Please note that this story will deal with heavy themes, and those explicit chapters/scenes I will warn at the beginning, and they can be skipped over.

All right, on to the fun stuff! I've been waiting to get this thing started for weeks! I'm aiming to have fairly frequent, small updates, so expect more soon!

Chapter 1: Man of Mystery

"Héctor's in the paper again," Victoria said, slipping through the door of the workshop with a roll of calf-hide hoisted over her shoulder. This elicited much less of a response from the family than one might expect.

"Anything interesting this time?" Oscar asked, not looking up from where he was busy punching out eyelets.

"Doubt it," Felipe said from beside him.

Months had passed since the last Dia de Los Muertos, a night that was already passing into legend in the Land of the Dead, and proved life-changing for the Rivera family. Ever since that night, there had been a clamor to learn more about Héctor, the new star of the Underworld, whether he liked it or not. And he decidedly did not. Nor did his family.

"Ugh they're always the same thing," Rosita said with a light huff. "Nothing we haven't already read a dozen times. Hopefully it isn't more of those mean rumors about him or Imelda."

Imelda didn't even respond to that before going back to carefully cutting out leather. The papers had already interviewed her enough to know to leave her alone, and she was sure that eventually they would get tired of writing about Héctor as well.

It had already become more or less known that Héctor was part of the Rivera family, and that he was indeed married to Imelda. When it was revealed that she was the mysterious 'Llorana' of the Sunrise Spectacular, there had only been greater pressure to learn more about her as well. However, she was better about answering questions, right up until they became too pushy and she would shove them out onto the street. They were less eager to interview her or her family after that. And after meeting Pepita.

"Would you like to read it, Mamá Imelda?" Victoria said, offering the rolled up magazine. "Senor Perez gave it to me, before you ask."

Imelda sighed and hoped her eye wasn't visibly twitching. "I don't know why you even bothered." Still, she took the offered magazine and looked at the cover image that loudly proclaimed:

Héctor: Man of Mystery!

The usual, then, Imelda thought with a faint twist of her lip. Another article spreading rumors and legends that did nothing to help muffle the fascination with him. There was a sketch of him, covered in shadow and grinning. Not a good rendition by any means, but she paid it little mind and read…

Certainly everyone has heard of Héctor, the newest celebrity to grace our Land, but does anyone truly know him? For years he has suffered amongst the almost-forgotten, unloved and unappreciated. That is, until the truth of his death and life were revealed, and there has been a rush know more about this great man!

He's spoken of in glowing terms: a loving husband and father, a man willing to fight for his family! A man stricken from life at too young an age! Poor soul!

But really, what did he do? Was he brave? Or selfless? Did he save lives or fight for his country? No. All he did was write a few catchy songs and had the bad luck of being murdered by the famous Ernesto de la Cruz. Certainly, he's had an unfortunate existence, but is he truly deserving of such adoration and pity? He has made it difficult to know, remaining shockingly close-lipped about his past.

Why has he kept so hidden amidst such outpouring of love? And despite being reunited with a supposedly loving family, he still lives in the land of the Almost-Forgotten. Is this a show of his great humility? Respect for his newly rejoined family?

Or… is he hiding something?

Dear readers, his reputation is not as clean as you might think!

We have discovered some fascinating, and at times disturbing, facts about him, which we will be presenting over the following weeks in a five-part series. Who was he in life? What did he do in death? Did he really stay loyal to his wife all these years? Or did he find others to keep him company? What is his connection to a Shantytown whorehouse? What about his past is he trying to hide? Is he really the family man he would have us believe?

Imelda skimmed through the rest of the article, but it was written in such a mean, vulgar way she barely caught any more words before she tossed it onto the counter.

"Ugh, garbage! Why even read that?"

"I don't know, I found some of it interesting," Victoria said off-handedly, picking it up again with a cursory glance at the cover. "Even if it is written so rudely."

"What's it say?" Oscar asked. Victoria walked over and handed it to him while Imelda went to her desk in the corner and filed away the receipt for the new calf hides, as the rest of the family gathered around Oscar.

"Huh… did you read through it all?" Oscar said with a deep frown, as Felipe peered over his shoulder.

"Mostly," Imelda said scornfully. "I skimmed toward the end. It's just the regular nonsense you find, nothing new."

"Really? Maybe it's just me, but I had no idea he'd been living in those slums for so long. I thought he might have moved there more recently."

