Summary: Somehow, Shuriki returned. None of the amigos know what to do about it. Naomi tries to talk her friends out of their self-blame, and comes to a realization about Mateo in the process.
Hey, so, mild content warning - this is probably one of the more emotionally taxing chapters in the fic. Everyone gets a breakdown, as a treat. Also the minor injuries tag is actually relevant again.
It was almost unfair, having to go back to the Sunflower Festival.
Rita was a farce from the start, Fiero was free once again, and Shuriki was alive and well. And despite it all, as the ever faithful Crown Princess to her people, Elena had to return to the party with a smile on her face and a spring in her step, as if her world hadn't been completely rearranged. She was the bastion of Avaloran hope, and she couldn't afford to cause any more alarm than what her brief absence while she was chasing after the sorceress may have already done. As it was, people cast her strange looks, perhaps seeing through the cheery facade, or just concerned by her disheveled hair and rumpled clothes.
Naomi couldn't imagine how she had to feel. It was hard enough to watch Elena freeze up at the sight of Shuriki, to feel the blood freeze in her veins as she thought she was about to lose one of her best friends. But Naomi hadn't spent half a lifetime trapped in an amulet, or grown up under Shuriki's tyrannical reign. She hadn't lost any loved ones to Avalor's tumultuous past.
It was a wonder her friends could endure it.
Gabe had taken off to the barracks the moment they'd returned to the palace, determined to rally the guard with an efficiency that would leave people surprised he'd only been Captain for a few months. Mateo had retreated into an eerie, pensive kind of quiet, shadowing Elena as she went about the palace courtyard, with unguarded concern for her etched across his face and drawing some odd looks from the still blissfully ignorant guests. And Elena kept smiling, right up until the moment she abruptly excused herself, turning toward the palace with an urgency that went far beyond her usual impatience.
It was completely unfair.
Mateo, always loyal, was close on her heels, and Naomi watched them disappear through the front doors, not even half listening to the conversation she'd been dragged into. With a curt goodbye that would have certainly offended Esteban's sensibilities had he been nearby, Naomi took off after her friends. Even if she could never truly understand what they were going through, she knew she needed to be there for them.
What she saw inside made her breath catch, and she struggled to swallow past the lump in her throat: Elena was on her knees in a secluded corner of the main hall, and she was weeping. Strong, fearless Elena, who had endured nightmarish isolation and come back swinging, who had faced down villain after villain with unyielding resolve, was clutching at Mateo's robe like a lifeline and sobbing into his shoulder. Mateo was holding onto her more tightly than he usually would, biting his lip and straining to keep his jaw from trembling. When he caught sight of Naomi standing nearby, he swallowed, and wordlessly, he held an arm out toward her.
Naomi didn't wait for a second invitation. She ran to the pair and dropped to her knees by their side, the skirt of her festival dress pooling around her legs, and she reached out to wrap an arm around each of them, scooting close enough for her shoulder to be touching Mateo's. Elena, realizing she was there, turned in her friends' arms to rest her head between the two of them. They'd barely had time to settle in when Gabe came running into the room, in full guard mode.
"Your Highness, I've gathered the–" he started, but froze at the sight of his friends. "Elena," he breathed, and Naomi waved him over, and Mateo grabbed onto his sleeve to pull him in as he dove to the floor, and suddenly Gabe's arms had enveloped the rest of them in a hug that could rival a Norberg squeeze.
They sat like that for what could have been five minutes, or five hours. They sat, holding each other like the four of them were all that was left in the world, Naomi feeling hyper-aware of the weight of Gabe's arm across her shoulders, and the way Mateo's breath kept hitching under her palm, and the damp spot where Elena's tears were soaking into her sleeve. They sat like that until Elena's sobs died down into sniffles, and then finally petered out entirely.
She sat back, wiping at her eyes, and fixed her friends with a watery smile. "Thanks," she said, her voice thick. "Today has been…" she waved a hand around aimlessly, searching for a word that could even begin to describe the horror they'd faced that afternoon. "...Hard," she finally settled with. Sighing, she closed her eyes. "I'm not quite sure what the next step is," she admitted, "but… can I count on all of you to take it with me?"
"Always," Gabe promised.
"No matter what," Mateo added.
