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dragoneyes618 · 9 months

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Ernesto de la Cruz, as evident by his immediate and complete acceptance of Miguel as his great-great-grandson, had quite a few girlfriends when he was alive.

It did not start only once he gained fame and fortune on the body of his best friend, though. Even back in Santa Cecilia, he was quite the ladies' man.

As was only to be expected, one young woman - the only child of doting parents who had had her late in life - approached him soon after their affair had ended with the news that she was carrying his child, and that they had to marry to spare her honor.

Of course, Ernesto refused. He had big plans, and couldn't be tied down by a wife and child. (He could never understand why it didn't seem to bother Héctor.) Maybe he was nice about it and gave her some money. Maybe he just laughed at her. The end result was the same: the young woman - Victoria, her name was - left alone and with child.

So, what did she do? She dared not admit what she had done even to her parents, who, as their only child born when they had nearly given up hope, would have forgiven her anything. Instead, she told them she was going to visit a distant relative in Mexico City, and instead went to the orphanage the next town over.

It's not like this had never been done before. She would live there for the next few months, helping out with the children, the cleaning, the cooking, the sewing - all the work that came along with a few sisters raising three dozen children as well as they could - and, once she gave birth, she would leave her child there, and go home like nothing had happened.

In due time, she gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl.

She named the boy Julio, because she'd always liked that name.

She named the girl Rosa, after her mother. Her mother was still alive, but she knew her children would never be able to meet her parents, that they would never even know her, and she wanted them to at least have this.

On their birth certificates, she wrote down their full names, giving them her own surname, and she wrote her name, as well as the name of their father. The name meant nothing to anyone outside Santa Cecilia then, but she wrote it anyway, because it was true. Just in case Ernesto changed his mind. (He wouldn't.)

Then she went back home and went on with her life, gently spurning all offers of courtship, unable to leave behind the images of the wailing babies she'd left in that orphanages.

About five years later, she grew ill - with influenza, pneumonia, it doesn't matter. She grew ill, and worsened, and died, and left her grieving parents to bury their daughter.

Before she died, she confessed to her parents and the priest administering the last rites that she had borne twin children out of wedlock, and had left them in an orphanage in a town close by.

She died, and her parents buried her, and grieved.

Then they traveled to the orphanage and told them that their grandchildren were here, and they had come to claim them.

Things were very lax back then. They didn't need proof, didn't need any documents. All they had to say was who they were, their daughter's name, and the names she had told them she had given her children, and the people running the orphanage said "That sounds right, nice to meet you, here they are."

Little Julio and Rosa were shy and uncertain at first, but their newfound grandparents were kind to them, and raised them just as if they had been their own children. They gave them both individualized attention, which had been hard to come by in the orphanage. They told them stories and taught them new things and comforted them when they had nightmares and told them about their mother.

To differentiate young Rosa from her namesake, they called her Rosita, and the name stuck, even after the first Rosa was long in the Land of the Dead.

As they grew older, Rosita helped her grandmother around the house, while Julio helped his grandfather - his name was Alberto - in the small upholstery shop he had that supported their little family.

Then one day, Julio met a young woman named Coco in the plaza, and his life changed.

Julio's grandparents were overjoyed to see him in love, to see him settle down and be happy. Elderly, they died only a short while after the wedding, and Coco helped Julio through his grief. None of the Riveras wanted Rosita to be alone, so she was invited to move in with them and join the workshop, and she happily accepted.

Neither of them ever knew the identity of their father. They had no reason to. They never had cause to look at their birth certificates. They'd never known him, and he hadn't wanted to know them. They had their grandparents, and that was all they'd ever needed. They felt like they were missing nothing.

The years passed, and Rosita and then Julio died. More years passed, and Miguel got cursed.

In the year following, Miguel suddenly developed an extensive interest in family history and would spend hours going through old papers. Héctor's letters proved that he had written the songs, but having more than just the letters, the importance of them unknown until now, would help. Maybe a journal, maybe more letters, something.

Miguel wanted to find out as much as he could about Héctor, too, to ensure that the true Héctor Rivera would never be forgotten.

