Vera Parker Leigh is not Jenny anymore (wantedthislife) wrote in zombieslogs, @ 2013-06-05 13:02:00 |
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Entry tags: | kono kalakaua, vera parker leigh |
Who: Vera and Open
What: Vera has something very important to say
When: Today
Where: The prison security room aka Charlie's not so secret lair
Notes: EVERYONE IN THE PRISON will hear Vera's announcement over the intercom system. I have bolded the speech for the tl;dr crowd.
Vera had stayed quiet for most of the day. The only two people in the prison who had any idea that she could talk again were Adrian and Jill. And as much as Vera wanted to run right to Julia and tell her, actually tell her the good news she had refrained. Instead she and Jill had hidden away all night so Vera could practice her speech. It was fun to actually talk with her friend instead of constantly trying to convey things with a look or writing them down on a notepad.
Vera was turning fifteen in two weeks and she had finally decided that she was done hiding. She had been so used to doing it for so long. Her mother had been in an awful relationship. They were always drinking and fighting and hitting each other and Vera who had been Jenny then had curled up in a ball in her little room in their tiny trailer and pretended to not exist. She had come out of her shell when The Tall Man had relocated her to her new mother in Seattle. Her new mother didn't have a boyfriend who beat her up, she didn't drink alcohol and she was nice. She was always encouraging Vera to learn and try new things. She had encouraged Vera to work hard at speech therapy so that she could talk again. Jenny had reemerged as the much more confident Vera. But then things changed again, the outbreak happened, people got sick, people were eating each other, ripping each other apart on the streets, she had to watch her mother die. And somewhere along the way Vera had reverted back to Jenny, the lanky kid with bruised knees and long dark hair to hide behind.
Vera didn't want to be Jenny anymore. She was finally ready to be the person that her new mother had wanted her to be. She was ready to be Vera and her coming out party wasn't going to be small. It was going to make an impact.
She was used to being unseen, unheard and it was easy to creep into the dark shadowy corners of the prison and move about undetected. She waited patiently until Charlie finally emerged from her control room to get a refill on her coffee. The minute the redhead was out of sight, Vera let herself in. She had seen the control room a few times but her eyes grew large as she looked around at all the screens and the buttons and flips and switches. Luckily the intercom was labeled clearly.
Her stepfather had loved that silly Will Smith movie and it was the only time Vera had ever spent with him, watching that movie over and over again. She had used the speech during her speech therapy which meant that it was the only thing she had readily memorized. Now the entire prison was going to hear it. She pressed the intercom button.
"Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in this history of mankind. Mankind -- that word should have new meaning for all of us today." She stopped for dramatic effect before continuing.
"We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps its fate that today is the 4th of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution -- but from annihilation. We're fighting for our right to live, to exist. And should we win the day, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive!" Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!"
And then the normally shy girl giggled before she turned the microphone off.