Swan Song

[Carlisle]

Flurries of emotions, howls of uncertainty and blizzards of thought had meddle with Julia’s mind for the rest of the morning. It had always been them against each other, yet the explosion on the earlier announcement offered a hopeful alternative. If the others had the same moment of reckoning that she had on that mountain conclave then this really could be a game changer.

Her heart was beating out of her chest for minutes, it felt like hours, after the announcement had been abruptly cut off. She’d reflected on that moment back and forth, her mind racing in different directions as she tried to reason with it herself. She had thought about formulating some elaborate escape plan at the very start, but quickly succumbed to her own insecurities and decided that it was hopeless to actually waste energy or effort on something like that. She was smart, sure, but there was no way she was clever enough to overcome this level of adversity. The whole operation was air-tight, or at least it seemed until this morning, so the prospect of actually revolting against their dictatorship seemed like a distant longshot. An unrealistic pipe dream that wasn’t about to materialize.

It was uncomfortably aligned with Julia’s general personality that instead of trying to come up with her own plan to escape, all of this time she was instead waiting to be rescued.

Waiting for something to happen, the army to bust in, the terrorist’s to wave a white flag and surrender, calling a ceasefire and playing it all off as a messed up joke. Hell – Julia was at the point where she’d even take a group of secret tribal ninja whose main mission was to ruin the terrorist’s plans and bring peace to the world. The longer it had gone on, the more fatalities were called, the more suns that set over the island, the less likely it had all felt. But this bomb, and Lily’s defiance, changed everything.

Julia sat still for an hour or two after the announcement, the reflections of the rising sun on the ocean horizon was nothing short of beautiful. The radiance of the sunrise perfectly juxtaposing the brutality that the island had faced over the past week or two. It was a moment she wanted to enjoy, appreciating the beauty in the destruction. If only for a moment frozen in time.

Eventually she pulled herself together, the continuing sounds of gunfire echoing down the mountain doing a pretty good job of stamping on the lull, waking her up from the dreams of optimism that she had been clinging to. Maybe it was all too far gone at this point, it hadn’t been enough to deter the violence, not even for a few hours, which probably wasn’t a good sign. Julia sighed as her grand thoughts crusted over, dampened, and collapsed to the ground with her bloated morale.

She knew what she needed to do, but like with many essays in the past didn’t know where exactly to start. The schematics of her master plan nothing more than a blank parchment. With a dwindling stride, Julia made her way round the mountain pass, deciding that with confirmation Lily wasn’t coming to join her that she was better off getting as far away from that gunfire as she could. The twists and winds of the pass continued as she readied herself to lurk around the mining town once again. Find a house maybe, to hole up in and relax.

But…

Her plans were thwarted by the sound of shouting. It was coming from somewhere around the mountain, Julia’s slow pace morphing into a sprint as she clung to the side of the mountain. Eventually, the shouting became clearer and she could understand properly what they were saying.

”ATTENTION CLASSMATES.”

Heartrate sped up.

“This is Marshall.”

The message was still a little muffled… Marshall? From their class? It wasn’t the terrorists?

“Hot springs.”

He was at the hot springs, round the mountain from the pass?

Truce.

Ceasefire. Peace. Truce.

Somebody else had the same idea, they had the right idea. And yet, her first thought wasn’t the excitement that she had expect to feel, instead all she experienced was utter fear. The type that shakes you to the very core. It’s the uncertainty that comes with change, that feeling of dread when you realise you’re encroaching on the inescapable. The inevitability of something big that comes with the bittersweet taste of anxiety.

She knew what had to be done, though, as she lugged her belongings and made haste to reach Marshall and rally for the truce. The anxiety came from the dangerous position it would leave her in, exposed and open. What is it was a trap? What if they didn’t want a truce with somebody who killed? For every positive outcome, it felt like there a thousand possibilities that ended negatively, mostly all containing bloodshed too.

That was probably the worst part of having low self-confidence. The rollercoaster of emotion, violently throwing her back and forth through the turbulence of feeling confident and feeling weak and useless. Every single waking minute, Julia wished for the courage that she felt at times. When she had somebody there to big her up, or make up for her uselessness, things felt okay. In fact, they felt great. Even if upon reflection it wasn’t, like with Joshua, it was that presence which had changed her.

Following her encounter with Lily, Julia made that promise to herself. A vow that from now until eternity she would not be that person any longer. She would push herself out of her comfort zone, not even just her comfort zone, she would just put herself out there more. To replicate the confidence that her sister Marina had, to manifest her own self-belief and do what she had to in order to rally the group and help Marshall to find a peaceful way to end this endless nightmare.

Her final oath was that she wanted to stop living in the shadows of other, stronger people. She wanted to be able to make her own mark.

[S119 - Julia Guercio - continued from Nightingale]

Approaching Marshall, and it looked like he had a few other people with him too. A girl with one arm, another girl and a guy who looked like he was carrying somebody?

Julia hid behind the largest rock she could find, not wanting to emerge from the shadows until the time was right. She needed to properly investigate the scene first, make sure it was safe and that it wasn’t actually the trap. Had they always been a group together, or had the others been like her and heard the siren song from Marshall that allured them towards him? Did everybody just want a truce as well?

The longer she looked, it looked like one of the men was carrying.

…

Surely not. Was that Kitty? Katelyn Graves? The one who had torn through half the class? She looked… dead.
She thought about jumping out and joining the party, but it was still a little too scary. Too many people, intentions weren’t clear yet. It was too risky to just jump out. And only moments later the group started shouting at each other. The one-armed girl shouting about Kitty, about the people she had murdered. She just about established the silhouette carrying the girl in his arms belonged to Kai Rosado-Prince, not somebody she had ever really spoken to in school. As the voices were raised, before long Kai took off, Kitty still lifeless in his arms, and left Marshall and the two girls. She slid back down the side of the rock to ensure he didn’t catch a glimpse of her as he walked past her hiding spot.

Maybe now was the right time to make herself known.

Well, that didn’t last long.

Others must’ve heard Marshall’s cries for a truce too, as two boys had now entered the scene from the other side of the pool. They were pretty far away, and Julia was barely peeping her eyes out from the side of the rock, but they were recognisable immediately as Matthew Bell and Shawn Bellamy. It turned out they must’ve stuck together after she bumped into them on the old road. Things had gone south pretty damn fast then, and Julia was very self-aware that she left that whole thing looking like a crazy person.

Once again, a sweep of that ferocious rollercoaster. As much as she had built herself up to make the move and come out to join Marshall and the others, Matthew’s appearance marked a crushing, probably final, blow to the bravado that she had been building up. Once again, she clung to the back of the rock, careful not to make a single noise to avoid attracting any unwanted attention. It took minutes for things to escalate, in a dramatic way that seemed to follow Matthew around. She’d noted that he had surprisingly ended up killing Karin shortly after her final fateful encounter with the girl. Eventually, threats were being thrown around, more voices raised, and again things taking a turn for the worst just like back on that cold morning on the roadside.

Guns were fired and Julia took that as the right time to flee the scene, scrambling some of the rocks with her feet as she hurried off into the distance, sprinting as far as she could to get out of harm’s way.

The plan for a truce had been thwarted, and in turn Julia’s confidence was once again left in tatters. It had taken her such a long time to build herself up to be confident enough to throw herself into the mix with Marshall and the others, that the anticlimax of her running away at the end of all that anticipation left her feeling disappointed.

[S119 - Julia Guercio - continued in If Walls Could Talk]