Ok. Last update till a little while now. Anyway, new character on the side, I choose Danny Trejo to be Juan. Yay...ok then. Ta.
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Sometimes, life isn't just fate...sometimes, it's just sh1tty accidents.
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-13 Hours Later-
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One by one, the situation worsened, one by one, hope diminished, one by one, the truth started to clear up. One by one...the truth didn't matter anymore.
Dry. Incredibly dry.
The sun is swallowing up everything today. There's nothing of soft water, refreshing breeze, nor cool spray of moistness. There isn't anything, but the suffocating travel of bright sand smoking upwards into our lungs, powdering our faces, making the creases and aged and uncared for skin even more unbearable to expose to the elements than before.
Hours of travel, wondering what the heIl will happen to us, figuring out piece by piece that Deniece sold us out to the men she thought were responsible for Tara's death, trying to think straight and piece together what all of this means...it's been getting worse.
I don't know how we got here.
They lined us up, knocked us out one by one, my hands shaking the entire time, and Carl's blue eyes were the final sight I remembered before I choked on musty air, minimal and barely vented to me in darkness.
I was still tied up, but that wasn't why I felt claustrophobic.
Everyway I turned, there was a small inch of room to wiggle in, the dirt masking fresh air for my lungs suffocated me physically while the realization that I had been buried alive, suffocated me mentally.
Hours like this, hours that felt like fvcking days...I was in a coffin, literally underground, breathing what I thought would be my last breath, thinking of how I was going to die like this, insanity threatening to overtake as it whispered like a tiny demon prancing around, stuck in this small confinement with me.
I saw the eyes of Infected, saw the expressions of Tara and that dead man, heard the voices of my father and his fellow scientists before speaking to myself, trying to think of a way to break free or make my last few seconds or minutes of existence meaningful to myself if no one else.
'What if there was a way to just kill myself now' I thought? What if I just tried?
No...there's no room. In this tiny, heated little pod that reminds me so much of experiments past and tortures for my mind, there's no use to it.
What could I do then?
What could I-
That's my yoyo! Give it back!
What?
Why am I thinking about an insignificant kids yoyo? I broke it didn't I? That was that.
Why don't you go strangle yourself with it then?! You're already dying in a box under the ground! Child of the Future!
"Shut up!!" I scream with a pissed off aura to these strange stupid random thoughts.
Visions of children looking my way with the broken yoyo at my feet, point and close their eyes while laughing at me, blood stuck to my fingers from the cats torn open stomach I remember caring for if only during a child's walk.
Let's begin again Spes. The history of who you are. Start.
I don't want to go over it again! Shut the fvck up! Just shut up!!
My name is Spes Trinity Markasson. I am the cure. I am the curse. I am the blessing. I am the reason so many have hope; I am the reason so many can hope for a better tomorrow. I am the origin of the beasts that roam this planet now.
I am the mother, they are my children.
I am the mother, they are my children.
I am the curse, they are the plague.
I am the curse, they are the plague.
"Shut up!!" I repeat.
Were you born only to destroy this earth? I mean what good are you? You can try and try to help but look what happened...you sat around and got buried alive. What good are you!? Worthless except for the blood that pumps and flows through your veins.
I've earned this life haven't I?! Haven't I?!
"Take a break. We'll pick the training tomorrow."
My instructor? Gabby?
"No!"
"Spes, you're exhausted."
"I want to keep going!"
What worth do I have if all I did inside that mall was train and prance around like I was actual hope for people who either loved me or hated me? It was all just a mask anyway, all just to hide the guilt I'd been eating for years and years.
What good am I out here? I came out here to do right but mostly to get rid of this blackened conscience, maybe be set free? Suicide was stupid, but what am I good for besides my blood? I'm nothing. I haven't done anything! I have no use to anyone!
I'm not just a mother to those things!
I'm me! Not just the Child of the Future!
Rick, Michonne, Daryl, Jesse, they all see it don't they?
How could they?
I played my specialty card and proved to be worthless to them all.
What is your purpose other than to be the Child of the Future? Are you even capable of being anything else? You're just a used vessel. Feeling guilty is for a person who actually had a choice in doing wrong.
You aren't even important enough to feel guilty.
You aren't important. You aren't a singular person. If you were a blind mute, dumb and dull, your purpose would be unchanged. It wouldn't even matter if you were in a wheelchair since birth and drooled every second of the day, it's only your DNA that they need.
