"The eyes... They had no expression at all. Whatever thoughts behind the smoke screen, none came through."
34 || Del Bosque Family || ♗
Logistician & Trader by Day ♘ Trouble Shooter by Night ♖
(aka Del Bosque Caretaker, Problem-solver, Racketeer and all-around Ace up the Sleeve)
Apart from the surname, little else identifies Teodósio as a Del Bosque. Related to the family via his long-deceased father, Emiliano, he was unenthusiastically collected by them when his own mother failed to care for him following the car crash that claimed Emiliano's life. To this day, he doesn't know that his father's demise was orchestrated by none other than his uncle, Rafael.
The quiet boy's education was paved by the family's exorbitant wealth in the best of schools and colleges, while his own inheritance he invested in stocks, property, and... Some special interests (weapons, poisons, fight-training, bombs, break-in tools, and sleight of hand) which increasingly began to occupy his attention, following a series of small-time favours that he completed for his relatives and the proclivities they awoke in him. His tendency to unsettle, even without meaning to, and his ability to fade into the backdrop after so many years of doing just that in his own family — become traits he could finally, terribly, exploit for his own purposes.
Two degrees in Mathematics, a legal job, savings for decades, and all the aristocratic opportunity that a Coronado citizen might need to make the world their oyster... Why he's become – some might say, obsessively – interested in serving a family who never loved him, is anyone's guess. He doesn't demand any fee for his discretion or the jobs they want done, no matter how grim or bloody. So what's in it for Teodósio?... No one really knows, and that's what frightens them the most.
GENERAL:
Name: Teodósio James Del Bosque
Age: 34
Orientation: Heterosexual. Flexible if he wants something.
Allegiance: Del Bosque
Occupation: Publicly - Logistician, trader. Privately - Family Caretaker
Education: MSc Applied Mathematics
PHYSICALITY:
Height: 5'11
Hair: Dark auburn
Eyes: Green-grey
Scars: 4. On the chin (fall from a boat as a kid), left arm (motorcycle crash), abdomen (appendectomy), and chest (wrong end of a knife fight).
Tattoos: None. Blame the family, no commitment left over for a tattoo.
Dislikes: An Unnecessary Mess, Histrionics, Ballet, Abstract Art
POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS:
For a Neutral/Unaffiliated Person: Teodósio is generally unseen, and he likes it that way. He's found a way to work it to his advantage. But you see him. In fact, you wonder about the Del Bosque Ghost, the one who haunts the background of so many family photos, both there and not at the same time. Maybe you wanna know more about him. Or maybe, you already do. Maybe you've uncovered some dirt on the man who leaves no prints, and maybe you'd like to see what it's worth to him in sellos... Or maybe you have something else up your sleeve.
For a Shibata: Some of the skills he picked up over the last ten years include fight and weapons training. Who was it that helped him? Why? Did they take him for a harmless rich kid with too much time on his hands? Did it seem too remote a risk that the teachings might one day be used in situations that might go against the Shibata code and indict (your character) who helped hone some of his skills? Or was the substantial paycheck enough to simply negate any questions?
For a Dubois: A favour for a favour. While it's true that, as a rule, Teodósio tries to keep his dealings with the family's rivals as limited as possible, where's the fun in that? Did (your character) save him from a tricky situation?... Do they expect the debt to be paid, are they waiting to collect? This dynamic can also be reversed if preferred, with {your character} as the one with the invisible noose around their neck. Either way, no such thing as a pro bono in Coronado.
The 'Friend': You're the gum at the bottom of Teo's shoe. And although he's tried treating you as such to disappoint any foolish hope of friendship, you've clung on. You've known him for longer than he'd care to admit, might've known him across awkward life stages that he wore less well than the one he wears now; with all the illusive grace of a man who exists only in the present. You like him, God help you, whether you know why or whether it's a mystery to you both, is UTP. And Teo, on his part, has grown to grudgingly tolerate you.
The 'Ex': Go on, see what lies beneath that inscrutable exterior. Though Teodósio carefully selected his romantic exploits relationships to be fleeting and leave him generally unflappable, maybe you were something of an exception. Maybe he felt something, or maybe you did. Did you break things off, or did he?... Was it one of those nice, clean breaks he loves so much, or were you a mess he's still mopping in his mind?... Let's put our heads together and find out.
The 'Thorn in his Side': Listen, he's a strange man and was even stranger as a child, before developing the social insight needed to mask (some) of his oddity. Maybe your character was a bully back in the day, or maybe it was all meant as teasing in good fun. Either way, old grudges die hard, and he doesn't like you. In fact, he'd like very much to be left alone with you in a room of no consequences, but that would be too easy. So come prod and pester him, I beg.
Etc, etc: Literally any desired connection that crosses your mind, please hmu!
The man is observant, or Barry's got a bad poker face. Either way, the fact that he mentions Leon sends a stab of irritation through his veins, making the one that popped on his neck strain for a second more before he regains a bit of control. If he thought about it hard enough, it was alarming to hear a Del Bosque know about him—anything about him. It felt like a bad omen, almost. "Nah, but if I'm going to be honest, you could replace everyone here with automation and no one would bat an eye."
