︵ ⊹ ︵⏜︵ ⊹ ︵୨ TW: mentions of death/grief ୧︵ ⊹ ︵⏜︵ ⊹ ︵
Sunny crossed her arms as she listened to Emilio make up excuse after excuse for his behaviour, each of them containing little to no substance. She was convinced he was just doing it to hear himself talk because he clearly didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that Sunny and Santiago were falling for any of his bullsh*t. She had to bite her tongue when Santiago told him to worry about himself, stopping herself from making a crack about how that shouldn’t be a problem. As much as she had once hoped that her brother would return safely, she felt as if the man standing across from her was a stranger. She scoffed, rolling her eyes when he claimed that whatever had kept him away from them wasn’t their burden to share.
“You’re our brother, Emiliano, of course, it’s our burden!” She retorted. Santiago pointed out how much they’ve changed since the last time they saw him. Much like her eldest brother, she had changed quite a bit since their brother had left. On a more superficial level, she’d changed her hair a few times and got a new tattoo but she also stopped singing and started a business. She had lost her spark and tried to find it again. Found love. She wondered if he was even aware of her relationship with Nacho. So far, everything to come out of her brother’s mouth was self-centred and he had barely taken a moment to acknowledge that the people he was talking to were the people he had grown up with and then deserted, leaving them to fend for themselves in their darkest hour.
She was 26 when he left. She remembered the sinking feeling when they first realized that he wasn’t coming home. She remembered always keeping an eye out when she left the house, holding on to hope that she would see him. She remembered the shift from hoping that he would be found alive to just hoping to find his body.
She looked up, blinking to dry her eyes as Santiago told him that they thought he was dead. He showed Emiliano the tattoos they had gotten to honour both him and Mattias. When he mentioned that she also had the tattoos, she pushed back her sleeve to show him the outside of her wrist, where she had chosen to place them.
She jumped as Emilio threw his glass on the ground, leaving a mess of broken glass on the ground. “Careful.” She quickly warned as her brothers bent down to pick up the glass but it was too late, Emiliano had already cut himself. “Aish.” She hissed as she saw the blood. She grabbed some nearby napkins and began to wrap them around her brothers’ hands, trying to help stop the bleeding. However, she tightened her grip when he confessed that he had originally planned to stay away for seven years.
“Why, so we could have held your funeral first?” She muttered sarcastically under her breath while Santiago asked the important question. At least one of them had their priorities straight. Though she couldn’t deny that every snarky comment she shot at her brother felt really good. She watched him with a hardened expression as she waited for him to answer Santiago’s question. Normally, she would say that he had a right to privacy but in this case, she felt that they were entitled to an answer. They had a right to know where he had been, what he had been doing, and why his brother’s death wasn’t a good enough reason for him to come back.
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@Kristi - Emi
@raviola - Santi