”

“I know.” A pause, then, “Where is it?”

“In a fridge at work, labeled as inconspicuously as possible. No one will bother it and we can get it if we need it.”

“Cassie. You shouldn’t have changed the timeline.”

“It’s only a small change.”

“We can’t know that.”

“I couldn’t let you die, if there was any way to save you. You of all people should understand that.”

He was quiet for a long time. She sad on the edge of the motel bed, didn’t even take her coat off, and mourned what she lost because she wanted to save him–and didn’t realize he was coming up beside her until he sat down, too, hip to hip, and twined his arm around her shoulders. He kissed the side of her head and she burst into tears–not for long, she wasn’t the sobbing sort, but she hadn’t realized how upset she was until he forgave her. And all the knots in her stomach and chest released all at once.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m still me. Maybe it didn’t change anything. We’re still here.”

“Not much of a happy ending.”

“Our happy ending is that we get to keep fighting. We’re both alive. Let’s keep it that way.”

#12 monkeys #12monkeysthemeweek #12 monkeys theme week #samiholloway #samiholloway fanfic #god theyre tragic

12 Monkeys Theme Week Day 5 - Finale Wishlist #3

I had this idea and I just couldn’t not write it.

Letters From The Past

The scavs would be through their defenses soon, and if Jones was to die, she wished it to be on her own terms. And so she retreated to her own chambers, locked all the doors between the hall and her office, and opened her trunk. All that remained of her old life–all that remained of her whole world, and of the only few things she’d loved–was in this trunk. Hannah’s blanket, the one she’d brought her baby home from the hospital in. Pictures of everyone who had died around her. Her favorite books. Her parents’ wedding bands.

And an envelope she’d never opened.

It was one of those large ones, big enough for a thick folder or a moderate stack of papers, and she’d gotten it only days before she’d had to leave her home in 2017–in the middle of the apocalypse. It had no return address, but she recognized the handwriting as Dr Railly’s. She’d told them to go, to forget about her. She didn’t want to know what happened to them–or what was to happen to her. And then this letter had arrived.

Now, what did it matter? They had hours left, at most, and then time would be someone else’s daily headache.

She opened the envelope.

The first page was a note from Dr Railly, saying she knew Jones had asked not to be told anything, but that their adventures since last they spoke had changed her opinion of the subject and she now knew that they all needed to share as much information as they had.

Jones humphed, and it a cigarette. She put aside the letter.

Under was another letter, this one in Mr Cole’s atrocious and little-used scrawl. This one was much longer, made of sections written in different pens on different days, some neater than others, one smeared with what looked like drops of blood and another with a ring of brown coffee stains. These pages told of everything they’d faced, every lead they’d followed and all of their outcomes, every clue they’d found and all the rumors and whispers they’d heard. They started out quick and formal, file pages, and soon became longer, more personal. She was reading Cole’s own diary of their mission.

Jones covered her mouth and choked back a sob she didn’t know was coming until it broke through.

“Oh, Mr Cole. I should have opened this much sooner,” she said into the silence of her rooms.

It was almost too much, this journal. It was so very him, and it made her heart ache that all these trials he and Dr Railly had faced, they had faced them because she sent him back. She heard his voice in the sloppy, hasty handwriting, and it hurt that she would never see her friend return.

She almost put the whole thing away, but instead, she lit another cigarette and turned the page.

Behind the journal was a folded map with fifteen points precisely marked–all within a day’s walk, or a day’s drive on the roads, from this very location. And in small, precise script–Dr Railly’s again–beside each, a note on what was there: “results of our research on the Army”, “everything we know about Jonathan Gibbons”, “Peters’s journal and various notes on virus creation”, “The Pale Men”, “Everything Jennifer has told us about the Daughters, and some other things”…

They’d left her caches of information. They had no way of getting them to her now, when they mattered, since Mr Cole was severed from the machine, but they set up hidden libraries she could access in her own time.

Libraries that could still exist.

Jones clambered to her feet as quickly as her abused bones would allow, and went to find Mr Whitley with the map clutched in her hand. Time had not run out. They had new details they hadn’t had before.

“Mr Whitley! Evacuate the base, leave anything you can’t pack quickly! We have somewhere to go!”

“What are you taking about?” His hands were bandaged, but he was cleaning and checking his gun anyway. Some blood showed through.

Jones waved the map in Mr Whitley’s face and slapped at it with the hand holding the cigarette, then brushed the ashes off. “It’s Mr Cole and Dr Railly! They’ve saved us.”

“And where was this a day ago? A month ago?”

“Unavailable. But this map represents more hope than we have had since Mr Cole left for 1987. We’re going. Evacuate. Now!”

