Any headcanons for Imelda and Victoria? I love these two and I thoroughly enjoy reading your stuff!!
First all, thank you very much!
And yes, I do. I have a lot of headcanons for everyone, because they’re just in the back of mind as I’m writing, haha, but so that we’re not here all day with a very long list, I’ll tell you one of my main ones.
We know that Victoria died fairly young, she can’t be more than her early fifties at the very oldest in that picture; noting the lines around the mouth, the eyes, the arms, body shape in general how the mouth has dropped....and comparing to my own family, when they were in their 50s...I peg her early fifties myself, which is still an incredibly young age to die...which is why her arrival in the Land of the Dead can’t have been easy. For one, she is leaving behind a family that no longer has Mamá Imelda to keep it together, which means both Victoria and Elena felt they had to help their Mother quite a lot so to ease the loss and grief of the whole family.
But suddenly, Victoria’s gone and there’s another loss that everyone has to suffer. Elena is now without her Dad, without her Mamá Imelda, without her sister...the fear she was going to lose her Mother too, or anyone else in the family, was probably huge for Elena. And Victoria, as her sister, probably knew this, so arriving in the Land of the Remembered with all that shit going on in your head must put a real dampener on ‘time to enjoy the afterlife’.
But then Mamá Imelda is there waiting. I fully headcanon that Imelda was the one who went to meet Victoria at arrivals. Julio probably argued that it’s his daughter and he should, but Imelda would have argued no she’s the matriarch and we know Julio is a little bit terrified of her. So Imelda is the one waiting for and she knows exactly how Victoria feels because she felt exactly the same way.
When Imelda died, she left everyone behind, she felt she was no longer able to protect them, guide them, she was leaving them alone to be lost, and Imelda felt such heartbreak and guilt at being separated from them. So she knows exactly what page Victoria on, so fittingly, she is exactly the right person to collect her. And she just hugs her. A proper Mamá Imelda hug. Warm and tight and acting like Victoria is still a little girl that can fit in the arms neatly and doesn’t actually tower over her abuelita now.
And they don’t go home straight away. Imelda takes her somewhere quiet and private where they can talk and she lets Victoria confess all her worries, fears, regrets, thoughts, all of it. Because this is her Mamá Imelda and she’s always known she can talk to her about anything (ahem, except music) and Imelda tells her how proud she is of her, how watching her every día de muertos has only made her more proud each year. And she also adds how her shoemaking work is fantastic and that she and Elena have become the experts she knew they would.
They just sit there for hours with Imelda explaining everything about the Land of the Remember and just reassuring Victoria and comforting her so that by the time Victoria does go to the house, she feels she’s been there forever already, because her Mamá Imelda has instantly made it feel like home.