Naomi smiled, and rested a hand on Elena's. "What are friends for?"
Elena's face relaxed, and she drew in one more shuddering breath. "Then what are we waiting for?" She opened her eyes again, a fire brighter than any of her scepter's magic burning behind them. "We have a sorceress to catch. To start: Gabe, I want you to set up patrol groups around the borders of the city, just to make sure Shuriki doesn't come back, and send a group of scouts after her to get a better idea of where she might be going."
He gave her shoulder one last firm squeeze and then pulled himself to his feet. "Right away, Your Highness." He saluted and took off back toward the barracks, though Naomi caught the mournful look in his eye as he turned, as if it pained him to leave her.
"Mateo," Elena went on, "do you think you can fix some of the damage from the fight?" She gestured around the ruins of the main hall. The shattered remains of the frozen chandelier lay strewn between the pockmarks of magic, burnt into the floor like scars, and some of the support columns dotting the sides of the room looked dangerously close to crumbling. The acrid smell of Shruiki's magic still hung in the air, burning in Naomi's nose as she breathed.
Mateo jolted as she addressed him, like he'd been deep in thought, and as he tracked her hand, something finally kicked his brain back into motion. "Oh, uh, right. I can take care of that." He looked faraway as he stood, the haunting quiet settling back in around him and slowing his movement like there was a physical weight to it he was straining against. Broken glass crunched under his feet as he made his way toward the edge of the room, and the normally familiar beat of his drum and crackle of his magic echoed ominously through the battered room.
The atmosphere pressed similarly around Elena, judging by the way she shuddered and worried at her lip. Her eyes were locked on nothing, and Naomi could see the way the shadows of the battle flickered through them, formless and dark. Carefully, slowly, Naomi reached out and took her hands.
"Hey, what do you need me to do?"
Elena's breath caught in a hiccup of surprise and grief, but she gripped Naomi's hands back, tightly enough that it pinched. "Stay with me for a bit? I—I don't really want to be alone right now." Naomi nodded, and Elena continued with a shaky exhale. "We'll need to call an emergency Grand Council meeting. And we'll need more search parties than just one group of scouts. And we—how did she even get a wand in the first place?" She stood sharply, her hands starting to slip out of Naomi's. "How do we know that she can't just make another new one—"
But Naomi followed her up, keeping her grip steady as an anchor. "Hey, hey, one thing at a time, okay? Shuriki's not here right now, so we have a moment to catch our breath."
"But—"
Mateo softly cleared his throat from a few columns down. He uncurled his fingers from around a handful of glittering shards—the obliterated remains of Shuriki's wand. "I can start looking into how she got this," he offered. "With the pieces, it shouldn't be too hard to trace their source."
"There, see?" Naomi said as Elena began to protest again. "Mateo's got it covered. How about you and I just start with getting cleaned up a little?"
They were a bit of a mess. Their festival dresses were rumpled and stained, and their hair had long since started to pull from their elaborate updos. Something dark smeared across Elena's forehead, either a smudge of dirt or a bruise, and Naomi was certain she had matching marks on her own face.
Elena looked between her and Mateo, and when he gave an encouraging nod, she let out another anxious sigh. "Okay, let's do that first."
"Great!" Naomi didn't waste any time ushering Elena toward the stairs, pausing just long enough at the bottom of the steps to cast an expression of silent gratitude back toward Mateo. He didn't look especially reassured, still loitering in a fog of melancholy, but the corner of his mouth twitched in acknowledgement before he turned back to his work, stuffing the crystal dust into the pockets of his robe.
The walk back to Elena's room was tense and quiet. They encountered few people in the halls, just a handful of palace staff that weren't out at the festival, and each time someone's footsteps drew near, Elena's body tightened more than an over-wound clock. Naomi kept a hand on her arm the entire way, squeezing every so often to bring her back to reality, but she was trying to patch a dam that was doomed to fail. She staved off the worst of it until they reached the room, and then another raw sob tore from Elena's throat as she collapsed onto her bed.
"How can she be back?" she wailed into the sheets. "She was dead! She fell off the bridge! I saw it!" Twisting around, she looked back at where Naomi was closing the door behind them, her eyes swollen and red. "You remember, right?"
