AN – For this chapter, I toyed with the idea of including the beating Zorro got from the Indians for comparison with Esteban's pain and how he was able to hide that from everybody while recovering. Although it is an episode fitting for this story, it is a bit confusing to mention it because that happened with De Soto as alcalde, not Ramón, and I already took the liberty to have Ramón as alcalde for this story because he is more of a psycho than De Soto, messing up the story line of the show, because this story is happening after the engagement ring. But, in the end, I decided to include this because otherwise it felt like a wasted chance to dwell into the "how Diego could pretend to be alright when he felt like shit" issue. So, when I mention what happened in the episode "Ultimate Justice" of season 4, remember to picture Ramón as alcalde, if you can, thanks.
And, what is in everybody's mind now, like in those haemorrhoid relief adds: "Yes, Diego didn't have to suffer in silence", LOL.
Oh, and before you complain, I apologize to the purists of the English language use of the 1800's for using the term "reboot". But that's exactly what Diego's brain need to do now, "reboot", like a crashed computer. If anybody know an equivalent term in use in Zorro's time, please let me know.
Chapter 58 – Revealing Zorro's dirty little secrets (III)
Victoria took a long time to calm down, crying her heart out while mumbling incoherent words about her misunderstandings with Diego that had led to this unfortunate situation.
Esteban tried at first, but because it seemed impossible to soothe her with words and reasoning, while she was lost in that world of angst of her own, rambling irrationally, he sat back in silence and let her cry until her eyes ran dry.
"Do you want me to leave, so you can be alone with him? I don't think you have got the chance to be with him on your own yet, have you?"
"No. I haven't. Would you do that for me?"
"Yes, of course. No problem. I'll wait in the other room. Say what you need to say, and then go to bed, please. Don't torture yourself anymore with this. It's not worth it, because what it's done, it's done, and you can't change anything just thinking about it over and over."
"But…"
"No buts. You know I am right. I'll go now. Talk to him, say what you need to say, but please, relax, and keep calm to carry on."
"Thank you."
He walked to the other room then, closing the connecting door to give her more privacy. After he left, she took Diego's hand and caressed its back with her thumbs.
"Oh, Diego, please, when are you going to wake up so I can tell you how much I love you?"
Curious, she stood up and lifted his hand as high as she could, and then she let go of it. His whole arm dropped down to the bed instantly, totally flaccid. She placed her hand on his chest then, through the unbuttoned collar of his nightgown, directly over his warm skin, and explored the area carefully, searching for his powerful heartbeats. They still felt strong and regular under her hand, but with a rhythm much slower than when they had made love. Much, much slower, less than one beat per second now, hardly every two. She idly caressed his muscular chest then, while her hand was there, playing one more time with that little bunch of hairs in the middle, remembering how safe and loved she had felt in his arms, while falling asleep on top of that pounding chest that one time. She didn't understand how it was possible he seemed so relaxed, so dead, but at the same time hanging on to life so tenaciously, comparing to Don Luis, who had died so quickly. But, she didn't have any medical knowledge, and the doctor didn't know what was going on either. Had his body shut down on purpose to give him the complete rest he needed, as the doctor said, away from everything and everybody, including her?
"Why didn't you tell me, you idiot?! We could have three children already. And none of this would have happened. Wake up, please. Wake up!" she said while tugging at his bunch of hairs, but he didn't react at all, like with any other stimuli so far.
She looked at his mouth, waiting for an answer, but of course, he didn't move his lips either to reply. Looking at those dry lips, now she realized she knew perfectly well how Diego's mouth tasted, and how much she liked his kisses, so there was no need to wonder. There was absolutely no need for that odd and out-of-place, mockery of a kiss she had shared with Esteban at the cellar, because she had already kissed Diego a hundred times… Well, probably not so many, as they had been interrupted nearly every time they were together, but still… More than… thirty times, sure.
She glanced at the connecting door then, which looked firmly closed, and she didn't think about it twice. While her hand was still over his heart, she leaned to kiss those familiar lips one more time, while they were still warm, just in case she never had the chance ever again. She lingered there, moisturizing his dry, thin lips with her tongue, hoping to feel how his heart rate accelerated, like so many times before, every time she got near him. But that didn't happen, and his heart continued to beat steadily, but slowly, as the same rate as it was.
"Why don't you wake up now, like the sleeping princesses in the fairy tales do when they get kissed? That would be nice," she said, kissing then his forehead, retreating her hand to sit down again by his side. Well, probably because this is not a fairy tale. This is a disaster of a tale, and I doubt it will ever have a "happily ever after" end. Not unless many things changed in this pueblo, starting with the alcalde, she thought, taking Diego's hand one more time in hers.
"Esteban, you can come back now," she said to the door, after a while.
