gold turns to rust // valentino + esmeralda

valentino salazar

"Val," she says, "what the fuck are you doing?"

And for a second, he thought his mother hadn't died after all. Constantly hanging over him, even in death, she stabs input in with a knife and leaves him more confused than he was before. Everybody wants to play leader, have a word in the way he does things, and if he hadn't bowed his head so low he got carpet burn things might have been different. He'd have the back bone to tell Esmeralda to choke on her cigarette, but it would catch up to her eventually. 

In little ways. Valentino should have expected as much, but time and time again he's learnt the cruel lesson of his family failing his expectations. As if it's a fun game to surprise in that way, always one upping themselves on the way they disappoint him. Sebastien's sending notes to a boy who can't keep his mind in his head, Elena's running off to couch surf when he's spared every expense for that restless head. A father, a husband, a brother, and everything he seemed to be related to was hellbent on making these things so difficult. 

"Did you two at least enjoy some wine while you talked about my business?" He says, pulling his jacket sleeves off and resting them on the coat hangar. Marina must have told her everything- if she weren't the last loyal person in this family, he would have figured she'd run off and elope with his sister already. The only person she talks to more than him, and they both worryingly mimic Eliena Salazar, a woman long buried. 

Their mother. 

May she rest, and may he finally get some peace. Just a moment of it, it seemed like the last twenty five years had been the precarious ways he did everything wrong. Valentino pulls a glass ash tray out of the cupboard before even looking at Esmeralda, feeling the way ash would itch his skin. He has always hated smoking, whether it be cigarettes, cigars or blunts. Assumingly, he figured she picked it up from their father - Leonardo - and somehow that cancer drove its way into Sebastien's hands. 

Call it genetic disappointment, at least it explained it all. He wipes the ash into the tray, grey flakes building on the snake insignia as the way blood stains the snow. Something you can't hide from, "really," disconcern in his voice, Esmeralda has somehow aged and stayed exactly the same. As in the way he has been stressed since eighteen, she has been vicious since sixteen. Cigarette in palm and he doesn't even have to guess if there's a weapon strapped to her thigh, only if it's a gun or a knife. You can always see it in her eyes, the way she thinks about killing you, all you have to figure out is how. 

The smoke has built into her clothes and he's nearly shocked that she can judge at all, considering she and Jacinta both reek of the same sins. His daughter's house smells like the whole tobacco store and his sister is only a step away from it, as if she bought it out and decided to bring it here. "You can say the grapevine's name, dear," as if it needs to be a secret, "don't tell me you've gotten scared of Marina these days." His own challenge to his sister, as if to soften the blows. 

Lovingly so, he sits the ash tray hardly an inch from her on the desk. He can't be annoyed at it these days, just another poor habit that's been forced into this house. Valentino became the leader and Essie became their parents combined, he hasn't been concerned for a while, "isn't the thought just terrifying, Jacinta being a Salazar again?" Truth be told, he didn't know what to say to her- what he even felt about it all. Valentino has always been a man of legacy, a bleeding heart that refused to listen to how things needed to be. 

In a way, he very much still loved his daughter. 

That being said, he didn't trust her with that baby, not when he's still not convinced she wants to live herself. There were too many years apart, he couldn't piece it all together yet, not in any reasonable way. She still hated him and he still sees the scar on his cheek in the morning -- "like it or not, she's attached to that name until she dies," he's trying to find the excuse. Something that holds his integrity together, "and if our intention is me in that mayor's seat I need the Victors' approval.

Both of them." 

He couldn't tell which was worse. 

valentino salazar

Of all the cruel things Valentino has suffered, he has hated being touched most of all. He barely touched Marina as they slept, the temptation of getting two separate beds a discussion that has come up ever more frequently; grimace bearing its way on his face as his sister scratches at his cheek. A single fake nail, coated in luxury and a name she would never own. 

He wanted to scream in the way he cringed, staring up at his sister. Valentino continued to shuffle through his desk as she talked, looking for the justice building files he owed. Too many distractions, too many things happening and part of it might have just been the pit of failure resting in his gut from his last run at office; he hadn't lost. Never truly losing, he never returned the files. Instead, he had to contact the ordinances, collect everything necessary for Violetta's early grave. Yet here he sits, five years later with the prospect of gaining a daughter. 

And she dare antagonize him for it. 

There's a creed, a family honor to these kinds of things, but those were all thrown out the window when Jacinta volunteered. In his mind at least, that's how he's been rationalizing it since Elena left. His last child, admittedly, and she grew up and decided to leave him too, and unfortunately, Esmeralda ages and still continues to haunt this office. She speaks and its in the interest of the creed; he ignores her, in the interest of himself. Of preservation, the way he sees his family dying out. 