Something sharp lodged in Naomi's chest. Now was probably not the best time to remind Elena that she hadn't actually been there that day. Instead, she let out a noncommittal noise, busying herself with the door and hoping the discomfort hadn't made it to her face.
"I just—I don't understand—" She drew a shuddering breath, and the misery on her face darkened into rage. "And how could anyone work with her? Victor used to be my friend, I don't get how he could ever—and he even dragged his daughter into it!" Suddenly standing again, Elena stalked around the edge of her bed, her hands balling into fists. "It's like every time things seem like they're getting better, someone has to ruin it! How is Avalor ever supposed to heal if there are so many people bent on making sure it never does? Ugh, I wish they would all just—"
Muffling a hoarse scream in her hands, she sank back onto the edge of her bed. The anger bled back out into despair, and she peeled her hands away from her face to stare blankly at the floor. Her ranting had pulled thick strands of hair loose from her bun, leaving them hanging around her like the world's saddest streamers, and tears, angry and bitter and grieving, clung to her cheeks.
Naomi carefully sat beside her, brushing a hand against her shoulder to get her attention, and then wrapped her arms around her. Elena leaned into the hug, burying her face in Naomi's shoulder and crying herself out for the second time that day. Any attempt at reassurance would sound empty, Naomi knew, so she just held her friend instead, listening as she tore her way through four plus decades of bottled up horror and resentment. Where her tears before had been distraught, now it all came out as fury, the kind that burned, venomous and caustic, as she spoke.
Fury at Shuriki, for the murder of her parents, for the tyranny over her people, for the indecency of refusing to stay dead.
Fury at the Delgados, for betraying her trust, for allying with a witch, for not staying out of Avalor when she gave them a second chance.
Fury at herself, for noticing too late, for trusting the wrong people, for not being strong enough to stop them all then and there.
The long shadows of sunset were stretching from the window by the time Elena had calmed down enough to pull away. She wiped her face off, sniffling and blinking rapidly. "I'll catch her," she concluded.
"We'll catch her," Naomi corrected. "We're all gonna help you."
Elena managed a weak smile against the exhaustion marring her features. "Thank you, but this is my responsibility." Glancing down at herself, she grimaced as if just noticing her appearance. "I'm… going to get changed."
She disappeared behind the screen further back in her room. Naomi let out a sigh she'd been holding in, quiet enough to not be heard over the rustle of clothes, and rubbed her hands against her face. Everything had gone so sideways so quickly. Her friends were hurt, her home was in danger, and she had no idea what to do about any of it. Still, she felt grimly vindicated; she'd been absolutely right about Rita all along, and if anyone had just listened to her…
No, that wasn't fair. The others saw no reason to mistrust her, and Naomi herself had doubted her own judgment for several weeks in the middle of Rita's stay. She could have been more forceful, she could have been more insistent, she could have gone to anyone earlier about her concerns, or to someone other than Elena when she wouldn't listen. If she could have only explained why Rita's overly-cheerful, sickening sweetness twisted so horribly in her gut, the familiarity of it reeking of betrayal from a mile away.
Heels clicking on the floor announced Elena's presence as she reemerged from behind the screen, back in her red dress and combing her hair out with her fingers. "I need to find my grandparents," she said. Her voice was still wobbly and thick, but she was comprehensible now, and she'd cleaned up the tear tracks. "And check in with the guys. And—well, I need to do a lot, actually." Grabbing a hair tie from a nearby vanity, she bundled her hair back into a ponytail. "Your things are still back there, too, if you wanna go ahead and change. I'm going to get going—if I don't work toward a mission right now I'm going to just sit down and start crying again, so…"
"Yeah, sure. I'll stick with you. Just gimme a second to change—"
"You can take your time. I'll be alright." She checked her ponytail one last time and paused by the door, her fingers on the knob. "Thank you for being here. And I'm sorry again for not listening to you earlier. None of this would've happened if I had just…" Her lip trembled again and she swallowed.
Somehow, the apology didn't feel as validating as it had earlier that afternoon. But Naomi plastered on a smile to mask the sinking guilt. "Hey, don't worry about it."
She waited until Elena's footsteps had receded out of earshot to cover her mouth and scream.
