#chwpanic

While he didn’t enjoy the close quarters he also knew better than to think he was truly alone. He couldn’t help the way he paced the walls looking for any sort of clue to explain the big red button on the plinth in the middle of the room, but he wasn’t going to let anyone watching from the comfort of their stupid mansions see him sweat. Was he supposed to press it? Or was it like the buried alive challenge, was he supposed to outlast everyone else? He’d never considered himself particularly smart, but he had the advantage of no one really knowing him well enough to be certain that he wasn’t a closeted genius. He’d figure out whatever the sick fucks in charge of the game wanted and he’d make it happen. Since the jump he’d promised himself he would get that money and he’d find his grandma the best care possible, whatever the cost.

Of course, Pete wasn’t as well versed in the legends of game as others who’d been in town longer than he had. His own dignity had been the high price he’d been willing to pay. It was supposed to be on him and him alone. Then Penn’s voice had crackled over the intercom and explained that he wouldn’t be playing this game alone, that someone important to him was there to encourage him.

“No…” the word slipped out of his mouth with such dread he swore he heard it hit the ground at his feet with a thud. Kenya had appeared on a screen at the far wall of the cell, the same strange cuffs on her wrists. They’d done it, the judges had found the one thing that might have a chance at derailing his game plan.

At first he’d laughed in disbelief at the idea of playing 20 Questions. It seemed like such an innocuous thing, a child’s game. Then again, so had being buried alive and that round had shaken him more than he cared to admit. What annoyed him more than anything was that Kenya seemed to be able to hear him but not see him, and he could see her but couldn’t hear her. What he would have given to hear her cussing out the assholes who had dared put their hands on her and drop her unwillingly into the game. Perhaps Penn had been right though, seeing her mouth the word ‘fuck’ a record breaking amount of times was more encouraging than he’d expected.

Even so, nothing was quite as encouraging as the first question he decided to pass on. It was about his grandma, about her health and if he was scared of losing her and being left with nothing. His reaction had been instinctual; no one had earned the right to know a thing about his family so it was an easy pass. There was a split second where he watched Kenya, certain her expression was one that agreed with his choice to stay silent. Then, again, the dread settled itself in the pit of his stomach as he watched her contort in unmistakeable pain. He couldn’t hear it, but god, he felt her cries like he’d been struck clean through the chest.

So that was the point of the game. The judges were blackmailing them for the truth, forcing them to cut themselves open and spill their guts for the vultures of Rosewood or choose to hurt someone they loved. The choices they made would be glaring– what was more important to them, keeping their secrets or the safety of the person on the other side of the screen?

The questions didn’t seem to come with any sense of regularity, to the point that Pete had abandoned standing by the buzzer and begun entertaining himself with a series of workouts. It was one way to gauge time at least, knowing how long it took him to complete one circuit in the rudimentary gym he had set up in his grandma’s garage. He spoke to Kenya too despite not being able to hear her back, initially promising her he would answer every single question to avoid her being shocked again, then just chattering away at anything off the top of his head; from his desire to take her on a date to one of those rooms where you got to break shit for fun, to a promise to actually meet her dad for real. “With all of Rosewood as my witness,” he’d chuckled darkly, middle finger raised as he turned around the room hoping every voyeuristic motherfucker watching felt personally victimised by the gesture.

Nevertheless his promise had been short lived. It turned out that even if he didn’t press the buzzer there was still a risk of being shocked. He’d been too slow to answer a question about how it felt to be friends with someone like Cohen so even if he did eventually mutter through gritted teeth that his friends’ wealth turned his stomach the judges deemed it insufficient and all of a sudden he was doubled over, groaning sickeningly through the shock until it passed and left him breathless and slumped against the wall.

More time passed and more questions were sprinkled intermittently between him slowly losing his mind in stress and boredom for all to see with varying levels of success. Some were difficult to answer, some were simple, but none were even close to comparable to the final round.

How did you come to know Kenya Stratford?

