(A/N: Exactly half of these are plausible. The rest are merely meant to be amusing.)

10 Things Mark Hoffman Knows About Amanda Young

1. She has an uncanny ability to turn even the most mundane objects into weapons. Not just with her games: he still has a bruise from the time she threw her hairbrush at him. Her aim is pretty impressive too, for someone who- he assumes- does not shoot guns (or throw hairbrushes) on a regular basis.

2. She can't sing- but she does anyway, singing to herself under her breath or along with the radio while brushing her hair or sketching trap-designs; or screaming lyrics she obviously relates to when she's in the shower: any time she thinks she won't be over-heard. The passion and energy she puts into these vocalizations make it easy enough to forgive her being loud and unpredictably off-key.

3. Nothing turns her on faster than hot kisses and teasing little bites along her neck.

4. She would rather attempt to start a physical fight than answer a simple question about why her supplies for Troy's trap include a teddy bear and a welding torch.

5. She hasn't actually stopped cutting. She thinks she's being clever slicing up her legs rather than her wrists. She's not getting away with anything; it's just that John's stopped asking, and Hoffman has stopped caring.

6. She actually has a rather impressive vocabulary, but her ability to define- and pronounce- big words -like "eleemosynary" -("It means 'charitable'")- is overshadowed by her obvious inability to comprehend simpler words like "wait", "listen", or "please."

7. She screams when she climaxes: without control, inhibition, or care. She's also particularly vocal during foreplay and the actual act: she manages a few words- demands and encouragements- in between sighs and moans expressing pleasure and, possibly, gratitude. Then, there are her gasps and whimpers- cries for MORE- that she doesn't know can sometimes render him just as desperate and senseless as she is.

8. She sleeps with two pillows. The first usually ends up thrown on the floor at some point in her sleep regiment. The second smells faintly like sweat, apples, and lavender. She keeps a knife under that one- a precaution she swears that she's taken since she was a teenager.

9. She cried herself to sleep the night they helped John move into the makeshift sickroom. She cries for several reasons and several people. But she has shed more tears for her dying mentor than for her family, her victims, and even herself.

10. Indirectly and unintentionally or not, she is, in fact, responsible for the death of John's unborn son. And there are consequences...