Mr Whitley hesitated just a moment longer, eyeing her the way he did when he was questioning her sanity–she had seen that look many times since she convinced him to leave Spearhead with her–while she waved her hands at the scientists and soldiers, snapping instructions. But he decided, again, blessedly, that she was sane enough to follow.

“You heard the woman,” he said. “Move!”

Jones paused long enough to meet his eyes and smiled, just a little, hoping he could read all the things she could not tell him–and there were so many things. He returned her mile, just the tiniest bit, and nodded.

Jones wheeled about to pack her own things. They had a new mission.

#12 monkeys #12monkeysthemeweek #12 monkeys theme week #samiholloway #samiholloway fanfic

12 Monkeys Theme Week Day 5 - Finale Wishlist #2

Jones is so fun to write, but harder than Cassie or Cole.

Courting

Jones had just decided not to smoke another cigarette and was still sitting on the porch when the man in the suit stepped out of the car and strode up to her. She’d never seen him before, but he looked like he knew where he was going, and she saw recognition on his face. She didn’t know him, but he knew exactly who she was.

“Dr Jones.”

“I’m afraid you must be mistaken.”

“I’m not. I’m here about a government employment opportunity.”

Jones decided to smoke after all; it was armor as much as addiction, and it bought her time. Once it was lit, she took a long drag, then let the smoke out in one long stream. “I have no need of government funding. Or oversight.”

“This is less about oversight and more about survival.”

That sent up a red flag. Words like survival, plague, government, all of these were red flags since she met that man who claimed he was from the future and the doctor who believed him. She had seen some strange things that day, and most of them convinced her that her research was on the right track. Some of it left her with an uneasy feeling that she should have asked what was to come–to have more warning. For times like this.

“Survival?”

The man stepped a little closer, put his hands in his pockets like he was entirely at ease, and squinted at her with a half-sideways look. “Terrible things are coming, Doctor Jones, and we want to save the best and brightest for the time after.”

“After.”

“There will always be an after.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“That’s what our program aims to do. Make us certain.”

“I’m sorry but I must decline.”

The man took the smallest step back, and she took another drag on her cigarette. He wasn’t as sure as he thought he was.

“The offer stands, for as long as it takes.” The way he said the sentence sounded half like a threat and half like her chance to accept was limited, though he didn’t say it. “My superiors are convinced that your research could be of use to us.”

“It could be of use to everyone if I can get back to my lab.” She stood, pulled her coat around her, moved to brush past this man and his false surety dismissively. He caught her arm and turned her back to face him.

“Don’t take this lightly, Doctor Jones. In less than a year, everything is going to hell and we plan to survive it.”

“So do I.”

“Take my card,” he said, and fished something out of his coat pocket. “If you change your mind–if the situation changes your mind for you–call me.” He pressed the card into her hand and left without a backward glance. She looked down at the card as he drove off. Cream card stock. Slightly raised letterpress printing. Only a name and a phone number: Enki, and a phone number.

She held the card over the flame of her lighter, a new cigarette in her lips, but in the end, she couldn’t bring herself to burn the card. She wasn’t interested. She had Project Splinter, barely getting started. She had a good team. And she had no use for questionable leadership when she was fully capable of leading herself.

But Mr Cole and Dr Railly had both spoken of a virus, a plague, a world-destroying event. And she had a daughter now to worry about. In the end, she stuffed the card into her pocket and left it there. She didn’t look at it again for almost a year.

#12 monkeys #12monkeysthemeweek #12 monkeys theme week #samiholloway #samiholloway fanfic

12 Monkeys Theme Week Day 5 - Finale Wishlist

You guys? I have no idea what I think will happen in the finale, but I wrote some stuff anyway. I feel like I posted this one already but I don't have time to check; forgive if I did!

The Days After

They hadn’t been able to get much from the bookstore–and there wasn’t much to get anymore–so they’d left as soon as they were sure no one saw them. Cassie drove, looking straight ahead, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. Behind her, Cole scrabbled into new clothes in the back seat. He moved easily for the first time in who knows how long. Weeks. And his skin was smooth and undamaged, all his scars smoothed away. All but a solar-flare shaped burn on his chest where the needle had gone in.

Cassie tried not to look, to give him privacy, but there was an ease to his movements now that drew her eye.

When he was dressed, he leaned forward, bracing his elbows against the front seats, and for just a moment, she remembered another time he was in the seat behind her–but the open almost-smile on his face was far better than the knife to her throat.

“Where’re we going?”

“I have no idea. Away.”

“We’ll have to make a plan. Soon. We’ve got a narrow window to really make a change; we can’t waste it now.”