In a sharp contrast to the funeral march to Elena's room, Naomi's journey toward the barracks was bustling. Guards hurried back and forth in small teams, gathering together supplies and distributing them among patrol groups. The door to the stables had been propped open as they rushed in and out, and the occasional confused whinny cut over the chorus of commands being shouted down the line. Gabe must have mobilized the entire guard. Naomi had never seen them outfitted for a full mission before—it was uncanny to see them so uniformly serious.
She waved to catch the attention of a pair of guards sharpening their swords. "Hey, have any of you guys seen Ga—Captain Núñez?"
One inclined his head. "Grand Councilor. The captain is outside, preparing for the scouting mission."
Of course he was. It was just like him to throw himself into the heaviest of lifting. With a quick nod of thanks, Naomi squeezed through the doorway past another group of guards, thankful her day clothes were so much less unwieldy than the ruffles of her festival dress.
Seeking Gabe out hadn't been her first plan. She was going to go home and fill her parents in on everything that had happened, but got halfway through changing before she remembered the emergency council meeting Elena had mentioned and then failed to provide any details about. Presumably, Elena would send Armando or Private Higgins to find her when it came time for that, but there seemed little sense in going home just to come right back. And if she was going to loiter around the palace until then, then she had no reason to not follow Elena's lead in checking in on her other friends. Besides, she figured she might run into Elena again in passing, and could hopefully get the details about the imminent meeting in person.
Weaving between rows of guards, Naomi finally spotted Gabe by his horse, loading up one of its saddlebags and relaying a rapid set of orders to another guard nearby, who stood at attention. "Gabe!"
He lifted his head briefly and dismissed the other guard before turning fully to her, his expression serious. "Naomi, is everything okay? Did something happen?"
"You mean besides everything this afternoon? No." His face relaxed almost imperceptibly. "I was just checking in. Have you seen Elena?"
"She was here earlier. Don't worry; I assigned her a personal guard detail until Shuriki's been caught." That hadn't been why Naomi was asking, and knowing Elena, she probably wasn't pleased by the smothering, but Gabe continued before she could comment. "I'll lead that group myself once I get back, but right now I need to head this scouting mission. Shuriki can't have gotten too far yet—if we can just catch up to her—"
There was a familiar-sounding desperate edge to his voice, the very same one that Naomi had heard in Elena's voice earlier that day when she'd led them in a frantic and ill-timed chase of the sorceress. Naomi frowned. While eagerness was common enough for Gabe, sloppiness wasn't. Rushing headlong toward danger was more Elena's speed than his, although she had seen him get careless when someone else was in danger, and this definitely qualified.
"You're leading it yourself," she remarked. It wasn't a question, and judging by the way Gabe's face crumpled, he caught the underlying warning. Don't do anything reckless.
"I have to," he said. "You don't understand," he lowered his voice and leaned in, tapping a hand against his chest, "I'm the reason she got into the palace. I'm the Captain of the Guard. It's my job to make sure threats to the kingdom stay out, and if security was lax enough for Shuriki to get in, then that's on me."
Some vindictive part of Naomi wanted to agree with him. Shuriki hadn't exactly been inconspicuous, loitering around in a quiet part of the gardens in clothes far too dark and heavy for the spring air. Naomi had picked her out as unusual right away. But even then, her focus had been on Rita, not the people she was with. The gates had been open to all visitors, and 'unusual' wasn't a good enough reason to bar someone entry. Had she been anyone other than Shuriki, she would have had every right to be there. Gabe was no more to blame than Elena was.
Not to mention, Naomi never told him her suspicions about Rita until it was too late.
"You didn't know Shuriki was even still alive," Naomi reminded him, shoving the guilt to the back of her mind. "No one knew Shuriki was still alive."
"A royal guard is supposed to plan for every possibility."
She drew back, scrunching up her face. "How are you supposed to plan for things that are impossible?"
"I don't know!" He threw his hands up. "But I could've done something! I—" he sucked in a harsh breath and looked away, locking his jaw, "When we split up to investigate what Rita was doing, I passed by the treasury. The door had been blasted in and the guards stationed outside it were knocked out. And you and Elena could've been hurt if Elena hadn't broken Shuriki's wand." His face turned back toward her, his eyes despondent. "It doesn't matter if I couldn't have planned for this. People got hurt today on my watch. I can't let that happen again."