An innocent question in any other setting but it was naive of him to think the judges wouldn’t have known about the bet with Cohen, about the money that had changed hands every time he’d spent time with Kenya all so Cohen could get his moment with Birdie. Now he was stuck between a rock and a hard place with less than ten agonising seconds to decide his fate. He could answer truthfully, because lying would only make him look worse when the judges obviously knew, or he could break his earlier promise and pass. Perhaps he could spin it as not wanting anyone in their business, as a small price to pay for privacy.

That split second thought, finding his hand raised over the buzzer, sickened him to his core. The game had fucked him up so bad he had genuinely considered allowing these monsters to electrocute Kenya to save his own ass and win. His grandma was everything to him but he knew she’d despise him deciding that a shot at the prize money was worth it at the cost of the woman he’d fallen head over heels for. They could find money anywhere, he would stoop to accepting Cohen’s pity payouts if he had to. Kenya, she was incomparable, irreplaceable. She was not a price to pay, she was the only exception. Whatever happened after he opened his mouth, he deserved.

The questions had started off pretty tame all things considered; the disembodied voice brought up her mom, asked if she wished it were her dad who had died instead. Perhaps they’d underestimated her, what with the ease and confidence she’d said yes, she would have swapped their places in an instant.

She might not have been a tactical mastermind but she knew how Panic worked. The judges weren’t going to play fair so she couldn’t walk into any challenge expecting there to be a clear cut path to the finish line. The games were meant to make them uncomfortable, to push them to their limits, to break them in ways they didn’t know they could be broken. Early on in the game she had to decide how she wanted to play; earnestly, and risk being put through immeasurable pain, or tap into the confidence that had been so hard won.

When the judges asked if she regretted exploiting the secrets she’d learned for the sake of that first book of hers she’d let her jaw tense for a moment before she answered– a resounding no. When they asked if she liked the attention it had gained her she’d said it went both ways. Sometimes it was good, sometimes it was a target on her back, it all depended on the kind of secret she’d alluded to. Writing about a character who lived in a trailer park and stole designer clothes from the town’s most affluent to parade around as one of them certainly hadn’t gained her any favours with Axel, but having the other girl steal her boyfriend had turned out to be a blessing in disguise anyway.

Did she wish Cohen had chosen her instead of Birdie? That was the first question that made her truly balk, her hesitation apparently too long if the shock they’d delivered her was any indication. “Stupid question,” she’d spat a bitter laugh, doubled over and heaving for breath. “Maybe I wanted her to choose me.”

Now, while she’d had heart fluttering moments with the other girl it wasn’t like that at all. She was just trying to avert the questions away from anything that might cause friction when she was back in the real world. Whatever crush she’d had on Cohen had been put on ice a long time ago, they’d both chosen their friendship over anything else. The last thing she needed was to stir up insecurities in every single important person in her life.

The next question took a lot longer to come around, which made her head jolt up from where she’d been incessantly plucking at a loose thread on the knee of her jeans, turning it into a hole. Did she trust that Perrie’s feelings for Haven were entirely gone?

“More stupid questions!” she huffed, “I trust him with my life. Weren’t you watching the last challenge?”

Apparently that wasn’t considered a sufficient answer, or perhaps the judges had some sixth sense that could tell she wasn’t being entirely truthful. Whatever the reason, it had earned Brodie a turn to be shocked. Willow reeled her attitude in quick-smart at that point, teary eyes glued to the screen as she watched her brother silently writhe in pain. It was cruel of them to have dragged him into the game though she supposed that was the point, that she’d tell her darkest thoughts to the world to save her brother from suffering. “Fine!” she stuttered, pleading for them to leave Brodie alone, “I’m always scared that I love people more than they love me. Even Perrie.”

Was she using Birdie to give her social standing a leg up? Her answer came quickly, wanting it all to be over now that she knew there was no method to the judges’ madness. She or Brodie could be shocked at any point if her answers didn’t suit the narrative the judges had chosen.