"And my husband is... off to do some work." Or whatever he's up to. Really, Barry tries to stay away from his arbiter work, seeing as it's already cost him more than he wanted to shill out. "He was supposed to come, but backed out—I managed to get one someone's list."
"I just need another drink, and I'll be fine, I'm sure." It sounds fake to him, like he's speaking through gritted teeth, even now. If someone checked his blood pressure, the gauge would definitely short-circuit. "Tonight's events just... need some getting used to. Most excitement I've had is a couple of nights in a yacht I won't recount."
The thing is, he didn't know that Barry was married, let alone to whom. He'd only gone off a hunch and an observation; that the man in front of him wouldn't show up to such an event willingly, nor would he have made it on the very exclusive guest list of his own merit... Hardly the sort of riffraff his family would care to invite for dinner.
Which begs the question, just who is Bartholomew Kennedy married to?
Clearly someone more important than Barry himself; after all, he admits his husband had received an invitation. It hardly narrows it down, the list of people more important than Barry runs from here to the Mill. He could ask, but where's the fun in that?...
Besides, the way he's blurting things out, he may let it slip whether Teodósio cares to hear it or not. "Funny," He muses, dangling his drink in one hand. "You had the perfect excuse to avoid this ballroom of automatons – as you so charmingly put it – given your husband declined the invite, and yet here you are." The Del Bosque's lips pull back into a wolfish grin. "... You must enjoy us more than you let on, Barry."
Nevermind the fact he's tense like a bow string, the veins in his neck could be spotted a mile away. Another drink, he says, and Teodósio enables it by stepping fluidly out of his path as the man moves in front of the cocktail dispenser once more.
"A couple of nights in a yacht you won't recount?... How exciting. Do us all a favour and take my cousin with you, next time."
It has been very rare to pinpoint moments when Giulia's soul has left her body, in the very figurative way of the sense, but it's also important to note that these moments have indeed existed. Today will be marked in the calendar as one of these top moments, aside memorable ones such as: Aurélie coming home with her first tattoo, Aurélie coming home with her second tattoo, her favorite brand of cigarettes that discontinued out of the blue, and quite a bunch more.
But somehow, none of these have managed to truly freeze Giulia in disbielief the way it did as Grace started singing without preambule. It takes two seconds for Giulia's insides to churn when she recognizes the music, and at least twenty more seconds for the shock to dissipate as her nephew interrupts the show.
Teodósio's words have barely finished leaving his mouth that Giulia looks away from the spectacle and anchors her own thunderstruck hazel eyes in his. Of course the little brat would want to flee, she understands him oh so well but ah. Not today. Please. Not today. She looks up over the rim of her sunglasses, making it sure that Teodósio catches the full seriousness of the situation. If you leave me here alone I will make sure these are your last minutes on earth. "Do not. Leave." She commands implores him, and if it were in her vocabulary, she would have said please. Still. She keeps her gaze on him a moment, trying to convey the myriad of emotions she can barely process and even less express, until a shudder of familiar agony writhers out of her entrails and she has to shake it off with a spasmic shrug of her shoulders, neck cracking, unwillingly turning back to the disaster at hand. She's too sober for this entire fucking day.
A spider crawling off her frozen prison, Giulia's legs find their ingrained tune, as she finally takes the steps towards the grave and breaches the distance, standing a few closer steps away from Grace. Smoke from the candles manages to penetrate her nostrils, makes itself home within the cavernous emptiness that defines a del Bosque elder. Giulia welcomes it with firm bitterness, angles herself towards her former... Friend? Faw? Another shudder, she clenches her hands, clears her throat filled with 25 year old inaudible grief.
"As always, this was superbly adequate Grace, but what is this farce?" Giulia asks, when the lament seems to be finished. A beat. The helicopter is omnipresent above their heads, and it ticks so many boxes in Giulia's accustomed brain. "I hope you understand how crucial it is that you had nothing to do about these reporters playing vultures above our heads, for a lot of reasons even you can grasp." Threat, as always in Giulia's voice, her sole language, but also implicit reminder that scheming that kind of sham will only lead to disasters. Would Grace truly orchestrate her grief in such way as to tip the local news about her procession? Would Grace truly keep her role in spite of her own son's comfort?
The back of Giulia's teeth grinds with pure distate, and she sends a last look towards Teodósio, making sure he didn't leave her and yet, as she catches his forelorn form, Giulia wishes even more for this entire moment to stop. Now. At least for Teodósio's sake. And also for everyone's self-respect.
A farce. Of course, Giulia would reach for that word, as though Grace’s grief were a staged recital, something put on for her sharp amusement. Grace kept her eyes steady on her because Giulia always thrived on the falter, the flinch, and Grace would not give her that satisfaction ... not here, not in front of her beloved's gravestone.
“The only thing I orchestrated,” she said at last, voice even, almost too calm, “was surviving this day without shattering. If the press decided to gorge themselves on what they call tragedy, then perhaps you should speak to them, not to me.”
The helicopter’s blades insisted above them, chopping through the air like a crude parody of silence, and Grace wondered if Giulia heard it the way she did: as something that could cleave the entire ceremony apart. Giulia thought in boxes ticked, optics managed, disasters avoided. Grace thought in terms of herself, who carried the absence of her husband. Giulia could not see that ... would not see it ... because it asked her to step beyond her single, sharp language of threat.
