Summary: BUT-!

"I never really liked Esteban, anyway."

It wasn't entirely true. Naomi couldn't say that she'd ever been friends with the chancellor—former chancellor—but she'd at least developed an appreciation for his knowledge and expertise. Their relationship was a far cry from the early days on the Grand Council, where he took offense at her mere presence and she saw no value in his uppity standards. She may not have liked him, but she could respect him.

Rather, she thought she could respect him. That sense had been stripped down to nothing in record time the moment she'd learned of his betrayal the week before. The image was burned into her mind: Elena's eyes filling with livid tears, his name twisting from her mouth in a snarl, the whole room around them shuddering to life in a heavy orange haze. Naomi couldn't think of anything else to do at the time than to catch her friend in a bone-popping hug, like she could banish the hurt if she just squeezed hard enough, and Elena had screamed into her shoulder until the tidal wave of rage had passed and the world had spun itself to a stop.

That fury had simmered almost visibly under Elena's skin through the Grand Council meeting that followed, her voice hoarse and raw as she called for her cousin's exile. What else could Naomi do but agree? Anyone that would put her friend through that was not someone she wanted around, and if she had any doubt, the choked sorrow and anger in Luisa's voice as she agreed was enough to tip the scales irrevocably.

At least, that's what she told herself to justify her vote. But all that would have taken too long to explain, so instead, she went on, "He was a jerk from the start. I don't know why I didn't see this coming."

'Jerk' was the understatement of the century. It was better suited to someone that cheated at cards, not someone complicit in the assassination of their own family. Gabe seemed to gather what she was going for by the venom in her tone, though, and he nodded sagely beside her on the sofa.

"Yeah, he always seemed like he had an agenda. I wanted to believe that all his bossing Elena around was just concern for her safety, but…" He leaned back, crossing his arms. "I guess his family's safety wasn't really that high on his priority list."

His disgust was audible, and Naomi felt bolstered in her criticism. Guilt went down easier when she knew someone else was on her side. "I know, right? Did you see the look on his grandparents' faces when he tried to excuse himself? The look on Elena's face?" She stuck her chin out, wrinkling her nose. "If I could've voted twice, I would've. I can't understand how he could've just helped Shuriki like that."

"I don't understand how anyone could do something like that. I'm not sure I get how Francisco could've forgiven him so easily, either. He's not my grandson, so maybe that makes a difference, but if you ask me, what he did is pretty unforgivable."

"Awful," Naomi agreed. "I can't believe I ever trusted him."

The thud of a book landing hard on the table startled the two out of their conversation, and Naomi turned her head to find herself looking up at an irate Mateo.

"Sorry to interrupt, but would you two mind taking this conversation literally anywhere else?" he said, his voice climbing in volume so that it echoed across the cavernous ceiling.

Gabe and Naomi shared a look. "Are we in your way?" Gabe asked.

Mateo spread his arms, gesturing incredulously around them. "You're in my room!"

"And?"

He let out a frustrated sound and turned to Naomi, swinging his arms toward Gabe as if to say 'can you believe this?'

She shrugged. "This is one of our usual meeting places."

"I live here! Ugh, forget it!" He stalked away and sat down heavily on the other curved sofa, grabbing another book from the precarious stack he'd built up on the floor. Flipping it open, he made a show of ignoring them, though his bouncing leg betrayed his agitation.

Gabe pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. "Look, Esteban's betrayal affects all of us. Naomi and I thought it would be good for us to talk about it without having to talk over his actual family. Sorry for thinking you would want to be a part of that conversation."

Mateo snorted, a harsh, sarcastic sound, but didn't raise his head. "Believe it or not, I have better things to do with my time than gossip about Elena's family behind her back."

"Not like we can gossip in front of her back," Naomi muttered. "Not unless we want her to get all orange and floaty again."

Mateo snapped his book shut and tossed it aside almost carelessly. "Well, some of us are trying to figure out how to help with the whole 'orange and floaty' thing," he said, making quotes in the air. He reached for a new book, shooting her and Gabe another glare. "So if you don't mind…"

"Don't try to act like you're the only one here that cares about Elena," Gabe retorted. "We're all trying to help her."

"Oh yeah? And what are you planning to do next time she can't calm down?"

Gabe opened his mouth, and then closed it, turning away with his face twisted in irritation.