“Yes. But that doesn’t mean my friendship isn’t genuine! Rosewood deserves better than a legacy of mean girls and Birdie can help me make it happen. It’s the same reason I signed up for this fucked up game,” her attention drifted to the cuffs around her wrists, nervous that she was going to get shocked again for speaking out of turn. Between that fear and the thoughts she was voicing aloud for the first time her heart was hammering out of control, the pressure on her chest like an elephant.

The only difference between Arden and a lot of the south siders that she had grown up with was that she hadn’t let her circumstances growing up harden her as a person. Like her neighbor Marlo or her best friend Cam, who had decided to join the greasers. Hell, even she had contemplated throwing herself in the ring but ultimately chickened out. She didn’t judge anyone for doing whatever they needed to do to survive though. She understood why others had done it, had put up a tough exterior in order to keep their head held up and their pride intact. When you didn’t have much else to lose but your pride you had to guard it with everything you had. 

Her hardships however had granted her never ending determination. So that no matter how low she would fall she could still find in herself the will to keep going, or at the very least the stubbornness to not give up until she had absolutely nothing left. The only question now was just how far was she willing to go in order to win?

That was a question she found herself ready to face as came upon Trevor in her search for a medallion. Someone she called a friend, someone she worked with, and someone who for as much shit as she gave him she actually respected because of how he never let anything bring down that goofy attitude despite all the shit he was faced with too. It was because of that fact that she trusted him enough to not think that he would pull anything when he warned her about the oncoming danger as the sounds of a shotgun rang out from nearby. 

She told herself that she would never let herself lose herself that much, that she would go as far as to sabotage someone else in order to get ahead. Even in the pageant scene when it seemed like everyone else was out to gunning for her, even when she wanted so badly to give people like Beverly a taste of their own medicine. She never let those kinds of intrusive thoughts get the best of her.

So why just before her and Trevor parted ways, as they heard the pack of dogs coming their way and decided it was better to split off, was she sneaking some of the hor d'oeuvres from the new year’s eve party she had saved for later in her crossbody bag into the blond’s pockets?

Did she hope that it would serve as enough distraction to lead the dogs towards him instead of her? Yes. Would she feel shitty if they actually attacked him and he got hurt because of it? Of course. She felt ashamed to think about what anyone else watching her footage would think? If her friends like Rosie, who thought of her so highly, would think less of her because of her actions? But as time went on and Arden was growing restless at not seeing any improvements in her life she was desperate for the money and would do anything for a chance at something better. 

But her first mistake was believing that she was in the clear as one of the dogs that had strayed from the pack was hot on her heels and took a bite at her achilles. 

After the string of attacks for the South Side’s businesses, a lot of establishments that’d already been struggling had now found themselves at wits end— unfortunately, that included her father’s shop. A shop that’d been a staple of the community for years. But her father, being her father... he’d never voiced that. The man simply kept a smile on his face and continued to make those around him laugh, because that was his super power.

And she refused to see that smile ever vanish, so in her eyes— Panic was hers to lose.

Penn called her number, which prompted her to make her way towards the front of the crowd that’d gathered where he’d stood. A mix of characters really. Some, she’d expected to be there, some were an utter surprise but regardless, they all looked ready for what this challenge entailed.

“You should all just pack it up now. Honestly.” Tallulah teased, as she received a flare from Chanel Horowitz. She looked between Penn and Chanel, again— the messiness. How could one not live for this shit? “Now, let me show y’all how this is done.” She said with ease she made a show of pulling her bikini bottoms up up to show off her buttocks. Tallulah gave her ass a slap, receiving cheers from her competitors.

Yeah, they might have been jumping off a cliff but did this all have to be so serious? No, no it didn’t have to be. 

So, in being her father’s daughter— Tallulah intended on enjoying every last bit of this competition and doing it with a smile on her face. Finally, it was something to keep her mind off of everything SoWood... well, until she had that grand prize, of course. A prize she’d use to help the South Side, without having to get help from Brooks, his brother Stefan, Ace or any of the rich guys who wished to do good but weren’t actually doing a thing.

After the trek up, which quite honestly was that exactly, she found herself  where she’d wanted to be. Sure, she’d caught sight of some people willing to go a bit further up the quarry and to those people, she wished them all the luck in the world but she knew her limits and this was more than enough for her. 

