Luciano Ribeiro
His lips twisted in amusement, and he laughed at the utter disappointment depicted on Gio’s face. “What else would they do with their edible gold besides ruin pasta?” He asked with a grin. “Maybe–and don’t kill me for this–maybe it tastes… good?”
Kissing Gio… it had been so long since he’d been this close to him, nevermind been able to kiss him like this. In many ways, it was like their first kiss all over again; in the way that there were promises of a new beginning, the way they had found a little paradise in an unconventional location, the way his heart pounded against the palm of Gio’s hand… and even though everything had changed since then, at the same time, as he shared this kiss with Gio, it felt like absolutely nothing had.
He was never much of a fairytale person, but if this moment reminded him of anything, it was definitely one of those happily ever after tales that his sister had loved when the two of them were children. Maybe it had to do with the fact that they were in the castle’s greenhouse in a literal kingdom—nothing screamed fairy tale more than that—but whatever the reason, he couldn’t stop thinking that he’d found his Prince Charming. It was very cheesy, and it embarrassed him to even think it, but it was the truth. Gio was… gold, and not the edible parmesan kind. He was the gold that people spent lifetimes searching for, and yet it was only a few that were lucky enough to uncover it. Luciano didn’t know how, but he’d managed to find Gio, his tesoro, and he never wanted to let go.
He would’ve stayed out here forever with Gio if he could’ve, passed the time among the various vegetation in this greenhouse, kissing and talking and… kissing. And just, doing whatever. It didn’t even matter what they did, Lui was happy enough to simply sit with him. But the fire threw a wrench in this plan, introducing a note of destruction into their found piece of paradise.
The fire ate at the castle, sending down the turret upon them, and any previous notion of paradise was ruined. His first instinct as the destruction rained down was to protect Gio because he’d be damned if he ever let Gio be harmed in an accident again. He wouldn’t lose him, not when he had just gotten him back.
Gio said that he was fine, and Luciano was able to let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. ”Are you?” He nodded, though he could feel the sharp pain of the cuts and bruises inflicted upon him by the dreadful tower thingy. “Don’t worry about me,” he said softly, helping Gio up. It was clear that he’d gotten the brunt of the crash, but he was glad; he’d go through a thousand fires if it meant that Gio wouldn’t have the smallest scratch. He’d be more than willing to bear eternal pain if it meant that Gio would be alright, for his friends, family, Aline…
He frowned slightly, his breath catching. Aline. Was she okay? Did she get out? There was no way to answer any of the questions that were arising from the thought of his sister being hurt, but they kept popping up.
She retraced her steps, taking a right instead of a left as she stumbled through the burning halls of the castle. Aline was moving slowly now, each step taking longer than the previous one. It had been an easy choice to forgo the exit at the time, her mind latching pretty illogically on the prospect of finding Luciano. She wasn’t thinking straight, should’ve turned around a long time ago, but her brain would think up memories of her brother and she would trudge on.
Her whole life consisted of him by her side, the two of them a pair, a package deal, two peas in a pod. For the first few years of their life, they were hardly separated, growing up together in the small apartment her tía Maria owned with her husband. It wasn’t nearly big enough for five people, but they survived. Even after Marcia had met Fred, after their world was flipped on its axis, Lui was still by her side. They went through it together, through all of the chaos.
She remembered when they first came to America from Brazil; Lui, so apprehensive, and her, excited and bubbly, everything so shiny and new and fascinating to her. She remembered her English being so weak—she would try to talk to people in that language and only get a couple of words in before she dissolved into either Portuguese or Spanish or a mix of the two, and it would frustrate her, not knowing what other people were saying and them not understanding her. Though in Brazil she had always been better than Lui with English, in Beryl, it was Luciano’s English that quickly advanced. He was a lot more dedicated to the language now that they had moved to a country that practically only spoke it, and he ended up becoming something of a tutor for her. She remembered all the nights they spent curled together in his room—despite the largeness of Fred’s house, they were used to being together and so it took them a while to grow accustomed to having separate rooms—him finding new ways to help her understand the spoken language and the ESL lessons they took. He had always been so patient, so understanding… whenever she was frustrated with herself, he would be there with his warm hands, murmuring comforting words and telling funny stories about his day until she calmed down.
He didn’t give up on her, and so she wouldn’t on him.
If he were here, he’d want her to go back, to find an exit and get out of the castle. His scoldings played through her mind, and she shook her head, as if he could see her doing the motion. “I’m gonna find you,” she murmured aloud, a hacking cough succeeding her words. Aline could nearly see his shape, his disapproving gaze staring down at her. “Ali, get out of here, what are you doing?” She paused, looking off into the distance. “¿Por qué nunca piensas bien las cosas?” “Why don’t you ever think things through?” The Lui apparition asked her. “You are going to die.”
