The fam except Aline because she’s a corpse
Date: June 16th (was it? don’t feel like going back yes anyway fatal day of the fire)
He knew Gio was being serious, or at least serious enough, but his words accompanied with the sigh, well, he couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out again. “You aren’t wrong though,” he said, his lips quirked upwards in amusement. “Just try not to throw a whole Gordon Ramsay sort of scene if they serve us some gold sprinkled pasta.” His eyes glinted and he shot a teasing smile Gio’s way.
It felt like her whole world was falling apart in her hands, and there was nothing she could do but watch as everything imploded. She was a woman of choices, liked being in control, and there was nothing about this situation that she could do to fix it. She just had to wait and hope things would get better, just sit in the waiting room, fidgeting with her wedding ring as she waited for someone to tell her what was going on with her babies. Marcia hated it, hated this total helplessness she felt and couldn’t do anything about.
Anxiety had its grip on her, wrapping and squeezing, stealing the breath from her lips. She just couldn’t believe that this was happening… they were supposed to be going off to university, not dying in fires. If they died, God, she didn’t know what she’d do. Her eldest babies, the twins, the two of them growing up so fast… living a life without them wasn’t something she was prepared for.
It was true that it could be a lot worse for Lui, and she had Gio to thank for that. She’d heard of how he’d heroically pulled him from the rubble, and she’d never felt more of a warmth for Gio than she had in that moment. Some people didn’t put much stock in love and relationships during high school, saying they were just kids, but Marcia had never agreed with that mindset and this was why. Putting his own life in danger to go save her son—if that wasn’t one of the greatest acts of love she’d ever seen… and from the kid who’d supposedly forgotten the existence of Lui. Maybe this was a lesson that love transcended the boundaries of the human conscious, and went beyond what was remembered.
”I’m the one who should be glad,” Gio said, her gaze rising slowly at his soft words. ”This… It’s all you. You made him, and honestly I have never met anyone as amazing as your son in my whole life, you should be proud of yourself Marcia.” No one… no one had ever told her that. She had been just a kid when they were born and the insecurity that they would’ve been better off with different parents was one that plagued them for the entirety of their lives. Especially now, with Lui and Lini lying in their respective beds, broken… well, it meant everything to her that Gio would say something like that. Her eyes shined with tears again, though this time, they were tinged with a prideful happiness. “Ay, hijo…” She murmured, watching his tender motions with her son. “I tried my best, but it’s me who is lucky to have a son like him.” Her eyes flicked from Gio’s face to his hand on Lui’s head, and a faint smile brushed over her lips. “You really love him, don’t you?” She queried softly, though the supposed query was more of a statement than it was a question. If anyone was going to be in love with her son, she was glad that it was Gio; Marcia couldn’t think of anyone who would be better for him.
After the pale blob focused into the face of Gio, the next thing he noticed was the presence of his hands on the side of his head, and Lui leaned into his fingers, smiling up at Gio. “Of course… I’m okay, you’re with me,” he replied, gazing into his eyes. It was getting easier to speak as the sedatives from the surgery wore off, but with the drowziness of the drugs fading, it also meant the sharp edges of pain from his injury were being uncapped. Still, he didn’t show much of this on his face, as judging by the looks of both Gio and his Mami, they had obviously been worried as sh!t about him—the last thing he wanted to do was make them worry more.
As his mother dipped to go and get the doctor, Lui refocused his attention on Gio, doing his best to ignore the headache growing with each passing second. He listened to him recount the events, gaping at the words. “You… you pulled me out? What, Gio-” Luciano abruptly sat up, wincing in pain as he did so, but ignoring the sharp stabs to stare at the guy who apparently was his knight-in-shining-armour. “You could’ve gotten hurt,” he said softly, his brows furrowed in concern. “Are you hurt?” Lui’s eyes flickered across Gio’s body, looking for any telltale signs of injury he might have.
”Aline… She’s… Not so good honestly…" His heart dropped at these words and he looked away, his hand gathering fistfuls of the bedsheets. "Her heart is beating, though she’s unconscious and ventilated right now, but the doctors are trying their best, I bet she would be fine in no time.” He didn’t respond immediately, letting the words sit in the air between him for a few moments before he turned to look at Gio again, a strained smile stretching across his mouth. “Yeah, I’m sure she’ll be fine,” he echoed, though there hadn’t been words he believed less in a long time.