It didn't take him long to open it to step into Diego's room again.
"Are you done now? Are you retiring to bed?"
"I know I should, but I find it so difficult to leave him here alone. I can't. What if he wakes up?"
"He won't be alone, you know? I'll be here with him. And Felipe will be back in the morning and he'll watch over him during the day, until he wakes up. And don't worry, the moment his brain reboots and he comes back to life, you will be the first one to know, and the first one to talk to him, all right?"
"Yes, please. Promise me that."
"I promise."
"All right. I'll go now then," she said, standing up. She kissed his forehead one more time and let go of his hand. "His lips are quite dry. Can you give him some water? The doctor said we had to keep trying, make him drink some water or he'll get dehydrated."
"Victoria, how do you know his lips are so dry? You, saucy little minx!" he joked, making her blush. "Don't blush. I assume you made the most of this little time alone with him to kiss him. So, now, there is no excuse for you: you have kissed Zorro many times, and Diego, once. No excuse to chase me around begging for my kisses anymore, down at a cellar or otherwise. No excuses whatsoever: I am not going to kiss you. So, don't insist."
He said that in such a funny way that he made her laugh, just as he had intended.
"That's it, good girl. No more crying. Laugh and go to bed with a smile on your face."
"Thank you, Esteban. For everything. I am sorry it has to be like this, but there is no other way. I hope you find someone else to love soon, other than me. After all, I told you I was taken."
"Yes, and I said I would wait to back off until you got married. I can't see this ending any other way than on a fabulous wedding and lots of grandchildren for my uncle, so, I won't bother you anymore, I promise."
"My children will be your nephews and nieces."
"Yes, and I'll spoil them rotten."
"No, you won't!" she said, slapping his arm. She fell into his arms to give him yet another hug. "As I said, thank you, for everything. For saving me of getting more lashes; for comforting me at jail, and now again; for saving me from the flames, because I could have burned to dead; and for protecting me at that cellar, with your silence. And, among other things, for your patience and your understanding. Oh, and for stopping that club hitting my face. How could I forget that?"
"It would be better if you did, believe me," recalling the whole fiasco at the circus. It would also be better if he kept silent and he never clarified that point.
"As I said, thank you, for everything."
"You are welcome," he said, hugging her even more tightly, in the final goodbye at his potential lover, inhaling her sweet scent, as Diego had done as well. When they broke the embrace, he looked at her in the eye, serious. "It could have great between us, I know that. It is such a same, I mean, at least or me. But you belong to him, so please, be happy from now on. With him, not with me."
"I'll try. The moment he wakes up. If…"
She was about to start crying again, but he stopped her.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk… What did I say? Go to bed with a smile on your face, please. Of course he's going to wake up. He's just taking some time off to heal, that's all."
"Gracias," she said, in a hardly audible whisper, trying to smile, heading then out of the room.
"Damn it, Diego," he said after he heard her closing the door of her bedroom. "You have to wake up, because if you don't, I'll feel like a traitor when I try to win her over again. And I don't think I will have any willpower to avoid that trap if you die, honestly. So, wake up, or I'll feel obliged to try to steal your girlfriend again the moment you stop breathing. And your father will chop my balls for that. Wake up!" He gave him a good shake, but of course his cousin didn't react. He got the glass of water then, and while he opened his mouth a bit with his left hand, he poured a small amount of water into his mouth with the other.
Looking at his dry lips, he couldn't help but imagining Victoria kissing and liking them only a moment ago.
"Shit, smartarse. I'll have to get used to that image when you wake up, if I want to survive this without going mental. At least Zorro didn't have a face, and imagining her kissing him was always kind of unreal. Damn."
ZZZ
Don Alejandro lay in bed awake, hugging his pillow, unable to fall asleep. All these revelations of secrets and aspects of Diego's hidden life had left him stupefied. Discovering the true scope of the sacrifices his son had made was overwhelming, and the worst thing was, they probably had only uncovered a small portion of it, like the tip of an iceberg, and the rest was yet to come. He felt as if he couldn't cope with any more information, because he already felt so bad, so upset and so angry with himself, and that spiral of rage grew exponentially every time he felt angry with Diego for now telling him, and immediately he felt even more upset with himself for having such unfair stance with his son, because it was only his own bloody fault he was so stupid he hadn't realized of what was going on under his nose.
If Diego had ever felt so unsettled about anything, with any of his problems, (and now he was sure he must have been), no wonder he had ended up taking drugs to cope, because right then, Don Alejandro felt like walking over to the doctor's house at the other side of the street so he could give him something to numb that eroding, emotional pain. But maybe alcohol would do the same instead. So many had turned to the bottle for his problems, over centuries, no, over millennia, so why not him now? And that would be easy to find in a tavern: alcohol.