Plus, who wanted to paint a bullseyes on their back, first challenge? That’s just asking for an early chop.

Tallulah took a moment to take this all in. She imagined there had to be nowhere else like Rosewood, and despite all the shittiness that existed in their town... it was quite honestly never a boring place. So silver linings, she supposed? She lit up her flare, attention back on her as Penn asked for her name. 

“Everyone already knows it,” was Tallulah’s response to his question. “but if you don’t, I’m Tallulah Turnblad and I’m winning this entire thing.” 

Was Austin Rapp losing his relevance? If you asked his friends, that was impossible. But if you asked him, it was exactly what was happening. Austin had never considered himself particularly pre-occupied with his reputation but as of late he found himself unsure of where he stood. The general interest in theater as a whole had seemed to diminish, and in it’s place was either an obsession with all things celebrity or all things daring. It seemed like a logical Rosewood cycle. It wasn’t as if his hometown wasn’t a hub for all things exciting, rich and famous. But the older Austin got, the more he wasn’t sure where he fit in. The more he could feel that little spotlight he had held onto, start to disappear. 

Complacent was the word that came to mind when he thought about himself. Most days were spent writing music on his couch or getting high out of his mind and it hadn’t brought the same kind of joy it used to. He felt stagnant. Uncertain. And the moment the Panic flyer had fallen into his lap, he knew that this was his chance at redemption. At least with himself. He didn’t feel the need to prove himself to anyone. But he did feel the need to prove it to himself. That he, Austin Rapp, wasn’t just some already washed up theater kid. But that he was a badass. The man. The guy willing to try anything at least once. 

Not to mention, the ending of Pride month had left him feeling empty. Hollow even. For an entire month, people from town or on campus had wanted to hear his voice. They wanted to put him in photo campaigns, have him talk about his scars and experience, have him show up at parties or rallies. His transness had become a hot commodity and all it had done was make him feel more and more detached from himself. He had once again come to question his masculinity. How it held up to others. How it was reflected in his relationships. How despite everything he tried, he still didn’t feel fully at home in his own body. Not to mention, there had been plenty of assholes at all of these events, yelling about how his own euphoria was something to be disgusted by. 

These were all of the thoughts circling through his mind as he pulled up to the party at the quarry. He hadn’t told anyone he was jumping, mostly because he as scared it’d get back to his dad and he knew that any of his friends had the power to talk him out of it. He blasted his music on the way there, smoking joint after joint and there was one still hanging from his lips by the time he got to where the jump was supposed to be. He didn’t even look at the crowd around him and when he saw Javi standing on the platform ahead of him, he felt a source of comfort and continued to walk forward. 

He had been young when the first Panic had happened but one of his brothers had participated and the rest of them had watched. He knew some of them were scattered about and would be a bit shook when they heard his name. But he wasn’t a baby anymore. He was a man. Or something like that. Man, woman, neither. He didn’t really know. But he knew that this jump was the first step towards something wild and new. And it was everything he needed right now. 

So he flicked some ash off the joint as he took the flare. “Here, I’ll trade ya,”he told Chanel and handed her the joint with a grin before he stepped up to the edge. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, thought about everything piling up and then...he jumped, high and forward and even managed to complete a flip (something he had learned from a diver he had hooked up with) before he went falling into the water. 

And when he did, the cold of the water was like an embrace, a welcome back to the chaos and he emerged from the water smiling, laughing even. But there was no real way for him to know if this was good or bad. 

He couldn’t hold it in so much that he didn’t tell his wife. Even at his darkest, not telling her seemed like a line he couldn’t cross. But he didn’t tell her until they were on their way and he pulled out the bag with towels in the backseat. He knew that in the end she’d support him but that didn’t make the conversation in the car any less tense. Still, he promised that if things got too crazy he’d just bow out, if that was even an option. Still, he pulled her closer for a kiss and promised to keep careful as they arrived at the quarry.

