S5, E4 | A Broken Little Girl from a Broken Little Home

With wet hair, Kayla slips a black tank top over her head and covers the black bra she’d just recently put on. Finishing the ensemble, the woman buttons a pair of black jeans into place and steps out of the bathroom, stepping aside to grant Kennedy the next access to a candle-lit bathtub filled with cold water and soap.

Rubbing at the side of her head with a hand towel, Kayla steps down the stairs from the second level and returns to the unnamed space where the living room and kitchen connect. In the same room, the woman’s husband occupies a recliner off to one side of the coffee table whilst the mother who’d once served as the building’s hushed matriarch occupies a seat near one end of the sofa.

“Has anyone seen Jaime?” Kayla wonders aloud, earning the attention of both residents, whose eyes take toward her after initially not hearing her quiet return. “Uh, yeah. She’s out in the backyard, hun’” Chevy replies, one leg crossed over the other as a natural support for the hardcover book that he reads, its pages lit by the candle that burns just a short distance away.

Nodding to herself, the woman steps through the living room and makes for the sliding door that already sits open, acting as a natural ventilation for the room in lieu of any air conditioners their lack of access to electricity would render inoperable anyway. With gentle footsteps, Kayla carries herself onto the back patio and takes a look into the spacious backyard that’s become overgrown with grass made tall through a lack of maintenance.

With a glance to the side, her eyes take to the outline of a figure who spends the dying hours of a day sitting in the one corner of the yard that’s been recently cleared of the tall lawn. “You know, it’s pretty odd to forgo showering before anyone else just so you can spend your time staring at the grave of someone you just buried” Kayla mutters, her words catching the ears of whom she wishes them to, but can’t prompt her to turn around and acknowledge her presence.

“It’s pretty odd to bury someone in your backyard too, but I don’t see anyone slapping cuffs on me for it or digging him up” Jaime replies, sitting on the grass with one leg crossed and the other arched upward, her wrist sitting at the tip of her raised kneecap. “It’s not so much odd as it is illegal- or at least was” Kayla responds, walking around her friend to take a seat beside her, “but hell, as long as you don’t say anything- I won’t either.”

Trying to make light of the rather bleak circumstances that bring them to this place in the yard, Kayla’s breathy laugh and smile is only accompanied with the minimal arch in the corner of her friend’s face. Instead, Jaime’s eyes continue to supplant themselves upon the makeshift tombstone that had spent the last number of years awaiting a body to join the grave it was situated at the head of, finally earning the corpse it had so longed for.

“I don’t really feel anything about it” Jaime confesses after a brief pause, eyes not once leaving her own name, which had once been etched into the rock but was since poorly scraped out, replaced instead with marker bearing the name of her father. “I thought I would feel something when we settled on coming back here. I didn’t know what it would be, but I expected something” she reiterates, all whilst her friend looks at her with a lack of judgement, “but it’s like I couldn’t care less.”

“You’ve known he was dead for years, though” Kayla replies, trying to offer an explanation for the way in which the woman reacts to the sight she’s beholden to, though she knows that’s not what her friend wishes to hear. “I’m not just talking about my dad. I’m not talking about seeing him, well- the way he was left. And I’m not talking about having to bury him-” Jaime corrects, a slight squint in her eyes held as her gaze never wavers from the grave, “-I just feel nothing about any of it.”

Looking off toward the thick, jungle-like layer of unkempt lawn that they sit ahead of, Kayla thinks about the claim for a moment as the air grows colder, a calm and peaceful silence held in the air. “I thought it’d be weird to see this place again. I thought it’d be weird to see these graves, nevermind putting someone in one” Jaime continues, admitting that the entire environment is something far different than what she’d been expecting to see, “but I don’t feel anything for it.”

“Almost as if it meant nothing to you?” Kayla questions, the inquiry spoken aloud finally proving to be something the once-chancellor reacts with the turn of her head toward. “Yeah, almost as if it meant nothing to me” Jaime replies, a gingerly nod of her head provided as she looks to her friend in that moment, allowing a few seconds to pass before looking back to the tombstones and continuing, “I know they tore the place up looking for us, but I figured even that would spark something.”

