THE FILM SEQUENCE — FIRST PERSON (FINAL BATTLE AVOIDANCE)

The General insists on a peaceful solution and comes up with a plan to project Juan's films and Soldier from their own army saying they were left to starve.  And they see the slave camps giving up, their soldiers giving up to them, and the General reading, at the very end.  Then the film tells them they have food and shelter.  They can leave the army.... etc...  and the women and children leave first.  They are also talking on speakers very loud telling them they do not want to fight anymore....  Then they begin to bring out food, a lot of food, and the women and children run to it... The general Joins them to prove the food is not filled with cynanide, etc.  The children all seem to want to be around him and he shows what being a good uncle had been about.  He had five brothers and sisters, all which they were told I was being held in a secure facility.  They probably thought I was dead?  They were on the East Coast, at the Sanctuary 3.  Sanctuary 3 was in mid-Canada.

THE FILM SEQUENCE — FIRST PERSON (FINAL BATTLE AVOIDANCE)

When the projector flickered to life, I braced myself. I thought the footage would be all me—me fighting, me shouting orders, me doing the things I never wanted anyone to see again.

But Juan… Juan had been filming something else.

The first images were battle, yes—but not centered on me.
Just faces.
Men and women running, ducking, helping each other.
Fear.
Determination.
Humanity.

I was in the frame sometimes, but only as part of the chaos, not the center of it. Juan had understood something I never said out loud: the story was never about me.

Then the footage shifted.

We were on the road.
A quiet day.
Dust in the air.
Children gathered around me in a circle.

I didn’t even remember Juan filming this.

There I was, sitting cross‑legged in the dirt, reading one of the books I’d saved from the prison library. My voice was animated, my hands moving as I played the different characters. The kids were laughing. Leaning in. Hanging on every word.

And then I saw it—
a moment I didn’t know existed.

I looked up from the book, saw Juan filming, and I waved at him.
A small wave.
My lips curved into something that might’ve been a smile.

I felt my stomach drop.

I hadn’t smiled in years.
Not like that.

On the screen, I turned back to the children and said,
“Nice to use my literature degree. At West Point.”

The crowd watching the film murmured.
Some laughed softly.
Some gasped.
Some stared at me like I’d been hiding a whole other person.

And maybe I had.

Juan kept filming the kids’ faces—wide‑eyed, hungry for the story, hungry for something gentle in a world that had given them nothing but fear. He filmed the way they leaned against me. The way I softened without realizing it.

He filmed the humanity I didn’t think I had left.

Then the footage cut to the women and children climbing out of the enemy trucks—starved, filthy, shaking. The moment they saw their husbands and fathers, they ran. The soldiers dropped their guns when they heard their families hadn’t been fed.

And then—
the part that nearly killed me—
a few of their children saw me on the screen and recognized me.

Recognized the man reading stories.

They broke away from their families and ran straight toward me.

I froze.
I didn’t know how to be the man they thought I was.

But Juan had known.
He’d seen it before I did.

He’d filmed it.

If