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Does it ever stop hurting? Will it always hurt like this? Miguel curls in on himself in the middle of the bed, fingers cramping from where they’re clutching the blanket. He’s so so tired, but he doesn’t dare close his eyes for fear of the nightmares. Tears leak down his face and he blinks them away, wondering if this will be his life from now on. Most of all, does he even care? This is all I’m good for anyway. He’s not like the others, he doesn’t know how he’ll ever put his shattered mind back together again. He’ll never be able to sleep, never be able to erase the faces of the dead from behind his eyes.
Finally, the exhaustion takes over and forces his mind to shut down. Miguel slips into an uneasy sleep, empty eyes and bloody bodies haunting him. He jerks awake not even an hour later. There’s no one in the room with him, but he can feel a pressure on the bed covers. Is someone there? He tries to make his mouth work, but nothing comes out.
A hand is laid on his shoulder. “Rest, muchacho.”
Miguel bolts upright. “Who’s there?”
His great-great grandfather smiles back at him. “Miguel.” His hands ghosts over Miguel’s cheek. “You have been through so much.”
This isn’t real – there’s no way it could be happening – but Miguel doesn’t care. He needs comfort, someone to know what he did and grant him some kind of absolution, no matter how small. “Papa Hector,” he sobs, wishing he could hug a spirit.
“It’s okay, mijo,” Hector says, and Miguel wants to believe it.
“I – I did so much. So many people died…and I lived.” Miguel stares at his hands. They’ve long since been cleaned of the blood that stained them in the arena, but he still sees the rust-red blotches. “Why did I live? I didn’t deserve it.” The words pour out of him like water and he couldn’t stop them if he tried. Not that he does. He needs to confess to someone, even if that someone has been dead for three generations. “I’m not any better than any of the others.”
“Listen, chamaco,” Hector says. “You’re a survivor. You got out of that arena.”
Miguel sucks in a breath. “It was an accident!” he says louder than he means to. The words hang heavy in the air. “I just – I just kept running and hiding and hoping it would work and then that girl came to find me and I – there was a rock and I was scared and now….and now she’s dead.”
He squeezes his eyes shut, hoping no more apparitions will appear. He can still remember the shocked expression on the girl’s face, blood leaking from her crushed skull onto the floor of the cave where he had been hiding. “I was scared,” he whispers again, wishing his empty words could make it right.
“It’s all right to be scared,” Hector says, skimming a hand over Miguel’s hair. “Everyone gets scared sometimes.”
“You never killed anyone because of it!” Miguel snaps back.
Hector laughs bitterly, bony hands dropping to his lap. “Haven’t I?” He looks at Miguel. “I bet no one told you that part of the story, eh?”
Miguel shakes his head. A small part of him wants to know the whole story, but a wave of relief drowns it out. He was a Victor, and his family would carry that with them for the rest of his life: the knowledge that one of their own was a murderer. But now he wouldn’t have to carry that alone, because Hector was like him.
More than that, Hector didn’t judge him, and Miguel would accept that consolation, small as it was. He laughs brokenly, aware that he’s talking to a man who has been dead for decades, but he still doesn’t care. If someone will forgive him, he will grasp that and hold it close. “You’re not really here,” he whispers anyway.
Hector brings his hand up to Miguel’s shoulder again. “I’ll be here for as long as you need,” he says. “Remember, muchacho, you can always call me if you need anything.”
It’s not much, nothing, really, next to the crimes Miguel’s committed, but he holds it close. “I will,” he promises his long-dead great-great-grandfather. “I will.”