Cassie opened her mouth to talk, then closed it, and finally sighed and pulled the SUV off the road and far enough into the woods to be shielded. “Not tonight,” she said. “I’ve had enough of plans and plots tonight.“

"Okay,” Cole said. He didn’t even try to argue, and it almost made her cry, she was so grateful right in that moment. She wasn’t as strong as she let people think. She’d spent years being looked at sideways, talked about in hushed voices, dealt with. Cole looked at her directly. He believed her when she spoke. She wanted to stay here, wrapped in darkness with only him forever.

She crawled through to the back seat, and with Cole’s help, she got the bench seat folded away so the whole back was open, almost big enough to stretch out in. Which she did. She laid down and covered her face with her hands and just stayed like that for a while.

Almost a full minute later, she heard Cole shift, felt him lay out next to her, not touching but close enough that she could feel the warmth of him. He wasn’t feverish now, but he’d always run warm, and it was the best feeling. The snow was piling up on their windows, the bitter cold was creeping in. She pulled her heavy jacket over herself like a blanket.

“It’s been years since I slept outside in the winter,” Cole said. “Course, last time we didn’t had any shelter at all.”

“You and Ramse?”

Almost no hesitation. “Yeah. Me and Ramse.”

She rolled on her side to look at him. “Tell me what it’s like. In the future.”

“Cold, mostly. Hungry. Mean.”

“And?”

“Hard. It’s hard. It’s been hard most of my life. When it was new, when things were still bad and there were still a lot of people, we lived in an isolation zone. It was too crowded, dirty, never enough of anything. That’s when it became obvious we were immune, and me and Ramse split. Better to keep to ourselves, away from the rest. Everyone was scared. Everyone was dangerous. We were just kids.”

He paused, and covered her with his blanket, stretched it over his legs, too. Pulled his own jacket up over his shoulder. She burrowed her hand through the layers and found his, laced her fingers between his.

“The woods were hard. We were always hungry. Always moving. Barely sleeping. It was like that again after we ditched the scavs, but worse because they were looking for us, not just maybe incidentally finding us. We lost a lot of friends. But–”

“But what?”

“But without it, I never would have come here. I never would have met you.”

“Is it worth it?”

“You’re worth it. I’m still undecided on the rest.”

“Tell me more.”

Cole talked quietly, murmuring details and stories, not following any pattern, just filling the silence. He folded his arm under his head and she snuggled her head on it, inching closer as she slowly relaxed into sleep.

She dreamed about desolate emptiness where everyone she knew used to live–and she woke with warm arms around her, Cole’s steady heartbeat under her ear, one hand tangled loosely in her hair and the other still twined with her fingers. If nothing else went right, she still hand this moment, this exact moment. The pale sun barely lighting the snow on the windows. Cole, sleeping soundly and naturally, no nightmares, no fear he’d stop breathing. Her own limbs relaxed and warm despite the winter.

She determined to remember every detail, so she could come back here in her mind when everything was hopeless.

This was her happy place now.

#12 monkeys #12monkeysthemeweek #12 monkeys theme week #look how tragic they are #samiholloway #samiholloway fanfic

Apparently I posted 7 things???

insanityofdanyi

No Rest - http://samiholloway.tumblr.com/post/115936874597/12-monkeys-theme-week-day-4-casserole

Casseroles - http://samiholloway.tumblr.com/post/115936854482/12-monkeys-theme-week-day-4-casseroles

(untitiled) - http://mousymissmousy.tumblr.com/post/115958622726/12-monkeys-theme-week-day-4-casserole-4

Bending History - http://mousymissmousy.tumblr.com/post/115958613241/12-monkeys-theme-week-day-4-casserole-5

(untitled drabble) - http://mousymissmousy.tumblr.com/post/115958613241/12-monkeys-theme-week-day-4-casserole-5

Scars - http://samiholloway.tumblr.com/post/115936749682/12-monkeys-theme-week-day-4-casserole-2

Failure - http://samiholloway.tumblr.com/post/115936715802/12-monkeys-theme-week-day-4-casserole

GUYS! If I missed any, link them up? Apparently Tumblr’s search function even when clicking directly on your own tags on your own blog is STUPID. I had to go through four tags to get all of them, even though they all have the same tags!

#12 monkeys #12 monkeys theme week #12monkeysthemeweek #samiholloway #samiholloway fanfic

12 Monkeys Theme Week Day 4 - Casserole

I have no idea how many I’ve written by this point.

No Rest

They both had nightmares after that night. Cassie dreamed of betrayal and death and not being able to know who she could trust. Of a thousand black-clad arms with pale hands grabbing at her. Their touch was always cold, and she always woke up chilled to the bone and shaking. Usually, she woke because she’d called out and woke herself up–or because Cole woke her. His hands were always warm. Even after the paradox cure reset his DNA, effectively washing the serum from his body, he ran warm, with a high metabolism and a radiating heat filling the spaces between them. Spaces that got smaller the longer they lived out of the back of her SUV or the small, dingy motel rooms they rotated through.