Only reason you're alive and so well cared for, is because you as a person, as an individual, doesn't matter.
You don't matter Spes.
You're invisible.
If you weren't responsible for the guilt you arrogantly claim to belong to you, you wouldn't even exist.
No...
You've always known this...
No!
You were born with only one purpose...
To be The Child Of The Future...
NO!!
Yes...
No, no, no! No!
It's not true! Not anymore!!
What's so different?! What makes you purposeful now when you were never born with a self justifying one in the first place?!
Spit it out! Clutch to anything that will make you think you're right! What makes you so special if not for the blood you carry?!
What makes you so special?!
What makes you special?!
What?!
"Carl..."
Carl makes me special!
I may not have been born with a purpose for me, and for my father instead...but I found my purpose when I found him...
Carl...
"Carl." I speak, my energy spent, my mind wasted with inner battles, inner demons, yet set free at the memory of his blue eyes looking at me while he laughed, smiling and pressing our mouths as one, fussing afterwards or challenging each other before we'd end up kissing again, not able to douse the flame between us that was barely ever soothed.
All that, before I could finally go to sleep, spending my last minutes the best way I knew how, and shut my eyes to imagine all the moments Carl and I spent together up until now.
Dammit.
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"Rise and shine chicita!" A loud as$ voice yells down to me when I surface from my sleep, only to be blinded by the sun and the almost orange colored landscape surrounding me.
"You too, cabron!" I turn my head and stare at a row of mounds that look like they were put there to cover more coffins, and I'm dragged away from my hole a foot or two under the surface before staring at my surroundings, a large barn that looks like it was home to chickens at one point is set happily in front of me with men in pants and thin or no shirts with rifles standing guard while one in particular, a rough looking Mexican with long hair and scars on his face, cheeks mostly, is resting his tale on a cheap white chair with his ankle on his leg and a frown on his face.
"Ugh!" My attention drags towards Rick being kicked down to the ground right before I'm thrown against the heated plain.
Sh1t...me and him...just us? Why?
"Spes..." I shifted my arms to see the man who'd taken me in, clean of the beard I first knew him to sport, struggling to keep his eyes on me with blood oozing out onto his lip.
I could only cough as a response.
"Don't tell them..." He breathed in anxiousness. Fvck, what did they do to him? "Don't tell them...who you are. Don't-"
"Shut up!" Another kick was landed into his stomach, a thick leg attached to the black shoe that had the clean shot to attack my leader's slender body. It looks so painful, no wonder I'm wincing...if it happens to me, I'm not sure I'll be able to stay conscious.
"They'll be no talking today gringo. That little girl over there with that fvcking grey hair. She'll talk..." He crouches down to his prisoner, a smug smile exposing his disgusting yellow teeth, brown blotches found in the creases near his unhealthy gums flash to my eyes when he starts to laugh. I remember him being referred to as Gomez. "Or the rest of your people die tonight."
Wait...the rest?
One look to the small distance behind us all, the dry land unbelievably powerful to take away all hope inside me, and I see the newly destroyed ground, all placed back where it was originally laid, apparent that just like me, the people buried under that area I see at present, are not dead.
They're alive.
For now.
Until then, what?
"Juan! This is her." Gomez struts over to me, using his boot to push on my hip and roll me over before I can actually enjoy the fresh air expanding my lungs at the moment. And even if this sun is blinding as well as hot, it's a happy change from all that time in a coffin and dark space. "Deniece said this girl has some sort of cure or something. For those fvckers?"
What?!
"No! She's not!" Rick forces some more words out, but it's too painful to fight a busted lip that's swelling every second. "She's just a kid."
"D wouldn't lie to me...I'm not a fool." Juan introduced by Gomez finally speaks and I nearly cringe by his rusty voice that sounds like he swallowed a bottle of sand and it coated his vocal chords. Sh1t, he sounds worse off than me concerning the water department. "Either way, this girl, if she's not worth sh1t like that, I'm good with making use of her..." He pauses to stare at me and slowly licks his lower lips with murky dry spits stretching on the corners of his mouth. "Another way." He whispers.
Gross.
Everything about this man, disgusting.