Staring ahead to join her friend in the sight they take and need not worry about losing anytime soon, Kayla looks at her friend’s grave and thinks quietly to herself, finding irony in how way too ahead of time it was prepared. “Maybe it’s because the life you had here- the one before the catalyst took shape- happened so long ago that you’re a totally different person now” the woman wonders aloud, staring deep into the chiselled-out name of the woman that sits beside her as she thinks aloud.

“You were never ‘the chancellor’ when you were here. There was no ‘Angelino Republic’, you were just-” Kayla murmurs, only being stopped when the voice of the woman she speaks of interjects. With a steady face, Jaime stares at her own grave and finishes the woman’s thought on her behalf, aware of where the woman was intended to go with the conversation, but too entranced within the thought that her tombstone provokes, “-a broken little girl from a broken little home.”

= Dire is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and the entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

“What the hell are you doing!?” Wade calls out, taking the lead on his security detail before shouting his question aloud whilst shoving the chancellor’s door in. “Mobilising a ground unit to fan out and search for Jaime Morris and whoever else is still hiding out with her” Julia answers honestly, pressing the handset of her desktop phone to the side of her head whilst patiently waiting for an answer from the other line.

“How many days has it been since we reclaimed Lancaster?” Wade questions aloud, the question a rhetorical one that he doesn’t desire an answer to, this made clear by his continuation. “Our troops- combined- are already stretched thin, and you want to stretch them thinner?” he doubles down, reaching over the phone to press his finger into the receiver, hanging up the call before the chancellor can earn a response.

Without a reply at first, Julia watches the man’s finger pull away from her phone before stepping out of her seat, placing the headset atop her desk’s surface before striking the NDF leader across the face. “The day I no longer need to pull teeth just to get you to answer a phone is the day you can have the permission to touch mine” the chancellor commands, watching her uninvited guest stare at her with shock as the sting of her swipe lingers.

“And you’re goddamn right I want our troops spread thin! If I even catch a faint scent that Jaime or any of her buddies leave behind, I will be nipping at their heels” Julia doubles down, remaining stood from the comfort of her chair, “if catching them means I spread those men out thinner than an anorexic model, then that’s how thin they’ll be spread!”

“You have an unhealthy obsession with that woman!” Wade angrily retorts, his voice calm though the rage he subdues for the sake of keeping the peace is impossible to hide entirely. “Wade, that woman is a danger to me, she’s a danger to you, and she’s a loose thread that needs to be tied-the-fuck-up” Julia responds even calmer than her legal superior, “the longer she goes without us catching her only puts us in even more danger.”

“Even when the woman in charge of this city, she had nothing that would’ve made her a threat in my eyes” Wade reassures, a smile through the pain beginning to replace the grimace he’d worn. “How many times do I have to tell you that Jaime is a lot trickier to deal with than you give her credit for?” Julia calls into question, watching the man’s eyes roll as he turns away, “do you even realise how many things I needed to make fall in my favour in order to just get her out of this chair?”

“Maybe I should reiterate myself more clearly, how’s that sound?” Wade rebukes, cutting back toward the woman before stepping as close to her as the desk between them will allow, “as far as Jaime Morris is concerned- I am untouchable.”

“And how so?” Julia challenges further, a second roll of the eyes coming over the face of the NDF leader before it joins the rest of his head in taking toward the floor. “Jaime Morris will not accept anything less than seeing the two of us dead and buried. She will not let anything stop her and she will not let anyone else take the satisfaction of doing it themselves” the chancellor doubles down, “if Jaime Morris is not caught, then Jaime Morris’ hands will be covered in both of our blood.”

“Ms. Avallone, I have more firepower than three Angelino Republic’s put together. The day one singular woman poses a threat greater to me than the mightiest force in recorded human history is the day I start believing in god” Wade answers, his voice dropping multiple octaves, “could she be a threat to you? I’m not sure. But what I am sure of is this- the day that Jaime Morris kills me is the day that we send a missile out from our silos in Pearl Harbor, do you understand that?”

