Chapter Text
The ball bounced exactly once before hitting Andrés square in the chest. Huffing indignantly, he shot a glare at his sister with a great deal of effort.
“Sorry!” Tamara had called out, though the giggles she had let out gave away that she in fact, was not sorry at all.
They had been throwing the ball back and forth for about half an hour by that point, taking up the sidewalk space in front of their house. Memo was sitting off to the side of the house, drinking something or other that the kids weren’t allowed to try until they were ‘older’.
Andrés had been living with the Agbayani’s for 2 years, long enough to understand that, no matter how hard she tried to hide it, Angelica wasn’t happy with Corvus. Tamara never talked about it, so he never did either. Then she was leaving, pulling Memo to the side and talking in a hushed voice as to not alert the younger children. Memo had seemed upset, and Andrés had just been able to hear the promises that the mother had made to her child. The promise to return.
Which left Corvus as Andrés and Tamara’s sole legal guardian.
(Alternatively, which left Memo as Andrés and Tamara’s primary guardian.)
Andrés hadn’t heard from Angelica directly since she divorced Corvus (because that’s what happened, no matter how desperately Memo tried to hide the truth), only letters addressed to the house that were found, suspiciously, in the recycling bin outside. The recycling bin that was always full of letters. The price of living with three heroes.
Who exactly had been trying to interfere with Angelica’s attempts at reaching her children wasn’t clear. The assumption had of course been the man she divorced, but Memo (the man she left behind) was also seeming to be a suspect. Tamara had helped Andrés sift through the papers in the recycling bin when the adults weren’t paying particularly close attention, and it had been Estevan who read the letters to the kids (they were just 6 afterall, they couldn’t quite read everything on their own).
Andrés threw the ball to Tamara.
Their little investigation was, to paraphrase Estevan’s words, almost what an underground hero would be doing.
“Detective work,” Suinara had called it. “They investigate crime and solve reports that public heroes haven’t been able to. It’s really cool!”
So, of course, when the kids were able to meet some new public heroes, they enthusiastically questioned them specifically about underground heroes. They had been, unsurprisingly, disappointed by the disdain that the heroes had felt towards their less popular counterparts. Sui and Memo had explained that some of the heroes thought their underground counterparts were strange, “but really, it’s okay to be strange! We have friends from school that are underground heroes, and they’re some of the coolest people I know!” And, really, who were they to argue with Suinara about who is or isn’t cool?
So their research continued.
Tamara tossed the ball back.
The two kids had talked about it, a little bit. Becoming underground heroes. They both vetoed the idea, set on becoming public heroes like Memo, Sui, and Estevan were. (Corvus, of course, was also a public hero. The kids just understood that they didn’t want to be like their father.)
He realized belatedly that he hadn’t been watching the ball Tamara had just thrown to him, feeling it hit his shoe at an odd angle that sent it shooting into the street a few feet away from where they had been playing.
Andrés caught Tamara looking towards the house where their sibling was sitting. “Memo- Memo said not to leave the yard…but…” She gestured to the ball jerkily as though Andrés’s yellow eyes weren’t trained firmly onto it.
“I can get it?” He offered. Truthfully, he didn’t want to disobey Memo. The man had enough on his plate without one of the children he was watching running off– but he didn’t want Tamara in trouble either. So, without waiting for an answer, he tentatively made his way to the road, looking both ways before and chasing after the ball, following it as it bounced off a wall and into an alleyway. He ignored Tamara’s calls, continuing after the ball until it was firmly in his hands.
“Well, what do we have here?”
~•~
Guillermo heard Tamara calling after their brother, of course she did. But at that moment she was trying to finish her cup before the drink had gone cold and wasn’t particularly concerned with whatever mischief the kids had been up to this time.
That is, until Tamara burst out from the front of the house, no Andrés in sight.
Andrés who had stuck by his new siblings since being adopted, Andrés who couldn't stand change, Andrés who had latched to Tamara’s side the second he realized she was good , was nowhere to be seen.
Memo immediately discarded the cup he was holding, spilling some of its contents on the ground in his rush. “What happened- Where’s Andrés?”
It hadn’t been long since their mother had left, and with her departure came Memo fully taking over as the primary caretaker of two 6 year-olds. Their father had stopped coming to the house as often after the divorce, leaving Estevan to come visit Memo and the kids alone– something it had hardly ever done in the past. Memo still hadn’t fully adjusted to Estevan showing up to the house alone, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
But when Estevan wasn’t visiting, it was just Memo, and she was sure to take care of her younger siblings to the best of her ability.
After hearing Tamara say that Andrés left the yard and ran out of sight, she grabbed onto Tamara’s hand and raced to the front of the house. Tamara continued babbling as they ran down the street, going based on the vague directions she had given.
He stopped abruptly, bringing the younger child to a halt as well.
A bright red ball sat in the middle of the street, a single muddy footprint about a yard away. A footprint too big to be Andrés.
“Where- But I saw him go this way!” Memo held his youngest sibling tighter, glancing up towards the lone missing person’s poster on the wall.
“I believe you, Tams.”
"Then, then where is he-"
"C'mon, let's- let's go back home."
"No! We need to get Andrés! Andr-!" Memo panickedly threw his hand over the child's mouth (always panicking, never sure of himself) to quiet her, listening closely.
"Maybe…" He fought to keep the quiver out of his voice, struggling to comprehend that he had lost his 6 year old brother when just around the house, close enough to keep an eye out. Close enough to be watching, and yet somehow not seeing. "Maybe we should call Dad."
~•~
John Doe guides the child away from the alleyway, leaving the ball behind as a message. A warning. A sign that he is always watching- and yet, never seen. Well, he will be seen. He will be powerful. With the boy so neglectfully thrown into the media's prying eyes by his side, the world will become his.