A while later Victoria re-emerged from the bathroom, her hair dripping and soggy and a much more content smile on her face. Rosita grinned at her, pleased that she had brightened up a bit. She chose to lie back down after having her bath, happy to feel warm again. She was obviously exhausted, her eyelids batted together defiantly, and her arms hung loosely by her sides. Dropping onto her bed, she allowed Rosita to pull the covers over her and close the window blinds.

"Are you alright now mija?" Rosita hummed, giving a loving squeeze of her shoulder.

Victoria's stoic mask, having long since broken, completely fell away into a big grin, "I feel much better," she reached up to hug her, "gracias Rosita."

Rosita backed out of the door, pulling it tightly as she left. She nearly tripped over her brother, standing a few feet from the door, startling her like prey would startle its dinner.

"This is ridiculous," Rosita ranted, "go and talk to your daughter Julio."

Julio taps his fingers against his palms, looking unsure. He so desperately longs to speak to her, yet is so afraid of... of... he doesn't even know why he's scared!

He pleads as Rosita pushes him towards her bedroom, "I can't, I don't know how to talk to her!" She stared down at him, confusion written on her face.

He confesses, his mouth opening like a dam, "You both get along so brilliantly, I always wished I could understand her like you do. I just don't get it, how you seemingly have a whole conversation with her just by looking at each other, how do you know exactly how she feels without even asking?" And he prays that Victoria can't hear them through the wood door,

"You've kept up with the thousands of books she's read, you are the only person who Victoria enjoys talking to."

Rosita gawks, unable to speak.

"I only want help, I only want to understand her."

She bends down to his height, poking him softly, square in the breastbone.

"She's your daughter, Julio. You don't need to know everything, you don't even need her to talk to you, all that you need is to talk to her. She might understand, even when she doesn't say a word." He felt himself get shoved through the door. As suddenly as lighting he wished he had never said anything and kept his thoughts to himself.

Victoria was focusing out of her window, Pepita flew by, chasing after another alebrije. Her mouth twists when she saw him and with little emotion she says, "Papà."

He replied with a nervous twinge, "Hola Victoria."

Julio approached cautiously, perching himself on the edge of the bed. She tries to sit up but he is quick to push her back down by the shoulders, with enough force to keep her down. She looks at him wide-eyed and surprised. He realised, pulling his hands away from her.

He twists his hands nervously as he squeaks,

"How are you feeling mija?" And suddenly he noticed his cheekbones are wet, soaked with tears. Victoria is scaring him. She is shaky and shivering, her bones are too hot, she definitely has a fever and she feels too cold, she refused to eat anything... and... and...

"Papà, are you crying?" Victoria try's to sit up again, this time failing out of her own weakness, Julio hiccups and scoots closer. Her arms reach out to him, to pull him into a tight hug.

This is the first time he can remember crying since she died.

He watched her plummet from her seat with a pained screech, his Coco's hand the only thing separating her head and the hard floor. Victoria, convulsing and sweating in her mother's arms, had a complete and utter look of terror on her face. He remembers the horror in her eyes.

Oscar, now an old man, scooped her up off the floor, bundling her into the back of the car as they drove off to the hospital. They waited and waited for hours though it felt more like a millennium, the ward was overcrowded, and children were wailing. Every doctor in the whole hospital was busy, too busy to bother with them. And his precious, sweet, loving daughter was curled in on herself begging to die, still screeching out in pain with her mother's arms wrapped tightly around her.

Victoria turned to him, tears streaming down her sharp face,

"Papá... am I going to die?" And he just wished she never would have asked. Julio was an honest man. Victoria took no nonsense, accepted no lies, only strived for the truth. Even if she hated the truth, she would much rather a painful truth than be let down with a lie. He reasoned with himself, his last words to his daughter should not be a lie.

"Yes Victoria, you are."