Grace let her breath out slow, almost a sigh. “If you truly cared for Teodósio’s comfort,” That was the point Giulia was pressing toward, wasn’t it? “... you wouldn’t be hissing at me now. You’d stand beside him, and hold him, and let him believe ... for once ... that the adults in his life are more than a parade of vultures.”
She didn’t bother to watch Giulia’s reaction. Her gaze followed Teodósio instead.
Teodósio was the only anchor she had left, though even he drifted now in his own tide of silence, unreachable, unbearably hard to reign back in. Grace wanted to gather him, shield him, remind him he was not alone in this wilderness of absence, but Giulia’s presence made even that act of comfort feel compromised, scrutinised, weaponised. Giulia had a way of inserting herself into every moment until it soured, as though she believed proximity to sorrow granted her authority over it. Yet Grace knew that Giulia could never touch what mattered, not really. She could circle the wreckage, she could hiss and grind her teeth, but she would never know what it was to actually call herself Teo's mother. And perhaps that was the sharpest blade Grace carried: the quiet certainty that no matter how Giulia postured, she would always remain a spectator to the true bond between mother and son.
Since that banana split a few nights ago, she’d been slipping back into their old house, finding him at six years old again. It might explain why she still spoke of him as if he were a child, even knowing he was grown. Not from the figure standing there, but from all the time that had escaped her grasp... time she thought would leave her with at least a late teenager, not the man she now faced. So much more intimidating. She reached up with deliberate care, removing first the dark glasses, then the veil that had kept her hidden. The world seemed to draw tighter around her as her face was laid bare.
He's already turned to go when his aunt's voice roots him in place, as exacting as the strike of a judge's gavel. He exhales slowly through his nose before swiveling to face her again, a tight, placating smile on his mouth that doesn't reach his eyes. It's good enough for his aunt though, whose attention returns to his mother. The women start bickering and his own attention returns the chopper, which looked to be leaving them initially, but now seems to be circling back on a wide arc, lending further credibility to Giulia's suspicion about it being a media hire. Would his mother go that far? Before he can contemplate it any further, his own name snags his attention amidst the squabble.
'If you truly cared for Teodósio’s comfort... You’d stand beside him, and hold him, and let him believe for once that the adults in his life are more than a parade of vultures.'
This time, he doesn't let his aunt reply. His voice cuts between both women like a serrated knife. "Shall we chat as if all present parties are indeed present?"
Nevermind that what his mother's proposing is simply ridiculous. He can't remember the last time he needed someone to hold him... It's clearer than daylight how little his remaining biological parent knows him. It's a joke; it's all he can do not to scoff.
And he's on the verge of doing exactly that and turning away from the conversation whether or not Giulia flays him for it later — when his mother shifts, begins removing her costume, piece by piece, and then addresses him directly. 'Hello, son'.
Just like that, Teodósio realizes he prefers her with a façade, with her glasses and veil to obscure her face from him. He knows it by the stiffness in his spine, by the tension that crawls over his shoulders like a spider. He still wants to leave except now he can't, lest she mistake it for an over-abundance of emotion that drives him away from her.
the stage was set, the cameras were rolling, and the professionals were bringing her vision to life—everything was perfect, right down to the last detail. until the horn blared. as startled as the rest of the crew, she turned to see headlights blasting down her set. ugh, and now they were going to have to set it all up again! throwing her hands up, she turned back to the crew and called out, "okay, take five everyone! i'll handle this..." intimidating wasn't on her list of traits, but being fed up could make anyone into a proper monster...
this was the third night in a row that he had tried to drive through here. "don't you what the fuck me," she sniped, glaring down into his side window. "you know i'm filming here. there are signs everywhere. you know, the big detour arrow? follow it. i'm sorry you're inconvenienced, but the more you interrupt, the longer it takes."
He's starting to think it's some genetic prerequisite for being born a Du Bois, but while he finds it charming in Tatiana and intriguing in Nora, Angelica and Greta seem to have been gifted with the unique talent of dancing on his last nerve.
"Do you take me for a fool, Miss Du Bois, or are you simply playing at one yourself?" His voice echoes in the underground lot, the unfriendliness in his tone starker for it.
"The detour's hours are 11am-6pm. Let's see, what time is it?" He pushes his sleeve up to find his watch, although he doesn't need to. The clock on the car's dashboard had given him that answer while he was still inside it. When he'd planned his return home specifically at this time in order to avoid her. "Ah yes that's right. Six-fucking-thirty."
Six thirty-four, to be exact, but lest he's accused of inflexibility...
"So no, you're not 'taking five'." Why the company to which the residential building belonged had even allowed them here in the first place is beyond Teo. He hooks a thumb through the air behind him. "You're shutting down and getting out, thanks."
Growing up is like drowning. The world opens up, growing so much faster than you can. It swallows you up as you try to keep your head high enough above water to make sense of it all.
At thirteen, Greta is standing at the shoreline, her toes bare in the sand as the waters pull back. She thinks she can see it sometimes, the oncoming tsunami of expectation and irrelevance and a battlefield so much bigger than the Du Bois family dinner table.