"So tell me...Spesss." He hisses out my last letter and I shiver before I'm dragged up off my side and slowly brought towards him, the still present singe of discomfort showing while I hiss it out, catching this ba$tards attention. "What's wrong?" He draws out the words like he's actually concerned for me. "You in pain?" He stares me over. "Show me where it hurts; I'll take care of it from now on." I feel a haze of smoke mist around my face from under his mustache, a cigar appearing in his fingers before he rests back and laughs with his friends.
Fvck. This.
"Qué quieres?" I spit. That got his attention. "Dime." I use my Spanish to communicate.
If I find out what he wants, hence the wonder, 'What do you want? Tell me', he'll give it to me and let us go. There's always a way out of these things isn't there? I know Rick isn't willing to offer me up as an offering...I really don't like the idea either, but these jackas$es look like they're only in this for the fun...I have no clue if they know what I'm worth...but in the end, it's my decision.
A thought to Carl slowly breathing under the ground, sweating and gasping for another intake of life is the driving tool that makes me decide on this spur of the moment gamble.
Hours of watching my father speak with his co-workers, hanging on the coat tails of adults that were the only company aside from Estela that would give me the time of day has done little for my attitude, but in cases like this, it has given me a little bit of wits and a touch of know how.
I know enough about Rick to know he's a fvcking good guy. Always has been to me...so if I'm going to be ratted out...I might as well be the one to do it. No one else will...unless you count that slut.
"Oi! Mira! Little girl knows how to speak some Spanish. Haha. Dime. What do you have to offer me? It's not about what I want...it's about what I can get. Anything you got. From what I hear," He leans forward, his crow colored medium long hair drifting over his leather vest. "You have something in you, you're a cure? For what? For those fvckers out there, eh?" He wheezes in confidence and relaxation. "Deniece said something about a mall? Why don't you tell me about that?" He falls back into his seat, and I already sense how tiring this day is going to become, but I know what I have to do.
Fvck, this isn't going to work is it?
Sh1t.
Sh1t.
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-Carl's P.O.V.-
Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
"She's ok. She's ok..." I heave out some breath. "She's ok. She's ok. She's ok."
Dammit...
Dammit, dammit, fvck!!
"Spes." I gasp to myself, going through all the possible outcomes of what will happen to me, suffocating down here, not from lack of air, but from lack on knowing.
Knowing that Spes is still alive, or if she's dead. Where she is, what they've done with her.
A quick wince at thinking about that dream I had, her with a bullet through her heart makes me whimper out in silence, a constriction on my throat while I cry as minimally as I can, shifting without luck of finding any secret room that I hadn't found before.
I'm stuck here, in the ground, away from her, away from everybody, probably dying all at once, cursing Deniece, cursing everyone who has ever given us trouble, the Governor, the people from Terminus, all those as$holes! ...Even Shane.
I feel like I'm back in that train car, getting ready, waiting, doing everything I could to make sure that we didn't go down without a fight, completely unaware that someone like Spes was alive, and one day, I'd be here, thinking hateful things, to anyone who hurt one grey hair on her head.
Underneath this sh1tty board, waiting for something to happen, knowing that I'm still alive for a reason, I've been going over and over in my head, every aspect of Spes and her personality, her body and mind, the hard attitude she tries to show even though I always catch her babying me in the smallest ways, clinging and sharing the need we have between us.
I've been thinking for hours, what it would be like if Spes was dead.
I want to suffocate on the carbon dioxide instead of that thought, but it's true. If she weren't alive...if Spes were dead, just wondering and imagining, I can feel myself begin to panic, and I don't even have her next to me to ensure that she's really by my side.
I mean, who am I without Spes?
If I don't have her...I don't want to be anyone!
I don't want to be without her.
I won't be without her!
Even if she ever died, I'd make sure that I wouldn't be without her.
"Sh1t." I gasp.
Seriously? That's how I feel?
I don't even have to wonder long. One memory and blurred image of Spes smiling up at me through the pain I put her through last night and I know for sure, completely, that's how I feel, but I don't want it to turn out like that.
It'd actually be nice if in the long run, we did deliver her to D.C. and everything went back to normal. That's kind of hard to imagine though. I mean, what would happen to Spes? I'd think her dad would go to jail, then what?
What about her mom? Is she dead? Spes never talks about her.
"You alive down there?!" I jolt at a clunk hitting the roof of my coffin or make do crate holder before listening to the sound of a shovel hauling dirt away going to work above me.
Ok...This is either good or bad, but I'm ready to breathe again either way. Find out what's going on now too. That's not asking much.
