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Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood Nina Simone

Please... nothing will ever fit her better than 'I'm just a soul whose intentions are good'. The lyric encapsulates everything that Cecelia has strived for her entire life. Even now in Redwood, no matter what decision she makes, what she says in a conversation, she's just trying her hardest to keep up a kind front and lend a sympathetic ear to others. It's all she can hope for.

(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay Otis Redding

Ultimately just a song about sitting and observing the environment around you, Cecelia's favorite activity. If there's one thing she can be counted on to do, it's to sit quietly and watch the world turn around her. The song maintains a pleasant beat, even as the lyrics describe having to leave everything you've ever known. It has the sunshine disposition, as well as the sad undertone, to stand for everything I see in her.

So Far Away Carole King

I think there's something just innately in her heart about being left behind, forgotten, ignored. Listening to this song really hits home the loneliness that is just intrinsic to her character. Nothing stays in place for her, and she cannot go back to a way it all was, it's never been the same. It's easy to interpret the face at her door as being her father, but it could easily be any figure from her past. I think up until Redwood, she was easy to dismiss as transient, and to count her out early. To be near someone is a great wish of hers.

These Days Nico

It's easy nowadays to sit and think about all the choices that were lost when everything changed. So much happened so quickly, and it's hard for a mind as analytical as hers to really parse how one can deal with it all alone. It's good now to look at the days around her, to process everything slowly, to stem the flow of loss and just breath. There's something so very tender in the song, but still an obvious sense of loss in what could have become of the singer's life, of Cecelia's.

Bridge Over Troubled Water Simon & Garfunkel

TLDR: cecelia is a decorated neurologist and psychologist who had a speciality in behavioral therapy and acute lonliness. redwood is the first place she's been where she's had a chance to be herself build meaningful connections outside her family name.

Biography

Jon Destrade travelled to Barcelona only for business, he assured his wife time and time again. He traveled there for the good of his family, and nothing more. He did not travel there to see a mistress. He did not pour vast sums of money into a problem that he had caused, he did not make the mistake of signing the birth certificate of Cecilia Iglesias Corisande Andres-Destrade, giving the child legitimate claim to his estate. That would all have been fathoms below a man of his standing and intelligence. Such a scandal would have been impossible to cover. 

But, if such things had happened, the resulting daughter might have been something like this: 

She would be exceptionally bright, remarkably kindhearted, and infectiously nice. Raised by her mother and grandmother, kept in stylish clothes and private schools. Able to excel based on privilege her last name bought her, buoyed her own hard work. She would finish a bachelors degree in criminology and psychology at the University of Barcelona. She would go on to Cambridge, hoping to be closer to her father in London. She would hope proximity would finally bring them closer together, and not just open her up to a barrage of endless half-cousins and leering gossips. She would excel in her masters program, before continuing on to a PhD in behavioral psychology, and finally an MD with their neurology unit. The hope would endure that the more decoration she added to the Destrade name, the more likely it would be that her father would finally publicly accept her, that her mother could stop draining away her life waiting for the return of a man who had lost interest long ago. 

And if none of that worked, perhaps Dr. Cecelia Andres-Destrade, PhD & MD, would have to get away from it all just for a little bit. She would travel to the United States, just months before a deadly outbreak. She would be trapped in a state she knew little about, oceans away from her friends and family. Her expertise being misunderstood as clinical therapy, instead of advanced behavioral neurology, would mean that she gets lost in the shuffle of potential teams trying to find an explanation for the outbreak. She would drop completely off the radar, landing in the newly formed town of Redwood. 

And Cecelia would finally just be happy to be accepted, wish to be helpful. All her studies, which might have seemed simply for attention once, are suddenly one of the most useful skills sets to have at the end of the world. After a year, she has established herself as a benevolent figure in the community, a conflict mediator and a healer. Here in Redwood, she would finally have something the previous world could not give her, the ability to be her own person

Headcanons:

Although she has a friendly and generally even-keel demeanor, Cecelia is observant of everything and everyone. Although she is not confrontational, she often times finds ways to have conversations which confirm or deny her hypotheses.

Her one luxury she’d like to extend as long as possible is a warm mug of tea. It’s a trick that she finds always works to soothe her and others. She tries to be rational about what she trades for it, but it can be considered a weakness.