(A/N): TW for brief mentions of homophobia and transphobia

Cisco applied the heavy white pancake makeup first, spreading it up to his hairline and down over his cheeks and jaw. He added the black circles around his eye sockets, over his nose, and carefully painted thin lines of black over the white on and around his lips, mimicking teeth. He shaded in black under his cheekbones to make them pop, make his face even more skull-like.

His neck took a little more work. He started with black there, painting it generously, and then layering white in careful rectangles up the middle. When he was done, he looked excellently skeletal from the collarbone up.

He switched to colors, painting orange and red scallops around the edge of his eye sockets, drawing a spiderweb in silver glitter paint on his forehead, with a deep black spider swinging above his left eye. He waffled, then added a thin mustache on his upper lip and a few curlicues along his cheekbones.

He studied himself in the mirror, then added a flower to his chin in yellow and red, with touches of silver for emphasis.

He sat down on the end of his bed, kneading his palms against his knees, and thought, I don't have to go.

He could wipe all the makeup off and stay home. Nobody would blame him. He hadn't even really said he'd go, when his mama called to remind him about it. His grief group had been split fifty-fifty, but they'd all sort of settled on, It's your call, do what you need to do.

At Star Labs, he hadn't mentioned it at all. He thought he'd probably been quiet and withdrawn all day, because Caitlin kept giving him concerned looks, and at lunch she'd gone out and gotten him a gigantic dark roast with two hazelnut shots when it wasn't even her turn to spring for coffee.

If he called, she'd come over and they could spend the night watching Star Wars and not talking about Dante.

He sniffed once, twice, then pushed himself to his feet and went to find his coat. He packed his backpack with the bottles of soda and some ice packs, and left his apartment.

Waiting for the subway, he got a bunch of comments, "Sweet skeleton look, brah! Dark."

"Hey, asshole, Halloween's over."

"What's with the faggy flowers, man?"

Cisco said, "Fuck off," and got on the subway, ignoring the insults they flung at his back.

A girl with a nose ring and spiky black hair looked up. Under her hoodie, she was wearing a t-shirt with an older woman's face printed on it, and In Loving Memory and two dates. She rolled her eyes at the jerks outside and he shook his head back.

He sat down next to her and said, "Going to the cemetery?"

"Yep. Who are you seeing?"

"My brother. He, uh, he died earlier this year."

She reached out and squeezed his hand. "The first year's the hardest."

He nodded a little. It already had been and he wasn't even there yet. "What about you? Is that your mom?" he asked, looking at her shirt.

"Yeah. Three years now." She touched the second date, her face soft with sadness.

"What was she like?"

The girl's name was Maya. She told him about her mom - Katrina. She had been in art restoration and preservation. "She loved it. She really loved public art. Murals and sculptures and things. She worked for the city - "

"Hey, did she have anything to do with that giant bas-relief in the CCPD North station?"

Maya lit up. "Yeah, that was her! Like five years ago. It was actually one of the last projects she finished before she got sick."

"I do work for them sometimes - like, consulting? I see it all the time. She did an amazing job."

"She was amazing." Maya touched the gold crucifix at her throat. "I miss her every day."

After a moment of silence, she asked, "Were you and your brother close?"

He sighed heavily. "No. We really weren't."

"Oh," she breathed, understanding.

"We'd been fighting since forever, I think. Nothing specific, it's just he never got me or the things that were important to me, and I … I guess I was pissed about that. But I never thought we'd be that way forever. I thought there was time."

"What was he like?"

He told her about Dante. He started with the music, because everything always started with the music. (It turned out that she'd seen him in concert once, when he was a teenager. She'd fallen madly in love with him, of course.) But also about how he'd helped Cisco build a treehouse when they were kids, and practically killed them both. How he would always play their nana's favorite songs when she was missing their tata, dead before he was born. How much he liked strawberry soda. "Nasty," Cisco said, shaking his head.

Maya laughed.

The train slowed and they both looked up. "Our stop," Cisco said, getting to his feet and shouldering his bag. "You want some help?" She had a giant cooler bag between her feet.

"Nope, I got it." They walked up the steps, talking about what they'd brought. Maya's cooler bag was full of her mom's favorite empanadas, and some carne asada from the taqueria around the corner from where Maya had grown up.

"Damn," Cisco said. "Remind me to come visit your mama tonight."

As they walked through the gates of the cemetery, she pointed. "She's off that way."

"Well, Dante's over here, so I guess now is where we say good-bye. It was nice meeting you, Maya."

"Nice talking to you, Cisco."

He worked his way through the plots, waving to people he knew every so often. The last time he'd been here, it had been soggy and chilly, empty except for the crowd around the hole in the ground, to watch Dante be lowered and covered up and then left behind.

Tonight it was cold again, but crisp and sharp, sending the blood stinging in his cheeks under his calavera makeup. And the crowd spread throughout the cemetery, not huddled and silent, but talking and laughing.

He passed by a couple of iPods, plugged into speakers on two adjoining graves, one blasting Juan Gabriel and the other Noriega. Nobody seemed to mind the mix.

"Cisco, hey!"

He stopped to talk to old neighbors and sample some machaca. His mama's was better, obviously, but since it was the family's matriarchal recipe and he was standing on their bisabuela's grave, he didn't say it.