On the worst nights, Cole held her and helped her stay awake, then helped her relax so she could sleep again, smoothing his rough hands over hers until she unfisted her fingers and laid back down under the blankets.

Neither of them commented on how the second bed never got used. It was too far away, no matter how small the room.

Cole’s nightmares were about being consumed by light that left nothing of himself behind, or about being overrun by violent men with knives and guns and dead eyes that wanted to kill him or make him like them. The first night, he woke with his gun in his hand, and terrified himself with the realization that he was about to point it at Cassie, that he’d mistaken her closeness for part of the attack he’d dreamed of.

She’d still been asleep, but he dropped his gun and scrubbed his hands over his face anyway, breathing too hard, teetering on the edge of some trembling sort of madness he feared more than anything else. Anything but losing Cassie without the ability to go back and fix it.

But usually, it was Cassie who woke him, her hand on his chest, her eyes big and worried. She’d looked the same when he was dying, before the cure; he’d hoped being healthy again would make that look go away. She always woke him carefully, quietly, much gentler than when he woke himself from the nightmares. Then she’d smooth his hair back, and murmur nothings to him until his breathing slowed, his heartbeat stuttered down to a normal speed. He couldn’t trust that they were safe now. He couldn’t let that guard down and risk letting Cassie get hurt.

They had nightmares, but they had each other, too, and as long as that was true, they could do anything.

They stayed off the grid for eight weeks before they were forced to settle. It was the coldest winter either of them had seen in years, and they compared notes about the quality of the cold, the way it knifed through you when you least expected it. It was better than talking about everything they’d lost.

Some nights, they slept snuggled together under their coats and Cole’s blanket in the back of the SUV like the first night, right after the paradox cure. Some nights, they slept out in the open in the woods, where Cole was teaching her everything he knew about living in the wild, off the grid. Those were the worst nights, and after each of them, Cassie insisted on staying in a tiny motel somewhere nondescript for a few days afterward. Never more than three days. Never more than an hour’s drive from the CDC so she could still go to work and make the income they were now using up just staying hidden. She acted like nothing had happened around them, at work, but Cole saw how thin she was getting.

So Cassie went to work, and burned up her vacation days and Jules’s conviction that she’d successfully weathered her breakdown when she couldn’t.

When she went, Cole stayed in the room with a gun close at hand and a stack of notebooks, recreating all their lost files, trying to make connections. When she found something new, she brought it home to him.

Every day she went, she felt like something terrible would happen while she was relatively safe at work, and every day she came home, the relief made her wrap herself up in his arms. It was like she couldn’t properly breathe until she was home. He was her home now.

Jones had said he was of 2015 now. He believes that. But Cassie had spent two years watching him go and waiting for him to return, and she never quite believed he wouldn’t poof out of existence when she didn’t have eyes on him. Both of them grew thin and tired. But they also grew closer and warmer. She caught herself watching his hands as he scratched in a notepad with a sharpie, or shuffled through pages with the pen sticking out of his mouth. She caught him watching her pace around one small room or another, trying to make their random-seeming bits of info match up.

In those moments, they always smiled, and the winter seemed less cold.

They had a plan. There was no way to communicate with Jones in the future–no way for them to be warned–but they could leave information she could use then, information she could give to Cole before he left. Or whoever came after Cole, now that he was just another test subject lost in time, as far as anyone but Jones knew.

Everything they found, every single scrap, they copied twice. One for their own files, and one for the Jones File–actually, a series of files. They hid them in places that Cole knew would survive relatively unscathed–a safety deposit box in a certain bank, the basement of an abandoned farmhouse that Cole and Ramse will-did stay in one night, a cement pit that they could close off and that would remain closed for thirty years. Cassie marked all the locations on a map–also in duplicate–one for them and one for her. Cassie barely knew her, and only this younger version that was her contemporary; Cole knew her as a friend, as something approaching a mother–if your mother used you as a willing pawn and a test subject, and made deeply problematic moral decisions about you life but still cared about you.

Sometimes Cole talked about his life growing up. There were a lot of stories of raids and attacks; a few stories of pranks and embarrassing moments. He tried not to say Ramse’s name, but their lives had always been a joined life. In return, she told him about her life. She considered it so typical as to be boring–she’s always craved something more exciting–but Cole wanted all the details. The world was still new to him. Everything was something he’d never seen before.

The day they planted the last file cache, they decided it was time to find a new place to live. Her credit cards couldn’t take much more, and Cole had no way to help that, since officially, he was either five years old or didn’t exist, depending on how you looked at it. And they were exhausted from moving, always moving.

They still had work to do, and they needed a safe home base to do it from.

#12 monkeys #12monkeysthemeweek #12 monkeys theme week #samiholloway #samiholloway fanfic