But just as he had felt before a performance, his nerves were nowhere to be found. His focus more on how to actually compete in this. If he was going to go for it, he was going to give it his best. He had been sure about this, even doing as much to dig up whatever he could find out about the last time this game had been played. He knew one thing, he had to be prepared to do anything, even things that may have gone against what he wanted. But it was a price he decided he was willing to pay. 

What was the worst that could happen - he died?

He only looked back at Oddie for another moment before he made his way towards the jump. Deep breathes and he made his way up, giving his name as he took a flare without a joke or glance at the crowd or much glance at who else was up there. But he had looked up just in time to hear a familiar named called and then a rush of a familiar figure by him and into the water. 

Agnes?

What the hell was he thinking ?

“ I’m going to die up here. “ Jamie said to himself as he tried to will his feet to move. 

What was he trying to prove himself?

Was it all really to show that he was able to do this? Was it some need to finally live his life beyond just an adoration of weird? Was it someway for him to connect himself to the mysteries and crimes he covered in his podcast? Perhaps it was all of the above; perhaps it was none of it. Jamie honestly had no idea why he was here but he didn’t want it back down. For the first time he knew he didn’t want to walk away from a challenge. He didn’t want to be the guy hiding behind his work using his poor social interactions as a crutch to not meet new people and to live his life behind a microphone in a room where he talked about double homicide and whether or not there was a serial killer gene? What had been his years of friendship with people like Axel and Agnes been for if their influences to live life had all been for nothing? 

All he knew was he couldn’t sit back and let life pass by. He talked about things that were exciting and dangerous and scary, but he had never lived his life in a way that will dictate he knew what that feeling was first hand. He played it safe for far too long and what did he have to show for it other than a couple friends (who he actually owed a lot to ) and a podcast where no one actually knew who he was beyond what he liked to talk about. He didn’t want to be scared anymore he didn’t want to be held back by his past and by a mother who wanted him under her thumb.

Jamie thought he had moved past whatever damage she had done to him over the years, but as soon as her calls started to come in again, the young man was thrust back into a world that didn’t seem like he had any autonomy. It could have been far worse, he knew there were worse cases of parental control and lies that veered into true danger. But his childhood still had impacted him as an adult and was still hanging over him in many ways. This task while completely insane was the most control Jamie could have over his life. It was his final middle finger to the way he was raised and taking complete control over his destiny. He had his own home he had a career pat,  he had friends, but he still on some level felt tied to his past. This could change things. 

Unless it killed him. 

Maybe that was why he couldn’t just let this one past him this time. The whole ordeal was utterly insane.. It also seemed like a few cases he had covered in his show and none of them went well. Was he eventually going to end up stuck in a cave forever due to some dare? His own anxiety about the situation could have sent him packing immediately. However those mysterious flyers at piqued his interest in the same way that serial killers had. This was something that felt like his own cases. He could be part of the story. There was something intriguing about the fact that he could be connected to something strange and in many ways unexplainable If they had he wouldn’t have brought them up. Was this what he really wanted in the end? To be a story that didn’t end in total macabre disaster. The game was twisted and devious and something Jamie would have normally wanted to be part of based on how others talked about it, but this may have been a bit extreme. 

The longer Jamie waited and debated things the more his nerves got to him and he realized it was now or never. If he kept at it there was no way he would jump. Whatever points he was proving would in the end have no meaning and Jamie wasn’t sure if he wanted to live with being someone who would cop out not after he made such great strides in his personal and professional life. That was all the kick he needed at this point before he took out his inhaler for old time sake took a puff of air and went straight for the edge. Now there was no way to second guess or look back.

“If worst comes to worst, I’ve had a good life”

Growing up she fully believed that it was a blessing how she and her sisters did everything together. That because they had all gone through the same experiences there would always be someone for them to lean on who understood exactly what each other was going through. That they were so in sync they could almost read each others minds. And that as long as they were together they wouldn’t really need anyone else. But what she didn’t realize back then, back before the world had trampled all over her naive and simple way of thinking, was that in order for that bond to stay exactly as it was meant that nothing about them could ever really change. Something that seemed like a much easier task before they began to interact with more of the outside world.

