odio decir adiós ✶ estelle/nekane {88th jb}

what's hiding behind those sad eyes?
don't start with those lies

A door slams behind me, and it sounds like history repeating itself.

It’s not meant to be a dramatic entrance – it’s simply meant to be another door opened, another door closed, gentle and unsuspecting.

Unfortunately, softness doesn’t seem to work around here.

By now, the Justice Building could be my second home. The walls are dotted with small photographs of past tributes, names I know by heart. I’m sure it was Vasco’s doing. Another way of his to honour the dead, as if we don’t see their ghosts behind every corner. Izar: it's a rotten name, plastered, stamped and spread across the room so loud I can barely hear myself breathe.

I’m a storm of a girl, almost forty and yet barely eighteen, because every time I walk through these doors, all I can see is Benat Izar’s face staring down at me. Smiling, and so, so sorry.

Me too.

My eyes move from face to face, slowly.

Settling on ‘1, U. I.’

Uxue Izar is a fable of a name; Uxue Izar is an upended tree with poisoned roots.

Settling on ‘85, C. K’.

Cyro Krane is a dead man; Cyro Krane is a dead man; Cyro Krane is a dead man.

Settling on an empty space where ‘88, E. S-I’ belongs.

Settling on a wide-eyed girl whose voice is still ringing in my head.

“I volunteer.”

I’m always too late.

Estelle is Summer – a head of brown curls and olive skin and sunken eyes, masquerading as a part of our family tree.

Estelle is a stranger, and I know absolutely nothing about her.

I shouldn’t be here.

This was a conversation to be had months ago – years, even, at some sort of initiation ceremony into the family. We’ve adopted half-cousins too fast to keep up with the exponential growth. I’ve lost track of where Marisol ends and Elias – that motherfucker – begins.

They fall through the cracks, and nobody’s ever thought to make a playbook on “How To Be An Izar”. Maybe that’s where it all went wrong.

I look at Estelle’s face – so young, so dumb. It feels like I’m filling up, and I’m sorry, so sorry, ‘cause I don’t know if I have the space in my soul to hold another death close by. I want to find it in my heart not to care for another ghost of a girl.

If only it were that easy.

“We don’t have long.” My voice shakes with the weight of the words, all emotions fighting to the foreground and a question of which Nekane has shown up to greet Death today.

It’s the anger that wins, in the end. I almost feel sorry for Estelle.

Almost.

“I’ve never understood why. Where it goes wrong.” I sigh, look down, look anywhere but into her face. “You know it’s not a requirement, right? You’re allowed to save yourself?” Know that just because we’re cursed doesn’t mean you have to play God?

Sigh, again. The bitter taste of exasperation lingers on my tongue.

I really shouldn’t be here.

I need to be here.

There’s a single chair in the corner of the room, of frayed edges and distressed leather. And I feel so tired, exhausted, weak. Ready to collapse into a pile of messy warnings and hot tears and violently shaking hands. I pinch my skin to stop from reaching out, lunging forward, grabbing her by the shoulders and screaming until my voice breaks.

I thought I’d be numb to it by now, but it hurts the same every time.

I force myself to stay standing, drawing myself to full height, as if five-foot-five is enough to be fierce.

“Do you not know what happens to anyone with our name?” I look at her face again, then, staring straight into the depths of her heart. Begging to see the answer to my question reflected in the whites of her eyes.

We die. We all die. That’s all we have.

There’s twice a lifetime in my veins that she’ll never get to have, and all I feel is hate.

I run cold.

“You’re not an Izar.” It’s spitting poison to stop acid leaking down my face; it’s an echo that settles on our skin.

She’s not an Izar; she’s not even half of one. An Izar knows the cracks in our fabrication, what our losses mean and what makes our small wins all the more significant.

She’s not an Izar, just like how I’m nothing more than jagged edges and poisoned roots and a broken heart.

Somewhere, a clock is ticking, and I don’t know what to do, what to say, because it was never meant to be enough to save her. None of it matters; nothing changes.

I just want to understand this anger.

“Why.”

Why do you want to die?

Where did we go wrong?

Why does this keep happening to us?

What can I do to stop it?