“I sure do, but what I can’t understand is how you don't realise that that’s already her endgame here” Julia corrects, her words earning an angered grunt from the man who swings his fist through the air in frustration. “Do you honestly think she expects there to be any way back into power for herself, Wade?” the chancellor persists, “of course not! The woman is more stubborn than anyone even books and television can conjure up! She may love this republic, but she’s not delusional!”

“Ms. Avallone, I am not insisting that Jaime is the delusional one in this scenario” Wade retorts, his insult wagered not in the words that he utters, but the message contained in the ones that he doesn’t. Pressing her lips together and forming a frown, Julia grimaces with displeasure before looking away, her face stricken with the afternoon sun of a brand new day that peers through the window at the back of her quarters.

“Perhaps I am the delusional one here. Maybe- just maybe- I’m giving a pain in the ass a whole hell of a lot more credit than she’s due” Julia replies, retrieving her headset from the desk and pausing as she redials the number and reclaims her seat at the business-end of the chancellor’s desk, “but I’d much rather be delusional and cautious than I would comfortable and next on the chopping block.”

Lowering her head and pressing her free hand against the ear still exposed to the air in the room, Julia returns to her prior phone call as Wade stares away and licks the dry spot on his bottom lip. With a smug frown and a dismissive shake of his head, the man turns away from his subordinate and rejoins the men and women employed to ensure his safety before walking past them, showing himself through the door he’d used to enter and beginning the journey back toward downtown Los Angeles.

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With the sound of pool balls crashing into each other in the background, Carly sits alone at the serving counter of the peacekeepers’ tavern, her fingers wrapped around the handle to a glass mug almost emptied of the IPA that had once filled it to the brim. Though the establishment is more recognisable when those that reside within it argue amongst each other, the times where it spends its days as a genuine pub make clear the unity that is shared amongst those in search of a brighter future.

“I’ve got next on the table!” a black man calls out as he steps through the bar’s rear entry, his presence immediately catching Carly’s eye the second that it appears. As if waiting for the re-arrival of the same man who’d unexpectedly shown up the prior day, the disheartened survivor returns her eyes to the near-empty cup sitting before her, its exterior covered in a thin layer of condensation, the droplets that form from it aimlessly wandering down its length and to the wooden countertop.

Continuing to drink well into the afternoon, Carly sips from her beverage every few minutes whilst spending the rest of the day lost in thought, taking her mind toward various thoughts whilst pausing every now and then to glance back at the tavern’s second entrance. Though each soul that enters through the back catches her eye, none of them hold a face familiar to her, and the mug gradually empties over the course of the following hour before reaching its inevitable point of refill.

Eventually, the analog clock mounted to the wall just over a neon light beer sign has its smaller hand reach the numeral seven, and the sunlight that covers the republic begins to finally vanish to start the process of yet another evening. “Town hall is in thirty minutes, lads!” the on-duty bartender calls out, momentarily regaining the attention of the woman that’s sat at his bar through the entire day before her eyes inevitably retake toward the drink she’s yet to finish.

“What’s wrong with you?” Margot wonders aloud, her voice guiding itself through the air that separates her from Carly, who looks back to the tavern’s not-so-secretive entry to find the arrival of the group’s leader to have evaded her. Surprised at first, the younger woman sits upright in her seat and quickly reaches for her eyes, grinding the base of her palms into them as the sudden exhaustion from spending the entire day in a near-lethargic state takes immediate effect.

“Nothing, I’ve just been sitting here all day” Carly answers, watching Margot depart the conversation for a moment upon her reply to gesture other peacekeepers away. “Whatever concerns you have can wait for town hall!” the leader proclaims, directing those that wish to speak with her back to their former activities, “I have to speak with Carly privately for a moment, so everyone keep to yourselves in my absence.”