There wasn't much he and Naomi could do. Elena's new magic was terrifying. A force of nature, untameable and unpredictable, it leached into the air and clung to every surface before spinning into a roulette of effects. It wasn't so bad when Elena was happy, trailing a carpet of flowers behind her as she walked, but those moments had been few and far between the last week, understandably so. It had to be even worse for Elena herself, to either be barred from her feelings so as to prevent collateral or to watch them spiral out of her control in ways she neither wanted nor helped her stay calm. It was a miracle no one had been hurt yet, with just some close calls on Carnaval.

But hoping for Elena to keep constantly calm was both unsustainable and unfair. They needed a better way to handle the actual magic as it happened.

Mateo huffed out a breath through his nose as neither of them could form a response. "That's what I thought." He stood up again to sort through the stack of books, dividing it into haphazard, meaningless piles. He was barely even looking at them as he set them aside, just shuffling around the center of his room like his aggravated energy had nowhere else to go. "Anyway, since talking about Esteban is the fastest way to make Elena's magic kick in, I was planning on just not talking about Esteban."

"What, ever? I don't think Elena's magic gives her super-hearing," Naomi said.

"Do you really not have anything to say about this?" Gabe asked. "Esteban actually seemed to like you; I thought you'd have some feelings about it." He leaned forward so his elbows were resting on his thighs, his face drawn and serious. "How are you not bothered by this?"

"Not bother—do you really think I'm not angry with him?" Mateo snapped, finally looking up. "I'm furious with him! The fact that he hurt Elena is enough of a reason on its own, but in case you forgot, my family was directly affected by what he helped Shuriki do. My abuelo had to leave because of what he did. My mom had to grow up without him—I never even got to meet him." He faced Naomi, his glare softening into something pained. "And I know at least one of you knows how that last one feels."

She bit her lip, sinking in on herself. She and Mateo had never directly discussed the similarities in their grandfathers' stories, but the comparison wasn't lost on her. When she first heard the tale as a child, she'd shaken her tiny fists and cried for the man she would never meet, her anger at the injustice of it all too big for her body. But sirenas were a faraway thing of fantasy until Nueva Vista, where their mere presence sent a renewed fury slicing through her, as raw and exposed as ripped stitches. How dare anyone ask her to trust them, she'd thought. To think Mateo wouldn't be upset now was an unfair accusation.

Mateo sighed, his anger bleeding out into a quiet bitterness as he continued. "The fact that Esteban had a part in all that, that he knew this entire time…" He crossed his arms over his stomach, squeezing like he was hugging himself. "It's awful. I feel sick just thinking about it. And it almost makes it worse that he 'liked' me—it just makes me wonder if he was only being nice because he felt guilty, or because he was trying to make sure I never suspected him."

"For what it's worth," Naomi said, "I never got that impression." She'd heard the way Esteban talked about Mateo during council meetings. He spoke with a genuine respect, if not for Mateo, then at least for his skill, that left Naomi feeling jealous and alienated. Esteban was never one to hide when he disapproved. "I know it doesn't change what he did, but I do think he really did just like you. I don't think he was trying to get you 'on his side' or anything."

Rather than seem reassured, though, that at least the duplicity didn't run that deep, Mateo's face crumpled further, his features riddled with fear and guilt. "Well, he wouldn't have needed to anyway," he admitted, his voice actually trembling, "because I kind of am on his side."

It took a second for the words to process.

"What?" Naomi blurted, sitting bolt upright.

"You can't be serious," Gabe said. "After everything we were just talking about?!" There was an edge to his voice, and when he stood sharply, hands clenched, Mateo stumbled backward, almost tripping up the steps with his palms out in front of him and his eyes wide and fearful. The tension dropped from Gabe's body in an instant. "Mateo, I'm not gonna…" His voice was low, and careful, and hurt. "Just what do you take me for?"

"No, I—I know, I just—" His hands were shaking, and he crossed his arms again to tuck them away, though this did nothing to hide the audible strain as he spoke. "You guys were saying you don't know how anyone could go along with something like that, and how anyone who would must just be—" He swallowed. "But. I think I—I think I get it." It came out in a whisper, like a confession.

"I've been there. I know what it's like to feel lonely, and ignored, and desperate to do anything to change it. And I can't help but think if—what if—what would I have—"

Oh.