There are already talks about where her parents might send her for secondary. She and her sisters are filling out into their own people. Conversations have started to spill out from behind closed doors, ones that are above her head but serious enough to even catch the attention of a teenager busy touching up her pedicure.
Wherever she ends up, whoever she ends up, she's going to be somebody. She may not be clever like Salem or graceful like Nora, sweet like Angie, steel like Kass, or a practiced enough to be a tactician that rivals Tati, but she's got that something. Her agent says so.
Teodósio says high and mighty like a slur, but it's the blueprint. She will be liked. Popular. Loved. Bigger than Monarosa. Certainly bigger than Mr. Nobody himself, Teodósio del Bosque.
He's not what she expected. Not that she's spent much time thinking about him, specifically, before this. But she's seen photos of him a handful of times (ironically in the same kind of teen magazine he finds so repugnant). He isn't, a total bad boy! or, a cutie with secrets behind those eyes!
He's just a boy. Too weak to be the embodiment of "capitalistic malpractice" (or whatever turn of phrase it is her parents use.) Too mean to forgive. He doesn't like her, not even a little bit, so she hates him, this forgettable nobody boy who was her only accessible friend over the past several days.
"You're a waste of time," she bandies back at the stunted line of his back.
Vivian-who's-now-Greta echoes his words like a cheap conch, deepening his scowl as he pads away from her in his slippers, firmly dragging his drip stand behind him.
She's an exhausting creature. And not just because she's a girl and thirteen, and either of those two distinguishing features daunt a boy who's raced through his adolescence as if the faster he does it, the more surely it might sweep his childhood under the rug.
She's exhausting because he doesn't understand her. Because she doesn't fit into his studious equations of the world or the people in it... Because those of her ilk – people who try to stick to him as surely as the bright, pink bubble gum that she chews – are not the kind of people he's learned how to read.
It's the same anomaly he'd first found in Monarosa when he'd moved into his aunt and uncle's home. She'd been around the age of four then, easy to ignore in the beginning, until she'd imprinted on him like a duckling with a pair of boots. Always around, with a smile, or a toy, or some kiddish affection he has never learned to respond to — always trying to offer something in a language he still cannot understand.
Except Greta's worse. Because she's a Du Bois, and that gives her an agenda, even if she's only thirteen. Adults are cruel and she's surrounded by them. He can't imagine they haven't put her up to this; to pestering him under some semblance of innocent interest, in order to... Gain what from him, exactly? A familial secret divulged in his loneliness? A laugh at his sickly, weak expense? He hasn't figured that part out yet, admittedly, but he doesn't care to, either. He's pushed her away, and that's enough.
So the last time they run into each other, as he's waiting to be picked up by Luciana and punching E48 on the vending machine next to the hospital's entrance, Teodósio ignores her. She pops through the revolving doors, stumbles when their eyes meet (blink and you'd miss it) and then they're in separate orbits. The girl walks away with her head held high, the boy crouches low to grab his pretzels from the dispenser.
They don't speak to each other again for over half a decade.
teo's wiry frame sunk deeper into the darkness of the cellar, more outline than man. katashi didn't know it, but it was as close as he'd ever been to seeing what he really was. teo didn't know it, but equally was he close to seeing katashi's true face, the writhing pit of fire and death that nestled at his core. his conceptualizations were close. almost the moment they had slipped past the doorway, the kagehito in him had recognized the value in the location—dark, quiet, prone to accidents. the other had shifted the song toward the ease in which he could rid himself of a nuisance. it was exactly what his rage was meant to do—to cleanse.
but certainly, he would not ( could not ) do it here. teodosio was too grand, too noticeable, a target. this was too public an event. he would just have to quell the fires of his rage in something stronger than raw emotion—the haze of an age-old blessing, alcohol. but the promise alone wouldn't keep him contained entirely. this man didn't deserve the respect of his careful, cold exterior... but neither did he deserve the clarity of explanation.
"you don't know anything about me," he growled, confident in his truth; "if that's what you think." but playing a part so alien to him took time, effort, observation—the disguise he often wore was the most reliable one he had. clearly, it had worked even on teo. he didn't realize that the same could easily be said for him, though. they were both dancing masked. but who would drop theirs first?
katashi's choice was something dark and strong, stench accosting as he pulled the cork. good. exactly what he needed. "here i thought you'd be happy to skip it."
The thing about rancor is that more often than not, it leaves a certain signature in the space between two people. Like a kind of heaviness, or the whiff of something sour in the air. Distinct enough that Teodósio can sense it even with his back turned. It doesn't bother him, he knows Katashi won't do it... And if his calculations are incorrect and the kagehito does stick a knife in his back, well, there'd be something almost poetic about it. To meet his death while doing a favour for the Man Who Never Smiles, the one who's hated him for years now. And here of all places; blood mixed with wine, skin losing all color, turning as cold and lifeless as the cellar that surrounds them...
He'd bet Gabriel would even immortalize him in a song.
A smirk touches his mouth at the thought as he rips the gold label off the bottle's neck, freeing the casing from the top. There's no cork, so all it needs is a firm twist before he frees it from the bottle. His smirk widens, before disappearing altogether behind the lip as he leans his head back and drinks heartily from it.
'You don't know anything about me if that's what you think.'