“You do?” the younger woman wonders aloud, hearing her name spoken and the words that followed before receiving no immediate answer to her inquiry, instead finding herself taken by the arm and led the way the leader had entered through. Though they travel in the direction of the rear entry, their journey comes to a close halfway toward it, instead allowing their discussion to remain hidden within the shadows just as they had operated prior to Jaime’s exile.

“I wasn’t going to tell you, but I slipped this off you when you were hammering back drinks last night” Margot explains, returning the piece of paper Chevy had offered his protege to the woman it was originally handed off to. “You can hate me in a second, just quickly let me explain why and what I need you to do now while I have the chance, alright?” the woman carries on, offering the lesser-ranking peacekeeper no time to process the betrayal and scheming that she’d otherwise be scolded for.

“Last night, I went to give this to the chancellor and let her take care of Jaime and the others so they wouldn’t put us in danger. I was an asshole for doing that- I know- and I’m sorry” Margot confesses, speaking too fast for the already-tipsy younger woman to interject her displeasure into.

“When I saw Julia walking through the hospital, I got this feeling that something wasn’t right and so I followed her. I still intended to tell her where Jaime was hiding, but I knew there was a part of me that was hesitant to do so” the group’s spokeswoman continues, “when we started talking, something came over me and it was convincing enough to give Jaime’s advice a try. After talking to the woman for a minute, I started to feel like Jaime might’ve been right about the chancellor.”

“Wait, wait, wait- I’m not sober. Give me a second to process all of this, won’t you?” Carly inquires, finally catching up to what’s been said mentally, though she still struggles to pull the woman back from the metaphorical ledge her comments had been gradually carrying her toward. “Sorry, Carly. I was running late as is and I’ve still got to get to some people before town hall starts” Margot replies, trying her best to slow the pace in which she’d begun speaking at.

“I don’t know what I do or don’t think about Jaime other than that she’s a massive bitch with a smug face that makes me want to punch it-” the group’s forewoman confesses, pausing as a dissatisfied expression of acknowledgement seeps over her face, “-but if she was telling us the truth about what’s going on with the NDF, with Julia and with what kind of role we have to play in it, I think it might be at least worth talking to her and trying to hear her out.”

“So we are in business with Jaime, or we’re in business with Julia, or-” Carly questions, trying not to trip over herself as her eyes squint, the brain she’s dumbed down to an almost-moronic level trying desperately to connect the dots, “-wait, who are we in business with now?”

“Right now, we’re in business for ourselves” Margot replies with an amused and dismissive frown, patting the younger woman on the shoulder as she shakes off the cobwebs and tries to regain her conscious composure. “If Chevy and Jaime are with the others at the place written down on that piece of paper, I want you to go there and bring them back as quietly as you can, alright?” the leader commands, keeping the woman within arm’s length to ensure she doesn’t topple over.

“Where do you want me to take them then?” Carly questions, a conclusion that- whilst necessary- the spokeswoman has yet to fully figure out. “For now, just bring her back here and we’ll figure out where we can hide them- if it’s even worth doing so- after that” Margot explains, staring into the dark and following the barely-visible outlines of the bricks that make up the nearest wall, “if worse comes to worse, we can hide them in the crawlspace I’ve got in the bedroom of my apartment.”

Shrugging at the gesture, Carly feels the weight of her superior push at her back and direct her toward the exit they’d initially ventured toward. “Now just go get them and bring them back in one piece- Jaime especially” Margot orders, watching the woman wave off the claim with a comedic enthusiasm as she continues for the door, overhearing the peacekeeper’s leader speak to the heavens with words meant only for her own ears, “I cannot believe those words just left my own lips.”

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Parting her eyelids, Jaime stares into the darkest depths of her childhood bedroom as the moonlight that pierces through the window her curtains have been parted around spills onto the floor in her quarters’ centre. Though she’d just been shaken from her slumber, the woman, whose head rests comfortably against the puffy and recently dusted-off pillow, awakens without the slightest hint of exhaustion, staring at the open door near her chambers’ entrance and the figure that stands before it.

