We Only Wanted To Live

Multishot. Sads ahead, probably.

Here is where all threads set in the month after the game belong. This is the place to post your character's individual epilogues or interactions. Handlers with a surviving character may have one active aftermath thread in addition to other threads. Make sure to read the Supers Denouement before posting here!

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Gundham
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We Only Wanted To Live

#1

Post by Gundham »

((Cecilia Moreno continued from C-WALK))

It felt strange to come home.

The first time, there hadn't been a home to come back to. Nothing had been the same. It'd been a new room in a new house in a new city with new clothes and new caregivers. She also had a new brother, who had the same name and the same face as the old one, but who scowled all the time and hid in his room, and lashed out angrily and hit things whenever he was upset. There'd probably been a new her, too. She remembered, sometimes, being a girl who smiled and told jokes, who blushed and hid behind a curtain of her hair when her dad said something to tease her, or when the boys at school said something rude. She remembered running up and down the street with her friends, kicking an old soccer ball around and cheering like a maniac whenever she scored. The new Cecilia didn't do things like that. The new Cecilia was hurt by things like that, because the new Cecilia knew what it was like to have it all taken away.

This time, there was a home. Cecilia noticed that a few pictures of her had been clustered together in the living room - she wondered if maybe they'd done a wake. But nobody would have come to it, would they? All of her friends were back in Mexico. Maybe some people from church, or some of the local families, people who would have come more to support Tia Paulina than to mourn the passing of the sullen, quiet niece who didn't talk to anyone.

There was her cramped little room, which had once been a pantry or something - one of those narrow rooms that was too small for people. Tia Paulina's house had been built with fewer bodies in mind, and there was only the one spare bedroom. That and the pantry. Cecilia had chosen the latter. She said it was because she knew Rafael would want the bigger room, but that hadn't really been the reason. She'd taken it because it felt familiar. Because she could sleep in the pantry lengthwise, but it was too narrow the other way. So on some nights, she would sit with her legs folded up, crammed between two walls, remembering what it was like to not have a bed, and not have a blanket. To remind herself not to get comfortable, in any sense of the word.

She was surprised to discover that her room had a scent. She'd been gone for a few days, smelling different smells, and somehow she wasn't used to the smell of her own room anymore. In a day or two it wouldn't smell like anything at all, because she'd be accustomed to it again. But today, right now, it just smelled... different. A few things were scattered about, not where she remembered leaving them. Tia Paulina explained apologetically that they had packed up Cecilia's few meager possessions, because... well, she had been dead. It made sense, after a fashion. That was what you did when people died. You did a wake, and then you buried people, and you buried their clothes with them, but there hadn't really been a her to bury, so they'd been preparing to bury the clothes without her.

She picked up a sweater and put it on, and then she left. She wasn't ready for the next bit. Not yet.
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Gundham
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#2

Post by Gundham »

The phone rang.

Tia Paulina answered it, and spoke quietly into the receiver. After a short exchange, she held the phone out towards Cecilia, trying to look brave.

Cecilia took it, and held it up to her ear. The sound of her mother and father crying filled the world.
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Gundham
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#3

Post by Gundham »

Imagine a ship, one of those old-timey galleons, caught in a terrible storm. The ship is in distress, so the sailors begin desperately throwing things overboard to keep it afloat. It starts out with excess, stuff that’s easy to lose and easy to reacquire once things settle down. But if the storm gets bad enough, the sailors will start throwing away things they’d ordinarily want to keep. Valuable cargo, heavy armaments like cannons, anchors to keep the ship in place. In an absolute life-or-death crisis, they’ll throw away vital necessities like food and water, they’ll even start throwing people over the side if they have to. That’s what brains do, too; they jettison things to stay alive. Politeness is one of the first things to go in times of stress, followed by social graces. Easily lost, easily reacquired. But when things get bad and stay bad, more and more things get dumped over the rail. Things that, once lost, stay lost. Things that are very difficult to replace. Ethics. Emotions. Morals. Relationships.