So it was some kind of penance, then. That didn't change the fact that it was reckless.
"So what exactly is your plan now?"
Gabe straightened up. "I'm going to take the scouting group to the edge of the jungle and start looking systematically from there. We'll find her."
"Okay, but what's your plan," Naomi repeated. "You always have one."
Something uncomfortable swept across his face, but he was spared having to answer when another guard rushed up to them.
"Captain, the scouts are ready to go."
"Right. Then we'll move out." He swung a foot up into the stirrup of Fuego's saddle and hoisted himself up, even as Naomi tried to protest again.
"Gabe—"
"I'll see you later. Stay safe, okay?"
"Gabe, don't you dare—"
He shouted a command to the other guards in the scouting group and tapped his heels against Fuego's sides, and before Naomi could challenge him a third time, they'd all taken off, galloping toward the bridge.
Naomi waved the kicked-up dust cloud away with a growl. So she was zero for two on getting her friends to listen to her. That was fine.
The main hall looked immaculate when Naomi passed back through. The columns were whole, the chandelier was suspended; she let out a low whistle at how pristine it all looked, as if there had never been a battle there at all. Mateo was getting good at this. Any trace amounts of rubble or dust were being swept away underfoot as festival-goers began to filter in, chatting amongst themselves and none the wiser that anything had happened. The only remaining signs of the conflict were the sour smell of Shuriki's magic that would only air out with time, and the distress Naomi knew was still on her face. She squeezed between guests and staff, sending an occasional tight smile toward those that tried to address her, and made her way upstairs.
The path to the library was quieter than the more trafficked areas of the palace, and it gave Naomi a chance to gather her thoughts again. Carla's masquerade as "Rita" had been targeted, and in hindsight, it made sense. Mateo's magic made him versatile, and he was inclined to trust anyone that showed him any amount of kindness. After her failure in exploiting Naomi, he would've made a much easier mark. And if Naomi was feeling guilty just from failing to speak up sooner, she could only imagine how he felt, having been the fulcrum on which Carla's plan hinged.
The temperature dropped abruptly as Naomi stepped into the library, and as she poked her head into the workshop, it wasn't hard to figure out why. The room was a mess. Frost crept up the side of the worktable, upon which sat the Codex Maru, cracked open with frayed edges of torn pages jutting out of it. The ice spread along the ground, leaving the floor gleaming and slick as it stretched toward the center of the room, where shards of glass and globs of potion residue turned the room especially treacherous.
For how quickly Mateo had cleaned up the main hall, he was patching up his workshop the old-fashioned way. He was crouched on the floor, delicately plucking larger chunks of glass from the mess and dropping them into a wastebasket he'd pulled up beside him. His back was to the door, so she couldn't see his face, but a thick sniffle made it obvious what she could expect to find.
"Mateo?" she tried, her voice soft so as to not startle him.
He flinched anyway, gasping and whipping his head toward the doorway. Sure enough, his eyes were wide and shiny, like he'd either been crying or was about to start. "Naomi, um, hi." He turned away again, hastily wiping his sleeve across his eyes.
Out of courtesy, Naomi turned away from him and went to examine the damaged Codex. "What happened in here?"
"Carla happened," he spat, pitching another glass shard into the bin. "When she took the key, she broke in and went through my potions. It's how she un-stoned Fiero, which I figured out when he showed up in here and tried to steal the Codex."
Naomi filed the information away, filling in the gaps of what had happened while she'd gone to warn Elena and while Gabe was stumbling across the broken treasury door. She hovered her fingers over the sheet of ice across the table, the chill seeping under skin even without direct contact. "You guys fought in here?" Glancing back at him, her face furrowed in concern. "Are you hurt?"
From the angle, she could see how drawn he looked. He shook his head, still not looking at her. "I'm fine." The way his grimace tightened whenever he drew too deep a breath said otherwise. As if the world wanted to spite him further, he overbalanced as he tried to grab an out of reach shard, and he tipped palm-first onto it instead with a startled gasp.
Naomi jolted from her spot by the table as he recoiled with a hiss, red welling up across his hand. "Mateo, are you—"
"I'm fine." Clutching his fist closed, he hauled himself to his feet. He rearranged his face into a tepid smile, like a half-hearted apology for snapping at her. "It's just a scratch. I'm fine."