That got her attention. "What do you mean?"

"It says here he moved to Shantytown soon after his death. If true, he would have spent, what… about ninety years there? And why would he live with a bunch of criminals?"

"What?"

Imelda moved over to also peer over his shoulder, and read where Oscar's finger pointed…

The now-famous Héctor Rivera has been a long-time resident of Shantytown, longer than most would even believe, having arrived only a few years after his death. Immediately he moved into a hotbed of criminals: murderers, rapists, revolutionaries and worse! Men that even the almost-Forgotten feared and Héctor lived right in the midst of them. Very little is known about this period of his life…

"I… didn't know that," Imelda sad hesitantly. The truth was she knew almost nothing about his time among the dead.

"And what about this?" Rosita said, pointing to the bottom where it read:

Next week: Héctor and the Other Woman

"The other woman…" Imelda said aloud and felt something prickle in her chest. That had a sharper effect than she would have cared to admit.

She had long suspected that he had run off with some beautiful young woman who had fallen in love with his music, and with him. That had been her prime suspect for his disappearance, that he had abandoned them for another woman. But once she learned the truth of the matter, it had never been anything she had brought up, not when they were finally starting to reconnect after so long.

"Who could they be talking about? It wouldn't be an article about you, right?" Victoria said, glancing at Imelda.

"Doesn't sound like it," Felipe said. "They make it sound like he had a whole secret life or something."

"You don't think he could have had another… uhh…" Julio said, tapping his fingers together.

"¡Claro que no!" Rosita said with an indignant huff. "Héctor wouldn't dare. I wouldn't be surprised if they just talked to one of those girls who thinks she's in love with him and made up some fool story."

Imelda felt a rush of gratitude for her daughter-in-law, who had, since meeting him, inexplicably become one of Héctor's greatest defenders. Although it wasn't too surprising, considering how much of a romantic she was at heart.

"Rosita's right. We shouldn't give credence to such vile reading," Imelda said sternly, looking at her family and daring them to contradict her. "The writers are clearly looking to get attention with all this. For now, everyone back to work, we still have the Gomez order to finish up before tomorrow."

She stepped away, taking the offensive magazine with her and throwing it into the trash as she walked to the front of the shop. But getting rid of the evidence wasn't enough to make her forget what she had read, far from it. Certainly her family was still wondering about it. She could see it in their eyes and in the way they all looked up whenever someone stepped in, but Héctor didn't show up that day. That in itself wasn't unusual, he would only come around so often, as if slowly letting the family adapt to his presence.

That evening she paused just before closing the door, looking up and down the street, but there was no sight of her wayward husband. She wished Héctor would have come, and wished she could see him and be assured that he was still there and still the same man she had fallen in love with. They had been going slow over the past months, almost too slow, too hesitant, but that could be blamed on both of them. The connection they had had in marriage, in life, wasn't quite there, certainly not the way she remembered it. She had felt it that night of Dia de Los Muertos amidst the chaos and with him so close to the Final Death. But since then, things had somehow become a little tense, a thin tightness in the air. There was still a great deal unsaid between them, they both knew it.

That night, lying alone in her bed, she stared up at the ceiling and thought about her husband. The truth was she didn't know anything about his past. She hadn't thought to ask. It hadn't seemed important.

Héctor, of course, knew about her. It certainly helped that her life and death revolved around her family, and they were more than happy to tell him everything, and he was an enthusiastic listener.

But what about him? What did she know of his life after his death?

She realized, with an uncomfortable sense of guilt, that she had been imagining him alone and miserable the whole time, a static existence broken only by his attempts to cross the Bridge or try to talk with her. But that seemed wrong the more she thought of it. Ninety years was a long time, far longer than his own short twenty-one years of life. Far, far longer than their few years of marriage together.

What had he done? Where had he lived? Surely he hadn't been alone all that time. He might have made friends, enemies… lovers?

With a painful twinge, she was forced to admit… she had no idea.

Notes:

So it begins!

I'm pretty excited about this, as we explore just what Héctor has been doing for all those decades.

I hate the idea of him being basically alone and miserable for all that time… so he gets some friends! We'll be meeting them in a few chapters, I just want the poor skeleton to be happy (even as I do my best to torture him).

Also, if anyone ever has any questions/comments/etc, you can also find me on tumblr under the same name.