Chapter Text
“You didn’t have to come, Imelda.”
Imelda glared at her husband. “Why wouldn’t I come? We’re just picking up your things.”
Hector shrugged and sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t have that much. Really. I can get it all myself. Or you could have sent one of the family with me.” He glanced back at where the entirety of the immediate Rivera family was trailing behind them, Imelda’s rapid pace being too much for them. “Instead of all of them.”
Imelda turned back to look. “Andale!” she roared at the rest of the family, all of whom jumped and scurried to catch up. She turned back to Hector and narrowed her eyes. “Are you hiding something from me?”
“No!” Hector said, too quickly.
Imelda made a skeptical face at him.
Hector sighed. “It’s--it’s nothing. I just don’t want you to be surprised when we get there.”
“Surprised by what?”
Hector said nothing,but he grabbed Imelda’s hand and guided her the last few feet up the hill. At the top, he motioned to the area beneath--the place where the forgotten lived.
“Surprised by that.”
For once in her existence, Imelda had nothing to say as she surveyed the place where her husband had been living for the past hundred or so years. She was dimly aware of the rest of the family catching up, bumping into Hector and herself, but she didn’t have enough presence of mind to say anything to them.
This. This was--a slum . Dios, Hector had been living here ? And…
It was all her fault that he’d been living here, among the forgotten…
Hector timidly touched her shoulder and she jolted in surprise, then turned to look at him. He looked so sad…
“We--” she swallowed, hard, trying to rid her non-existent throat of the phantom lump that had taken up residence in it. “We should get your things.”
She marched down the hill without looking back, although she could hear a gentle clatter of neck bones as the family looked at each other, and then the louder clack-clack of skeletons walking.
She paused at the edge of the water, not sure where to go. Hector appeared at her side. “This way,” he said softly, motioning her towards one of the ramshackle piers built over the water.
She gulped again and followed him, then stopped as cries of greeting reached her ears from three women seated around an old table. At least, it looked like a table, who knew what it was made out of.
“Hector! We were worried about you!”
“Where have you been, mi primo?”
Hector chuckled and greeted the women, saying things that Imelda wasn’t paying attention to as she continued looking around.
“It’s kind of--sad down here,” Rosita murmured behind her.
Imelda startled again. Dios, why was she so jumpy?
But the rest of the family were agreeing with Rosita in soft voices, or else looking around the slum with the same wide eyes as Imelda.
“This is my wife,” she heard, and she startled yet again as Hector’s hand materialized out of nowhere and guided her towards the women at the table.
“The one who nearly made sure you weren’t remembered?” one of the women said. All three of them gave her looks that Imelda couldn’t quite interpret.
“Now now, she’s not that bad,” Hector said, smiling. He nudged Imelda and she cleared her throat, trying to think of something to say.
“Um...hello,” she managed finally.
One of the other women laughed. “Dios, Hector! From the way you talked about her, I was expecting a little more!” The other women laughed with her. If Imelda had had cheeks, she was sure she would have been blushing in embarrassment. When was the last time she’d been embarrassed?
Right. That time when she was fifteen and Hector--no, not the time to think about that.
She was dimly aware of Hector pushing her away from the table, saying farewell to the women there. She managed a grimacing smile and a wave.
“Here we are,” Hector said as he pushed aside the curtain that served as a door to his shack. Imelda walked inside and swore as the heel of her boot caught in a hole on the floor.
“Sorry, sorry. Here, let me--” Hector said, kneeling down.
“I’ve got it,” Imelda said, pulling her foot up sharply. To her dismay, the boot stayed, as did most of her foot bones.
Hector, to his credit, didn’t laugh when that happened, merely wrestled her boot out of the hole and offered it to her. She snatched it from his hand and pushed her ankle bones back down onto her foot bones, waiting for them to click back into place.
When she was done, she looked up to see Hector looking sadly as a small collection of objects on a half-rotten wooden table. “Are you going to pack those, or should I?” she asked.
