Daelia Dollinger was tired of this.

If you were to ask what had drawn the curtains of her eyes away and revealed the new day? She couldn't have told you. Something like the letters she'd received, maybe it was the entrance of a new man in her life and it was entirely possible it was none of those. Closure, you know? Fickle creature that seems to only give you the answers you need when you forgot you wanted them to begin with. Just when you had settled into your cluelessness, there it hits you.. like a ton of bricks.

She'd successfully brought up a child who was now a blossoming man, named Saint. They looked at him like a ghost, didn't they? Probably for the best, if they avoided the spectre that reminded them of Morane, they'd ask fewer questions. They'd leave the two of them in peace about the subject and both Morane's offspring and the lawyer could do without the drama. Things didn't seem to go that way though. Just another brick to add to the pile, right? Everyone staring at your child like you're the youthful embodiment of the monster and killer that helped conceive him. Fantastic. Like I said, one more brick.

Then, there was the deceptively broken pieces of the people she cared for most. Sadie's family was something that you saw on a Lifetime movie, the kind where they warn you against urban life and lacking educations. While Sadie and Tah were brilliant human beings, they lived the fucked up life of unfortunate people who everyone you grew up with said.. were examples. They're examples of what happens when you live your life recklessly inside the city limits of Hathian. Then again, so was Parnell. So was Jacinda. Fuck, come to think of it, so was Dae. Loss, bloodshed and the whole pile of it.. it seemed to stack up. God, if you were to even contemplate the annexes of tragedy in just Page's life alone, you couldn't get the books together. It was amazing that the rest of them didn't feel buried under their own troubles. More bricks, stacked up around the Rejects like a bomb shelter.. sloppily mortared and left to dry while they recovered. Were the Rejects weak? No, they just spent their lives.. living and they did it with the world on their backs.

Her captivity within this urban jungle was becoming complicated and her only escape was to latch onto the hands of the various abandoned children and feed them at her home. That home that Zacch had brought them to live in on the outskirts of town. Amidst the trees, amidst the wildflowers and sunshine. Hard to believe just ten minutes away lived the blood-thirsty zombies with heartbeats and burrowed-bags under their eyes. So very much alive, but for what reason? She didn't understand it and Daelia only seemed to be able to find contentment when saving someone. Their life, their children, their world from crumbling down into mere flecks of blacktop and cocaine. So, she used those bricks to support the only thing she knew to do.. to give a fuck. One brick, two, then maybe three and slowly but surely she'd built a fence around the perimeter of her yard to keep the hate out.

Caleb. Caleb was something that only an angel would've sent her. Something to help her get over the dead Doctor and the many nightmares and dreams that she swore she'd been reunited with him. Caleb wanted to take those bricks down, with his sleeves rolled up and his constant questioning of why she stayed in a place like Hathian, Louisiana. Would she leave? Never. Not until change was made. Could change be made there? No idea, but that just meant that he'd have to stick around and watch her try her motherfucking hardest. So, Caleb would use those tensed biceps to lunge a metaphorical sledgehammer to the bricks she'd built up to protect herself and maybe, just maybe.. she wouldn't need those again.

Hathian was built on the sweat and destruction of it's people. Like the Mayans, each handmade brick laid out in the sunlight to harden and then heaved to the capital to rest in steps. Leading to the sun, leading to the heavens, leading to the ritualistic suicides to keep the Gods bringing their rain back. See, this little place in Hathian? It wasn't much different than those indiginous peoples during the reign of Yum Kaax.. bleeding for the livelihood of it's beliefs and welfare. God, to just get in there and watch it all crumble and start anew? It'd be something to behold.

Dae had seen enough of the rise and fall of a civilization and she was ready for a sledgehammer and some tears. She was ready to watch their world change as her's did, for once and for all.