"Alright, just stop," Gabe said, sounding annoyed again, though he kept his posture deliberately loose. "That's completely different. You wouldn't have helped Shuriki. None of us think you would've done that."

But Mateo shook his head. "When Sofia showed up at my house, I didn't question it. I was fully prepared to help her with everything she was saying, and it never occurred to me that she could just be lying."

"She… wasn't lying, though," Naomi pointed out. "I get what you're saying, but helping Sofia was very much the right thing to do. You can't really compare helping her to helping Shuriki."

"I don't think you do get what I'm saying! We were lucky that Sofia was the good guy!"

"Yeah, because a ten year old girl is really the picture of villainy."

A frustrated noise crawled out of his throat. "Then what about the Rita thing? I was willing to believe anything she told me just because she was paying attention to me!"

"Carla fooled all of us with that act," Gabe cut in. "That wasn't anyone's fault but hers."

"Naomi knew something was wrong!"

Naomi flushed, suddenly feeling put on-the-spot. Her goal with investigating "Rita" hadn't been to make her friends look bad. "That's still different!" she insisted. "Mateo, we've talked about this. We didn't know for sure that she was doing anything wrong until—"

"I was gonna break her into the treasury!"

Silence hung over the room, broken by Mateo's heavy breathing and the soft fwump of the couch cushions as Gabe sat back down hard.

A shaky laugh wrung its way out of Mateo's mouth and he dug his fingers in where he was gripping his arms. "It's not like I can pretend I didn't know what I was doing," he croaked. "Regardless of what I thought of Rita, I knew deep down that doing that for her was wrong, but when she said she wanted to see it, I just—" He squeezed his eyes shut and took another shuddering breath. "I just wanted to feel like—I just…"

Gabe softly cleared his throat beside her, and Naomi turned to look at him. He was drumming his fingers against his thigh, looking uncomfortable, and he tilted his head almost imperceptibly toward Mateo and shrugged, a silent what do we do now? As if Naomi knew. She shrugged back.

"That's still different," Gabe finally said. "Breaking into the treasury to impress someone isn't exactly the same as overthrowing the entire kingdom."

"We're not gonna hate you for that," Naomi added. Count on Mateo to beat himself up over hypotheticals. "You didn't know she was working for Shuriki."

"You guys are still missing the point. I'm not looking for reassurance. I know that you guys don't blame me for anything that happened with Rita. I know that there's a pretty big difference between Shuriki and Sofia. I don't need you to tell me that I didn't do anything wrong; I need to know if you would've thought differently of me if I had."

Naomi and Gabe didn't answer, just sharing another look, and Mateo continued quietly.

"Because if the answer is 'yes', then, well," he choked on another bitter laugh, "I'm not sure I can believe that you guys don't blame me for 'almost'. And if the answer is 'no', then…" He glanced between them, something pleading in his eyes. "I don't understand how we can hate Esteban for doing the same thing."

Naomi wanted to protest again, but the words died on her tongue, swallowed by a surge of guilt. It was still different, she wanted to insist, but any reasons she could come up with felt shallow. Because Mateo was her friend? The absence of that didn't justify hatred. Because Esteban was rude? It wasn't like Mateo didn't have his moments (or Naomi herself, for that matter). Because of the scale of the offense? If Mateo had actually let Carla into the treasury, Shuriki would've come back to power that much earlier.

"Esteban knew what Shuriki was planning to do," Gabe said, but he sounded much more hesitant than before. Naomi clung to the reason anyway, one last rationale to justify everything she'd said earlier. "He knew that people were going to get hurt if he helped her."

Mateo frowned. "Do we know that?"

Gabe opened his mouth to reply, but said nothing, just sinking back against the sofa with his arms crossed and his features pulled into a grimace.

The full-bodied shakiness that had gripped Mateo while he was trying to argue had run its course, and his posture wilted, exhaustion seeping into his frame. "Look, I'm not trying to say we need to be okay with what he did—I'm not okay with what he did. I'm angry, and I want answers, and I want Elena to be okay. But I understand why he might have done it, and I just can't bring myself to hate him for it. Hearing you guys talk like that was the only option, though," he shook his head with a pained noise, "it just made me really uncomfortable. For a lot of reasons."