“Who are you?” Jaime inquires, quickly lifting her head from the pillow without so much as a second thought, sitting upright beneath the covers as the apparition stares back at her, the features of its face too concealed within the darkness to present themselves toward her. Not uttering so much as a sound, the person within the sights of the deposed chancellor stares at the woman calling out to her before refocusing her sights elsewhere, instead choosing to wander throughout the home.

With intrigue, the fearless survivor throws her comforter aside and steps out of bed, her lilac-coloured panties and white t-shirt the only articles of clothing she leaves the room with. Though her own feet step across the wooden floorboards with the weight of a human being, the featureless soul that traipses onward ahead of her steps with the mass of a feather, their each contact with the ground leaving such little sound that they’re almost non-existent.

“Excuse me?” Jaime wonders aloud, questioning aloud the figure that journeys throughout the home as she descends the stairs, stepping past a sleeping Chevy and Kayla on their way through the open doors. Remaining mum along her travels, the awakened former head of household by default follows the entity into the backyard and onto the rear patio, finding the lawn that had grown beyond feasible control to have now returned to its well-maintained and recently-mowed state.

Though her adventure has led her to the back of the home, the figure whom she’d followed is now nowhere for Jaime to find, instead replaced with a peaceful and calming landscape that puts the woman at ease. “Am I dreaming?” the self-described ‘broken little girl’ questions, unsure of who would answer her now that she’s breached the boundary line of her ‘broken little home’.

“You must be” an enthusiastic, warm-sounding and feminine voice replies from the area in which an assortment of graves have been dug, re-earning the chancellor’s attention. “How else would we be here?” a more masculine voice carries on, his tone just as comforting as the soft-spoken one that had preceded it.

Leaning against the side of the home, Jordan provides his fiance with a warm smile whilst Kate stands a few centimetres away, her own pleasant visage paid to the distressed and troubled woman that stands before them. “Through my thoughts and imagination, I suppose?” Jaime sarcastically replies, her in-character reply only helping to widen the smile upon those her mind conjures up.

“Well, that’s the way that I normally appeared-” Kate corrects, passing a glance back to the man whose spirit realistically finds itself in the same afterlife as herself, “-though, I suppose I can make room for others to share the same flattery with.”

Chuckling to herself, Jaime nods before looking back toward the direction of the newly-manicured lawn, which has now vanished- replaced with a vast sea of rolling hills all covered in a thin layer of snow. “I’m two thin pieces of fabric away from being butt-naked, and yet I don’t feel an ounce of cold” the woman proclaims, letting out a deep sigh as she takes a moment to accept that none of this is forged in anything resembling reality.

“You’re also back where you spent the majority of your life- both by circumstance and by choice- before the catalyst took shape” Kate responds, now dressed in a heavy coat whilst Jordan sports a thin jacket, their breath fogging the air just ahead of themselves, “and yet, here you are. Two thin pieces of fabric may separate you from your birthday suit, yet there isn’t even an inch that separates you from a world where you no longer belong.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m back home and I feel like that couldn’t be further from the truth. I thought I already established this with Kayla a couple hours ago?” Jaime responds, turning back to re-enter the home, only for her eyes to take back toward the side in which the conversation had taken place.

“You’ve gone over these lessons for how many years now?” Kate retorts, joining Jordan in following her once-client as they slowly make for the litany of graves at the home’s side. “If we’re here, it’s usually ‘cause you’re trying to make peace with something” Jaime’s fiance continues, amused at the recollection that the once-chancellor has come up with, “maybe you followed us out here because-”

“-because I never really made peace with it” Jaime replies, finishing the man’s sentence on his behalf whilst standing at the foot of her own burial plot, the empty grave residing without a body once more as the tombstone at its head reverts from its now-adjusted state. As opposed to being scraped out, the chancellor’s name remains boldly carved into the stone tablet that serves as the tomb’s marker, a collection of words written in smaller letters sitting just below that.