Teodósio chokes on a laugh. "Come off it. I've known you since you were a boy. Much as you'd like to pretend you sprung from the sea, fully formed and armed to the teeth."
He takes another long swig from his bottle, before wrinkling his nose as Katashi's own choice wafts in the direction of his nostrils. "I thought you wanted wine, not vinegar... And for the record, I'd love to skip this entire evening. But what would the family say?" There's a mocking lilt to his voice as he strolls towards the kagehito, reaching a hand for his bottle. He tilts it in order to better read the label.
And then he drops it just as carelessly, attention centering on the man. "Worse, it'd add to the long list of mortal sins I've committed in your books, too... Wouldn't it?"
LOCATION — Some country ass road.
DATE — Late August.
STARTER — Closed for @intheseaofred
The screech from his tires is a warning that comes too late.
He tries altering course with a spin of the steering wheel, but it's an overcorrection. The tires skid first and then roll in protest, losing traction with the asphalt beneath him. His knuckle-white grip makes no difference; the car is unmoored. An unchained beast obeying no master... Teodósio has only enough time to brace as it careens off-road and pitches him over the shoulder. The vehicle is briefly airborne. The slam back to earth is violent, shattering the front windows and deploying the airbags. It's an ugly sound on an otherwise peaceful road, but the cacophony settles almost as soon as it starts, sputtering into an eerie, smoky silence.
For a spell, even the driver is still.
His head swims, there's a trickle of something down his neck, and he'd very much like to take a nap if it weren't for a low, bothersome hiss coming from what he suspects is his engine. It takes a herculean amount of effort to drag himself up. His muscles groan in protest, and his vision is doubled as he tries to assess the damage done to his car.
That's when he realizes it's the wrong side up. Ergo, not something he can fix himself.
Teodósio slumps back against the headrest, momentarily defeated.
But a few minutes later, an idea comes to him. He pats the pocket of his trousers, finds what he's looking for. His vision is still doubling in lazy halos, but if he squints he's able to decipher the words on his cellphone screen as he navigates to the address book to find a contact he'd added only recently. It's in the column under A – Ariya's Boy Toy – and he taps it quickly and raises the phone to his ear.
In reality, it's the number to Dusty's Garage, because it's the closest link he could find between the license plate on the sleek, black vehicle idling outside of Isolde when he'd descended the restaurant's steps, only to see a blur of unmistakable satiny green in his peripheral vision, and then his ex feeling up someone who looked a lot like a chauffeur.
Well, not how he'd have planned it, exactly, but there's always room for serendipity.
"Hello, yes... I'm in need of some assistance... Probably a tow-truck. Well I don't know exactly, this wasn't my final destination as you might imagine, but it's off the shoulder of Mulberry road. I doubt there's a whole parade of us... Yes, would you mind terribly?"
Is anyone injured, the voice on the other end of the line asks, and Teodósio remembers the feeling of wetness on his neck, reaching to touch it haphazardly. His fingers come away slick with blood, and he makes a face. "No... Just the tow truck is fine. Thanks."
What the actual fuck? Is all Giulia can think as she lets the coldness take a hold of her at the ludicrous sight of Grace, wearing some sort of disguise that she can't even begin to comment. She feels herself turn to stone, her nephew's shadow at her back a shrine of protection, a shield she's even more relieved to have invoked today as she links her hands in front of herself. Dark eyes stare down, her heart pulses with the familiar heartbreak of standing near the grave of her brother, whose first cries to the world had echoed barely two minutes after hers. Warm air leaves her nostrils in a rattly sigh. She swallows the grief painfully, trades it with disdain.
"Grace." Giulia finally mutters in transparent distate. What to say? The distance between them is greater than the few steps that separate their bodies, it measures in years, decades... Betrayals.
Silence stretches a bit.
The stillness in Teodósio's form is louder than words, and Giulia lets herself miss the feeling of his arm against hers, a testament of the love she bears for him that she allowes him such closeness. Still, in the moment, there's no way for them to turn around. Del Bosques don't let others fill their spots, don't offer time, don't propose to step away, don't do acts of services. It is a harsh world for outsiders, which Grace is, now. She made her choice.
"Will you be leaving soon?" Giulia asks skipping pleasantries, because frankly she doesn't give a flying fuck how the other woman has been, she just wishes for this forced coexistence to stop as soon as possible.
Trepidation seized her -- though she would never admit to such a thing, for she was not a woman easily shaken, hardly ever. Yet here she was, unmoored, as if all the decades she had survived so bravely collapsed into this single moment. Two figures stood before her: one her blood, her son, though it was impossible, unfair, cruel even, that he should look so much like a man when last she left him he was a child; the other, not blood, though the world had once conspired to make it so, binding them as though sisters, as though family. How easily they came together, while she had borne the harder path, the exile, the solitude.
And still it was she who stood accused. She hid behind her veil, her one shield, though she despised such cowardice in others, and told herself it was only the wind, only the dust, that stung her eyes. What did they know of sacrifice? Of absence? Of survival? Their very faces seemed to condemn her, pressing guilt upon her as though it were hers to claim, when in truth she had none -- none that she would acknowledge, at least. It was not her sin she felt, but their insistence that she should feel it. But still... was she not the one wronged, the one forgotten, the one abandoned?