As if every word she says is straight out of Luzia's mouth, he hasn't heard his daughter speak in years and he wishes he could trade even half of Esmeralda's words for it. He loves his sister, of course, protective for twenty five years running, but a bit of him wishes just one line of criticism could be from his daughters again. It was better than the silence that followed, to match his deaf ears. 

Valentino wishes he were deaf when he hears the truth in her words -- the way he uses Jacinta. An heir turned victor and the way he falls into her life is something all together strange to him, he lost control the second she realized he stopped loving her like a father's supposed to. At the time it was betrayal, and now he sees it for what it was: a plea. A warning call, the sound of a gun being loaded. She gave him every chance to be better and he was; he was convinced he was a better leader for it. 

They don't have to hurt their own kind to be strong anymore, not like how their mother taught them to be. "mi querida hermana," he says, a threat in the way they can only say it in his house, "why can it not be both?" A conversation barely started and yet already too long, he says it near flat in response. Esme has hurt in ways he can never understand, and he has done the same; she has never lost a child. Birth and birth and he respects her for being able to keep her's together with how little difficulties they have faced in comparison. 

Had Jacinta not lived, Valentino can't say he would be better than he is today. Had he truly lost both daughters, it's easier to hate Jacinta than to ever imagine that loss. Valentino has made peace with the fear she built in him, the fact that she would kill herself first before saying she hated him truthfully. He looks back up at Esmeralda from the files, "is that really the worst thing I have done in my life! Of all the things I've done," if letting just a crack of sympathy into his heart was the undoing of the Salazar's- perhaps it is worth it. 

valentino salazar

He's never been a man of much kindness. Not since Leonardo's murder, and not since the subsequent actions. There's a funny way life twists your morals, having the feign hint of control in everything that you do and yet, never truly being. Valentino had tried his whole life to take to the mast, keep everything under reigns and under wraps and here it was- Jacinta Salazar, pregnant for the world to know before even he himself did. It happens quickly, how quick word passes and he unravels into something weaker than he was a week ago. 

Even he admits it -- Valentino a year ago would not have agreed to what he was doing. His own son wouldn't, and maybe Sebastien's listened to his words more than he has. Esmeralda lets it be known, in every sentence she says on the face of his desk; "you are tarnishing your honor." Watching it rust before his own eyes, the methodical way he takes the files out from his desk to sort through them. 

What will it take then to build it back? 

If it's such a fragile thing that even Jacinta touching it can tarnish, how much is it worth? Truly? Valentino knows better than to not take her words seriously, mostly as Marina will mimic them in a harsher, more demanding tone. She knows best, she always has, but the two of them both know how royally fucked they have made things in the most recent years. The last time either of them were happy was the Zodiia Massacre. 

Such a sick twist of fate, how killing children came between him and his daughter. All things considering, he almost thought they would bond over it. He almost laughs at the thought before finding the files he needed -- certificates and letters of history on himself. Almost impressive how real it all looks, how the digits of charity cover up the amount of graves he and his family have created. Valentino thinks back to honor, the concept so weak in his hands just like the papers. 

How easy it is to ball it up, ruin such a wonderful thing.

And his life could have been truly wonderful. At one point, had they only picked a more determined girl to pay off, if they had a back up plan to save Violetta's life. Had he loved her more or loved her less before her death -- he was always something passive. Violetta wasn't strong enough, hadn't been trained to be strong enough, and he never expected her to be there. A beautiful girl, kind in the way she survived in a softer way. 

She never had to watch things fall apart, she never got the chance to. "She's having a child out of wedlock, does that not tarnish our honor any differently?" He says, thinking back to when Jacinta was born. Before Marina and he were married, when they had every luxury including the ability to enjoy it. Violetta was their first after a rushed engagement, the death of Leonardo burned into the ring of a wedding ring he had no longer connected to. Marina was the love of his life, so perhaps his life ended with Leo's. 

And here he was, in hell, trying to convince his mother reincarnate that Jacinta was deserving. After seven years of saying she wasn't, of trying to convince himself that she wasn't, "tell me, Esme, what do you think the correct thing I do here is?" Valentino says, as if he already knows the answer -- regardless of it being what he truly wants. Jacinta or not, that grandchild was something of district seven royalty, and he'd be damned to see it reaped like Violetta. 

Killed like Violetta. He shuffles the files into a clean stack, hearing the way the pages rattle against the hard wood. Valentino tries not to dismiss her, because he knows she's the side of the argument he doesn't want to hear. The harder side, what makes this all complicated when it doesn't have to be. Seven years ago, Jacinta yelled her own name like a plea, and he chose honor then. He chose honor over blood, and has paid for it ever since. 

In every way. 