“How does that make you feel, Jaime?” Kate wonders aloud, watching the chancellor’s face turn toward the woman from over her left shoulder, an eyebrow raised on the near-nude woman’s face. “Are we really gonna resort to therapy cliches now, Kate?” Jaime retorts, scoffing at the question as the woman carries on with the point of her inquiry, the survivor’s attention re-centring upon the tomb that bears her name as her feet begin to feel light.

“Knowing the truth about something that everyone keeps leaving unsaid can have various effects on a person” Kate says, pausing for a moment to glance toward Jordan, who reassuringly nods back to her. “And what truth is everyone ignoring, exactly?” Jaime challenges, hands hanging by her sides as the sound of distant pops climbs over the horizon where the sun rests- though they sound too far away for her mind to be dragged from the conversation at hand.

As though they’re weak, Jaime’s legs begin to wobble whilst the woman herself fails to take notice of them, experiencing the dream as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

“Telling people that you live to see the day where retribution falls upon Julia and Wade at your hands says one thing, but what it doesn’t say is the thing that brings you back here... Looking at your own grave” Jordan responds, taking over for where his fiance’s therapist leaves off whilst resting his hand upon the woman’s shoulder, “the thing about it is that everyone else knows what taking down Julia and Wade for good means. More specifically, what it means for you.”

Though one shoulder feels heavy, the one that experiences the grazing of her fiance’s hand soothes Jaime to the point where she feels light enough to defy gravity, leaving the earth’s surface in ascension of the heavens.

Though it isn’t spoken between the three, the question that leaves itself off with an open end brings itself back to the open plot of land awaiting the soul it intends to host. “You know exactly why you’re here, Jaime. Everyone else knows it and they care, so they overlook the part where the journey ends so they can, instead, join you in going along with the fight” Kate concludes, her hand joining Jordan’s in resting on the woman’s shoulder, “so my question remains… How does that make you feel?”

Lifting her chin high, Jaime’s face takes toward the sky as its dark and gracious waves of blue gradually turn lighter, becoming a faint shade of light no different than the day before defying the colour barrier and becoming a pearly white. Without warning, the woman’s body ceases to contain mass as her feet leave the ground, and instead fall through the air as the woman whom they belong to plummets into her open grave, entering the cushiony comfort of the coffin that awaits her below.

“Jaime!” Kayla hisses, shaking her friend violently with both hands wrapped around the woman’s shoulders, watching her jolt from the slumber that prompts her head to shoot off the pillow. “What!? What!? What!?” the woman quietly stammers three times, guiding her hand toward her exhaustion-covered face as she’s awoken from her sleep, looking into the eyes of her friend who kneels before her bedside in the same black tank top she’d worn earlier in the day, her black jeans hastily put back on.

“The NDF... They’re outside” Kayla whispers, watching Jaime’s eyes widen in spite of the crust that desperately tries to force them shut, the words spoken both as a horror and as a profound jubilation. “They found us?” the chancellor queries, only receiving a vehement nod from the woman before Chevy hurries into the room, a pistol brandished in his hand as he hurries toward his wife’s side.

“Come on, we’ve got to go!” Chevy hisses, grabbing his wife by the arm and pulling her upward, trying to afford the woman time to finish putting her pants back on whilst helping Jaime out of bed.

“We know you’re in there!” Blake calls out, speaking through a megaphone at the front of the weed-covered driveway, unable to see any signs of life within the suburban home from his place atop the overgrown grass of its front lawn. “On Chancellor Avallone’s orders, I’m going to give you one opportunity to come out with your hands held up and surrender peacefully” the man continues to proclaim, uncertain of what kind of ruckus is going on within the building’s confines at his voice’s resonance.

“If you do not surrender at this time, I have orders from the chancellor and NDF leader Wade Cordova to enter the home and take you by force in the name of the Angelino Republic” Blake carries on, the deposed chancellor they search to bring in already buckling her pants in preparation for their grand escape. “I have been authorised to use lethal force if you do not give yourselves up now, so be warned-” he concludes, making his mission incredibly clear, “-your compliance is the only way out.”

== Dire ==