Lui was going to get off the bed, going to suggest seeing Aline, but then Gio was speaking again, his hand slipping into Lui’s, the touch momentarily calming his anxiousness. He turned to meet Gio’s gaze, the tension briefly melting off of his face. “Tesoro, why are you apologizing?” He asked softly, giving a slight shake of his head. “None of this is your fault.” The idea of Gio blaming himself for Luciano being in the hospital was unfathomable to him as he could see that Gio had clearly done everything to get him to safety. He reached out with his arm to wrap a hand around the back of his neck, staring straight into his eyes. “You f^cking saved me, it’s because of you that I’m alive.” Lui paused before pressing a gentle, fleeting kiss against his lips. The pain of the movement was completely worth kissing him, even if it was merely a small one. These days, even the smallest kiss from Gio was one he’d treasure. “So don’t blame yourself, okay?” He leaned back, his fingers retreating from where they were touching Gio as he shifted back onto the bed. “And I love you too, G,” he murmured, the smallest smile pulling at his lips. Did it feel good to be able to say that. It felt like the first relieving breath you took after holding your breath for a ridiculous amount of time, and it was just so easy, so natural—it was holding back the breath that had been difficult. “And you’re not going to lose me,” he added, squeezing his hand in reassurance. “I’m okay.”
Aline wasn’t tho LMAO anyways
Marcia returned with the doctor, and after doing a series of tests on Luciano, they deduced that he did, in fact, have a concussion, and so administered him some medications to deal with the symptoms. As a result, they decided to keep him overnight for observation, just in case sort of things ya dig.
Luciano did eventually go to see Aline, but that wasn’t until after he’d gotten some more rest and the rest of his family had arrived. Being wheeled to her room, his sisters on either side of him was a nerve-wracking period of time. He could feel the tense energy, and he’d known from Gio that she wasn’t doing well but he couldn’t have really known until he laid eyes on her. And… seeing her was nothing short of heartbreaking.
Lying lifeless in that bed, her curls matted against the pillow beneath her head. The room was quiet, safe for the constant sighs of the ventilator as it pushed oxygen into and pulled it out of Aline’s lungs. The tube perturbing from her mouth looked so foreign, and looking at it gave Lui an irrational urge to pull it out, even though he knew that it wouldn’t help her. Silent tears streamed down his cheeks, but he remained at least relatively composed, while his family around him loudly broke down. Andi curled up in his lap, the two of them a bit off from the bed with Aline because she found all the tubes scary. He rubbed circles onto her back as she cried into his t-shirt, his mind choosing to focus on making sure she was alright rather than the loss that was not more than a few feet in front of him.
It was explained to him that she was brain dead, which he kind of knew despite not knowing, as there was nothing in that room that even resembled the Aline he knew. The essence that was his twin sister, the girl he’d never lived without, that was gone. There was nothing on that bed that was anything but a corpse being kept alive by the marvels of human technology, nothing but a hollow reminder of what she used to be.
Even so, he stayed with her body for a long time, remaining in the room after his Papi retreated back to the hotel with his younger sisters and Mami. His Mami had been stubborn at first, insistent on staying too, but with both he and Fred doubling down on her needing rest and a proper shower, she relented and they headed to the hotel to recuperate, leaving Lui with her. His breath was shaky as he fully took her in, able to wholly collapse now that there was no one around. Wheeling himself closer to the bed, he intertwined their fingers, gripping tightly as if that would cause her to grip back. “Ali-” He lowered his head, the sobs leaving his body in explosive bursts, his shoulders shaking as he let himself be encompassed with the pain.
There were so many questions he had that no one seemed to be able to answer. Why was she in the building for so long? Why had no one helped her, gotten her out? Why was it that she was in the fire, alone, when there were so many people who could’ve- just-
Maybe the real question was why hadn’t he been there for her.
This was his sister. Not only that, but his twin. Since conception, they’d been together. There was quite literally not a second of his life in which he’d had to contemplate existing without her. And what, how was it that some people could nearly be killed several times within their lives and live to a ripe old age and she just—just this once and she’s gone. It didn’t matter if her heart was beating, if he could see her chest rise and fall with every intake of oxygen, he knew this, this body in front of him was nothing more than that. A body.
And yet, even within these acknowledgements, he couldn’t begin to fathom a day without her.
So much change had happened in the past few days that Andressa, the current youngest of the Ribeiro-Meyer clan, couldn’t even begin to process. She was five—almost six!—and she liked to think she understood a lot, but a lot of the events that happened were… confusing.
Andi had been back in Beryl with Lia and Mami and Papi, and Lui and Lili were off at a real royal wedding, like the kinds between a princess and a prince and she’d wanted so badly to go but Mami had told her that she was too little. Andi wasn’t even little, she was a whole almost-six-years-old, but whatever, she’d had to stay behind with them.
