Interlude:

Explanations & (Half) Truths

October 31st, 2017

[Land Of The Dead]

Helene sat herself upon one of the crates opposite to Michaela, rubbing at her wrist as she put her hands in her lap. The two of them sat quietly in the underpass tunnel, just taking a few minutes to relax and breathe. In order to make sure that officers of the station had lost track of them, they had gone around and across many neighboring blocks of the station a few times over.

Helene clearly was very familiar with this area, because after 20 minutes of moving around and checking to ensure they hadn't been followed, she ducked into a downward sloping alley and brought Michaela to this semi-underground tunnel where she had set up a hideout of sorts, or as the woman herself had called it, a "rest point".

"Are you all right? I didn't aggravate your injuries, did I?"

Michaela jumped when Helene spoke. 'O-oh! No, I'm fine…I think." Her fingers absentmindedly reached up to her throat, sore and bruised, but intact. "Um…thank you. For helping me earlier. Those men had been looking for you, so you put yourself in danger and…!"

Helene shook her head. "Alternatively, you could also say it is my fault you were in that sort of danger. They only attacked you because they thought that you were me in disguise. However...you also shouldn't have run off in an unknown area. It could have ended...a lot worse. As I said earlier, it was pure luck I was nearby and heard what was happening." After that slight scolding, they lapsed back into a somewhat awkward silence. She got the sense that Helene didn't talk much, and didn't know how to reassure her. The attempt was appreciated though.

"Who were those men?"

Helene pursed her lips. "You could call them…hired guns. I believe they are officially employed as body guards for the wealthy... but they also work in the underground sexual trafficking ring here. They only answer to the highest bidder, such as shady celebrities, politicians, and occasionally, some of the more dubious well-paid medicos."

Her expression darkened further. "As for their client…sorry. I can't…tell you that. All you need to know is that he doesn't take no for an answer." She looked away and left her ominous words hanging in the air. It didn't take a genius to figure out the implications. At the best (could there even be a 'best' in this situation?) It was attempted assault. At the worst…well, it was clearly someone Helene knew and didn't want to talk about. Pity grew in Michaela stomach thinking about Helene, who was probably even stronger than Michaela was aware of, being betrayed so intimately by someone who had been close to her.

Michaela stopped thinking about it. Helene didn't want her to know, so she wouldn't even think about it.

"Also, let's get this straight. I don't believe you told me the truth."

"What?!"

"Anyone whose ever heard of de la Cruz, or spoke to some of his crazier fans, knows very well both his parents died when he was 8, and only then was he sent to an orphanage. A rare 'diamond in the rough' as they say. He was an only child, at least by blood. The only way you could be related to him is through an illegitimate child born from one of the hundreds of woman who have been, shall we say, close to him over the years."

As she spoke, Helene got up and walked over until she was right in front of Michaela. Judging by how pale her face had gotten, she was quite frightened on being called out. "Calm down, I'm not going to drag you back to the Marigold Station. Even though I probably should..." She added this last part under her breath.

It was almost comical how the child perked up so quickly. "Really?!"

She held up a finger.

"However. You must tell me the truth on how you got cursed. You must also tell me why you refuse to get a blessing from your other family members. Otherwise, it wouldn't have spread around the station that a family was looking for a missing living child."

The teenager fidgeted nervously and it took all of Helene's willpower to not pull her into a hug, to reassure her and tell her that she was safe (...all the things she had wanted in youth and lost in death). While her social skills had waned over the years, her instincts hadn't even as she grew to lock them away. Softheartedness only got you hurt in the end after all.

"I...technically didn't lie about needed Ernesto de la Cruz's blessing. I want to be a musician, you know. I don't have any real training, but I have some experience from dancing and singing in the local plaza at home but-" She stopped speaking and looked down, fidgeting with her hands.

Helene knelt down very slowly and gave Michaela her hands to fidget with when the girl began scratching against the backs of her own anxiously. She didn't speak. She waited. Maybe it would have made others uncomfortable, but for Michaela who had only wanted others to listen to her, it was more reassuring than Helene probably knew.

"My family didn't agree with my desired career path. We have our own business. Every very member of the family has always been in the business. I was expected to join the business. It's in our blood. It's what we are supposed to do. But it wasn't what I wanted to do."