Now, imagine that the storm ends, and the dawn arrives. Imagine those sailors trying to sail the ship, now that they’ve lost the extra sails and the cannons. The waters are calm and placid, but there’s no food or water left, there’s no lifeboats, there’s no anchor. That’s what it’s like, trying to live again after a trauma. Because even though the actual events might be over, the consequences of what you had to do to survive them are not. And it’s hard to see the bare shelves in the larder and the empty bunks in the galley while the storm is raging. It’s only when you hit the calm period afterwards, only when it’s safe enough to stop and have a look around, that you can really see what you lost along the way.
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Gundham
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#4

Post by Gundham »

Cecilia couldn't cry along with them. She wanted to. She wanted to so, so badly. She strained her throat, her eyes, everything, trying to force the tears to come, trying to share in their grief. But the tears refused to come. She could only listen mutely to their pain.

"Mija..." was all her father managed to say at first.

"Mi corazón, mi corazón," her mother crooned, over and over again. "Mi corazón, (our hearts were broken. We thought we had lost you.)"

She wanted to bawl her eyes out. She wanted to be their little girl, sobbing and afraid, needing them, clinging to them to make all the bad things go away. But all she could think, all that was in her mind, was that they had lost her. They had lost her a long time ago. She had needed them. She had wanted them. The bad things had come, and nobody was there to defend her. And after the bad things had finished with her, she wasn't their child anymore. That wasn't how it was supposed to happen. There should have been a quinceañera, a formal ceremony and a dance with both of them there. Both of her parents should have witnessed and celebrated the moment when their little girl became a woman, and then they should have gracefully and gradually let her outgrow them. That was how it was supposed to happen. Instead, the darkness and the fear had beaten her into adulthood, all at once, and she'd had to do it all on her own. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. But that's how it was.

They told her how proud they were of her, for what she had survived. For how tough she was, and all that she had managed to overcome. But she hadn't wanted any of those things. She hadn't wanted to be strong. She hadn't wanted to be tough or independent. She hadn't wanted to be self-reliant, or to be assured that she could do whatever it took to survive. Those traits weren't shining aspects of her personality, they were shields that she'd been forced to raise. It's inspiring when a person chooses to be tough, or independent, or self-reliant. But it's horrific when a person needs to be any of those things to survive.

The truth - the horrible, awful truth - was that Cecilia didn't need her parents. And even if she had needed them, it wouldn't have mattered. Because they couldn't be here. Because even if she did need them, needed them more powerfully than she'd ever needed anything in her entire life, they weren't here. And they were never going to be here. Because what she needed and what she wanted didn't matter, not in the face of all the things that couldn't and wouldn't be.

She didn't say any of these things to her parents, because she loved them. Loved them so fiercely that her heart felt like it was about to burst. So she stayed silent, because even though they had hurt her so many times, in so many ways, she knew on some level that they hadn't meant to. Because screaming at them wouldn't fix anything now. She listened, and she tried as hard as she could to tell the cynical voice in her head to shut up and take what they were offering, to let herself just be loved, however imperfectly. She tried to accept their pain and their apologies, and to open her heart to them.

She really, really tried.
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Gundham
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#5

Post by Gundham »

After she hung up the phone, Cecilia looked at Tia Paulina. There were tears in her eyes. Cecilia thought for a moment, and then hugged her. She didn't say anything, just held on tight. After a second, Tia Paulina hugged her back.

They stayed in silence for a while, and then they drifted apart.

Cecilia felt awkward being out in the house. Tio and Tia were looking at her like she was made of glass, and might shatter into a million pieces if they made the wrong move. Rafael was watching television in living room, some futbol game highlights or something. But every now and again he glanced her way, as if sizing her up. Like he knew that she wouldn't be the same sister who had left, and he was waiting to see what she'd become.

