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She managed to sneak the laptop into her house that night. When all was quiet, and not even a blinking streetlamp cast light her way, she pulled it out and gathered her blanket over her head to block the screen light from being visible. Carefully logging in, she set up a VPN connection before accessing the net. After hopping a few routers, when she felt she was reasonably removed from giving her activities away, she opened the National Preternatural Portal.
A few hours of desperate searching took her to the page she wanted to see. Shock, anger and a feeling of betrayal coursed through her gut as she read what showed up.
There was no mistaking it.
She tried to browse hectically, desperate for a way out, answers, whatever she could find. She was clutching at straws, but anything, any way out was better than where she stood. The whole of her life had been a big fat lie.
She didn't know how long she sat under the covers, but when she came to, she peeked outside her blanket to find a light streak across the sky : dawn was breaking. It was time to confront a new day. But a noise upstairs put her on edge. Carefully closing the laptop, she put it in her bag and hid it at the bottom of her closet.
She then quietly ventured upstairs to see who can in. Her father should have been asleep...
It wasn't.
Her little sister hobbled in from the foyer as quietly as her obviously hurt self would allowed, freezing when she saw someone find her, but relaxed and broke down when she saw that it was her elder sister.
She had thought things couldn't get any worse. She was so, so wrong.
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Maddie woke up with a start. Her memories swam with the vision of someone dear to her, who, over a really short course of time, had become so important that she could not imagine not having her.
And yet, as fate would have it, she was human.
Only human.
A human with limited rights, and few avenues open. Even lesser power.
During the darkest of jights, she would wonder...was is worth it?
Shaking herself, remembering - this is my fight.
She couldn't give up.