"My grandmother and I got into an argument over it. She's the most hard headed of our family, probably right next to me on the scale of hardheadedness." She chuckled bitterly, and tears began to slide down her cheeks as she remembered it, cold and sharp like a wedge of ice had pierced her heart.

"She seemed to think that if I became a musician, I'd abandon the family entirely. I guess its not unheard of for people's fame to get to them like that, but it hurt badly that she thought I'd end up like that too." Her hands tightened on Helene's, gripping them like a lifeline. Whatever happened next, Helene had a feeling she wouldn't like it.

"I had spent months working on it. The guitar I practiced with."

She was speaking in past tense.

"I used whatever I could get my hands on, from scrap wood to discarded soundboards. A friend even lent me other materials, like guitar strings. I put all of my allowance into this project."

Dread began seeping through Helene's stomach.

"She...my grandmother...she..." Michaela's voice cracked.

"She smashed it to pieces right in front of me."

"What?" Helene rose in alarm, squeezing Michaela's hands. "She destroyed your -" She paused and took several deep breathes. Her gaze darted around the room, trying to find something to focus on, something to alleviate the shock running through her brain. "Why?"

Michaela shrugged. "I guess she thought if I didn't have an instrument, it would solve the problem. After that, I basically swore her out. I said that I didn't want to live in a family which didn't care enough to listen to me. Not listening to someone, is that same as not caring about them, of not supporting them. It's ironic, because earlier my mother said that...she had said that my family will always support one another. Too bad it was a lie."

"Ay, dios mios..." Helene murmured, sinking down besides Michaela. How...what could she do to help with something like this? Was there at least something she could do to help Michaela heal, even if it was only a little? To seek support, to seek love only to be denied it...something like that carves a deep wound. She knows what that feels like, feels it twice over every single day. Unaware of Helene's thoughts, Michaela only continued on in her painful account of recollections.

"Then I ran away. Santa Cecilia," Helene turned white and went still as stone, "the town I live in is pretty small, so I wasn't concerned about getting kidnapped. I ended up in the plaza, right in front of de la Cruz's statue. The one where he is holding his guitar...Helene, are you okay?"

Helene started. "Oh. Oh, yes. I'm fine. Don't worry about it. It's just..." she partially lied through her teeth. "I can't believe your grandmother would..." Her voice wavered and cut out as sympathy and other emotions overwhelmed her. She raised a hand to her mouth and looked away to regain her composure. Technically, she was telling the truth. For Michaela's grandmother to go to such extremes was virtualy unthinkable to her. However, it was not the reason for her sudden vertigo. Just...Santa Cecilia, huh?

"Neither did I." The teenager whispered. She shook herself after they both straightened themselves up.

"The statue gave me this genius idea of borrowing de la Cruz's guitar. So I kind of ended up breaking into his mausoleum by a window."

Helene very slowly faced Michaela. "You...'kind of'...just broke into...a man's crypt? To steal a guitar?"

She seemed agitated, Michaela assumed it was because she broke into the grave. "Well, I wasn't exactly on the straight and narrow path of the more mentally balanced folk in the world. I was desperate. Tonight the plaza was holding a talent show. I wanted to sign, but needed an instrument. An instrument I no longer had. I had based my handmade guitar off of de la Cruz's," An imperceptible curling of Helene's fingertips, "so I just decided to borrow the real deal."

Helene snorted, in both bewilderment and agitation. "You make it seem so simple." She gave Michaela a look. "Maybe I really can make a lawbreaking protege out of you." Her face, which had been stoic up to now, had a very faint teasing smile across her lips. There was something melancholic about it though. Michaela returned an even fainter smile. The joke warmed her, if only just a little. Just a little further to go.

"I tried speaking to his spirit, asking to borrow the guitar. I wasn't lying when I said he knew my great-great grandmother either. In a letter from her, she mentioned she had been with him before...before she divorced my great-great grandfather." That wasn't a lie. She disappeared and never returned, which could be perceived as an unofficial divorce...unless something had happened to her before that. Michaela doubted that though. Helene's eyes were wide as she absorbed Michaela's words.

Ernesto de la Cruz, despite his womanizing tendencies, had never been anything but chivalrous to both coworkers and fans. He was probably even more so with family. If something had happened, he would have definitely informed Papa Imelio. They would have at least met if her tatara abuela was his sister (blood, honorary, whatever).

