#i should mention that at no point does he have ashes to spread lmfao

[breserker]

small change in plans, pushing off chapter 1 of book 1 for sharing an Extremely WIP part from late in book 2. roughest draft, some transitions are stilted and there are references to things earlier in the book that might feel out of place, omitted paragraphs, etc etc.

major cw for discussions of death and grief, and us-mexico border wall things

~~

They walked. For once Vel didn’t fill the space with words, not even mundane ones. Every now and then though he’d raise a knuckle and tap the fence, following the ringing tones of the beating hearts that passed through the borders. One after the other. Many frightened, some of them hopeful, with papers or without. Before TUSD had ripped Mexican-American history from the curriculum he remembered seeing old maps of the US-Mexico border. The line they followed, the wall they kept to their west, had not always been a border. So too did he have skin that didn’t used to have scars. Pushing further back he wondered if there were borders no living person remembered; territorial disputes, trade routes, throngs of families traveling the land towards pueblos across all seasons. What that made of the earth they set their feet on now, Vel didn’t know. He felt wistful, melancholy. Confused, yet too muffled to express that confusion.

The Santa Cruz River used to be louder. It was something he felt more than knew, gazing over at the struggling riverbed. Supposedly Pima County was working to help restore it with treated wastewater. He hoped that’d be enough. A jackrabbit could swim in it now, but not so camouflaged, not so part of the river as before. Still he paced the old bank where buds of thick grass held the memory of the river’s original breadth.

“My mother was accused of being a witch, you know.” Vel said, knowing Lieu was there but speaking as though it was just him and the pages of a diary.

“I know.” Lieu confirmed.

“She taught me a lot of things that I’m not sure was magic or spiritual, religious or witchy, I don’t know.”

“How did that work?” she asked him. Vel pursed his lips, thinking hard.

“I don’t think it was half as much what she said so much as how she thought about things. It wasn’t that she passed down water has memory, spit in a hand and make a lens to see into someone’s memories.” he heard Lieu’s breath short at the unexpected pull of their shared memory, not discussed since it happened, “It was more. Here’s a way you can see the world. Like uh, building blocks. Not quite. Molecules of atoms? I don’t know. But like a bad present, it’s the thought that counts, rather than the material the present is made out of.”

Lieu didn’t respond to any of that, and he supposed he wouldn’t have a response either.

“I miss her.” he said bluntly. A chunk of grass dried from the recessed reach of the river gave way under the toe of his boot and he retreated it just enough to watch it crumble into the smoothed sand of the old riverbed, “I wanted Laura to meet her so badly.”

Lieu was silent, enough that he’d call it out of respect even though it was more likely she just knew there was nothing to say.

“She always seemed to know what to do,” Vel continued, “Meanwhile I don’t know a goddamn thing. And sometimes I feel like that gets people...well. It’s not enough to save them.” This time he pressed his boot into the sand just beneath the bank, finding it softer than he expected, the texture clay-like from dampness he hadn’t realized was there. Perhaps the river was growing back, even if only from concerted effort. But it didn’t feel like enough.

“Every now and then I get so angry at her for dying. Uncontrollably. How could she leave me alone? I’m so angry, I love her so much, and she left me alone with so little to have.” Red water splashed against the leather of his boots, lapping higher up his shins as he waded into the river, “Magic that I believe in but doesn’t make me feel powerful. One language less than I should have. People to lose. What’s one more, anyway?”

He tilted his head to the side, not quite glancing over his shoulder but enough to let Lieu know he wasn’t a lost cause. She remained rooted on the bank, watching as water ate up his legs but never became a threat to his height. The last words he had ever said to his mother were I don’t care. It was in response to being asked to clean his messy room. She had told him to do it, otherwise his titiritero will yank his strings tight and his limbs won’t move again. (Tetanus, he deduced later in life.) Vel had rolled his eyes, his father’s eyes, told her he didn’t care, and left the house to explore. It had been dark by the time he had returned, water bottle and stomach empty. Her body was there, but she was gone.

Then Sebbie. Now Laura. Vel raised a foot out of the water, watching it drip off his heel before reaching for the far bank.

The trail to his mother’s killer had gone cold. Any and all clues were walled off to him by rusty red bars. Why search for the person who killed a woman without documents to prove she lived there, lived anywhere? In the eyes of the wall-builders, it was the universe righting itself, like water leveling out between two containers. Even her own sister didn’t seem concerned with finding who did it. By this point Vel lived by building his own peace with it.