"Is your mama coming?" Claudia Delgado asked.

"Yeah, I think she's here already."

"I'll come see her." She squeezed his hand. "I prayed for Dante at church this morning."

"Maaaaa," her daughter Lupita said. "He's an atheist now. Remember?" She gave Cisco an apologetic look.

"I'm, um, sort of questioning. Right now. But I'll tell my mama. Thank you." He kissed Claudia's cheek and thanked her for the food, and continued on his way.

A fat little toddler came tearing through the graves, shrieking with laughter as an older boy chased him. Inevitably, he tripped and went sprawling on the grass. His laughter turned to wails.

"Oh my god, you're such a pain," the older boy muttered, but he hoisted the toddler up in his arms and hugged him. "You're okay," he crooned, as pudgy arms locked around his neck and the baby sniffled into his shoulder. He kissed his brother's fluffy hair. "You're okay. Come on. Let's go back."

Cisco watched them go and swallowed hard. He made himself keep walking.

He made a brief detour at a grave to say hello, pulling a plastic butterfly on a stick out of his pocket. He was gratified to see that somebody had already painted over the name on the headstone and corrected it.

Gabriel had died right before he was due to start his transition, and his parents had buried him under the name Clarissa, insisting they'd had a daughter, not a son. Cisco and his friends hadn't been able to do anything about it, but every year, they made sure that Gabriel's grave at least didn't show the wrong name.

He crouched down and wedged the stick into the ground. The plastic wings fluttered in the sunset breeze, dancing alongside the butterflies and flowers already there.

As he walked on, a soaring croon cut through the general noise and chatter. … and every breath we drew was Hallelujah …

He caught his breath, but the music faded away as if the person carrying it had gone in another direction.

A giggle drew his attention, and he looked over to see a skinny teenaged boy slip his arm around a girl's waist and kiss her cheek. She batted her lashes at him and they wandered off. He smiled a little, remembering all the times he'd seen Dante charming girls.

His brother's grave was decorated already, covered with marigolds and jar candles, their flames already burning well. La Virgencita floated on flickering light, dreaming in prayer, held up by a fat baby angel, surrounded by roses. Next to His mother, Jesus gazed out on everyone, with his sorrowful eyes and his gentle peace-sign hands and his thorn-pierced heart all exposed to the world.

A big picture of Dante, protected with plastic, framed with flowers, was propped up against the headstone. He stood in front of it, gripping his jacket hem, gritting his teeth, staring into his brother's bright, laughing eyes.

"Baby, you came," his mom said, and her arms closed around him.

He hugged her back. "Yeah. Sorry I didn't say - "

"No, I'm just glad you're here." She patted his cheek.

"I heard 'Hallelujah' while I was walking over here," he told her. "Like just now."

"Which one?"

He hummed the bit he'd heard.

"Oh, my god, that song. Your nana's favorite, remember?"

"Yeah, and Dante would play it for her whenever she wanted."

She sighed and hugged him again. "Come on, your tio's got the barbecue going over by your tata's grave."

"Sweet look," his cousin Josue said, dishing him up a plate. "You bring any makeup to do me?"

"Nope, sorry."

"Damn. You going to the parade on Saturday?"

"I don't know yet, maybe."

"You know Dante never wanted to go after you moved out?"

Cisco paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. "¿Que dices?"

"You remember how you used to do everyone's face for when we went? Dante never went if you didn't do his face. Said you were the best at it."

"He never asked after I moved out."

Josue shrugged. "Well. That's what he always said." He grinned. "You remember when he was dating that white girl and she wouldn't go because she said it was scary and morbid?"

"Oh my god, that girl," Tia Julia said. "She didn't last long, did she?"

They started telling stories about Dante's girlfriends, and then just stories about Dante. About when he got his driver's license and dented their pop's bumper on his first solo drive. About when he'd played the big concert hall in Starling City. About when he was toilet-training, and they had a puppy they were trying to train at the same time - "Tito," his mother said, rolling her eyes, "that mutt," - and Dante pooped in the yard instead of the toilet for a good month before they broke him of the habit. About how he'd been trying to start up a business teaching private music lessons, but kept giving kids free lessons if they couldn't afford it.

Cisco swallowed the knot in his throat and the burn in his eyes a few times, but he found himself smiling too. Especially at the story about Tito. He'd never heard that one before. He wished Dante were here so he could give him hell about it.

But after awhile, he had to fade himself out of the circle. Maya had been right. The first year was the hardest. At least, he couldn't imagine it being harder than this - the twin bright swords of loss and love spearing through his stomach, the catch of breath in his throat at some memory.

He went back to Dante's grave and picked up his backpack, which he'd left sitting next to it. He pulled two bottles out and poured out two cups of soda, one of orange and one of strawberry. He set the cup of strawberry soda down on the grave. "Still nasty, bro," he said, toasting the picture with his own cup.

Dante laughed, same as he always had when Cisco said that.

He sat with his brother, drinking his soda and watching the sun go down, feeling the skin between worlds stretch thin. Just like when he was about to open a breach, but it wasn't him this time. Or anyway, it wasn't just him. It was everyone else too, with their memories and their laughter. The food, the music, the stories.

A breeze rustled over the cemetery, fluttering clothes, rustling flowers, sending candles flickering, as if the dead were coming back to the ones they loved.

FINIS