FINAL CHAPTER: Cecilia: Room With A View

[Kadael]

"Katie! You chose to run off to the Amusement Park! You could have stayed with me!" Unable to keep her voice from rising, Cecilia puts her hands on her hips and locks eyes with her daughter. "This is not my fault - I didn't make you go. Do you understand that I was trying to keep you safe?!"

"I tried to follow you, but I couldn't, I'm telling you! Katie, I..." Her anger wavers, and the sharp edge in her voice fades. "I'm sorry that I made you feel like you don't matter. But you do, sweetie. You matter to me more than anything in the world."

Even if I can't seem to show it.

"Jack," she sighs, shutting her eyes and putting a hand to her forehead. "Let's go."

[Seon]

"Alright," Jack said weakly. "I'll go get my stuff."

[Laraqua]

"Really? Your stuff?" She rolls her eyes. "You'd never survive a housefire. Let's go get our stuff and not drive away from a monster infested town. Oh yeah ... good idea ... that's fantastic. Fine. You go get your stuff. Mommy, why don't we go wait by the car like you usually do?"

[Kadael]

"Katie! I know you've been through a lot, but that doesn't mean you get to be rude." Cecilia gives Jack an apologetic look, then falters. From her daughter's perspective, this man is the crazy guy who tried to kill Mommy. She doesn't know about what's happened since then... and now is really not the time to tell her.

She bends down and picks up the kitten, ignoring any cries it might make from being pulled away from its ham. Frustrated and bitter, she wonders if Katie will even like it, or if she'll just spit in its face too.

Wait by the car, like you usually do? Is that about the restroom? Angry remarks are the least of what she deserves for that, but... Katie said it was okay. And it wasn't okay at all, but what changed?

OOC,Oh, man. I neglected to mention Cecie's purse while she was in the hotel room/changing clothes. Does she still have it with her? The car keys are in there, after all...

[Laraqua]

Show,She's a woman. Therefore, she has her purse.

The kitten hisses at Cecilia, then growls at Katie, and struggles to get back to the food. Katie, for her part, doesn't even seem to notice the kitten.

[Seon]

Jack turned around and glanced at the kitten's reaction before heading off towards the room to grab his shirt, trenchcoat, and most importantly of all, his shotgun.

[Kadael]

Cecilia wants to follow him - a desire born out of fear, as though letting him out of her sight is somehow dangerous. But she knows that, despite the way she feels, things will be okay. The uneasiness she feels around Katie is only due to her anger, and she has nothing important in that hotel room anyway. Nothing irreplaceable.

She has her daughter back for the second time. They're in a safe place. And no matter how confused she is about them, she does have feelings for Jack... doesn't she? And he seems to return them. Enthusiastically.

So why isn't she happy?

"All right, come on." Cecilia offers her free hand to Katie, trying to shake the sadness and anxieties away.

[Laraqua]

Katie accepts her hand with a brief flash of a smile.

[Seon]

Jack quickly wore the shirt in the privacy of the room.

The kitten had growled at Katie. Why? It had growled at only monstrous things before. Then there was that matter of the body in the freezer.

He quickly wrapped the trench coat around himself and put his hand inside the inner pocket. Good, the gun was still there. He then looked a Rochelle's coat that was placed on the bed. Didn't Cecilia have his switchblade in there? He rummaged through it in order to find it again. That or any other interesting tidbits that she left behind.

[Kadael]

Cecilia leads Katie out of the hotel, periodically glancing over her shoulder to see if Jack's caught up.

[Laraqua]

Jack finds everything is as he's left it, though there's a stiffening tension to the air, and a sense that he's about to be left behind if he dallies long enough to search through coat pockets.

It may already be too late.

Cecilia heads out into the foyer and crosses toward the door and as she does, Katie slips her hand into her mommy's and gazes up at her, skipping all the way.

"We'll get to go home now," she says, seeming both very serious and very wistful at the same time.

Cecilia pulls open the front doors to reveal dazzling sunlight and as she steps out, one hand poised to protect her eyes from the light, the doors slip shut behind her. She blinks against the light, hearing the distant, almost muffled, sounds of traffic and birdsong and voices, and something scribbling behind her. Turning, she squints against the light and sees Katie finishing her drawing of an X upon the door in chalk. Then the noise hits her in full and she finds herself standing on the front step of the hotel, a businessman passing her by with a suitcase in his hand.

"Let's go home now, mommy," says Katie. She turns to her mommy and it's only now that Cecilia notices that her eyes are a different shade of blue than they used to be.

[Kadael]

"That's not your daughter." Jack said that, in the hospital. She'd mostly ignored him, just listened to Katie... Katie?

Katie's eyes are green.

Cecilia jerks her arm away from this child, this child who isn't her daughter. She... looks so much like Katie, but those blue eyes... nobody in their family has those eyes.

"Who are you?!" she shouts, avoiding the child's gaze. "What did you do with Katie? TELL ME!"

The feeling of safety is gone. Now, there's only fear.

[Seon]

"Shit," Jack muttered, just taking the coat out of the room with him. He rushed towards the main entrance to the hotel.