She didn't want to linger out here. She didn't want to go outside. She probably needed a shower after the long car ride back to Oregon, but she didn't feel like taking one. She especially didn't want to go to her room, because she knew what would be waiting there for her. She'd felt it lurking around the first time she'd poked her head in, and she knew it'd still be there, patient as the mountains.

In reality, it didn't matter which location she picked. As soon as she was alone, it would come. The only choice was whether she let it hit her in the shower, in an alleyway nearby, or in her room. She decided on the latter. It felt like the safest place. Mumbling a polite excuse, she slipped into her room and closed the door.
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Gundham
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#6

Post by Gundham »

Survival always comes at a cost. It might be environmental, monetary, physical, mental, emotional, or any of a hundred different things. But it always costs something. And the worse the situation, the greater the peril, the higher the cost. It varies from situation to situation and person to person, but the payment will always be exacted in one form or another.

You can put it off for a while, and it's easier to do so if you have experience. You can white-knuckle your way through a week of mortal terror, running on adrenaline and fear. You can repress the dread that comes from hearing your classmates' names read off one by one, knowing that you were only one wrong turn away from joining them. You can force yourself to leave your only friend's body behind and keep on surviving so that his death will mean something. But you can't walk away from all of that. You can't make it unhappen, no matter how many times you try. Sooner or later, the bill comes due.

Sooner or later, in the calm moments after the storm, in the moments when you feel safe and relaxed, right when you let your guard down, that's what it happens. The exhaustion, the fear, the shame, the guilt, and everything else you didn't have time to deal with in the heat of the moment. It all catches up. It always does.

Cecilia opened the door, lay down on her bed, and let the feelings take her.
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Gundham
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#7

Post by Gundham »

The phone rang again. Tia Paulina picked it up. "No comment," she said, and hung up.

After a few minutes, it rang again. Again, she answered. "No comment." Click.

Then it rang again. She let it ring twelve times, and then finally lifted the receiver just enough to hang it up again.

It rang again. And again.

She unplugged it from the wall.
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Gundham
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#8

Post by Gundham »

Cecilia stayed in bed for the entire day of October 30th. Tia Paulina left a plate of food and a glass of water by the door.

While this was happening, someone threw a rock through window of the family's bookshop. Through the spiderweb of cracks, you could still see the neatly lettered "Closed for family emergency" sign that Tia Paulina had put up.
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Gundham
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#9

Post by Gundham »

Cecilia put her feet against one wall, and her back against the other. Her eyes shut.

Her eyes snapped open. Concrete and chain-link fencing. Jeffrey King's face spray-painted on the wall.

The girl with the hedgehog spines was leering at her. "(Do you ever do anything but sleep?)"

The little girl with the tail tugged on her arm. "(You were crying in your dreams again.)"

Her dreams. Right. She had been dreaming again. Dreaming about the outside world. Lately, she'd been doing that a lot. She had vivid dreams about going to live with her Tia Paulina, and drifting along all by herself a school full of faceless, nameless people. Dreaming about a death game, where all of her fears and failures put on masks and pretended to be something else, laughing at her while they found new ways to torment her. Sometimes, the dreams felt real. Sometimes she could convince herself that she really had gotten out. But even in those dreams, she was still miserable and lonely. Because even in a dream, reality would seep back in. She could never be happy in her dreams. Because in the back of her mind, she knew the dream for what it was - a lie. In reality, she had never left this cell. She was alone. She would always be alone. She had only ever been here, day after day, for months or even years now, living the same dreary days over and over, waiting for -

"Cecilia."

She sat bolt upright, and the fence rattled like a rusty drainpipe. "Mattie?"

He standing in a square of light, that she realized now was an open door. He held out a hand towards her.

"You made it, didn't you? What are you doing here?'"

She looked over at the picture of King. He was laughing, jeering at her. Telling her that she had no power, that one lone girl couldn't win a war against the President of the United States and all of his men. Saying that she shouldn't even try to fight him. Saying that no matter what she did or said, nothing would ever, ever change. She'd always be here. Always trapped and powerless.