"Then I kind of just...picked it up. That was probably when I got cursed."

"After that, I found out that the living couldn't see or hear me. They just kept walking straight through me. I even tried to run towards my parents, who were looking for me. I went straight through mi mama and..." She froze and went very pale. Michaela began to shiver. Helene leaned closer to try and provide some sort of comfort. "And...?"

"I fell into an open grave."

Helene flinched back in sympathy. She knew, realistically, her own body had likely been long buried as well, but even the thought of falling into a dark, six feet under, cramped hole in the ground evoked very negative thoughts. Just imagining it made her feel pinned down, almost as though she was smothered under the weight of something heavy. Trying to move away from those thoughts, she spoke. Anything to keep her mind off that. "That must have been...terrifying."

"It was. Eventually, a passing spirit helped me out. I panicked when I saw her bones, and panicked even more when I noticed other spirits. Eventually I ran off and tried to hide until Dante, the xolo dog you met earlier," who was curled up at Michaela's feet and currently attempting to choke down his own leg, "led me to my visiting deceased family."

"They took me here, trying to figure out what happened, and we learned I was cursed. The clerk we spoke to, he said that there were two ways I could get sent home. One, because de la Cruz was a family member, regardless of blood, I could receive a general blessing from my family to send me home. My great-great grandfather tried to send me home...but under the condition that I was never, and i mean these were his exact words, to never play music again."

Helene gave Michaela such an dangerous look that she shrunk back. The woman's anger, while targeted at a completely different person, was palpable. "He put such a ridiculous condition on your life?" Her voice had lowered into a hiss and her eyes burned like black coal.

She tried to shrug it off. "I think he blamed music for my curse in general, though it was a combination of my own recklessness and the events from earlier. He's...very protective even if he goes about it the wrong way. I pity him, because I really think it stems from his divorce more than anything else. He probably wouldn't have kept the condition the longer I stayed here now that i think about it."

Trying to reduce her boiling anger to a simmer, Helene clasped her hands in front of her face as though praying for patience. "Michaela, I mean in the best way possible. You are a fool for thinking music is worth more than your life, because on some level you must have been aware it was in danger. He is an even bigger fool, no- an utter bastard for demanding something like that when your life is in danger. If you did something like steal from the dead, than he should have figured out that forbidding you to play music at all was just a surefire way for you to get cursed again."

Michaela looked at her with wide eyes, startled from the sudden outburst. Helene blanched and looked away, pinching her nose. "I'm sorry, but its just...that wasn't fair to you. Not in the slightest. Not to mention unsafe considering you wound up running off, getting attacked, and met me of all people." The sentence was tainted with immense self-loathing. "And the other way of returning home safely? Which has to do with getting you to... de la Cruz?"

Michaela took a moment to remember where she had been before Helene's outburst. It was...kind of her to care so much.

"Since I stole from de la Cruz, the clerk said I could also receive his blessing to return home. Like you said, I ran off after that planning to find him, got attacked and...well, I met you." She shrugged.

Helene watched her blankly, trying to just understand what the hell had happened to this child, this baby right in front of her. God, what was she made of? Steel?! Helene had years to learn to get her shit together, but Michaela...this poor kid was getting lambasted by years worth of life crises in a single day!

In that moment, she made up her mind.

"I'll help you get to de la Cruz."

Michaela smiled so brightly, it was like staring at the sun in the middle of the afternoon.

"I'm...sorry for pushing you to tell me the truth. I don't regret it, but still...those memories hurt you and I'm sorry that I hurt you by making you recall them." Helene stood and crossed her arms sheepishly. It made her seem younger, somehow. Michaela burst into teary-eyed giggles and then had to deal with Helene's bewildered stare. "Sorry, sorry...but you looking so sheepish doesn't suit you. It makes you almost look my age!"

After regain her breath, she managed to speak again, warming the last soft spot of Helene's heart that hadn't entirely frozen over.

"Somehow, I feel a little better talking about it to you. So...you shouldn't be apologizing. I should be saying thank you."

"Thank You, Helene..."

Was originally part of the next chapter, but felt it would be too long for my tiny brain to work out. I wrote this in a day sooo...enjoy?

My laptops about to die, so gtg. Review please!