Also, he was worried that maybe the family had somehow forgotten someone else, and wanted to make sure they knew of everybody.

The Riveras lived in the same house that Imelda and Héctor had scrambled to put together money for all those years ago, adding on rooms as the family grew. If not for that, many of the crucial papers - Héctor's letters first and foremost - may have been scattered in different households across Santa Cecilia, or even destroyed entirely, their importance unknown. Having only one house to search makes it much easier. Not easy, but easier.

Miguel finds Héctor and Imelda's marriage certificate, and Coco's baptism certificate, and her and Julio's wedding certificate (the one documenting the union of Elena López Rivera and Franco Rivera Rojas is in a drawer in their bedroom, and so is Luisa and Enrique's, and Carmen and Berto have theirs pinned to the wall), and birth and death and baptism and communion certificates for all the older, deceased generation of Riveras, the ones who have no need of any of them anymore.

And he finds a birth certificate for Papá Julio, and another for Tía Rosita, naming them as twins, born illegitimately to Victoria López Hernández and Ernesto de la Cruz.

To say Miguel has an identity crisis is an understatement.

He was devastated when he thought he was the descendant of a murderer, and overjoyed to find he was Héctor's descendant instead. All of his love and admiration for de la Cruz has curdled into hatred, the love passed on to his great-great-grandfather, the musical genius and, more importantly, the loving father.

Now he finds out that not only is he the great-great-grandson of Ernesto de la Cruz after all, but he's descended from both of them - one great-great-grandfather killed his other one.

He begins to worry that he's going to be like Ernesto. What if he, one day, lies and steals for music? He's already lied to his family and stolen a guitar for music. What if one day he kills for music? How can he be sure that his musical talent is inherited from Héctor and not Ernesto? Because he doesn't want anything of Ernesto's, not anymore.

Elena takes personal offense to finding out that she's the granddaughter of the good-for-nothing musician who probably (nothing has been proven, it's too long ago for that, but it's all very suspicious) murdered her other good-for-nothing grandfather (said in completely different tones of voice; Elena is the only one allowed to insult Héctor, you see).

The Riveras were abruptly plunged into national scrutiny after Héctor's letters were published; the media has a field day with the news that most of them are descended from Ernesto.

Miguel writes a long letter - multiple long letters - about his feelings about all this, and leave it on the ofrenda at the next Day of the Dead, along with the offending birth certificates. Actually, with all the papers belonging to the dead Riveras, in case they want them. But Julio's and Rosita's birth certificates are at the top.

So the dead Riveras get home after the holiday is over, and they go through all the things Miguel left them, and Héctor reads the letters Miguel wrote to him.

Now Julio (and Rosita, to a lesser extent, but she's not the one who married the child of the man her father murdered) has a bit of an identity crisis.

His father caused his wife (and her mother) so much pain. How is he supposed to live (well, not live, but you know what I mean) with that? His father killed her father.

He and Coco have a lot of long talks about this.

Coco doesn't blame him or his sister, of course; neither does the rest of the family. The only change comes in the way Julio thinks the rest of the family is now thinking about him. He was always more on the timid side; it takes literal years before he stops calling Héctor Señor Rivera. Now he's sure that Imelda and Héctor hold his father's crimes against him. It takes a surprisingly gentle talk from his in-laws to get him to surpass that.

"So, ah..." Héctor hesitates afterwards, not having felt this awkward since his first few weeks with the family. "You remember, the trial and everything, I testified, I'm the "principal victim" and all that...I could probably arrange for you to visit him, if you wanted...."

Julio and Rosita look at each other, and shake their heads in unison. "No," they say at once.

"No," Julio says again. "I don't. We don't." He squeezes his sister's hand of bones in one hand, his wife's in the other.

Oscar stirs. "Hey, so....Ernesto's blessing would've worked with Miguel after all."

Felipe, of all people, hushes him. "Not now, hermano."

Victoria takes up Héctor's offer to arrange a visit with de la Cruz, though.

"What?" she asks, daring anyone to question her. "He's my grandfather too."

Any suspicion of sentimentality is immediately discarded when Victoria walks into the visiting room, boot already at the ready, hits him once, and walks right back out again.

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