Leave? The word struck her with a hollow clatter. She supposed she could -- she had left before, hadn’t she? -- but where would that leave her now? Thin, invisible, erased. Teodósio had never chosen his father; he had been an accident, a presence thrust into their lives, and though her husband had loved him fiercely, it was not the same. Giulia hadn’t been a choice of Emilio’s either; their closeness was decided at birth, written into the family, inevitable and unchosen. But Grace… Emilio had chosen her. Of all the people in the world, he had picked her, invited her in, let her step across the threshold of his world, and in that choice lay her claim. That claim to the grave, to this moment, to memory itself, was unassailable because it was hers by right, by desire, by love, not by accident, not by obligation, not by inherited closeness.
Of course she did not speak this aloud. She never spoke the full weight of her mind; she only thought it, composing a grand, furious soliloquy in the theatre of her head, as though the whole stage were hers.
“I am not leaving,” she said. “I have as much claim here as anyone.”
She let the words hang in the air, then turned away, moving with slow deliberation toward the grand stone where she had left a candle the last time she had visited. Her fingers retrieved a long match, slender and black, the kind she always used to light her cigarettes -- Aurevia, thin and pale as ivory with a glinting tip that caught the light like a shard of polished bone. The flame leapt, hungry and bright, licking the candle’s wick until it blazed steadily, throwing her shadow long and quivering across the grave.
And then, softly at first, she began to choral a hymn of the Ancients, a solemn litany that had no words for anyone but herself, directed to Emilio’s resting place. The melody swelled in her chest, reverent, possessive, and defiant all at once, filling the quiet graveyard with her unyielding presence. She was as steadfast, as immovable, as the stone that marked Emilio’s resting place.
His mother's name falls from Giulia's tongue like an ugly word or a bad omen. Teodósio tilts his head back and peers up at the sky. Perhaps he would be looking for omens at this very moment if he believed in them, but, much like standing around the tomb of a long dead man, he doesn't see the point.
'Will you be leaving soon?'
One corner of his mouth lifts. Bless his aunt for her directness. He watches a helicopter rattling faintly into their portion of the sky, before he lowers his head and finds himself staring directly at his mother. Or so he thinks, given the shades they are both wearing obscure her eyes from his vision as much as they do his from hers. More, because of her ridiculous Bride Of The Dead veil. Not that he'll give her the satisfaction of having taken any notice; his body remains stock-still, his expression as blank as marble.
... That is, until his mother starts singing.
Everything in the graveyard seems to go still just then. The wind is suddenly absent, the helicopter gone, even the insects seem to have stopped buzzing in sheer terror. If he were to dig up a burial plot this very instant, he has little doubt the deceased would be in the midst of dying a second death. Grace's voice rises to a keening.
His own voice is a low, disbelieving rasp – a discordant note in Grace's performance – as he addresses his aunt who's standing a few feet ahead, nearer to the tombstone.
River’s shoulder throbs where it was twisted, but the pain only sharpens his focus, winds him up like a toy. He pushes himself up from the table, jaw clenched, pupils still blown wide. “Nah, I’m not done until your face matches how fucked up you are inside.” He rolls his shoulder, testing the joint, adrenaline and chemicals making him stupid-brave.
River doesn't know the first thing about him, inside or otherwise. Hell, River doesn't know the first thing about most things, which makes his dig a bit of a moot point.
Stars only know why he falls for such weak bait, then. "Fucked up? That's rich, coming from Coronado's human garbage disposal." The man's drugged out expression doesn't leave much room for doubt on that front. "You're polluting my air — run along, now."
Were it anyone else, he wouldn't have been piqued enough to reply. In all likelihood, he'd have simply reached for a magazine. It's been over two years since the incident, but to his mind, it may as well have been yesterday. Teodósio turns to move towards the sofa. There's no one else waiting in the private room at Don Carlos' Barbería, and River looks like he should be done... Not that his hair can make up for the rest of him.
“Oh, the other cafés in this district are just shaking in their boots,” she says with gentle ribbing. Josephine definitely wouldn’t mind the extra foot traffic—the bills in the stockroom-slash-manager’s office are certainly screaming for it—but it may very well be just wishful thinking at this point. “And again, there’s no such thing as a lost cause, not in my turf. I’ll have them over to you in a bit.” Josephine celebrates the small wins. A pastry and adding milk to coffee (which, yes, costs extra) is still something.
Minutes later, she approaches with her new patron’s order balanced on a tray. Curiously, she asks, “This is your first time here, I think. Right? I usually only have regulars these days. La Paloma’s a stickler for routines and the same old places that’ve been here for longer than I have.” That, and her café doesn’t particularly scream, ‘HOME FOR THE MONEY-HUNGRY YUPPIES!’ If it did, she wouldn’t be neck-deep in debt. Heck, she could actually be making a profit. “Are you new to the area? To working here, I mean.”
His eyes crinkle, the smile he offers her could pass for genuine. "They would, if they only knew what's good for them." He watches her leave, notes the spring in her step.
Teodósio doesn't actually care about an underdog.
If Josephine's a better businesswoman than she appears, then she'll survive. If not, her tiny café will be mowed down like a dozen businesses before it, creating a nice and flat foundation for her betters. It's all the same to him.
