pleading at the sun ｡ﾟ･ jaci

He tried to call forth all the ways things had been different between them since she first came home. How Valentino might have changed, what might have happened to Jacinta -- though, clueless he may be. There's was a considerable portion of his daughter's life that he would never know, never get to know- perhaps, never deserve to know. She was ever confident, just like her parents, and that's almost where the similarities ended.

Valentino had one change- regret. In a way, it might have just been because he had finally been forced to acknowledge his losses. Violetta, the name of the largest. He had lost her just as Marina had, and it drove an incurable wound even deeper between Jacinta and her father. They mourned two separate battles- the first time he would lose a child, and the first time she would lose a sibling. Even for a man as cruel as Valentino, he could never hope that pain relatable, that Jacinta would ever lose a child. 

Looking at her now, he realizes he lost two, all along. 

They died together, perhaps, buried in two graves next to one he wouldn't ever say aloud. It hung over his head since the day Jacinta walked out, the serpent necklace still biting at the flesh of his hand. He bares that scar, placed like a crescent on his cheekbone and it's the one thing never letting him forget his daughter. Needless as he may try, she was everywhere. Every year, ringing through like the holy hymnal of the district and he wished he was more prideful of her. 

That he could credit for it more than just getting her on that stage. He pushed her, broke her, killed her, and a weaker girl would have died for it. This was proven, as that weaker girl was his second daughter. Violetta Salazar reaching a cold death that made the other Salazar's seem almost warm. 

He feigns approval at how cold she is towards him. 

As if it's undeserved, as if it's anymore cruel than he had been. To her, to Violetta; she failed her, and he failed them both. He failed Violetta by watching her die and still never reaching to Jacinta again- as if she could be to blame. Valentino had made amends that he was a terrible father, he saw it in the mirror each morning. In the way Elena hid around corners to write letters to Marley, the way Sebastien snuck off at night and he would see Angel de Costa walking past the yard, dropping something. Different each day, like the silence of Luzia. 

"Now answer my question,

why are you here?"

He tries not to show his sleeve, to draw attention to the tabloid in his hand- as if you don't know. President Snow was dead, the man who had tortured his removed daughter for years; as if taking Valentino's place. As if Valentino couldn't break his daughter alone, he stood tall, chest out in the way the cold air bit his ear lobes. The scar of his cheekbone itched as he tried to choose his words. 

Salazar fashion, never truly in the open. 

Never truly honest, you call from your heart and they know just where to stab you. Lighting that crimson beacon bright enough to not wake up the next day, he would never trust his family well enough, not in these later years. Only Marina, and perhaps Luzia, but he wanted to again. For the first time in nearly a decade- he realized how damaged they had all become. 

How little they spoke the truth, how small the value of family had become in their core. As if Valentino was never prepared to be the head of this family, "I wanted to see-" for the first time. What is was truly like to be a father, before it was too late and Jacinta's child was born with no grandparents. 

That is what, perhaps, scared him most of all. The idea of failing a second generation, that family would be nothing but the same pain his mother had embedded in him. Generational failure, as if the last name was something too heavy to bare. He cleared his throat, "my daughter." Words too heavy to keep to himself, he felt them fall to the ground in front of him. 

Like fog onto his shoes, it poured from his lungs and danced above the floor. Just thick enough for the secrets to hide in, slither in a way only Jacinta and he would know -- he had learned to be better. To be what the Salazars had needed ten years too late, as if he and Marina rushed to see their own car crash into the woods. 

"I don't want to be on the outside anymore," admitting it felt like something broke inside of him. Spoken words slitting his own throat and it was the closest he could say to an apology; she wouldn't take it. Accept it, accept anything but what he had already done to kill it all. To kill those lights, it does not see his daughter in Jacinta's eyes. Only a mother, like Marina. 

That warmth gone, dried like the blood in his palm.. 

Cracked, so horrifically, and he knows she had cut him second. 