Was she? Well, seeing things usually wasn’t a good indicator of life but she didn’t think she was ready to die. She was only eighteen, she had so many more life experiences to experience. A wedding, kids… but if Lui wasn’t alive, then none of that mattered to her. “And you think you’re any help to me?” He asked her, arms crossed. “I’m fine, but I won’t be without you.”
He was nothing but a figment of her imagination, but he was right, what was she doing here? She was clearly no help to anyone in here, and… she had a feeling that Lui was alright. Aline usually didn’t pay as much attention to her instincts as Lui seemed to, but as she thought about it more, she was surer of the fact that he was okay.
A smile graced her lips. Even if she couldn’t get out of here, if this really was her end, well, that was okay. She’d lived a good life. If she was going to die trying to save Lui, that was just how it would have to be, and for a way to die, that was a pretty good way to go out.
Maybe she wouldn’t get to see her little sisters grow up, but Andi and Nadalia would be okay, she knew. She would’ve loved to help them through their teenage years, seen the women that they would become, but she didn’t worry about them. After all, they would have some pretty baller family members there to help her through the milestones she would miss. Her littlest sister, the baby still in her Mami’s stomach, Aline would miss out on her whole life. She wondered who she would be, what she would do…
Aline started shuffling towards the nearest door, determined to find a way out of the castle and to wherever her brother and Gio were, but though her will was strong, her body was weak, and it was the limitations of her human flesh that failed her in the end. Her vision blurred and then she was falling, the influx of smoke and lack of oxygen finally causing her to lose consciousness. Her grip slackened, the fabric-mask she had fluttering to the floor and the long gown of her dress falling back down around her legs, hitting the floor as her body did. The fire caught quickly on the train of her dress, but her heart had stopped beating long before the flames even touched her skin.
The thing about twins was that they often had a level of interconnectedness that many people couldn’t touch. Spending nine months together in utero tended to build a special sort of connection between babies, even if later in life they didn’t get along at all. While Luciano and Aline never claimed to have any sort of twin telepathy, and they certainly couldn’t read each other’s thoughts, they did still have a unique connection. Maybe it had nothing to do with being twins, and rather their closeness which built from all the moments they spent together.
Whatever the reason, there were sometimes just instinctual things they knew about the other. A feeling that they didn’t question but one that didn’t arise very frequently. As Gio moved away from him to search for a way out of the burning greenhouse, presumably, it was this instinctive feeling, one of absolute dread settled upon Luciano, freezing his motions. This was something he’d never felt before, and it was so total and encompassing that it startled him. His breathing came quicker, though he didn’t know why, and he was so confused at this peculiar development that he didn’t notice more parts of the building beginning to crumble, the debris falling upon him. He fell, knocking his head against the floor and losing consciousness as a pretty significant chunk of the building fell onto his legs. The echo of Gio’s screams danced around his mind for a few seconds, but even that then faded into the empty void of unconsciousness.
Twenty-four hours. That was how much time had passed since the fire that had consumed the castle of Listaria, and had caused the events that would become pivotal moments of Luciano’s life, even though he didn’t know it yet.
Minutes after he was strapped into the gurney on the ambulance, his sister was pulled from the castle, though her retrieval was more of a recovery than a rescue. Resuscitative maneuvers were attempted at the scene, but the strain on her heart from the excessive inhalation of smoke was immense and the burns on her limbs were deep, and the effort from the paramedics yielded only a very faint heartbeat from her. None of them could say just how long she’d been without oxygen for, and the threat of brain damage was more than likely. Aline was shipped off to the hospital, her heart failing several times on the brief ambulance ride, and now she laid in a hospital bed, connected to machines that were pumping oxygen into her.
When Marcia arrived at the hospital nineteen hours after the disastrous fire, by herself, the doctors told her of her eldest daughter’s condition and she immediately dissolved into sobs, her heart ripping apart. They said that she had no brain activity, and it wasn’t looking like anything would change in the days ahead. Her heart was beating, but that was about the only thing she had going for her, and they said that if they removed the ventilator, her heart would stop too. And if that loss wasn’t enough for her to have to deal with, she had to then hear that her only son was also in the hospital, and that he had to go into surgery for some of the injuries he had sustained. There was so much uncertainty and she found herself wondering what could have gone differently if she’d made different decisions. She should never have allowed them to go to this strange royal wedding because look at them now…
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, mothers weren’t supposed to lose their children. It wasn’t something she was equipped for, and definitely hadn’t ever thought much about. She’d done everything she could to keep them safe from harm, but now, with Aline lying in this bed, hadn’t she failed her one objective as their Mami? She had let her down, let both of them down.