Over time an underlying resentment began to take root in Nova’s heart and started rotting her from the inside. She was inarguably the most free spirited of the siblings, the one who jumped headfirst into every unknown opportunity and the one who put herself out there the most. She was the one constantly pushing the limits of what they were allowed to do with their newly found freedom. It was because of this lust for life that she felt more people gravitate towards her. People were interested in her, they wanted her attention. For the first time she was felt seen by people other than her sisters. And for someone who had constantly been put down and had her worth diminished by her own mother, being an object of desire to outside parties gave her the validation she so desperately longed for. These new relationships quelled the silent fear of abandonment that was always haunting her in the back of her mind. But the realization quickly hit that none of these connections were real. None of them wanted her because she had anything to offer that they wanted. They wanted her as a trophy or something to conquer, some even admitting that they used her as a stepping stone to try to get to her sisters. She wasn’t seen as Nova but as a Lisbon.  

That never changed despite the hobbies she threw herself into or the flings she had. Still, she never dared voice any of these feelings of hostility to her sisters. She already felt like enough of a burden to her family, constantly bringing them down with her antics and wracked with this feeling that she needed to apologize for her existence in general, that she chose instead to bottle it up. Her mother had successfully convinced her that her own hardships were deserved, that they were punishments for the type of life she lead. Maybe that was why to this day she still wasn’t able to form any real lasting outside relationships outside of her familial attachments. Because she still didn’t truly feel like she deserved good things. Sure, she was slowly recovering and relearning her worth through her peer mentoring. But in a lot of ways she was still stuck in that mindset that her attempts to let anyone in too close again would just end as they always did. She was okay with her fleeting superficial connections because at least if no one wanted her in the long run she was content with knowing that she could be a nice memory for someone later down the line. That someone out there wouldn’t forget her, just as she had forgotten herself.

Things had been much more simple for her family before they had arrived to Rosewood. That wasn’t to say that any of the relationships were healthier. Because looking back at it the way they were so dependent on only each other to fulfill their happiness was slightly detrimental to their growth as people. Though it was to be expected as they bonded through their trauma. Back then they didn’t know anything else. They had everything they needed so there was no reason to want anymore. Was this town the start of the girls’ awakening? Or was it that they simply began to grow older and wisen up?

Nova didn’t cry or beg for her sisters to stay as they began to leave the confines of their family home one by one. Being left behind, left to fight through the abuse of their parents practically alone by the end, was still such a fresh wound for her even though it had been so long since it happened. And set her abandonment issues on overdrive, feeling that she was easily disposable even to her family. But she knew they had do it. They had go their own ways in order to find their own peace and happiness. Instead she chose to cover up her pain with over the top bubbliness. How could she still hold bitterness over the way things had gone down when she could see with her own eyes just how much better they were doing now. Tessa had her baking thing and a relationship that made her happy. Marina was off being a girl boss while juggling her own relationship. They were both surrounded by love and acceptance from so many people. Even Cecily had grown to be a much stronger, thoughtful, wiser person than the lot of them. She couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of pride to see just how far they had come. Enough to even take the initiative to join something like Panic.

Now, as she made her march to the edge of the cliff and thought of her sisters she started to feel that sense of disappointment again. Only it wasn’t directed towards them but at herself. Maybe her mom had been right all those years. Maybe there was no helping her. Not as long as she let those intrusive feelings continue to take control of her. But she was going to let that drive her to prove her wrong in the end.

Teetering on the cliff’s edge with her flare in one hand she reached up with her free hand to clutch at the cold metal of the gold cross that continued to dangle from her neck, even after enduring so much pain and losing so much of her faith. Just before Penn cued for her to announce her name she tore it off and threw it as far into the quarry as she could, a symbol of starting to let go of her past so she could finally move forward for herself.

“Nova!” She shouted to the crowd (just Nova) before tossing the flare to the side and jumping into the cold water, funnily enough after letting go of her necklace almost reminding her of a baptism. She would come out of the water born anew and with a whole new lease on her life.