In every goddamn way.

valentino salazar

"She really was a judgmental one, huh," he says, thinking of the way Eliena Salazar would turn over in her grave had she heard of everything happening. From Jacinta to Violetta to Jacinta again, Valentino can't help but utter a chuckle at the way his family seems to always fall apart in lovely ways. He feels loopy, almost -- high off the fatigue it takes to make all of this work under his own morality. Valentino wants to be that honorable leader, somewhere deep within the pivots of his gut. 

He needs to be. It's an indoctrinated elderly voice telling him to be, the way his mother would kill him herself to take everything back over. Valentino was left with a legacy any weaker man would have destroyed faster, and yet he still didn't seem strong enough to hold it together. They all seemed to rebel against him in ways that he could have only dreamed of when he was a teenager, forced into this position. Through it all, he had almost forgotten he didn't do this willingly, it had become so natural to him. 

To rot, to destroy. A bit of that teenage wander returning back to him in the way he wish he could have let his own children experience before it all went up in flames. Jacinta refused, and Violetta couldn't, so Luzia suffered. Sebastien was something stupid and forfeit it all in a way he hadn't even asked; Elena was the only one left who knew what it was like to be a child, and he watched her leave twice. Disappointed in a way that came so humanly, because now in its wake he almost wants to be proud. 

He swore to carry the burden of honor, and he sees it when he looks regretfully at his sister. 

Jacinta is a burden, a disgrace, a traitor. Everything Valentino spent so long trying to iron out of her and the words resurface so quickly, he is speechless in the way she throws Violetta's name so carelessly, insulting both of his lost daughters. And he just sighs, looking at the footnote of his file that describes where his money comes from. The large sum of family inheritance, split in four parts and now only three. And his would be split three ways currently, but that was assuming even they worked out. 

From the sounds of it, Sebastien would die in a street fight and Elena is throwing herself into marriage. A portion that goes straight to Luzia; all she has to do is confirm it and she can't be expected to do even that some days. Esmeralda is disgustingly right in the way they both know that child won't make it past eighteen, not easily at least. "Yo-" He stutters on the words he wants to say, "¿tenemos que hablar de esto?"

Valentino grimaces, trying not to look from his page -- they could buy a volunteer, but considering how that went last time it might be best to save the money for the funeral. He speaks to her in the family tongue, as if it's a secret he can't bare out loud. A piece of shame in the way he still grieves for his daughter, he tries not to admit how soft he has gotten since. The way Violetta died and a piece of his core rots as well, through the marrow and flesh of what builds sorrow and exposes him for it. Esmeralda sees through it, and he isn't surprised. 

Only raw. 

Tender, in the way he tries to focus on his files and ignore it all. Since the conversation started, he's been waiting for its end, "you can't pretend to understand this and still say it's obvious," a slow blink. Valentino has to remind himself that she hasn't felt these events, the way watching your daughter die five feet and fifty thousand feet away simultaneously feels. What being a grandparent feels, in the way it pulls the blood from your toes to your ears and you think of all the ways you've failed as a parent as your veins begin to empty. 

Every way Jacinta will pass those tragedies onto her child. 

"And don't call my grandchild fodder, Esmeralda. Not when it's closer to being an heir than you ever were."

valentino salazar

Valentino sees the anger in the way Esmeralda shuts herself away, breathing heavy as if he had insulted her more than she had him. As if a dead child and a hurt pride were anything measurable -- he had been trying so long to convince himself of this condition. That it was the truth, the way they had to live, because if they chosen to be better people, it exposed how cruel their parents were. Honor had to come first, to excuse all of their actions, the way they pained their own children. 

Perhaps it was just his own spiteful, trying rationale, trying to wrap his fatigued mind around how to bring his children back into his life. They want Jacinta, they already chose her, and it would be the honorable thing to die alone, in the petty ways he would watch his children leave him behind. That's what his mother would want, in her wicked ways, and "I haven't met a Salazar yet that's a fool, Esme!" 

As if defending her, deflecting in the way he talks with his hands. 

It's almost fun, bickering with his sister, treating this not so seriously. Treating this as family dispute and not a legacy of tradition older than him; these circumstances are different. They have to be, for Jacinta, she's always been a girl to challenge authority and after all this time he's near bending to it. Almost willingly, "I can't! Esme, I can't, I've tried and tried again and I just-" he talks from his chest, from something beneath the skin. 

"How are we the prideful branch when none of my children look me in the eyes, Esme?" It's near cathartic to speak it into the air, everything he and his wife and their four remaining children would say, "Jacinta can't be the heir, I understand that, but they have all made it clear that if she isn't family, neither are they!" He motions to the door as he talks, pointing in the way Sebastien would be listening behind it, and if he weren't, Marina was. 

The way Eliena Salazar would hear every word in the room, and Valentino would try his best to disappoint her one last time. "She doesn't need to be on the banister, but at least let us end the divide between our houses. Sebastien and Elena are both a damn door away from being Pryce's at this rate."