No matter how much I wish I did, I do not own Repo! The Genetic Opera.
An old woman sat gazing at the sky. She never thought she'd see it. The sky was actually blue, not the electric blue of the street drug, but a soft blue that was vivid at the same time. Yellow sunlight streamed down onto the beginnings of green grass, nothing at all like the gray that she had been accustomed to her whole life. She knew this was how the world was supposed to look, it said so in her books. The books said that this was how things looked before the epidemic.
Things had changed so much. Her first two decades of life had been so confusing. Caged up by her father, then suddenly thrust into a cruel world that she didn't want to be a part of anymore. Though everything looked so appealing from her window, the view from below wasn't nearly as welcoming. Her only friends were a drug peddler and an opera singer she had known for mere hours before that horrid night.
Her father was an enigma she didn't want to solve. He had his reasons for what he did, but it didn't make it any less agonizing to think of the hell she had been put through because of that man. She loved him dearly, but she could never see him in the same light.
Hearing a whirring overhead, she looked up at one of the few remaining hovering billboards. A banner for GeneCo. ran across the bottom. A bittersweet sigh escaped Shilo's lips. She had grown up in a world where surgery was a fashion statement, drugs were extracted from the dead, and if a family member suddenly disappeared it was because they were behind on their payments.
But the dead no longer littered the street. Internal surgery was for extreme cases and the Largos were a name accompanied by a bitter taste. People were comfortable in their own skins, their own actual skins that they were born with. The thought amazed Shilo.
The sound of footsteps came from behind her. Smiling at one of the few constants in her life, Shilo grasped her husband by the hand. He lovingly gripped her hand and rested his chin on her head. Chuckling at the fact that his hair still had those ridiculous dreadlocks in it, Shilo turned to face Terrance. She'd stopped calling him "Graverobber" right about the time he stopped calling her "kid".
"Lovely, isn't it?" She murmured. "I didn't think that it was really supposed to look like this." His arms encircled her waist as they both soaked up the sun. "I remember it. Or at least I think I do. I remember a time before everyone died." Looking up at his face, Shilo quirked her eyebrow. "What? I'm a fair bit older than you, kid." He said with a smirk on his face. "And don't you forget it, old man."
Watching as children flitted in the distance, Shilo could see GeneCo's main office towering over the city. The constant reminder that even though things were better they weren't perfect. They never would be, she supposed. There would also be a problem, and society would always want to fix it. She saw it in the teenagers around her. Though she had no idea what was going through their minds when they came back from the city with tails or wings, Shilo understand the pressure to conform.
Walking back into her husband's loving embrace, Shilo took one look at her home. It had been her prison for seventeen years, and her haven for seventy more. As she and Terrance walked hand and hand into town, the gates closing with a sense of finality behind them, Shilo thought about everything.
She thought about the first time she met Graverobber, she thought of gazing over the city longingly from her window. She thought of the promise of a cure from Rotti Largo, her one conversation with her godmother, Blind Mag. She thought about how horrified she was when she learned her father was the Repo-Man. She thought of the shock of watching her father die in her hands, and the feeling of freedom while walking from that fateful opera.
Shilo thought of the feeling of dread that possessed her when she realized she was truly alone. She thought of Graverobber scooping her into his arms while she sobbed. She thought of the time she spent healing and grieving over all she learned at the Genetic Opera. She thought of forming a relationship with Terrance.
She thought of him proposing. She thought of the world starting to flourish, as nature slowly returned. She thought of grass starting to peep up from under the bodies that lay decomposing. She thought of the sky, and how everyday it seemed to be getting just a tad clearer. She thought of how she had finally made her peace with the events from all those years ago.
Shilo Wallace grasped her husband's hand, finding comfort within his embrace. She thought of the trials and tribulations she had to go to before finding such happiness. She thought of how corporations were no longer corrupt, and how good was in the world. She thought, as they headed to the car that would lead them to town, that maybe, just maybe, everything would be alright.