"Very observant." He commends her, helping to transfer some items off the tray when Joey reemerges with her arms full. "Even if it is mostly regulars, I bet there are dozens of people milling in and out a day... You must be good with faces."
The buttery scent of the warmed pastry hits his nostrils as she sets it in front of him.
"Sorry to disappoint, but I wager I'm as old as some of those sticklers in La Paloma." Teodósio's expression turns sheepish, another foreign imitation he's picked up from others. This one, from watching the many nobodys who interact, every so often, with his aunts and uncle. "Not new per se, but I live in Genta..." Truth. "How long have you been here?... Had I known about this spot, I'd have definitely dropped in sooner." Lie.
One minute, River's fist is flying towards his face. The next, that arm's twisted at an awkward angle behind his back, and his cheek is pressed flat against the tabletop.
If the speed of it surprises him, he isn't the only one. Teodósio blinks, trying to trace his thoughts back to that split second between action and reaction. He hates River. Hates that he succeeds where most others fail — provoking responses out of him seemingly at will; blind and reckless impulses that slip past all his normal checks and balances.
He releases the man's arm as if he's been burnt, easing back a step. "Get the fuck out of here, Masten... Difficult as it must be for you — go find somewhere you're wanted."
Hold sway, he means, since it's apparently the criterion which, according to Eleanora, differentiates those worth knowing in her family. Little does she know that Teodósio is more liberal with the scope of his attentions — not out of generosity, but because one never knows when an opportunity might present itself, ripe for the picking.
Take him and Nora, for instance... Who would have thought that his casual proximity at a bar would be enough to unsettle her so? He notes the forbidding set of her brows, the pupils that look apt to swallowing him whole. He sees the pulsation of her carotid, how it betrays her disquietude when she turns her head to acknowledge the bartender. His study is no less dedicated than hers is of him; the only difference is he hides it better.
"I'm beginning to think you've got me mixed up with someone else, Miss Du Bois."
Or maybe she hasn't. Maybe Nora's hitting the nail on the head, even if it is based on instincts she can't prove. But Teodósio's never been much interested in truth. It's too slippery a thing; malleable, but rarely fit for purpose. Far more useful to play into the role Nora's written for him. Easier, too. "You don't strike me as a fly. You most certainly don't strike me as the type who flies unknowingly into webs. Seems to me that's what the spider would say." ... Right before springing her sticky trap.
Except, according to Nora, that's his role. Teodósio hands the bartender a card to pay for the drinks as they're set in front of them, contemplating her confession. He lifts his corvélis as the man leaves, but turns to find that the brunette is already sampling hers.
"I make you uncomfortable." Her words, volleyed back with an appraising smile. "How do you propose we remedy that?" His own glass remains poised between lazy fingers as she leans in (liquid courage?) with another confession; this time that she believes him when he says she has no reason to be concerned about his presence here tonight.
Sweet Nora... She really should've stuck with her first instinct.
He doesn't say so though, merely offering his glass to toast to that scrap of misplaced trust. But then she pushes her luck. 'You checked your watch. What're you waiting for?'
The Del Bosque's reply is unhesitating, as smooth as the alcohol before it runs down his throat. "How much longer I have to enjoy your company, of course."
Eleanora stares at Teo as she downs her drink without flinching before gently placing the glass back down on the bar. More and more people are flooding the dance floor behind them and whatever hopes she'd had for a fun night out had been dashed. The man had found her instead is intriguing, yes, but she knows better than to push her luck. The gulls would have her tongue for speaking as much as she has.
"I'm not sure you can remedy that," she replies. "That would be antithetical to our situation and our families. And, I believe, to you and your intentions." She smiles a little and then slips from her seat, straightening her skirt and then grabbing her purse.
"It's been a pleasure, Mr. del Bosque. But I'd hate to interrupt whatever it is you're here to do. Try to have some fun." She waves at the bartender to close out her tab and then turns away to start making her way out of the club, skin crawling with the sensation that Teo had managed to see just a little bit too much of her.
It isn't until she's outside of the building that she notices her heart is still pounding like he's still sitting five inches away.
Even as she seats in the car, Giulia keeps her sunglasses perched on her nose, plucks a strand of perfectly coiffed hair behind her ear. It's been 25 years, somehow. There'll be articles in the press, maybe some tv documentary reclaiming the same usual story, displaying the same pictures of the crashed car, of the twisted down body, the funeral, everything to entertain the audimat. Half a century since her brother died. The car purrs back into life as Teodósio drives away.
"Good, as usual. What about you, busy?" Giulia replies without much energy, words tumbling down like raindrops that must fall on the rich earth, taste of scotch strong at the back of her teeth. Liquid courage. She doesn't pay much attention to the way her nephew drives, keeps her gaze trained on the all too-familiar landscape. "Thank you for driving me," she offers simply as an olive branch, knowing she basically guilt-tripped him into this.
Grace drifted through the graveyard as though the grass were a stage, each step deliberate, rehearsed, even if the sorrow was real. What clung to her body were not clothes but a costume -- excessive in its artifice, a veil trailing like a curtain, black from crown to heel. It was not concealment but completion, the final flourish of an actress who lived for effect. To grieve without performance would be unthinkable. Tonight, she was once again the dying doe, her ballet resurrected in mourning, a creature collapsing in beauty for an audience of the dead.
