lostintheriveroftime replied to your photo “Having a lot of Gabriel Thompkins feels right now pondering that...”
I've thought about him SO OFTEN. I would love to know more about him and how he views/feels towards his 'little' half brother. What was their relationship like as kids? Were they close? Does he wonder why flynn hasnt contacted him in years?! I NEED INFORMATION
For me, Maria was a bit happier given she didn’t also lose Gabriel, but she still ended up in a bad second marriage due to loneliness, being in a foreign country, etc. (There’s pretty much a reason Garcia apparently left home at 15 to go join proto-rebel groups in the months leading up to the Croatian War of Independence. And there are some hints of things, like how he reacts to Emma’s story of abuse, that seem too on the nose.) Gabriel wasn’t born into that household like Garcia, and tried to convince her to leave, but in the late ‘70′s, not as much opportunity for a wife to escape an abusive marriage. Plus she was terrified that as the foreign American wife, she might lose Garcia, and no way in hell was she leaving him alone with Asher. So Gabriel did his best to protect his mom and his kid brother as long as he could. But things between Asher and Gabriel kept getting worse, and Maria pretty much pleaded with him to leave and go make his own life and get away from all of it. So he left Split as soon as he headed off to college at 17. Once he was in grad school, there were some weekends Gabe would pointedly invite Garcia to visit him for the weekend, and Maria would pointedly send him to get him away from Asher. They’d usually watch Westerns--Garcia’s favorite. Gabe always thought it was odd that his European-born brother identified so fiercely with the ideal of America, whereas he, as an American-born kid, embraced Europe far more. (He only realized later that basically this was Garcia was rejecting Asher in favor of Maria, and he was embracing a new life away from the lonely, stressful years in Houston and the father he couldn’t remember. They both met in the middle more as adults--Garcia became definitely proud of his Croatian heritage, and less conflicted, while fighting for his country’s independence.)
It was pretty hard for Gabriel given his kid brother was 12 years younger, so he was both kind of a brother and uncle at the same time when Garcia was a child. The relationship got a bit closer once Garcia was older and they were more on the level of peers, but given Gabe was in Paris and Garcia was always off in some new war-torn corner of the world getting shot at by partisans, they probably only got together rarely prior to 2008, and only a couple times a year in 2008-2014 since Garcia was still sometimes off in various corners of Eastern Europe apparently getting covertly shot at this time. The warmth and love would always be there between them, and he adored Iris, but they could never quite be BFFs like Amy and Lucy were. So yeah, he’s reallllly surprised Garcia hasn’t called him since that fateful night in 2014. Which means he’s also half-convinced it’s likely his brother was also killed that night, and Flynn’s body was probably weighted down and dumped in the water as part of the frame-up.