But then when she was playing dolls with her Mami, she got a phone call and then she was crying and then she left the house. Less than a day later, she, Lia and Papi were all on a plane and she thought that maybe—just maybe—they were going to go to the royal wedding after all. But instead, they were in a hospital, her brother in one of those black chairs with these big, round wheels and Lili had become a sleeping monster.
These… tentacles, like Ursula had, protruded from her body and snaked behind the bed. She worried that if she got too close, the tentacles would reach out towards her and-
Everyone was crying, and she thought it was because of the whole monster bit, but she didn’t understand—they were in a hospital, that was where you went to fix these things. The doctors would fix everything, that’s just how it worked.
So, when she was supposed to be sleeping in the double bed she shared with Lia, she awoke to the sound of stifled sobs. Andressa sat up, saw her Papi staring at the opposite wall, each shaky inhale causing his shoulders to tremble, even as he laid on his side on the bed by himself.
Andi walked over to him, getting onto the bed behind him. As Lui had done for her at the hospital, she started rubbing circles on his bed, whispering, “Papi, it’s okay. They’ll fix her and she won’t be a monster, so don’t cry.” He turned over, clutching her small body against his chest and cried more. She didn’t understand; why was he so sad? Aline was going to wake up and not be so monster-y and they’d go home and it’d all be fine.
But when they went again to see Lili, the doctors did remove the monster of her and she was just Lili her Big Sister, but then her sister was even stiller than she’d ever seen her. She knew Aline as someone who was full of energy, always moving but now she wasn’t moving at all. It was weird, maybe even weirder than when she was a monster and she clung, again, to Lui as he wheeled them to her bedside.
She could feel the overwhelming sadness in the room, the tension produced by everyone seeping into her too. Lui, too, was crying—she could feel the slight tremble of his shoulders with every inhale—and all the sadness made her start to whimper as well, her lip wavering. Lui rubbed her back, gently pulling her away from him. “Andi,” he whispered in her ear, “Come say bye to Lili.”
She shook her head, clinging harder to Luciano. “No,” she said, her head shakes growing more violent. “No, no I don’t want to. I don’t want her to go. Luc, tell her to come back-!” She looked up at him then, her hazel eyes shining with unshed tears. Even at that age, she could tell that her brother shared a connection with her, and in her eyes, maybe it was enough of one for him to bring her back. But she could feel him beginning to shake his head before he did, and then her nose was wrinkling. “I can’t Andi,” he mumbled, the tears streaming down his cheeks again. “I don’t want her to go either but it’s not up to me.” He nodded towards where she lay prone, which made Andressa’s gaze turn that way too. “Dile adiós. Por favor.” Say bye to her. Please. He spoke softly, his voice wavering. After a brief pause, she was turning, looking at what was left of her big sister.
“Bye Lili,” she whispered, her small hand opening and closing in a parting wave. Andi didn’t understand where she was going, or what had even happened to her to begin with, but even then, she understood that this would be the last time she saw her sister.
Date: June 19th
Returning to Beryl without his sister was a whole new dimension of sadness he hadn’t even thought about. At least in Listaria he could pretend that she was alive, imagine that she was chilling back at their home, but being inside this house, going to her room and it looking totally empty inside… it was like a sucker punch to the gut. Seeing her empty bedroom, her cat mewing at him from her bed, it was so unexpectedly devastating. He sat in the doorway in his wheelchair, closing his eyes against the loud silence of the room.
The silence was filled suddenly with a long-buried memory, of a particular moment in time he hadn’t thought about in a long time. Luciano could hear her voice, hear her eight-year-old giggles from the time when they were first introduced to their respective rooms. They just finished a long tour of Fred’s house, and Aline had been so excited to spend time in her new room, which was a lot nicer than the one she shared with Lui and Mami back home in Brazil.
He heard her voice suddenly, saw her as he had seen her back then; a small brown-skinned girl, her kinky curls pulled into a hasty bun at the back of her bed. “Mira este lugar, Lui, ¡es un castillo! ¿Puedes creer que vamos a vivir aquí?” Look at this place Lui, it’s a castle! Can you believe we’re gonna live here??" She laughed, running into the room and flopping down onto the bed. “Me encaaaanta América. Seré feliz si nunca volvemos a Brasil.” I looove America. I’ll be happy if we never go back to Brazil.
Lui remembered frowning, his arms crossed as he watched her from the doorway. His eyes danced across the unfamiliar surroundings, and he remembered feeling betrayed by her words. To him, America was nice and all, and he could see himself enjoying many of the luxuries but Brazil would always be special to him, as it was the place he was born and lived for so long. “Pero es nuestro hogar,” he said soberly. “¿No te lo perderás?” “But it’s our home. You won’t miss it?”