[Laraqua]

The businessman gives them a wide berth as he passes, then goes into the hotel and shuts the door.

The girl gives her a rather sombre and level look. "You still don't remember, do you?" There's no emotion in that voice. No accusation. There's barely an indication of a question. "You felt no urgency to find her because you knew.... You already knew ... you just couldn't remember. I'm all you have left of her. If you turn your back on me, you'll have nothing." With that, the girl who looks so much like Katie turns and walks toward the car without a backward glance.

Show,Sorry Jack! You're too late. We'll soon return you to your own thread in a moment.

[Kadael]

"Remember what? Do you know something about what happened?" Cecilia takes just one step towards the girl, eyes wide with curiosity and dread. Something happened to Katie. She just doesn't know what, and the thought of it terrifies her.

Following Katie - not Katie - down the stairs and to the parking lot, she turns and takes a last look at the door. Is Jack coming? What the hell is that X supposed to mean? "All I have left... what are you talking about? You know what happened that day, don't you?"

[Laraqua]

The girl doesn't answer until she reaches the car, at which point she turns to Cecilia. "I can be Katie. You want me to be Katie. I'm the closest thing you have to your little girl." She pauses, still with that level blue-eyed gaze. "And I'll tell you everything once we've cleared these hills. I'll tell you all that you could ever have wanted to know and then you can choose what happens next."

[Kadael]

"No. I'm not going anywhere with you until you tell me what's going on." Cecilia stops a little ways away from the car. People promising things. People lying. People being vague for no damn reason. She's done with this bullshit. Nobody's going to point a gun at her if she puts her foot down.

At least, not this time.

"You think you can be some kind of... replacement? For my daughter?" She shakes her head, scowling. "No, you tell me who - no, what you are. There's no way you're just a little girl."

[Laraqua]

She tilts her head to one side in that oh-so-familiar way but there's a maturity in her gaze and a wistful sadness to her lips that were never a part of Katie's make-up. She stands like that for a long moment, gazing at you as though you were the confused child, and then she draws in a long breath, holds it, and lets it out. As she speaks, her words change steadily from the calm adult she's trying to be until her petulant childishness becomes clear. "I can't tell you that. Not here. We either go right now or ... or I ... I'll have to go back and then you'll never know. If you don't want a replacement daughter, then fine, I don't want a replacement mother, either! I don't want you and you don't want me but we need to get outta here right now if we're ever going to get revenge." She points at the car. "You get in that car right now and drive me out of these hills or I swear to the mother of God that I will start a hellstorm that you won't survive. I will not be denied!"

At that rather intense proclamation, she sniffs and says a little whinily, "I want to go hoooome."

Tears start to spill down her cheeks and she digs her nails into her palms, balling her hands into fists, trying to rein them in. "I need to find her. Don't you understand? Please ... they've taken someone from both of us and I gotta get her back. I can help you but only if you leave right now." Her tone is stricken. She's pleading with you. The whole metamorphosis took barely a minute but it seems almost like a natural attrition of her defences.

[Kadael]

"Stop! God, stop it! I'm so sick of people telling me lies!" Cecilia strides forward and grabs the girl's shoulder, shaking her. "How am I supposed to believe anything you say when you pretended to be my daughter?! How could you just stand there and do that to me? For God's sake, you ran off when I could have gotten you out of this place, and now you want to leave?"

don't please no you're better a better person she looks like Katie she looks like

She crouches low to the ground, pressing hard on the child's shoulder as if she could drive her into the earth. "I thought I had Katie back. I thought she was okay. I thought we could go home, and she'd be happy." Cecilia drops the kitten on the asphalt of the parking lot and seizes the girl's other shoulder, her hands trembling as she squeezes. "But because of you, I wasted hours that I could have spent looking for her on you. You don't know how that feels, do you? To be given so much hope because of a lie... I lived that for years."

no not right don't do it don't hurt her you're supposed to be good

"And you think I'm taking you anywhere? You think I want any more of your help?" Cecilia shoves the girl backwards, shaking her hands as though she's touched something filthy. "No. You're not really going to help me. You never did, did you?"

stop it don't be angry

[Laraqua]

Katie is flung back by the shaking, the forceful shove down that had held her rooted in place, just as a child should. Her gaze lands on the kitten's sodden corpse that lays on the ground by Cecilia's feet. There's the faint wailing of a police siren in the background and Not-Katie flinches and looks back over her shoulder. "You made your choice...." She says it in such low tones as though merely commenting on the weather but there's a tension to her face that shows the importance of it to her. "If you want to find Katie, you're looking in the wrong place. I can show you. I can show you where Katie went. It's not far."

With that, she picks herself up, corpse-pale now, her long blonde hair falling from the ponytail and falling straight just past her chin. She holds out her hand, fingers twitching slightly, and gives Cecilia the slack-jawed look of the severely traumatised. It's not the shaking that did it. Cecilia can feel that much in her bones. She's not responsible for it. The girl has simply retreated down to someplace inside of herself where no one, and nothing, can ever touch her.