WHO: Matias Márquez → Marcos Diaz WHEN: Evening of March 14 WHERE: His apartment SUMMARY: Marcos goes and sees his ailing father and inspires Matias to call his own father. WARNINGS: Cancer. Probably incorrect, because I used Google translate, Spanish.
Marcos looked down at the bowl of cold soup in his hand, the spoon doing nothing but turning the contents in circles. As easy as breathing, he let his palm light, the heat resonating through the ceramic and heating the soup better than a microwave ever could have.
Below him, his father coughed, his gaze eyes opening to see the almost foreboding figure of his son at his bedside. "Is that… Marcos?"
"Sí, Papá."
"What do you want?" It didn't escape Marcos that he wouldn't look up at him. It could have been the illness just making him that weak. It could have been shame for the path he had forced his own child onto thanks to his anger and hate for what he was. Marcos doubted it was either of those things.
"They told me you came here to die." He continued to turn the spoon, but his eyes stayed focused on the dying man in front of him. "I remember when you wouldn't be caught dead dying in a place like this."
"Leave me be."
Marcos stared at his father for a breath, listening to him as he struggled to breath as he did, then set the bowl aside and reached for the chair nearest his bedside. There was still a chance this reunion could be salvaged somehow, even if he felt the probability growing smaller with every shared word. As he sat, he explained, "I made some calls. I can get you into a nicer place."
"You shouldn't have come."
Ignoring the admonishment, Marcos barrelled forward. "The cancer center in Bogotá has a specialist, the same one the president went to."
"You think I need your blood money?"
"I think you need my help."
Those were the words his father needed to find the energy to look at him, the same anger and fire in his eyes and the set of his jaw that Marcos remembered from the last time he had seen him. It was a look of repulsion, one born of ignorance and fear of what his son could do, what his son was. "You whore your demon powers to the cartel, then you come here and try to buy my love?" As his breathing became labored once more, Marcos got to his feet, his patience with this man gone. "Get out. You don't belong in the house of God."
"No, I don't belong, not like you." Despite himself, Marcos had to laugh. Who was this man? Why had he thought that his coming here would end in anything other than this exact conversation" "Un hijo de perra who abandons his son. What kind of man would do -- "
"I didn't abandon you. I gave you a choice."
"A choice?"
"The same choice your mother made."
"To hide her powers? To live a lie?" Marcos stood at the foot of his father's bed, looking away at the man wasting away before him in disbelief. "You drove her into an early grave."
"At least she never had to see what you became." His father paused, struggling once more to breathe as this conversation clearly too more out of him than Marcos had hoped it would. Again, he wondered why he had thought this may have gone any other way. "When I go to Heaven -- "
"Heaven?" Marcos interrupted, leaning forward to grip his hands around the frame at the foot of the bed. Had his anger not been what it was, he may have choked with laughter on the word. Had his disappointment when it came to his father not been what it was, he may not have taken such pleasure in the fear he saw in his father's eyes. "You might be able to fool the sisters, but we both know where you're heading."
Matias woke with a start, but it wasn't because of the anger and lingering disappointment that he still felt brewing in his mind thanks to Marcos, but instead had everything to do with the heat in his hands. He sat up quickly, the glow at his palms impossible to ignore, but luckily much easier to extinguish than it had been when the powers had first started to plague him just over a month before. The heat itself hadn't been uncomfortable, but enough to pull him from the sleep that he had apparently been in desperate need of; given the near constant state of tiredness that he existed in, this didn't surprise him too much.
Letting out a long-suffering sigh, Matias sat back in his desk chair and raised one of his now perfectly innocuous hands to push his fingers through his hair. He had seen bits and pieces of Marcos's life since he'd had the first rush of memories that had come with his powers -- an ability to absorb and manipulate photons, he had eventually come to understand. It all came together to equal a challenging life so unlike his own, but similar in other ways.
Matias had never been kicked out of his family home as Marcos had. Born to a pair of teenagers, he knew he could have had a much more difficult upbringing, but his parents had worked hard to provide for him, even after their own relationship fell apart not long after he came along. He was lucky and he knew it, especially as he relived Marcos's being expelled from his home and time spent living on the streets, only to get by on the graciousness of churches and kind strangers -- at least, until he became involved in the cartels. His life had changed then, though Matias couldn't say that it had been for the better; it was a situation he knew that he, Matias Márquez, would never have to stare down.
But while their lives were different, he could understand an contentious relationship with one's father. Though Marcos's was a whole different level than what Matias had grown up battling, their relationship was still a difficult one. Despite his academic and football successes, his father had always viewed him as a failure, as he hadn't followed in the footsteps that he had laid before him. Unwilling to budge or apologize for his choices, they had been at a standstill.
Matias's mind wandered to Marcos and how he had gone to his father's bedside, even knowing that he would be displeased to see him. Would something like that happen to his own father, would he treat Matias with the same coldness? His eyes drifted to his cell phone.
Before thinking about it too long, Matias snatched it up and went to the contacts. He listened as the connection was made, then one ring -- two rings -- and then finally a click as the other line was answered.
"Matias?" If he wasn't mistaken, he'd say there was actual hope, maybe even excitement in his father's tone. "Mi hijo, eres realmente tú?"
Slowly, tentatively, Matias started to smile. "Sí, Papá."