#an eighteen year old kid shot and killed his friend rival enemy everything because his fuckass dad told him to

[haejjoon]

Goro celebrates Akira Kurusu’s death with cheap cup noodles and a bottle of wine.

The noodles are a month past its expiration date, and the wine has been sitting in his cabinet for three whole years untouched. (The latter was from Shido—a gift celebrating Goro’s first completed mission.)

The noodles are soggy. The wine is sour. They taste horrible together, and Goro devours both like it’s his last meal.

The TV blasts the news Goro already knows into his ears. The leader of the anonymous terrorist group Phantom Thieves, arrested just last night, is reported to have committed suicide in his questioning cell…

“He didn’t commit suicide,” Goro says to the screen. “I killed him, and it felt incredible.”

The identity of the Phantom Thieves’ illustrious leader has not yet been disclosed to the public, given the severity of their perpetuated crimes…

“Akira Kurusu was a nobody. He lived in a dusty attic in a stranger’s café. His parents disowned him for being too good of a person.”

Police investigation has revealed that he stole the guard’s gun to end his own life. Results show that he was likely to have died instantly…

“He died from one shot.” Goro drunkenly lifts the hand holding the remote and mimes shooting at the chattering television. “Just like that. He ran around like he was invincible, you know. I almost believed it when he told everyone that he would be okay. I half expected to open the door to find an empty seat, and then to have to call Shido-san to tell him that Joker got away. I thought I might die tonight due to my failure. But I didn’t fail. I killed that son of a bitch with one shot. He lost. I won.”

The TV shuts off.

“I won,” Goro’s reflection repeats.

-

(work in progress for oneshot i plan to post soon!)

[ssincielo]

in the mood to talk abt lourdes’ CHILDHOOD + HOME so hey. tw for: mentions of dr*gs, a lil’ light violence, and the fact this got kinda lengthy ‘cause i got carried away and couldn’t focus on one topic so i just talked abt everything.

lourdes grew up in a public housing complex in east harlem — a three bedroom apartment, floor seven door F, once occupied by lucia and her older sister elise, until elise moved upstate and gave the place to lucia when she’d gotten pregnant with ramone. plus, she clearly needed the space more anyway, considering how many times alonzo spent the night. or hid out at their place.

at first, it was just lucia and ramone living there after he’d been born. alonzo was in and out, super non-committal, had other girls he’d been entertaining and a street to run. it wasn’t until he’d gotten another fling of his, jennifer, pregnant with beatrice — then put jennifer in a situation where she took the fall for him during a drug raid, did lonzo actually take full responsibility for beatrice and move in with luce. talk abt trifiling.

by the time lourdes was born, albeit a few weeks early and after some time in the NICU (which, her birth story is a whole tale within itself. long story short, alonzo’s exes had bad blood and jumped a heavily pregnant lucia on her way home from the train station. cue early labor. cue luce sending her cousins to beat the bitches in question up in retaliation.), ramone was eight and beatrice was four. (and fully adopted by lucia, since she actually got alonzo to calm down and he actually decided to marry her.) for a while, ramone and bea had their own rooms and lourdes slept in a crib / toddler bed in lonzo and lucia’s room until she was around four or five herself. at that point, they just bought a cheap little day bed and shoved her in beatrice’s room since they were both girls and closer in age.

first and foremost, home was switzerland for alonzo. he never liked having people in and out of the house that he didn’t consider to be family, blood or otherwise. never conducted business where he laid his head, designated areas where he and his boys would meet and do drops. and since he was known to have an unpredictable ass temper in the streets, nobody dared to actually cause some shit where his kids and his old lady lived at. (that’s not to say that there weren’t a few rivals and enemies bold enough to try something, but they learned their lesson rather quickly and often walked away with a few fingers and teeth missing. if they were lucky enough to walk away at all.) so growing up, the santino kids had little to no exposure until they either came of school age hanging around other kids or happened to be out in the street with alonzo when shit popped off.

by the time ramone was about fourteen, he was fully aware of his father’s status and dealings, and decided he wanted to be the man just like him. there were efforts to sway him, obviously, but alonzo was still kinda trifling and didn’t try very hard to resist his first born son following in his footsteps. he still tried to get him to pursue other interests, but ramone knew that to actually get off the block rather than simply working nine to fives, you either had to trap or you had to ball. so he gets jumped in behind lucia’s back, made to be an errand boy for a little while, then started peddling dime bags of weed and some pills between school and parties. beatrice is ten and about to enter middle school cheerleading, lourdes is six and under her mother all the time after a few bad colds and hospital scares.

