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You were the lucky one.
You.
You were the lucky one.
Those words kept Dani awake at night. Those words, spoken with such conviction by not only Lita, but -
You.
Some days he could still feel Diego’s weight in his arms. So much different than at Antón’s table, different than when he’d shielded Diego’s body with his own. He’d been strong, then. Unyielding. So far removed from his slack, dead weight, the rest of the Libertad all but cheering his death in the background.
Mijo. Chamaco.
How different things would have been if they’d only waited. Thought things through, made plans. Not been so blinded by rage, hate, the thirst for blood and a revolution that seemed like it would never come.
Antón had been right. Yara was burning. Yara had never stopped burning.
He’d buried Diego himself, far from any of Libertad’s prying eyes. At first he’d come there because of guilt. He’d watch the sun set, bathing all of Yara in reds, not unlike the toxic fumes of Antón’s pesticides. And he’d talk. He told Diego about how he’d grown up, the orphanage. The army. His friends. How all of this had started.
He talked about that day on the boat, how he'd arrived there fueled by adrenaline and some fragile hope that things could change. The baseball card he’d kept. It was waterlogged and stained red like everything else, but he’d kept it. He’d briefly considered burying it with Diego, but he knew he’d miss the near self-soothing action of feeling it between his fingers. It was the only thing that felt real to him now, the slightly frayed edges, the paper worn thin by each stroke from his hand.
He kept wondering if things had played out differently if they hadn’t met on that day.
Would he have shot Diego at Hotel Paraiso as willingly as Juan? As readily as Antón?
Had he known, had they all known, what monstrous cycle of violence they were fueling, would they have continued?
That was the hardest pill for Dani to swallow; They would have. They were destined to create another monster, again and again.
Would Diego have broken that cycle? Or would the death of Antón have killed the last of what was good in Diego as well? Had they already set that in motion after assassinating his mother on live TV?
You are not going to kill him, Diego had said, like a demand, but not quite. A child, learning to be a leader. Not yet the lion Antón wanted, but inching ever closer to the abyss.
What was always true?
Death, Diego had replied, as if this had been imprinted in him from the day he was born. Antón’s little lion.
Closing his eyes, Dani imagined Diego. Not as a child, but as a man. A leader. Not like his father, but ruling by his own conscience. Dani had seen Diego’s kindness and he had been willing to die for it. He’d still be willing to die for it.
Lies, Antón had sneered at him, madness in his eyes.
That word kept ringing in his ears.
Lies.
Could he have kept Diego safe? From Libertad? From Juan? Perhaps Antón saw this as the only safe route for Diego to take. Perhaps killing him himself was better than all the ways he imagined Libertad would do it. Like all the ways he himself had suffered.
Maybe he killed Diego to stop history from repeating itself, but Dani couldn’t help but think that Antón’s actions had truly doomed Yara - that he had killed the only two hopes Yara had for a peaceful future. Clara, who had finally understood that for a future to be possible, both sides had to co-exist. That there could be no more divide between True and False Yarans. And Diego, who somehow had managed to keep a good heart despite it all.
The future. That was another thing he came here to talk about. The future of Yara and of everything Diego would never be a part of. About the people he’d gotten to know during the so-called revolution, and how little they’d truly achieved. Yara was no different than before. There was still a leader on top, chosen by them, not by the people. The drugs were still being manufactured, except this time it was sold to smugglers and drug dealers. Nothing had changed, even if he didn’t want to believe it. Nothing had changed.
Although, looking at Diego’s grave, Dani wondered if that was altogether true.
He’d distanced himself from every single one of his former allies, because every time he looked at them, all he could see was Diego’s lifeless face, and the blood staining his uniform.
“We should have waited,” he muttered, still stroking the baseball card.
Antón was dying. They knew that. Antón was a dead man, and then Diego would have -
He’d thought from the start that Yara’s future lay in Diego’s heart, but he hadn’t expected it to be a bullet.
He had been tempted, after. Tempted to go on killing, being a guerrilla, hunting down whoever was left of Antón’s sympathizers. Libertad had thought that ending the Castillo bloodline would free Yara, but all it had done was showcase how little they’d known.
Dani, it’s okay.
Diego had spoken those words with more maturity and acceptance than a thirteen year old should ever have to. He’d accepted it, so why couldn’t Dani?
Because he wasn’t lucky. He wasn’t the lucky one, no matter what Lita and Diego had said.
As he had closed Diego’s eyes for the very last time, he’d also opened his own. There was a sense of heartbreaking futility in trying to do the right thing. He could have taken the position as the next El Presidente, could easily have taken all the power.
Libertad - freedom - had seemed like such a simple idea at first, but who held the definition? The cycle of corruption had merely shifted from Antón Castillo to Libertad.
And through it all, there had been only one constant in a world of chaos. Of lions and lambs, truth and lies.
Diego would save Dani. Dani would save Diego.
Except.
Except Diego had died.
Despite all the imprisonment he suffered, despite how little mercy or kindness Antón had shown him, there had been no saving grace at the end of it all.
Diego had died. Just like that, it was done. Over.
That had been Antón’s final lesson - that death was the only guarantee in life.
Perhaps that was why Dani was left so hollow.
He’d come to realize that the truth was that in Yara, not everyone could be saved. Not even Yara itself.
More than that, he'd come to find that it wasn’t just death that would always be true.
With power came corruption. Inevitably, and as certain as death.
That would be true, even when Dani walked away.
Even when his heart stopped beating, and Diego’s bones turned to dust.
Even when Yara stopped burning.