He got up and walked down the stairs silently, to the bar. He grabbed a bottle of brandy and a large glass and returned to his room. After drinking the first glass, he thought about how rude Diego had been during the last few weeks, especially the last few days, for example when he got the bunch of roses for Victoria's bouquet, refusing to talk to him. And also as Zorro, he realized now, when he ignored his command to leave the roses alone, and he still took one for Victoria, in his face. Why did he behave so badly, always around the roses, knowing how important they were to him? Was Diego doing that on purpose, as his little, childish, subtle way to get back to his father for all the grief he was giving him all the time, unbeknown to him? He gulped down another glass then, and while looking at its empty bottom, he felt deeply sorry for Diego, having to turn to drugs, because among other things, he didn't have anybody to talk to, other than Felipe. Good job his son was never keen on wine and spirits, or he could have become an alcoholic instead.
After three full glasses of the rich liquor and some more mulling over the revelations, he felt drunk and dizzy enough to go back to bed to sleep it off, woozy and feeling almost guilt free while his head spun around, with his mind busy concentrating on not to be sick all over the sheets.
ZZZ
"Rough night?" Esteban said when his uncle appeared in his room late in the morning, looking worn out, unshaved and with dark circles under his eyes. The tavern was already open, with a few customers having a mid-morning almuerzo; Felipe had return from the hacienda and was locked down with Diego in the other room; and Esteban was back in bed, pretending to be extremely weak and unable to stand up. "Gosh, you rank of brandy! How much did you drink last night?"
"Don't know. I don't remember. Shit. Coffee, I need coffee," the old don said, taking the cup of now cold coffee Esteban didn't drink for breakfast. "My head is killing me!"
"Yes, that is called a hangover, Uncle, and I bet all that hammering from Pedro and Pablo is not helping you. Wow, I never pictured you as the crapulent type, ever," Esteban said with a smirk.
"Shut up. This is a one-off, and you know perfectly well why this happened!"
"Why don't you go back to bed then? Diego is the same, Felipe is with him, following the plan, and Victoria is serving the customers. I'm fine here, pretending to be half dead, so you are not really needed here at the moment."
"Are you sure? How can I go back to bed under the circumstances? It is already mid-morning."
"Come on, do it. Disappear before the alcalde sees you and wonders why did you drunk the entire supply of brandy in the tavern last night."
"I guess you have a point there. God, I feel so rough now… never again!"
"Said every drunk person the morning after," Esteban said, laughing, enjoying the moment. It wasn't every day that he could see his righteous uncle showing a flaw, and he loved it.
"All right, I'll go back to bed. But, call me if something happens. Did the alcalde bother you yet?"
"No, not yet, but I am sure he will, soon."
"Don't antagonize him now that you are awake, please. The only reason why he is not dragging you to a cell by the ear is because he is afraid of Zorro. And you know he can't help you this time, so behave."
"Yes, I will. I'll play dumb and refrain myself from smashing his face, because I will not think about how much he enjoyed pressing on my bruises and my broken ribs, all right? Now, go back to bed please. I'll tell Victoria to bring you lots of coffee the next time she comes up here."
"Thank you."
"And, if I was you, I would tell your men to go easy with the hammer for a little while."
"Yes, that as well. See you later."
ZZZ
At siesta time, Victoria closed the tavern, using that precious half an hour to go upstairs into Diego's room. The doctor was also there at that time, checking on him.
"How is he?" she asked when she came in.
Don Alejandro, now feeling better from his excessive overconsumption of brandy the night before, was holding Diego's floppy torso, supporting him against his own while the doctor checked the abnormally tinged, stabbing wound at the back, changing the dressing.
"He has a bit of a temperature now, and he is breathing more heavily, but he is still stable. So far, so good."
"That's good news, I guess," she said, taking a seat by the bed.
Esteban looked at his cousin from a distance, standing with a hand on his ribs.
"One thing I can't get around is how he managed to get injured so many times and nobody ever found out about it. Right now, I am in so much pain I would go mental if I wasn't allowed to complain and whinge about it from time to time."
"I don't know. I wonder about that too. A lot," Don Alejandro said. "For goodness sake, he got shot in the abdomen, and the doctor said he made himself sick to pretend he had a tummy ache, like you! Can you imagine the pain he went through then?"
"What do you mean he made himself sick? I thought it was something we both ate, that didn't agree with us much," Esteban said.
"No. Diego took an herbal mix to make himself sick," the doctor said, "when he vomited over the alcalde after getting shot. The same mix he gave you in your porridge, by the way."
"What? He, he… he also poisoned me? Like Lucía? With that awful porridge?" Esteban said, stunned, because that had been such a bad experience, and he couldn't believe Diego would do that on purpose to him. "I knew there was something dodgy in that damn porridge! But, why? Why did he do that?"