The family gasps at him. He pulls back from kissing her cheek, looking back at the rest, as if to say "what?" He and Rosita had been raised to be honest and he saw no point in lying. He was beginning to doubt if there even was a doctor in this hospital, they haven't seen one since they got there.

He looks around himself. The family is silent again, staring dead at Victoria who appeared to have gone limp. Franco had his fingers pressed on her neck, Julio placed his on her wrist, Coco's ear over her heart. It was when Coco let out a deafening scream that silenced the entire room, that reality hit him in the face with a shoe. There was no beat. Julio held a wailing Coco in his arms as she keened over their daughter.

Perhaps the second worst part of loosing his daughter was the other people. He disliked the way the neighbours looked at him with pity in their eyes. He doesn't like it when parents tug their children closer when they see him, like holding them near will fight off the dangers of the world. Hardly able to bare it when Franco and Elena hold their children just a little closer. They all act like it won't happen to them. Just like he did. It could have happened to anyone.

No one told him grieve felt so like fear.

No one told him that losing his child would leave such an unimaginable, lonely, painful hole where his heart was.

He genuinely sobbed every day.

For years afterward. When his sister died, only a few months after his daughter, he sobbed twice as hard. The twins a few years down the line, he sobbed for them too. His wife's mind and sanity began slipping, they spent more and more time indoors, away from other people. Then it was him. He died in the late seventies, his family mostly died in less than a decade, his poor wife lost her family in less than a decade and was sentenced to thirty years to live out on her own.

He watched on as one of his daughters raised her children and became a grandparent. He watched one of his daughters become reclusive, as her friends grew old without her. Recently some of them had joined them in the afterlife, they tried so hard to reconnect but in their presence Victoria felt like a child. They had all forgotten her. Forgotten that she was young and wouldn't understand when all they wanted to talk about was how their grandchildren were doing, or that she wants to stay up late to talk to them into the early hours of the morning.

All the crying he had done had blended together long ago.

"Yes I'm crying, of course I'm crying."

"But why are you crying?" His heart could have bounced out of his ribcage if he had one.

"You're ill sweetheart," her back shuddered in his arms.

"So?" Her voice cracked with sadness.

His moustache twists as he frowns.

"You died so young mija." And her quality of life while she was alive had been so poor he wonder how she coped. She couldn't catch a ball if you handed it to her, but if anyone had a cold within the surrounding ten miles, then you can guarantee she'd come down with it.

"Your life was so short, you shouldn't have to suffer another minute of your afterlife." There he felt her head bob up and down on his shoulder.

"You could have done nothing about that, it was my own fault, I was far too weak." Victoria's voice is wavering and horse from being sick, Julio pats her back to coax a cough out of her. He grabs her chin and says firmly,

"You are never allowed to blame yourself for that! You can blame me or anyone, but you are not at fault. We should have taken better care of you and watched you a little closer."

"But papà! You don't understand, I tried to hide that I was sick, I wasn't su-," he cuts her off before she could finish.

"I know you were hiding it, for whatever reason, but that's not an excuse for not noticing." Julio pulls back from the hug, just enough that they can look at each other easily, "And you," He pokes her in the chest, "will never be weak, you fought it off for as long as you could, I don't think you're weak mija."

Her instinct was to fight back, tell him that she was weak, she was feeble, it was her fault. All of her drive to argue with him had left, and the need to be a child in her fathers' arms again replaced it.

It was quiet, peaceful for the first time in months; Hector wasn't singing, Imelda wasn't screaming and the twins weren't inventing. Exhaustion hit her like a runaway train, knocking her down into her papà's arms. Grabbing her shoulders, he nudged her back down so that she had to look up at him and slathered her face and hair in boney kisses, that made a clinking sound when they touched.

Victoria giggles.

He made her laugh. A genuine, happy, joyful laugh. There are storm clouds pushing in his eye sockets, tears that are nothing but pure joy run down his face, he hasn't heard a laugh like that in a long time.

"Get better, mija," he kisses her one finial time, "that's all I could ever ask for."