"What, that fucker? That's what's keeping you here?"

She shrank back against the fence. The links dug into her like claws, not wanting to let her go. "I... I'm afraid. I cannot fight him. I... I don't want to do it alone."

"You won't. You'll never be alone. Come on now." He leaned in, hand still outstretched.

She looked over at Jeffrey King. He was laughing at her. Mocking her, telling her that there was no point in leaving. Telling her that she had no power, and no strength, and no backup.

Cecilia looked back at Mattie, and took his hand. She'd never been able to leave before. Because when it came down to it, she couldn't do it for herself. She wasn't strong enough for that. But for Mattie, for everything that he had done, everything that he had been... for him, she would do it.

They stepped into the light together.
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Gundham
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#10

Post by Gundham »

On October 31st, Cecilia woke up early. Tia Paulina wasn't there. She was at the bookstore, having new windows installed. Cecilia ate some toast, and then booted up the family computer. The first thing she saw was a news article about a manifesto that had been released. She clicked it. The video wasn't linked, but the descriptions were enough. She closed the article and thought for a while, about a lot of things. About the video. The article said that it had seen by thousands, maybe millions of people.

She looked up a few things, getting specific numbers and figures, double checking and making sure that it was all correct, using Google Translate where she had to.

Then she called Ximena. She had to plug the phone back in first.

The two girls talked for a while, mostly in Spanish but with bits of English here and there. After they finished, Cecilia unplugged the phone again, and went back to the computer. Slowly, laboriously, she composed an email and sent it off. Ximena's reply, with suggested edits, came back. There were over a hundred unread emails in the family's Outlook inbox. Some said "praying for you." Some had profanity. One just got right to the point and said "DIE." Cecilia deleted that one, and then sent back some clarification questions. After a few other exchanges, she felt ready.

She sent back one last question. "Do you know where I can find a web cámara?"
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Gundham
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#11

Post by Gundham »

Cecilia sat down on the chair in Ximena's bedroom. She looked down at the paper, then up again at the camera, and pressed record. She began to the read the speech. She had practiced it over and over again on the way over, pronouncing the words the way Ximena taught her to, so they'd be crisp and clear in English. It took her eight tries until she could pronounce all the words correctly, and thirteen before she could get through the entire thing without crying.

“My name is Cecilia Ana Moreno.”

“I was born in San Andres Mixquic, in Mexico. Three years ago, my parents brought me to this country because they thought I would be safe here. They were wrong.”

The next sentences were tough. She took a second to steel herself before continuing. “As you know... not long ago, I was kidnapped. A group of extremists wanted to make a political statement, and so I was taken away from my loved ones. I was dropped in an unfamiliar place with a bunch of strange children I did not know, and left to survive on my own. We had hardly any food or water, and no change of clothes. We had no family, no one to protect us. Not all of us got out. Some of us died there. Some are still lost. Most of us were attacked or injured. And... none of us will ever be the same."

She let those sentences hang in the air for a moment before adding, “…And three years after Jeffrey King did that to me, some terrorists came and did it again.”
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Gundham
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#12

Post by Gundham »

The video was just shy of two minutes long. Cecilia ended it by saying: “The Deerstalkers took fifty children. But your Mister King took five thousand. The Deerstalkers gave us more food, more water, and better blankets than the government did. The Deerstalkers are being hunted down for their crimes, but Mister King walks free. Why is that? Why does it matter that I am a victim of terrorists, if it does not matter that I am a victim of Jeffrey King?

Your politicians and your media have told you that we are at war, that we come to take things from you. It was not immigrants who took your children. Immigrants do not shoot children in your schools or riot in your streets. Immigrants do not take away your rights or your freedoms, they do not pollute your air and poison your water with toxic chemicals. But every day, we are hated and threatened, just because we are here. We are not here to replace you. We are not here to steal from you. We are here because we want to live. That is all my parents wanted. That is all that my friend, Mattie, wanted. To live. We only wanted to live."