Her mind circled Emiliano as though he still waited in the wings -- sharp-tongued, careless, dazzling. She loathed him for leaving her, yet the loathing trembled into ache. He had been hers, wholly, maddeningly, and now he was only stone and memory. She pressed a hand to the cold marble, feeling how stagecraft faltered before death’s finality.
“Why did you leave me,” she whispered, the words slipping out as though meant for no one but him.
The crunch of tires jolted her head up. A car, too close to ignore, creeping along the gravel. With a small, precise gesture she raised her hands, parting the veil just enough. But the figures were blurred, indistinct. Too far. Damn her for refusing the prescription glasses. She would not wear them -- glasses belonged to the meek, to those who accepted their frailty. Instead she squinted through her non-corrected shades, willing detail out of haze, straining to make out who had come to interrupt her scene.
"Busy, always." He concurs, but lest his aunt think he's trying to guilt her for roping him into this, he adds, "It's nothing, really." A double entendre; reassurance for Giulia, and a grain of truth Teodósio chews on privately as an outlet for his own malcontent.
It is nothing.
Because this anniversary means nothing to him, Emiliano's death means nothing to him. It's a waste of an afternoon better spent doing practically anything else. It's a waste of his temperance, a mask he doesn't feel like erecting for this purpose.
A waste, even, of the tread of his tires, which roll over the uneven gravel in the graveyard's expansive parking lot, creating microtears along the way.
He kills the engine, plunging the car into abrupt silence. There's a pause as he steels his patience, and then he's yanking the keys from the ignition and pushing the door open to get out. Giulia isn't so quick to follow. She's still sitting in the car, her fingers working anxiously over the handle of her purse. Teodósio rounds to the passenger's side of the vehicle, tugging the door open for her. He gives her a minute. "Ready?"
Soon enough, it's their shoes crunching gravel as they make their way down the path leading to neat rows of marble gravestones, each one more ornate than the next. His arm's extended to her, should her high heels get stuck on the uneven ground. But for all her hesitation a few minutes ago, Giulia's steps are determined as they weave their way towards— Fuck.
Kneeling in front of his father's grave, shrouded in a long, black veil, is his mother.
What kind of ridiculous-... Why is she here? Why does she look like Death incarnate?
He exhales sharply through his nose, annoyance fluttering beneath his ribs. Teodósio lets his arm slip from his aunt's grasp, allowing her to move forward as he hangs back.
For several moments, Dira wants nothing more than to hit him. In fact the urge gets stronger the longer he silently boasts over getting his way. She settles for rolling her eyes and taking a sip of her drink, not quite patiently. But then he speaks; finally informs her of the challenge she’s already blindly accepted. And at first, she’s confused. Gabriel has, to the best of her recollection, always been the most gentle of the Del Bosque boys. Even if he did accept her invitation to the next tournament, she had to doubt he’d even be left alive after one round. She goes to voice her concerns when Teodósio, always a move ahead, stops her and addresses them unvoiced. It’s as agitating as it is, in this specific instance, endearing.
Something in the way she looks at him, as she studies his freckled face, softens. One moment passes, then two, before her reply floats between them. “Poor thing.” Her pity comes out in a murmur, as she too turns her attention to the golden revelry. “He wouldn’t be the first to need some sort of macabre exposure therapy to deal with that kind of horror.” It’s how she’s gotten a few of her best fighters over the years– though she leaves that tidbit unsaid.
“It’s kind of you to think of him like this.” It’s almost a question, as she glances at Teodósio once again. In truth, she’d have done his ask without the challenge of a game– but that too, is left unsaid. Lest he come up with something actually torturous instead. “But is your cousin to know of your kindness?”
He follows the trail of Dira's unspoken emotions, mentally classifying each expression that flits across her face under a given label. It's an old habit; capitalizing on his talents for pattern-recognition and perception to make up for a lack thereof where it concerns a truer, more intuitive ability to understand emotion. He's never been too good at that.
But he recognizes Chandira's disgruntlement for what it is, as it melts into curiosity, followed by confusion, followed by... Ugh. He doesn't know exactly what that sudden softening of her expression portends, but he doesn't like it. It's like being thrust into foreign territory, like the ground shifting suddenly beneath his feet; when the people he knows look at him like that, it forces him to move like a blind man in the dark.
'Poor thing. He wouldn’t be the first to need some sort of macabre exposure therapy to deal with that kind of horror.'
"Nor the last." Teodósio replies, with as much feeling as a shrug. He returns Chandira's questioning gaze, a mirror, rather than an answer. Is it kind of him to rope Gabriel into this? He isn't so sure. He may just as well be doing it for the amusement that will surely follow when his cousin, who's normally away with the fairies, must sit through a match of grown men beating each other to pulps. Or maybe he does want Gabriel to toughen up... Maybe that's the only way he'll survive.
The only truth is that Teodósio has no more insight into what drives him than does Dira, which makes this the point in the conversation where his interest dwindles.
"Good. We have an agreement, then." He glances at the door, ready to move back in. "As for whether to let Gabriel know it was my idea..." He shrugs, smiles. There's a glint to it that could pass either for mirth or for cruelty. "Surprise me."
