What did it mean to be partners?
Before, it meant being together at all times, making their living and playing out their cons. It meant breaking their bread and drinking and living as a unit, almost like a married couple. They spent their life as one; that was what their partnership stood for.
But then came El Dorado.
The gold, the adventure, the alluring exotic woman, they twisted and disfigured that partnership into naught but dust before Miguel's eyes. El Dorado was, in a sense, a cruel manifestation of what they desired most. For Tulio, it was a literal goldmine, a bottomless pit of jewels and riches any European king would die for, and with a beautiful courtesan on the side to boot. For Miguel, it was the happiness, love, and acceptance he never could have achieved in neither Spain nor England. He never saw what his own innocent covets could do to his brotherhood with Tulio until it was far too late.
"Forget Miguel."
It took two words to shatter everything he'd come to understand. Everything his world had revolved around was wrapped in tanned arms and pressed against a curvy body, smothered in lustful kisses and lost to Miguel and the rest of the world. He was suddenly alone in a world with no one, and for that split second, he contemplated turning and pitching himself off of the temple.
Tulio had the gold. Tulio had Chel. Tulio had his boat back to Spain with his gold and his Chel. Where was the space for Miguel?
There wasn't, and as he told the chief of his decision to stay, he accepted it wholly. Somehow he must've known it couldn't last, but he'd managed to delude himself quite well. He'd somehow convinced himself that the boy he'd met on the street nearly a decade and a half ago, the boy who'd shared escapes from soldiers and angry barmen and bulls and vengeful women with him, the boy who'd sworn to be his brother forever, would actually be there forever once they grew up and became men.
Perhaps it wasn't so delusional, but all the same, it couldn't and didn't last, and Miguel could accept it. Tulio would be happy, living an aristocrat's life in Spain with a foreign wife to love and plenty of wealth to display, whereas Miguel would be happy living a God's life in El Dorado, with twice as much gold as Tulio but nothing to spend it on, hundreds of worshippers but not a single friend…
Tulio would be happy, that was the point in it all. Miguel reassured himself of this as he watched his old partner board his boat with his gold and his woman, and even when Tulio didn't even turn around as he sailed away, he promised himself he wouldn't break. He wouldn't become a nuisance in Tulio's new life; he'd live on his own and enjoy it. Damn it all, he'd enjoy it.
~ * ~
The boat should've been gone by the time he reached the top of the stairs, but it had it a slow current on the way out. As a flash of blonde hair disappeared into the temple, its owner never saw the brown eyes staring pleadingly up at him from the entrance to the city.