They sat for a moment in the following quiet, processing his words, and Naomi stewed, the discomfort creeping up her spine. Before she could stop herself, she blurted into the dead air, "I don't actually think Esteban should've been exiled." She met Mateo's surprised expression, and she could feel Gabe's eyes on her as well as she went on in a rush, feeling the coil of guilt loosen in her stomach as she did.

"I know how awful it is to not have a home, and I wouldn't wanna wish that on anybody, but you weren't there during the trial. You didn't hear—Elena and Luisa were so upset, and if I'd voted against it, it would've been a tie, and I don't know what would've happened then, and—" she swallowed, ashamed of how her voice was starting to wobble, "—and he wasn't even sorry! He went on and on about how outcast and invisible he felt, and believe me, I know exactly how that feels. He made me feel like that all the time! But it was like he cared more about that than the fact that people were dead because of him!"

She let out a slow breath, clutching at her skirt and staring at her knees. "So it was easier to not think about it, and vote to have him exiled. I don't really hate him, but in the moment… I didn't know what to feel."

Gabe watched her as she trailed off. "I don't think he should've been exiled, either," he said, speaking with measured caution, "but from the practical standpoint that he's more of a threat to the kingdom running around out there than he is locked up in here."

"Gabe—" Mateo started, but Gabe cut him off with a raised hand.

"You got to say your bit. Let me say mine." Mateo closed his mouth, and Gabe gave him a quick nod of acknowledgement before continuing. "I understand what you're saying, but I don't think I can completely agree with you. The stuff with Shuriki isn't even my biggest concern: it's everything he was willing to do to escape the consequences of that. It's wondering how much longer he was planning to lie, or how many people he was prepared to manipulate, or how many malvagos he'd be willing to team up with if it meant keeping that secret. He's been willing to work with enemies of the kingdom before, and he's willing to work with enemies of the kingdom now, and that makes it my job to apprehend him.

"Maybe he was just a scared and lonely kid back then that didn't understand what he was signing up for, and I feel for him if that was the case, but now he doesn't have any excuse. He's knowingly working with Ash Delgado, and that makes him a threat to the Crown Princess, her family, and her friends. There's no telling what he could do if we leave him unchecked. As Captain of the Guard, I have a duty to bring him in. And as Elena's friend," he added, more softly, "I don't think it's our place to try and forgive him."

"I wasn't trying to say that," Mateo quickly said, and Naomi shook her head in agreement.

"I know that. I just wanted to mention it."

Ultimately, Esteban's fate was going to come down to Elena's choice. The three of them wouldn't get a say in it. They weren't his family, and they could barely be called his friends, and though the ripples of his actions had touched them all, it was Elena who had to deal with all their grief and then some.

"What do you guys think is gonna happen now?" Naomi asked as Mateo sat back down.

"I don't know," he said, casting his eyes toward his scattered spellbooks. "Helping Elena with her new magic is something tangible that I can do, so I'm going to focus on that. If that means helping her catch Esteban, then… that means helping her catch Esteban."

"I have the guard tracking him and Ash as closely as we can," Gabe said. "So we're just waiting on a better lead, and hoping they don't make any dangerous moves in the meantime."

Naomi nodded stiffly. So they all just had to bide their time, then. It felt eerily similar to when Shuriki was at large, leaving everyone jumpy and ready to fight at the slightest provocation, with no idea when or where the next attack would be coming from. And just like when Shuriki was at large, Naomi felt useless, with little she could personally do to help other than encourage her friends not to overdo it and vote in council decisions that flipped her opinion as much as her stomach.

Whatever was coming next, they would just have to hope they were ready.

A lonely and isolated teenage boy teams up with a magical, foreign royal and helps her overthrow the Avaloran government. He ends up working for the new regime as one of the ruler's closest advisors.

Am I talking about Esteban or Mateo?

I just think it's really interesting that Mateo is basically the only member of the main cast where we know absolutely nothing about his thoughts on the Esteban Situation. Like, don't get me wrong, we don't exactly get a lot for any characters that aren't Elena (understandably so - it's her show, after all), but we can at least make some inferences about say, Gabe and Naomi's opinions based on their reactions during the trial scene, or Isabel's opinions based on her behavior in "Dreamcatchers". When it comes to Mateo? The best we've got is a few moments of him trying to push Elena to focus on Ash instead, and that could just as easily be him finally learning how to prioritize. And given the parallels in their respective backstories, well. I just think that's interesting.