Valentino had been killing her all along, Jacinta said it herself. And this woman was no daughter, no child, she would have her own family. Her own Salazars, and in a way, perhaps they were destined to be the branch they were supposed to be all along. Stronger than the one before them, and stronger than Valentino's, and stronger than his mother's. Something built since the dark days. 

"So, I came," he struggles to chew through the words with a clenched jaw. So riddled in regret and hate and a wound he had let heal, and kept her's bleeding. He could not accept his own apologies, Elena had taught him that, "when I heard that you had won again." Standing where he should have been seven years ago, not in front of her but beside her. 

Valentino can not hold eye contact, "can we talk inside? I do not trust that the bushes are not wired," paranoid, as he had been before this all began. That he would be so wrong again, as to kill her. 

The rose bush stares at him incredulously, disposing of his sentiments like photosynthesis. Like they are compost, and he straightens his sweater against his skin watching them as well. Paranoid in the approach that a serpent is being followed -- these are things better left in the shadows. Eyes and ears have been biting at the Salazar name ever since Jacinta threw her head under the crown; he has lessened his disappointment on that situation. 

Entering the victor's house, he would have to. Valentino can not trust her words as Jacinta dismisses the theory, she's never been one to listen to the ways he keeps her safe. Whether Snow's corpse overhears them from a wire tap or from the void, he would rather keep the family's business between them. As it always has been -- however vague definition you describe family as. She closes the door behind him as a threat, he can smell burnt smoke as it bleeds from her couches. 

Perfect, he thinks to himself, don't miss this time. 

Valentino has a penchant with the hands of a traitor, the hands of those that threaten his family's name. She should know, he grins something limp over his shoulder to Jacinta -- as if it were funny. Just a friendly jab, like how your normal family does. Like a knife to the head, blood on the palm, you strike your eldest daughter from the veins of royalty over it; she lives regardless. Refusing to die through time and time again and it's been obvious all along- she's only built from stone. 

And stone, you know, does not bleed. Does not rot. 

He wonders how they managed to sculpt her so with such little ease, without ever second guessing it. Just as he wonders who decorated the victor estate, lavish as it may be it feels like fool's gold. If he bites on the dime piece, it'll break as easy as Violetta had. The image is as fragile as his family's relationship, he swipes his finger on the hearth, rubbing the dust between his fingers as the room grows to fit him. 

Picturing Elena in here is difficult, trying to visualize his youngest sleeping on the couch, backpack under her cheek as a pillow. So uncomfortable and still choosing it over himself, over the home he built by hand. There was no chance in Valentino's life, no lucky break, no last lucky blow; he was a methodical man, who had lost slowly to his own daughter. 

Essie would never let him hear the end of it, the fact that he bowed his head and came to Jacinta after all the years. In the pit of his gut, he wondered where Jacinta would put the family banister, a macabre mural of all the ways he has failed. His parents, Luciano, his children- Jacinta's child. Mackenzie Pryce would find his way onto his legacy had the two ever married, but Valentino didn't have his hopes up.

Jacinta was too stubborn for something that stable. 

Because of that, he was almost scared of her being a mother. Scared to see all the ways she would stumble, fall, fail just as he had, and just as his mother had. The way Luciano and Essie failed in ways he was only starting to recognize; Valentino had always tried so hard to be the best. Whether it be husband, or leader, or father, he had let so much fall between his cracks but at least he continued to swing fists against the time he had. 

That's all he could hope for Jacinta, to listen better than he had for those twenty five years. Maybe, in some ways, she was a better parent than he was already -- he tried to picture himself at that age, looking into her eyes. "Who is your maid?" He said, so dryly, maybe he was also a better parent at twenty five. Before the world fell apart, a gun was held to Jacinta's head and he wanted nothing more than be that bullet vest protection. 

When had he become the pistol? 

"I trust she is good with children," he says, turning back to Jacinta in what he assumed to be the entrance room. He had never been inside a victor's home, never enjoyed the idea -- how much of this had been in her choice? Had she been the one to wire the roses? 

He hardly wants to ask, "but I would enjoy a tour, regardless."