It didn't sound any more convincing the third time around. Naomi stepped out of the way so he could grab a clean rag from a compartment in the worktable. He pressed the cloth to his injured hand and pressed his mouth into a hard line, staring down at the jagged seam where the freezing spell met stone.
"You need any help with anything?" Naomi offered. "Another set of hands might help with the cleanup, especially considering…" she nodded toward his own hand.
"I've got it," he said, sounding hoarse. Retrieving a small roll of gauze from the same compartment, he made to start securing the rag against his palm, but after a pair of false starts seemed to realize it would be a challenge one-handed. "Um, actually, could you…" he trailed off, turning toward her with his face tense from embarrassment.
"Oh, sure." And she took the gauze from him. She wrapped his hand in silence for a moment, unsure of how best to broach her own concerns, until Mateo spoke up again, in an even smaller voice than before.
"I can't believe I did that."
She glanced up at him. "What, fell into the glass you were cleaning up?"
"Fell for Carla's con." He sighed, wincing as she tugged the fabric more tightly around his palm. "I should have noticed that something was wrong. I should have at least noticed when she took the key! I can't believe I was so, so—" he swallowed, a tiny tremor in his voice, "—so stupid."
"You're not stupid," Naomi replied automatically. "You know you're not."
An almost imperceptible disappointment flickered behind his eyes, and he looked away stiffly, retrieving his bandaged hand. "Okay. Did you actually need something from me?"
His tone was sharper than she'd expected, and Naomi drew back, offense pinching in her chest. "I'm sorry, do you want me to leave?"
"Please," he responded, his voice tight. "It's not you," he quickly added, as if that made it any better, "it's just that I—look, I already had this conversation with Gabe and Elena, and I—I don't think I have it in me to do it a third time, so," he sniffed, thick and gross, and it hit Naomi just how close to tears he actually was. Alarm bells clanged in the back of her mind. Just what had the others said to him?
"What are you talking about?" she asked. "What conversation?"
"You know," he spread his hands, "the one where you tell me that it wasn't my fault, and she had us all fooled, and that no one really blames me."
He sounded sarcastic, and he also wasn't making sense. None of what he was saying sounded bad. Reassurance hardly warranted the attitude, and though he'd hit the nail on the head for what Naomi had planned to say, she still felt like they were having two separate discussions.
He took her dumbfounded expression as a cue to continue, something almost pleading in his eyes. "Unless you're here to skip the sympathy and just say what we're all really thinking."
Huffing, she crossed her arms. "Okay, I give up. What are we all really thinking?"
Mateo opened his mouth, closed it, and stared back at his hand, picking absently at the bandage across his palm. "That this is all my fault. That I should have known better. That my stupidity is causing nothing but problems."
Oh. Naomi's posture loosened, her face falling. She'd half expected something like this, after all. "None of us are thinking any of that," she promised. "We really aren't blaming you for this."
But rather than be pacified, Mateo drew his face up into a sardonic, bitter smile. "I thought I could at least count on you to be blunt."
He may as well have slapped her. Pity whiplashed into indignation as the accusation of dishonesty burned in her cheeks. Mateo started to turn away again in a retreat toward the back of the room, but Naomi swung around the other side of the table and cut him off. She jabbed a finger against his chest, boxing him in toward the potion shelf and trying not to notice how his eyebrows pinched together in anxiety and pain.
"You wanna know what's stupid?" she snapped. "What's stupid is that you think I have nothing better to do with my time than go out of my way to lie to you! What's stupid is that after all this time, you still trust me so little that you can't believe I might mean what I say!"
If she'd gone to him earlier, she wouldn't have been nearly so wound up, she knew. But after an afternoon of guilt festering in her stomach, swallowed down like bile because it had been more important to give her friends reassurance than seek it herself, Mateo's suggestion that she and the others were just being dishonest was the proverbial straw on the camel's back. Like he was the only one hurting. Like the rest of them just didn't care.
Mateo looked crestfallen, and he shook his head rapidly. "Of course not! That wasn't what I was trying to say—"
Naomi folded her arms. "Then what were you trying to say?"