Then she clicked the button and sent it uploading to YouTube.
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Gundham
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#13

Post by Gundham »

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Mack Micro
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#1 Post by Mack Micro » Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:35 pm

what a crock of shit. disgusting that she would try and use her 15 mintues of fame to trash king


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big sandals
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#2 Post by big sandals » Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:37 pm

It's fake. She isnt even in the deerstalker video. 8)


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YelloSnakeGuy
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#3 Post by YelloSnakeGuy » Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:37 pm

I go to Dunway and Ive literally never seen this girl lol. 100% doing it for attention.


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reverend02
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#4 Post by YelloSnakeGuy » Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:38 pm

I think she's a camgirl??? That background looks familiar. Explains why shed be desperate for attention tho


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Mack Micro
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#5 Post by Mack Micro » Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:39 pm

lol reporting reverend02 for watching underage camgirls


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KINGMEB!TCH
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#6 Post by KINGMEB!TCH » Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:39 pm

She's not hot enough to be a camgirl


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JimiGravestone
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#7 Post by JimiGravestone » Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:40 pm

yawn
dem plant. infowars did a whole thing on it, the place she was supposedly locked up doesnt even have a record of her being there and theres photos of her at reynolds rallies. just another nothingburger.


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KINGMEB!TCH
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#8 Post by KINGMEB!TCH » Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:39 pm

If anybody wants it her email is [redacted]
and her phone is [redacted] but its disconnected tho
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Gundham
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#14

Post by Gundham »

The police offered to post a car near the house after the broken window incident, but Cecilia's family spent Halloween night in a hotel anyway.

It wasn't safe to be in the house, not on a day when masked people were running around and feeling just a little bit bolder than usual.

Besides, if Cecilia had seen even a single person in an animal mask, she didn't know what she would have done.
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Gundham
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#15

Post by Gundham »

When they got home the next day, the yard was a mess. Words that she didn't know the meaning of had been spraypainted across the door. The officers explained, shamefaced, that someone had baited the mobile unit away by starting a trashcan fire a block away, and in the meantime some others had apparently come along and taken advantage.

There were eggs and toilet paper everywhere. But to Cecilia's surprise, there were also people. Faces she recognized from church, or customers from the bookshop. People who lived down the street. At first, she thought that they were there for her. Some of the most hateful comments on her video had been from immigrants, cursing her and telling her that it was people like her that were ruining everything, that illegals were screwing everything up for the people who tried to do it right and giving all of them a bad name. She thought that this was what was happening here, that they had all banded together in a big mob, ready to denounce the problem family and drive them out of the neighborhood so they'd never come back.

But then she saw the garbage bags and the wash pails. Saw all of them gladly pitching in to clear away the garbage and scrub off the graffiti. Shaking their fists and swearing in Spanish, vowing that this wouldn't happen again. Not here. Not to them. No matter what.

Afterwards, when all the work was done, they had a dinner. Everyone brought food, and they ate it right there on the lawn. They sang and they shared stories. It reminded her of being back home, of the neighborhood celebrations and festivals like she'd had growing up. Cecilia clapped along when people sang, and she smiled at jokes and funny stories. Some of them had seen the video, and they clapped her on the back and told her how brave she was, and what a good thing she'd done. Others watched it on their smart phones that night, and Cecilia's cheeks burned with embarrassment when she heard her own voice, how bold she'd tried to sound in the speech. And after watching it, one of the neighbors said, "Aren't you going to do a version in Spanish?"

Over the course of the night, she learned the names of more than twenty people. And she remembered every single one of them. These were her people now. This was her community. This was where she belonged, if she wanted to.

There were still bad things out there. Bad people. But she wouldn't have to face them by herself, and that was what mattered. She wasn't alone anymore.
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