Hector shook himself. “What? No, no, these aren’t mine. They belonged to a friend of mine.”
“You should return them then. You always were terrible about returning things you borrowed,” Imelda grumbled.
Hector picked up one of the items--a femur. A femur ? “I can’t” he said softly. “He used to live here, but--”
“But what?” Oh no let him have been remembered let him have been remembered let him have been remembered so he could move out of this place…
“He went through the final death.”
Imelda turned, her arms crossed as she looked at the walls, the floor, the bits of furniture. She could distantly hear the women joking around their table, and what sounded like Rosita’s voice as she made conversation with them. Someone shifted outside the door and Imelda heard more voices, Julio and Victoria, having a conversation so soft that even her keen hearing couldn’t make it out. And who knew where Oscar and Felipe had gone. She hoped not deeper into the slum, she didn’t know if she could handle looking for them…
The next thing she was aware of was Hector’s arms around her, radiating warmth as though he still had flesh surrounding the bones. “Mi amor,” he whispered. “What’s wrong?”
It was only then that Imelda realized she was crying.
“I--I--”
“It’s alright. I’ve got you, Imelda.”
Imelda leaned into him, struggling to get her tears under control. “What is wrong with me?” she said angrily, pressing her face into Hector’s tattered vest. “I don’t--”
“I know. To be honest, this is scaring me a little.” Hector put a hand under her chin and tilted her head up, smiling at her, inviting her to laugh at him, although she could see the worry in his face.
“I almost lost you,” she said. “And it was all my fault--oh Hector, I missed you, and I was so angry, and I thought it would be better if everyone just forgot you, but this--” she freed an arm from his embrace and waved it around, indicating the walls, the floor, the leaky roof, the miserable excuses for furniture that dotted the small room, and by extension everything outside. Every hut in this miserable swamp, every forgotten, lonely soul who had no one to remember them.
“It’s alright,” Hector said with a shrug.
She pushed him away, her chin tilted up and her eyes ablaze. “It is not alright! I should have never done that to you, I should have listened to you when you came to me, and besides, even if you were forgotten, you shouldn’t have had to live like this!” She waved her hand around again, again encompassing the shack and everything beyond. “This--this is despicable! An abomination! Nobody should have to live like this, whether they are forgotten or not!”
“Imelda, I think everyone can hear you outside--”
“Then let them hear me! I won’t stand for this! We may not be able to save the forgotten ones from the final death, but I’ll be damned if we let them rot in this slum while they are still with us!”
Hector blinked at her in the silence that followed her ringing declaration. She heard the rustle of the curtain being moved back and Julio stuck his head in. “We?” he asked
“Of course! I’m only one woman, I can only do so much on my own.” She crossed her arms and gave Julio a look. “Go get everyone together, we’ll gather Hector’s things and meet you outside, and then we’ll go home and start planning how we’re going to make the forgotten comfortable while they’re still with us.”
Julio nodded and withdrew. Imelda turned back to Hector, her tears forgotten. “Come on lazybones, let’s pack you up, eh?”
“Uh...Imelda?”
“Si, mi amor?”
“I--don’t take this the wrong way, but--where did this come from?”
“Where did what come from?”
“Your sudden desire to give everyone who has been forgotten a more comfortable home?”
“Not just a more comfortable home. They’ll need resources too, for upkeep--clothes, food. Things they aren’t getting down here.” Imelda was putting Hector’s few belongings in his hammock sloth as she spoke, and tying the corners together to make a bag. “Is there a problem with that?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“What question?”
“Why?"
Imelda paused. “I suppose,” she said softly, “it makes sense to me. To...make it up, a little. To you. And to myself.”
“You don’t need to make anything up to me,” Hector said softly.
“Maybe not. But I need to make things up to me, and this is how I am doing it.” She shoved Hector’s bundle of belongings into his arms. “Come. Let’s get home so we can start planning.”
Hector smiled. “Ay, mi amor,” he said softly. “As you wish.”