Marcia called Fred, letting him know of the condition of their kids and trying her best to hold back the sobs that threatened to escape. Her weak bravado did crumble, and she was full out crying by the end of the phone call. Her husband did his best to comfort her through his own tears, but what she really needed was for him to come and hold her. It really, really hurt to learn that he was cheating on her, but he was still the man she loved, regardless. And she just really needed him to be here, with her and their kids. Maybe the twins weren’t his biologically, but by any measure of family, he was as much as their father as she was their mother.
Even if he and the girls took the next flight, it would be a good fifteen hours, at the very least, until she saw any of them. She didn’t really want the girls to come, but if Aline truly was… not alive, at least, not in the ways that mattered, then she wanted them to be able to say goodbye to their big sister. She just wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with all of this waiting—well, she wanted to curl into a ball and just, sob, but she felt like if she did that she would never unfurl herself. Being pregnant too, Marcia didn’t want to put any more stress on her baby; this was quite literally the only thing that kept her from losing her composure, she just, wasn’t going to lose another child.
Maybe one good spot in all of this was Gio, who she’d seen when she first arrived at the hospital, the young man hunched over in a seat in the waiting room as Luciano underwent surgery. Seeing him had made her smile because, well, he had become something of a son to her when he had lived with their family. Marcia had gotten to see just how much Gio had meant to her son and it was just very heart-warming. He was already such an incredible boy, kind and loving (from what she’d heard of his father, it didn’t look like he shared many traits with him, gracias a Dios) and she would never understand how his parents could just… abandon him as they had. Clearly, though, he had many supports coming from places that didn’t involve the parents, and she was glad for that, because if there was anyone who was really deserving of all the love, it was him.
When the doctor pulled her aside to talk about Aline’s condition, she had wanted to hide how bad it was from Gio, but seeing as she had quite literally started sobbing, sliding to the floor, well, obviously there was no other option but to tell him the truth.
Luciano was moved back into his room an hour or so after that and so the two went there, a heaviness sitting in the room as they waited for him to wake up.
“There was evidence of a concussion, but we can’t say how extensive the trauma will be until he wakes up,” the doctor told the two of them, her eyes flicking between the two of them and the tablet she held which contained the information about Luciano. “His leg was broken, but with a cast and a couple of months, it should be good as new. There was some hemorrhaging, but all this was amended during surgery. Besides all of that, he’s pretty well-off.” That was nice to hear, but Marcia couldn’t muster a smile after all of the events of today, just tightened her grip on her son’s hand as he lay asleep in the bed. “We’ll monitor him, see how he gets on, but I expect a full recovery.” A relieved cry broke through, and she took a few steadying breaths to prevent herself from breaking into tears again.
“Just call me when he wakes up,” she said as a parting message, and then the doctor left them, leaving the two of them alone. Marcia looked up at Gio, tears streaking down her weary face once again. “Thank you…” she whispered his way, reaching a hand across the bed to hold his. “Thank you for being there for him, if you weren’t with him, no sé lo que-” I don’t know what- She exhaled shakily, offering him a watery smile. “Just… thank you Gio. I’m glad he… he has you.”
The steady beeping of the heart monitor was the first thing that penetrated his conscious, the recurring, constant tone bringing him from the edges of unconsciousness back into reality. His eyes slowly fluttered open, a shocking bright light greeting them as he grew more awake. It made his head hurt, so he closed his eyes and turned away, positioning his head to the side. Lui remembered the fire, though not how he had gotten to this specific bed, so he gathered that he was in the hospital—like the beeping heart monitor wasn’t enough of an indication of that.
Opening his eyes again, he took in a blurry shape—the pale blob familliar, yet still unrecognizable. It was after his eyes had focused when the recognition dawned on him: Gio, of course, that’s the person he was staring at right now. If he was beside him, he was okay, and Lui was more than glad of that fact. He smiled slightly, a faint wince accompanying it. “We should… stop meeting… in the hospital,” he told him in a teasing tone.
Turning his head to the other side he took in his mother, who leaned over to give him a gentle hug, pressing a kiss against his forehead. “Mami…” he mumbled, attempting a small smile his way. She rubbed his arms, nodding through her tears. “Hijo,” she murmured, “Estoy tan contento de que estés bien.” “I’m so glad you’re alright.” Marcia reluctantly pulled away from him, getting up from her seat and heading to the door. “I’ll go get the doctor,” she said before leaving the room.
“Soo…” His gaze flicked to Gio, his brow furrowing in confusion. “What happened, exactly? My head hurts and I can’t really remember how I got here. And…” Luciano’s gaze scanned the rest of the room, his mind alerting him of an alarming absence. “… where’s Ali?”
@CerealKiller 3234 doo dooo so BAHAHAHA LONGER
The title of this doc aged well
anyways bye don’t kill me 