ramone is eighteen, fully immersed in making friends with the bangers who loitered in the courtyard of the apartment day and night, and has a few bands stashed in his bedroom. beatrice is fourteen & just entering high school, smitten by her older brother’s cute older friends, and gets caught up in pushing a (much older) boyfriend’s drugs that she gets cuffed at home and given house arrest. lourdes is ten, starting to come of age, and curiosity and nosiness is more or less her first exposure with all that goes on. she also develops her irrational fear of heights after beatrice tries (and nearly succeeds) to push her off of the seventh floor terrace. like, the siblings were great whenever they got along, but when one annoyed the other...yeah. usual sibling shit. just they would full on beat each other’s asses occasionally.

at a certain point, ramone up and leaves the apartment — he doesn’t exactly move out, because his bedroom still held all of his shit and he was always at the apartment come nightfall, but he’s pretty much in and out by the time he hits his twenties. only really came around for dinner, or to walk lourdes up the block on her way to school, or god forbid, when he needed a place to duck out until things cooled off. beatrice is coming up on sixteen and seventeen herself, and despite lourdes still sharing a bedroom with her into their teenage years, she’s...not exactly around much, either. still caught up in her boyfriends. still caught up in emulating her mother. lourdes, having already been made to properly fire a weapon by alonzo at this point, spends most of her nights going to sleep alone and being woken up in the middle of the night by either ramone sneaking home or lucia screaming at beatrice because she’d been gone for hours and she nearly called the police. (and while the santino kids were never explicitly kicked out or told they needed to leave at a certain age, there were still rules to follow under their roof! so every so often, their big grown asses would just be in and out of the apartment throughout late teens and twenties.) things start getting tumultuous, and it’s around this time that lourdes is hiding her brother’s drugs under her bed, coming home to beatrice curled up crying in her bed from time to time, lucia and lonzo arguing that they need to start backing away from this shit, and lourdes pretending that Everything Is Fine and trying to do normal high school girl shit to cope.

after ramone gets shot and killed outside of the building while on his way home, literally everything goes to shit. beatrice stops coming home, alonzo nearly goes to prison, lucia is trying to run her clothing shop and be a parent and mourn her only son at the same time, and lourdes is just. fucking angry — at her brother dying, at her father, at being made to actually shoot a person and having to wash someone’s blood off of her hands when she was supposed to be planning her prom dress and senior year. eventually she, too, falls victim to the lifestyle and gets herself jumped in because she thinks it would make everything go back to normal, and she drops out to stay at home, take up some job as a clothing store cashier, and trap full time. lourdes literally lives in her and beatrice’s childhood bedroom until she’s twenty, entertains then drops a few boyfriends that offer to move her in or some dumb shit, and when alonzo finds out she went behind his back to go work for the oversacces, he (completely against lucia’s word) gives her one bag to pack and throws her out for disrespecting him / not being loyal to family. cool cool cool.

aside from like...all of That, lucia and alonzo still live in that same apartment complex. beatrice comes around from time to time, having gotten engaged to her longtime boyfriend (again, an affiliated guy she met through ramone’s clique). alonzo bought out and owned a junkyard when lourdes was like, fifteen, so that’s his little hobby while lucia still owns her own tailoring & clothing store. there’s a huge mural for ramone on the side of the apartment building, because he was a social butterfly and often helped a few tenants out and old ladies loved him for some reason, and lourdes is literally on the proverbial ‘do not allow to enter’ list. i mean, the last few times she tried to get into the building, she’s getting her ass whooped by the rotation of old affiliates that still hang out and smoke in the courtyard. one of these days, alonzo might soften up and let her back in their life — but he’s stubborn. and a man. and often times, doesn’t even wanna listen if you were to bring lourdes up. so you can assume how that goes. lucia, however, mails lourdes some of her stuff and her old stuffed animals from time to time, and during christmas especially, sends her shit off of her amazon wishlist with a take out container of tamales and a slice of her famous dulce de leche cake. lucia > alonzo.

it’s worth noting that not everything was bad, though. there were birthday dinners, big parties for holidays like fourth of july and thanksgiving, lucia blowing money on giving the girls their quinceañeras, summers riding bikes and roller skating around the block, spending all their change on mister softy’s and coco helados up at the corner, getting lit up on the terrace and reminiscing with her siblings, sneaking in crushes (and eventually getting caught). lourdes has more good memories than bad, for what it’s worth, and they were actually a rather normal family unit most of the time. plus, her parents were overly affectionate as fuck, they were well fed and well clothed, moderately spoiled. like shit was all good!! so you’ll never catch lourdes speaking down on her family, or about the community she was brought up in.