He shrank back under her glare, but his voice only climbed in volume, a defensive edge to it. "I'm saying—all of you went out of your way to reassure me that no one blames me. But doesn't—" he swallowed, "—doesn't that mean you had to think I did something deserving of blame?"
"That's not—" Naomi let out a frustrated groan. "I didn't come here to reassure you; I came here to apologize!"
Blinking owlishly, Mateo straightened up, the fight draining out of him in an instant. "You—what?"
Her arms still crossed, Naomi gave an annoyed huff. "Do you really think you're the only person beating yourself up over this? Elena's mad at herself for not catching on to 'Rita', Gabe's mad at himself for not checking the festival guests enough—literally all of us could've done better these last few days."
Mateo still looked confused. "What do you have to be upset with yourself about? You're the one that actually knew that Rita was up to something."
"Yeah, for all the good that did. I didn't do anything about it until it was too late." Sighing, she let herself sag against the worktable, leaning on it with one hip. "I knew she was up to something from the start, but I gave up when I couldn't prove it, and by the time I made up my mind she'd already made her move."
She sank further in on herself, guilt welling up at the memory of what she'd seen 'Rita' do. She'd heard the overly saccharine praise, seen the way she'd roll her eyes the second Mateo had turned his back. "It was like the Beatríz thing all over again," she said. "I saw what she was doing to you, but I didn't say anything back then, and I didn't say anything now." She looked up to meet his eyes. "I'm sorry. For both times."
But Mateo had squeezed his eyes shut, his fingers digging into his arms. "I was trying so hard not to think about the Beatríz thing," he said, his voice brittle.
"Mateo—"
"I could've gone the rest of my life without thinking about the Beatríz thing."
Something in his tone told her that was exactly what he'd been thinking about, for all his effort not to. Where his face had softened during her admission of guilt, it was pulled taut again at the memories, and Naomi saw his lip tremble for a second before he spoke again.
"How did I fall for the same trick twice? You'd think after the first time around, I would've actually learned something! And—and even if I know it was Beatríz choosing to target me, or Carla choosing to target me, there—" he swallowed, "—there had to be a reason why they chose me, right? Do I—what, do I have a sign on my back that says 'con me, I'm gullible?'"
Letting out a sound part way between a bitter laugh and a hiccup, he thumped backward against the potion shelf and slid to the floor like he couldn't hold himself up anymore. He shuddered, either from the ice he was half sitting on or just from stress, and pressed a shaking hand to his mouth, sucking in another harsh breath.
And then, almost too soft to hear, "I think there's something wrong with me."
Naomi's heart clenched. Had the context been different, her gut reaction would have been to laugh it off with a scoffing "y'think?" She'd tease him a little, call him a dork or nerd, and they'd move on, leaving the air a bit lighter behind them. But Mateo sounded vulnerable and small, watching her with a look of abject misery. So instead she quickly sat opposite him, her back to the worktable, and bumped a foot against his. "Hey, there's nothing wrong with you, I promise. None of us think that."
Rather than look comforted, though, Mateo sniffled again, wrinkling his nose like he'd tasted something sour. "I'm not looking for reassurance. I'm looking for honesty."
"This is honest," Naomi retorted. "Do you seriously believe we think badly of you? Do you want me to sit here and insult you? Because I'm not going to," she quickly added as Mateo lifted his eyes.
He shook his head. "No, I just… I just want you to think about it for a minute. If there's anything you can think of that's—" He waved a hand, frustrated. "I don't know, maybe 'wrong' was the wrong word, but there has to be something, right? Because the alternative—" his voice caught again, "—the alternative is that I really am just an idiot, or that I'm just not trying hard enough. And I know that can't be it, because—" another shaky breath, "—because I'm trying as hard as I can and it's still not enough. It feels like there's always a joke I'm missing, like there's some big secret that everyone else is sharing and I'm the only one not in on it. And it was one thing when I was in school, when it was just Beatríz, but now other people are getting hurt because of it, and I—I don't know what to do."
He trailed off, tracing circles in the frost on the ground beside him. "I know you guys care," he concluded, sounding wobbly. "That's why I'm having a hard time believing that you're not just sparing my feelings."
