Growing up as a Marshall was everything and anything a child could hope for out of life, and for the first twelve years of hers, Liliana — or Lily, as she prefers to be called — knew, loved, and respected that fact. Born to Joshua and Olivia Marshall and the youngest of three children (even if it was only by two minutes), Lily enjoyed a happy and healthy childhood within the grounds of Fort Fidem. It was their home, and though even at a young age she knew many desired to escape its confines for good and explore what the world had to offer outside the safety and sanctuary of the base, Lily had always felt perfectly at ease with military living. After all, how many other children off base could say they had a bowling alley within walking distance from their house and the greatest fireworks display right outside their front door each and every Fourth of July and Memorial Day? No, she had decided from the time she was old enough to understand the concept of life outside of Fort Fidem that she would much prefer to take no part in it. And why would she? The Marshall’s were the very definition of the American dream from the time Lily was born. Her mother and father constantly doted on her and her siblings, making sure they were raised to be respectful, considerate, and above all, happy and healthy young children. There was nothing Lily felt she could not go to either one of her parents with, whether it be a problem she was having or even just to share in her excitement over the recent NFL draft picks. I mean seriously, it wasn’t every day the Cowboys drafted the top quarterback in the country. To put it simply, they had the perfect life. Or at least, what Lily believed to be the perfect life. Her father, Joshua Marshall, was a sergeant and because of this, they lived fairly well off. While it was nowhere near the high life the General’s family lived out, it was comfortable and quite frankly, she didn’t need or want for anything. She had two wonderful, supportive, and loving parents who devoted their time to her and her siblings, and though there were occasional spats, a brother and twin sister that she pretty much considered to be her best friends for as long as she could remember. As a child, Lily was quite the tomboy, preferring to play sports, dig in the dirt, and hang out with the boys rather than participate in what other girls her age were interested in. Barbie dolls, jewelry, dreams of becoming princesses, and dress up were practically cringeworthy for the young girl, and the very idea of being forced into a dress even for the most formal of occasions was enough to bring on a temper tantrum of such epic proportions, the sheer force of it threatened to bring the house down. She was stubborn through and through, something she liked to attribute to her father, and she was perfectly fine with that. At one point or another she participated in every sport available, refusing to play in an all girl’s league on any team. She was just as good as the boys, just as tough, and if they didn’t believe her? Well…she was her father’s daughter. She’d just have to show them. And she did just that, becoming MVP of nearly every single one of her teams before each season was up. As far as schooling was concerned, Lily viewed it like she did everything else in life -- a competition. She enjoyed learning from the moment she entered pre-kindergarten, and was always looking for any opportunity to one up her fellow students, no matter what it took. To her, school was just like one of her sports competitions or games. She wanted to be the best that she could be if not for herself, than for her father, and for the most part, maintained straight A’s, with the occasional B, all throughout her schooling until the seventh grade. Throughout her first twelve years, Lily was the prime definition of a “Daddy’s Girl”, even from the moment she was born. He was the first to be able to calm her crying and get her back to sleep as an infant, the first to convince her to use the treacherous and terrifying potty chair as a toddler, and the coach and cheerleader at every single one of her sport’s games. There was absolutely nothing in the world that Joshua Marshall could not do, she was convinced of that much, and she enjoyed spending any and all amounts of time with him that she could when he wasn’t working. It wasn’t that she wasn’t close with her mother, because she certainly was, but Joshua could do no wrong in her eyes. He understood her in a way she didn’t think possible for anyone else. He hung the moon and stars (or so he claimed), and she was more than happy to give him the credit for it. Deployments were extremely hard on her, even if just for a few weeks, and she would often try and find a way to hide in his luggage or in line with him and the other soldiers in the hopes of somehow going along with him. However, these attempts were always inevitably thwarted by her father, mother, or one of the nosy Lieutenants who had absolutely no business taking her Daddy away from her yet again. As the old saying goes, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”, and with each deployment, the next became harder and harder for Lily to bear. Little did she know then that in just a few short years, there would come a time when her father’s deployment would never come to an end. On her brother, JJ’s, fourteenth birthday, just as they were getting into the final verses of “Happy Birthday” and Lily was amping up for the coveted role of belting out “you smell like a monkey, and you look like one too”, there was a knock on the door. Unusual as it was in their tight knit community, Lily thought nothing of it at the time. They didn’t usually have door to door salesmen, especially not this late, but there was a first time for everything, or perhaps it was a late night package delivery. It was her brother’s birthday, after all. Presents arriving by UPS truck weren’t that unusual and her father must have sent something. He always did, even if he was on a deployment and missed a birthday. But after the first few minutes turned into half an hour, after they were told to head upstairs while their mother spoke to the men in uniform, she knew something was wrong. She wasn’t stupid, she’d seen the movies, she’d heard the stories from friends in school who had gone through this. You never wanted these men at your door. Not at eight o’clock on a Tuesday night, when everyone was supposed to be off post. This wasn’t a casual visit from her father’s colleagues. This was the notification of her father’s death. She didn’t have to wait for her mother to come up and speak to them to know that, and her agonized scream as she caught a glimpse of the men in uniform while gazing down the stairs told her mother as much. After her father’s death, nothing seemed to matter half as much as it used to. The first few weeks were the worst. She’d wanted nothing else but to curl up in her mother’s lap and never move, if only just to make sure nothing happened to her too, to make sure she was safe, to make sure she wasn’t going anywhere. Because the very thought of losing someone she loved so much ever again made her want to sink into the ground and die so much more than she already did. They were told they had to leave base, and if it wasn’t for her parents’ friend, her Aunt Tali, offering her mother a job at the base school, they would have. Instead, they packed their things and moved into Fidem housing. It wasn’t their home they’d shared with her father by any stretch of the imagination, but it was still within the safety of Fort Fidem, she was still able to hold onto that part of her father, and for now, that was good enough for her. When the time finally came for them to go back to school, the sympathetic glances from her peers only served to infuriate her. How dare they look at her like that? How dare they say they understood how she felt, or even pretend to? They hadn’t lost what she had. Most, if not all of these kids had their fathers and mothers with them. They would always, always be with them and they would never understand or even have to fathom what it felt like to lose their entire world. The girl who once could spend hours on end talking about her father no longer wished to, except on the rare occasion when she would curl up with her mother and reminisce. What she once clung to in order to still feel close to her father began to become a reminder of all that her family had lost and soon enough, she found herself not wanting anything to do with the military life anymore. Her grades plummeted, no longer caring about her future, her education, and feeling as though she no longer needed to impress anyone. As a result, she failed the seventh grade and was held back, forced to repeat the grade over again. She quit every sport’s team she was involved in, choosing instead to spend most of her time taking every opportunity she could to sneak off base, or creating havoc within it. Now a sophomore at the base school, Lily has barely been getting by on her grades and is in jeopardy of being held back once again, skipping class at every opportunity she can when outside her mother’s line of vision. However, she has taken up league soccer at the sport’s complex once again as she really enjoys it, but spends most of her free time off the field finding trouble wherever she can in the hopes of sabotaging her family’s privilege of living on base. Even four years after her father’s passing, to her, the base only serves to remind her of what the military has taken away from her, as she blames it for her father’s death and resents having anything to do with it. Rather than getting into trouble secretly, she would much rather cause chaos publicly on base in the hopes of the General serving them with an eviction notice and sending them packing. As a result, General Hamilton is often the victim of her pranks and behavior, ranging in anything from TPing his house to slitting the tires on every car he owns. While she knows that no amount of rebellion or distance from base will bring her father back, she can’t help but feel like every little bit has to help at least a little bit…right?