2 minutes of waiting, sighing every few seconds, sucking in the air that's beginning to spread abundantly over me, thank goodness, and I'm being dragged out of the hole they put me in, squinting at how bright the sun is before I see my dad a few feet in front of me, and an ear cut off next to my face when I hit the ground.
An ear?
"Carl...no..." My dad begins to crawl, but despite him trying to fall into that same old routine of hiding me from harm, sh1t that never works, I feel something rise in my stomach at the sight of blood all over the body piece, ruthlessly sawed off and chunked in some areas with blood draining out of it.
Spes.
"Carl..."
Spes...
"Yeah, you're little lady...she's somethin' else...we made a deal." A cackle crawls into the air.
I should be curious about what he just said, yelling and demanding to see the one I love, crying to my hearts desire, anything like that, honestly all of it, but instead, I slowly push myself up off the ground, common sense leaving me, and I glare at the man in the seat who's still laughing, probably the one in charge here...before gathering a fist full of dirt in my hand, heart pounding and adrenaline rushing as a relentless tear falls down my face, and I slash the powder across the eyes of the darkly tanned man behind me, blinding him, and the impact of my body on his is almost excruciating with the force I threw into it, but all that's going through my mind now is... a need to kill him.
I need to...I-
"Carl!" I gasp when I notice my hand trying to dig into the man's eyes, his body and thoughts disoriented to let me. I may be growing and becoming more of a man, but I wouldn't have been able to hold out for long, and it's useless to care either way.
That voice.
"Spes?" I turn. Oh God, thank you! "Spes!" I get up, only to stumble and look at her standing straight up next to the man in the chair, her body perfectly put together just the way I left her, a face of concern drizzled against her eyes and mouth before I stare at the son of a b1tch beside her throw his cigar out towards the dry sand, and rise to come closer to me.
"Little guy..." He barely moves his mouth when he speaks.
"Are you ok?!" I don't care if he beats me for ignoring him. First concern, I move to stand the same time the one behind me hurries to rise up. "Spes?!"
"I'm fine." She frowns and it's a wave of relief that lets me get back on my knees.
"That's right. She's fine. For now. You see, little gringo..." The wind blows from the left of me, and I slowly raise my eyes to stare at the now kneeling Mexican in front of me, our hair blowing and shifting while I enjoy the paradise of Spes being alive and healthy...almost.
She's not happy, that's for sure. That makes two of us.
"That girl there...she made a deal."
A deal? Dammit, what did she do? Knowing Spes it's nothing good. I'm going to hate it. I hate everything about this right now! Sh1t!
"Deal is, you two, little kiddo's, go to the mall, right? And make them welcome us..." He cheeses. "With open arms." He extends to an awaiting embrace, wheezing before he starts to laugh, showing me a devilish smirk afterwards. "You take that ear, show it those high heads over there...if you fail, your dad and them, everyone? They die."
I figured. It never changes does it?
"What if we don't make it?"
"Oh I'm sure you'll make it. Every time you don't think you will, look at that ear." He points down, behind me, and I slightly turn to stare at the freshly sawed off cartilage, clenching my jaw with pissed off anger for him, Deniece, and everyone who fvcked with us today. "I'm doing this on faith little gringo." He slowly speaks. "I'm fair though! Right girlie?" He turns and I heavily breathe through my nose at the idea of him talking to Spes. "I'm giving you one week." He lifts his finger and bobs his hand back and forth.
"A week?" I hiss in curiosity.
"That's right! A week..." He nods with a light smile. "Make it count." I strain to hear his whisper and sly voice. "Little gringo."
"We'll need supplies." I slightly shake my head and see my dad look at me with little pride and great concern. I'm concerned too, but I don't have a choice. I'll be dammed if Spes is going alone, I can tell by the look on her face that that's exactly what she was planning. To go alone. Fvck no. She's crazy.
She's already glaring at me for volunteering to head off with her...tough luck then.
"Of course! Water and food!" This as$ yells, laughing to his men, and it's only eye contact with Spes afterwards till we're sent on our way, the price of my families lives depending on the success of our journey.
I don't know what the mall is even going to be like. But I know for sure, If Spes goes back, my worst fear will come true...
If she goes back, they won't let her leave again.
She'll be gone...
And what will happen then?
Will it be the end?
Of everything?
Everything?