Luciano remembered clearly how she had sat up and cocked her head at him, an amused look passing over her face. “Mientras estés conmigo, ya estoy en casa.” “As long as you’re with me, I’m already home.”
Date: June 25th
Her funeral on the 20th was perhaps the saddest event of his life. And yet, he didn’t shed a tear. It was funny how on the inside it felt like his body was decaying, but on the outside, his face didn’t even begin to illustrate that pain. He kept his composure at the funeral, which was great for the rest of his family, who were understandably torn up about it all. He was too, but he wanted to be able to be support for them. It was… the least he could do, he felt.
Most of all though, the funeral was exhausting. All of these people coming to express their condolences, sharing stories of Aline… it was objectively nice to see all these people that cared about her, but also further broke his heart that all of these people had lost someone so important to them.
Lui didn’t speak at the funeral. His Mami had really wanted him to, but he really… wasn’t up for the combined stress of public speaking and having to share words on someone who had been home for him. And was now dead. Everything he had wanted to say to her though, he said later that night, to her nicely adorned gravestone in the local cemetery. It was weird talking to a rock, but also… nice? He wasn’t sure if he really believed in a God, or in an afterlife, but as he just talked… it felt like maybe, she really was listening. Luciano left the cemetery with tears dried on his cheeks, but also feeling just the slightest bit lighter.
He also found out that Valerie’s mom, aka Papi’s mistress had died in the fire too; he’d taken this news without a change in expression and, to be honest, he still didn’t know how to feel about that. He felt bad for Val, because he liked her enough, but he didn’t have any particular qualms about the homewrecker dying. Yes, he knew that it took two to tango, but if one of them was dead…
Yeah, Aline’s death had made him pretty cynical.
Speaking of her death, he learned that the whole fire was caused by a Ruby Danvers, someone he remembered vaguely as being on his Valentine match thingamajig----what a different world that had been. He knew he was supposed to forgive her, and it was good that she was going to prison for it, but… a part of him still burned with anger from that. He… he blamed her entirely, and though he refused to talk about her, kept his mouth firmly closed against spreading any of his thoughts about her, inside, he really couldn’t stand her as she was the reason that his sister was dead. Maybe in time he’d grow and learn to forgive her, but for the immediate future, he just… was going to pretend she didn’t exist.
Graduation day. The day he’d been anticipating since the start of senior year, and now was the day that he was entirely dreading. It was funny how he’d been expecting to walk across the stage with Aline, but now he wouldn’t get to do either of those. Aline was dead, obviously, and he was in a wheelchair, his leg indisposed for at least the next several weeks.
He would be graduating from high school today, without Aline, and that made today very f^cking sucky. But also it was the day that Gio was born, so it was made exponentially less sucky. Gio had been… really great, through the past several days. Especially now that he had his memory back, it was comforting to be able to mourn with him. So he wanted Gio to have as good a birthday as he could, given the circumstances, but he figured that’d be hard given, well, his sister was dead and she had emphasized the fact that she was going to give him a wonderful birthday.
It was a fairly busy day, being their last day and all, but he’d paid Gio a visit bright and early in the morning with a soft ‘happy birthday’ and a bouquet of blue orchids, which he’d read symbolized peace (heavens knows they both needed that) and rarity and love.
He had lost, yes, but he had also gained—and within all of this tragedy he was holding the people he loved close. If there was one thing he wasn’t going to do again, it was take Gio, or anyone for that matter, for granted.
So yeah, he graduated, wheeled himself across the stage like a boss, managing not to totally break down as he was handed his diploma. It was very hard to feel happy, but he looked happy, and well, fake it 'til you make it and all that, right?
After the whole graduation ceremony concluded, most of his class started heading towards the Rockefeller Residence, which was where the afterparty was going down. Before this though, he grabbed the takeout container his Mami had been kind enough to keep warm for him in their Fancydancyrichpeopleheateruppermachine 2000. Placing it in his lap, he wheeled himself over to Gio, a small but proud smile on his face. “Happy birthday again,” he murmured, offering the takeout container to him. “It’s your favourite pasta,” he said, his eyes flicking to the ground. “I went all the way to Little Italy to get it, and then asked the locals which was the most authentic restaurant and got it for you… I know it’s not from Italy really but I got it from the next best place we could in California. And, I promise, there are no gold parmesan flakes.”
@CerealKiller - hi 
so the funny thing is is that I was trying to keep this short 
anyWAY feel free to have your post be the restart since… idek how long this is akdhhedslrencj
