A/N: Yes, yet another pre-Repo, Marni-based story from yours truly. This is what was originally supposed to be some of the back-story in ADW, but got pushed to the back burner once I actually stared writing it. So here it is. Thank you for reading and for acknowledging the fact I don't own Repo! The Genetic Opera! Oh, and I finally got my computer to run spell-check! YAYS! (And maybe I won't abandon this one like I did My Sunshine...*sadface*)
"The best way to honor your dead is to live."
She remembered hearing that before, but she couldn't say exactly where. But it seemed a good enough excuse to be here, though she wasn't quite sure that here is where she wanted to be...but it was away from where she had been born; away from the dead house, the dead road, the dead sky. And the first way to living, she reckoned, was to get away from the dead.
Of course, the reckoning of a fifteen-year-old girl who may or may not become an illegal immigrant in the near future may not be of the highest quality. But if you are the fifteen-year-old possible illegal who happened to just lose both parents to the recent epidemic, then you consider your reckoning and reasoning to be fairly valid.
And as for the possible-future-illegal-alien part...well, it was simply because she wasn't sure of how valid the papers she had—the only thing she had left of the dead world that she had left a thousand years before—were, and whether or not they were the right ones to get into the ever sought-after shelter of the Isle. There was the Birth Certificate, of course, (that had to be at least one of the documents needed) as well as the Death Certificates of her mother, father, grandmother...the ones that would be needed the most, the ones that were to prove that Marni Shiloh Schrodinger was truly alone. The weight they had for her getting to the Isle was equal to, if not more than, the weight her own identification had.
People were more valuable dead than alive these days, it seemed, though several months ago a recently orphaned Marni, then fourteen, had decided that she had to live. As the only surviving member of the Schrodinger family, she just had to. And Sanitarium Isle had seemed the proper place to do it.
A good hundred-plus miles away from her home, it seemed far enough away to get a new grip on life, to start over, to forget about the toll the epidemic had further inland. But as she traveled closer to the coast, it was soon apparent that, although she had certainly left her dead behind, the epidemic that had brought them to that state was spreading everywhere. But she still went on, now in what called itself a "Community Shelter" but was more along the lines of a dung heap, and would stay there for only a few more days before trying to get into the near-sacred Isle only a few miles away.
Of course, when she first set out, she wasn't thinking completely rationally; Marni'd admit that much. She hadn't really thought of where she was going to stay along the way...or how she would get food...or even how to get to the coast. All she did was get whatever papers and documents she could find, the few hundred credits from her parent's (mainly her mother's) bank accounts, pack a small bag with some amount of food and clothing, and started walking east. After a few days of walking and only a few miles into the journey, she decided to give in and give up a few of the credits on a train ticket that took her to Crucifixus, the small port town that housed the only bridges to Sanitarium. There she would get herself in order, maybe get a small job just for a little while. And then, if all went well, the homestretch would be just a boat or car ride away.
As it was, the small job that she had planned on ended up taking care of smaller children at the Shelter, in exchange for the room, meals, and a few credits a week. And a few credits a week adds up quite quickly when you've got nowhere to spend it and several weeks to earn it. And no one else to spend it on or with.
But it's funny how life can change that sometimes.