Not that it was easy. Not that he felt like he had done it at all. But at the same time he had no idea how to be anybody else. To live with another person’s life and history felt impossible, because everywhere he turned—English speakers, Spanish speakers, queer spaces, coworkers, neighbors, something felt off. Something always set him apart. One piece of his puzzle would fit with one group but not another, and there was never a place where all his pieces could fit together. Always, always, always there was the rusty red wall cutting right through him.

Vel sat on the bank opposite Lieu, facing the border wall. Not long after he pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Who would he have been if he was on the other side? If his mother hadn’t fled, hadn’t had reason to flee—if he spoke fluent Spanish and broken English, if he’d never met Dom and Sebbie, if he had never fallen for Laura. There’d be others in their spaces, certainly. Vel wanted to know who they would’ve been. Would he have lost them all the same, or would they have stayed in his life? In his wildest dreams his mother lived on the other side of that wall, content and unafraid. Maybe even his father was there too, though he didn’t want to be selfish. He only wanted to be whole, and the grass looked so much greener on the other side.

But he had decided long ago not to abandon a home half-built, and until Laura came back from the dead it was destined to forever be half-built. For as much as his heart ached an ancient pain looking at the wall, Tucson was the home of his body and his blood. Blood he held in his hands. Blood spilled by his mother, his best friend, and his lover, all soaking the earth, all staining the land with his handprints on their cold bodies.

“I miss them so much.” he said aloud. Lieu heard it even if it was distant, likely heard it like he had said it into her ear. His body spoke it as much as his voice did. From across the riverbank she spoke, emotionlessness cracked with concern.

“Are you going to be okay?”

Vel shrugged, taking another drag of the cigarette, “No other way to be.” No other way he knew how to be. Lieu stood and watched him smoke, the sun dipping overhead, soon to be something redder and purpler than before. Vel gazed out, disappearing from the present moment. So too did the wall, just for a mere miraculous moment. He wasn’t fooled, knowing it was there, knowing that by now it would be there for years to come even if he tore it down right here and now. Vel pressed a hand to his chest and rubbed it, feeling the fabric catch on Saint Sebastian’s blunt scars. There, visible for everyone to see if they got close enough to look. There, even if they completely healed over, in Vel’s mind forever.

He snuffed the cigarette in the riverbank, bending to pick it up soon after even though the guilt of leaving it behind still took hold. Lieu watched him wade back across, and they followed the wall back to their cars.

“Ah, shit,” Vel swore. A border patrol SUV was wedged between their two cars with an officer closely inspecting them. Falling behind Lieu, Vel all but pushed her ahead to cover him. He could still smell the vinegar on the back of his neck, but in hindsight that meant its warding followed him and did nothing for his car.

“Hello,” the officer greeted, friendly in a way that was heavily guarded, however they pulled that paradox off, “These vehicles belong to you folks?”

“Yes.” Lieu answered flatly, pulling out her badge when they were close enough for him to see it. Vel stayed silent, unscrewing the cap of his water bottle to busy himself with hydration instead of talk.

“Tucson,” the officer whistled, “What are you doing way down here?”

“He wanted to see the border wall.”

“Did he, now?” the officer’s eyes wandered over to him. Goddammit Lieu.

“My mom remembered when it was just a chain link fence. Wanted to see how much it changed.”

It was unclear if the officer was buying it or not, catching the unspoken truths in the smaller one, “Didn’t bring her along with?”

“Oh I did. Was spreading her ashes.” Vel said casually, shaking his water bottle that was very clearly full of liquid. At this the officer raised an eyebrow quizzically, and Vel took small joys in seeing the wheels turn as to how the ashes had been transported and where the water came from. Hell, he wouldn’t even mind if the officer wondered if he drank the ashes and pissed them out. What food for thought. Why not piss on the fence anyway, and rot it from the blood-soaked earth up?

He bit his tongue. This was why he brought Lieu along.

“Strange place to be spreading ashes.” the officer commented.

“She was a strange woman.” Vel said, meant that to be it, then couldn’t help himself from adding, “I loved her.”

For once, that seemed to help his case. The officer gazed at him, then looked back at Lieu’s badge. Lieu gave a single nod in support of his words, and the officer did not know them well enough to know that she only supported half his words half the time. An air of suspicion still surrounded the officer, but he packed it away for if they were repeat offenders and let them go.

Vel paused before getting in his car, giving the border wall one last look. Lieu spoke freely then, and he caught the disbelief in her voice. Disbelief that he wanted to be here at all, unable to understand why it could’ve been important.

“Did it help?”

Once more, Vel shrugged, “I think I would’ve regretted it if I didn’t come down here.”

Lieu did not understand and he knew it. But it was answer enough, and they got into their cars to leave.