"He needed an alibi to return home to change into Zorro's clothes that day. He also sedated you after you were sick so you didn't notice he had gone, while he returned to the pueblo, pretending he stayed at the hacienda with you."
"There we go again. More and more secrets. My goodness," Don Alejandro said, leaving Diego resting on the pillows again. "Will this agony ever finish?!"
"If I had to retch and be sick right now with my broken ribs, I'll die. Let alone with a gunshot through the abdomen. How could he suffer in silence like that?"
"And judging for the number of old scars in his body I didn't know anything about, he has done that many times," Don Alejandro said, wishing he had another bottle of brandy at hand right then.
They all kept silent for a moment, lost in their own thoughts, until Victoria mentioned there was an episode once, not long ago, with the alcalde and the Indians.
"The alcalde was bragging once at the tavern about how proud he was to have cajoled Zorro into a deadly Indian Challenge. According to Mendoza's version, taken from the alcalde's, (and as we all know how prompt the sergeant has always been for exaggeration, I don't know how much of this is true), Zorro got a good trashing from the Indians, beaten with sticks and clubs of all sorts, having a stick fight with one of them, and then they made him climb a dangerous, vertical wall, almost impossible to climb, but he got to the top. I didn't see him for a few days after that, and when he finally showed up and I asked him about it, he apologized because he had to stay away from the pueblo, quietly nursing his injuries. But he didn't look very bothered about it, at that time, and he didn't tell me many details, only that I shouldn't worry because he was fine. Felipe, can you tell us what happened there, exactly?"
Felipe started signing then, nodding first to confirm that was true, and then, for the wild movements he did with his hands, it was clear he was mimicking a quite violent episode.
"So, that was true? They did beat him up badly!" Don Alejandro said, squirming in his chair when Felipe nodded again. "Why?"
Felipe tried to explain it was all the alcalde's fault for stepping into their sacred land, and Zorro had taken his side to avoid a major incident with the Indians if they killed him, but they didn't understand him.
"When was that?" Esteban asked.
"About a couple of months before you arrived from Spain, I think," Victoria said.
"I just remembered something, Don Alejandro," the doctor said. "At the time, I thought Diego's behaviour was quite odd. You called me to see your son because he had fallen off his mare when she got frightened and reared while crossing the shortcut path to the Olivares hacienda, late one evening. You know, that narrow passage that runs so close to the ravine, that saves quite a lot of time, but hardly anybody uses it at night because it is so dangerous. He said he had fallen off, down into the ravine, and it had taken him ages to climb back up from it, but fortunately the mare had not run away and he could come back riding on her. You wanted me to give him a check over, but he insisted he was fine, only a little bit bruised, but nothing to worry about. He refused to take his clothes for me to have a look at his ribs, and I left him alone. He had bruises and cuts I could see in his face and arms, and his hands were very sore, with raw areas and cuts from his attempts to climb off the ravine. All those injuries were consistent with falling into and climbing out a ravine in the dark, but also would be with getting beaten and climbing that high wall Mendoza mentioned Zorro had to climb, if we think about it now. I guess he didn't let me have a look at the bruises and contusions in his body, because I would have realized those marks had been caused by sticks and clubs. By the way, when I arrived at the hacienda, you were scolding him big time for being so lazy he could not bother to follow the longer, safer way."
"Oh, my God! Yes! Yes! I remember that now," Don Alejandro said, fretting. "About five months ago or so. Oh, please, don't tell me that was when he was beaten up so badly, because I gave him hell with the issue that riding that dangerous path in the evening at dusk was irresponsible and it was all down to his laziness to take the longer route. I even scolded him in his lack of riding skills, telling him how ridiculous it was he had fallen off that gentle mare." He started pacing the bedroom then, with his hands on his head, and it was sort of a miracle he didn't bang it on the walls for punishment. "How on earth could I do that to him? How could I be so blind not to realize he was really hurting?"
Nobody knew what to say then. Victoria, with fresh tears in her eyes, took Diego's hand in hers again, feeling extremely sorry for both men.
In the end, Esteban stopped his uncle from pacing the room like a bull, and he crumbled in his arms, crying like Victoria in one of her numerous breakdowns.
"Calm down, Uncle, please. You are the strong one here. Please, don't do that."
"How could I do that to him all the time? How? How could I be so blind?"
"You'll apologize for the short sighting when he wakes up. In the meantime, I know I shouldn't offer you this, but, what about another glass of brandy? I'll take one myself too. Come on, let's go to the bar."
Don Alejandro nodded, following him, ashamed of himself, but if he had to turn to alcohol to get him through that time of pain, so be it.
ZZZZZ