Naomi opened her mouth to say something, but couldn't think of any kind of comfort that wouldn't sound like a platitude. Frustration flared in her stomach again. Her friends were hurting, and her friends were blaming themselves, and her friends still weren't listening to her, and she didn't know how to fix things, that desperate helplessness rendering her angry.
And then she took a deep breath, and swallowed the feeling. He wanted honesty? She could do that.
She considered him silently, running their years together in her mind. He was as easy to impress as he was to goad. He offered up his trust to anyone who showed him the bare minimum of decency. He spent half his time distracted by rules that didn't exist, and the other half focused on his work with such an intensity he'd forget to eat and sleep. He was a study in extremes—awkward and earnest and confusing and straightforward, all at once.
Mateo shifted, uneasy under the scrutiny. "Is—um, were you gonna say something?"
"You told me to think about it," she said. "So I'm thinking about it."
That alone seemed to banish some of his anxiety. Nodding, he straightened up, his eyes still glassy with unshed tears but far more alert.
"Okay, so," she took a breath, choosing her words carefully for once, "I don't always get what goes on in your head. There's stuff that you get upset by that I don't understand, and sometimes it does feel like we're having completely different conversations. And…" she paused, another brief pang of guilt shearing through her, "...you do tend to just go along with whatever anyone tells you. It's really nice of you, but I can kinda see how people like Carla might see you as an easy target."
He nodded again, solemn. "Okay."
"But that goes both ways," she went on, "because a lot of the time it just seems like you care a lot. About us, and about the kingdom, and about your magic—" She chuckled. "You don't really do things by halves, y'know? I dunno, maybe it's a wizard thing. But the point is that I don't think any of that stuff is really a problem, you're just…"
An ironic smile crept onto his face and he huffed out a laugh, sounding composed for the first time all evening. "Oh, please don't call me 'special,'" he said, rolling his eyes. "I haven't heard that one since primary school."
"I was gonna say 'different,'" Naomi muttered, her ears tingling.
"That's not much better."
"Well, you called yourself 'wrong' and somehow I don't think that's great, either!" She threw up a hand. "What word do you want me to use?"
Tapping his chin, he thought on it. His body had loosened dramatically, with his legs stretched out toward the worktable instead of drawn up to his chest, and his bandaged hand relaxed in his lap instead of digging into his arm. It was like some pressure had released, letting him unfold back into himself.
"Do you think I'm weird?" he finally asked, and Naomi had to laugh.
"Yeah, you're pretty weird," she stretched her own legs out alongside his, bumping them together, "but you're our weirdo. Wouldn't trade you for anything."
He let out a shuddering breath, and when he wiped his eyes again, they stayed dry. "Okay," he said, smiling, "then let's go with that."
So in case it hasn't been obvious thus far, the word Mateo is looking for is 'autistic.' I have no idea how common of a headcanon this actually is - I've seen a few people bring it up, but not a lot, and I'm not sure if that's because it's just not something people really think about, or if it's because it's one of those ideas that seems so obvious that it doesn't warrant mention. In either case, it's one of the very few headcanons I have that I treat as a constant across all my works, and it's one of the core ideas I've been specifically leaning on in this fic.
On that note, I feel like I should also clarify: obviously, there's nothing wrong w/ being autistic (hi, hello). But the thing that happens when you grow up autistic and undiagnosed is that you figure out pretty early on that there is something fundamentally Different about you compared to your peers. You don't talk like they do. You don't act like they do. You don't like the same things, you get upset by things that don't bother anyone else. But you don't have anything on paper to point to as a cause. It doesn't feel like there's a reason for you to be so Different. And whenever you try to bring it up with someone, they're always quick to assure you that no, don't worry, everyone struggles with that, you're perfectly normal, you're just like the rest of us. Never mind that the way you're normally treated makes it crystal clear that that's not the case.
So you start to wonder. Is it me? It must be me, right? I must just be stupid, or lazy, or naive, because there isn't any other reason I could be like this. And trying to articulate that when you don't have the right terminology is really, really difficult. In a way, it's a relief to finally hear that there's something wrong with you, not as an insult, but as an affirmation, to know that you haven't just been imagining it.
On a lighter note, that opening scene where the amigos all have a good cry together is actually a revised version of one of the scenes I submitted when I was applying to be in the Guiding Light Zine back in the day! Good times.