Twilight: The Man of La Mancha [ Once Upon a Time in Mexico ]
Collection Title: Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Author: Zee
Piece Title: The Man of La Mancha
Fandom: Twilight
For: Prompt claim at twilight20
Prompt: Hero
Characters/Ships: Maria
Word Count: 2,153
Spoilers: None.
Rating: G/PG
Fanfiction.net: Here.
Summary: It was not Don Quixote, Sancho Panzo, nor her father who showed Maria that a human could be decent.
Notes: For the prompt Hero and claim of Maria at twilight20.
Disclaimer: I own neither Maria nor the Twilight series as I am not Stephenie Meyer. For if I were, I would be rich and happy and not the poor, poor college student that I am today.
Maria had been exactly ten years old when her abuela had passed away. Nine decades later, she regarded the death as inconsequential-just one more death among the thousands she had seen and helped facilitate during her century of “living” in eternity-but at the time it had been anything but. At the time, Maria had been devastated, because her abuela had raised her in the absence of her mother, and her father, the typical, rich, abusive, Spanish intendant, was only tolerable when he wasn’t present at all.
At ten years old, she had had no reason to believe that she would outlive eternity and, one day, come to see human life for what it really was; nothing but a falling grain of sand in an hourglass so large that no one granule would ever be missed. At the time, she had still had the naïveté to believe that the loss of life was something grievous and inconsolable instead of something so natural that breathing paled in comparison. Even now, nearly a century later, Maria could still remember what she had felt at her abuela’s funeral; a deep, aching sorrow that she had never felt since.
After her abuela’s death, even locked doors couldn’t stop her father from stumbling in, whip in hand, and blaming her for something she had not done. According to his slurred Spanish, she had broken the dinnerware or had forgotten to clean the house again or had become a whore and was generally a disgrace to him and his entire family, which she was most certainly never going to be a proper member of. It was the last bit that always weighed her stomach down with that cold, leaden feeling, because it was the only time that Maria could see the glimpse of clarity and truth in her father’s otherwise glazed and drunken eyes. The words that would never touch his lips-the accusation that she was the reason her mother was no longer living- were the words that Maria could read in his eyes on those nights, and it was only after he had retreated, leaving her to nurse the lashes across her arms and legs, that she realized just what her abuela had been for her.
While her abuela had been alive, her father had scarcely been in the house. He had always claimed that business kept him away, but Maria knew better; she knew that her grandmother’s persistent beliefs in ancestral spirits and old Aztec Gods, despite her forced conversion to the Catholic faith, terrified him more than he ever cared to admit. After her abuela’s death, he had thrown out all of the physical remnants of her grandmother’s Aztec heritage, except for a small gold medallion that Maria had stolen. The medallion had the Aztec sun god Huitzilopochtli-whom, her grandmother had always told her, her mother had gone to after dying in child birth-engraved on it, although much of the face had smoothed out due to her abuela’s constant rubbing.
That small token of a fraction of her heritage aside, Maria was never again allowed to mention the Aztecs or the old Gods-or even her abuela, for that matter. But for all of her father’s destructive habits and forced removal of the only part of her family heritage Maria had ever really cared for, he could never destroy her memories or the knowledge that people like him-and there seemed to be so many of them surrounding her-were not the redeeming components of the human race.
///
It was nearly two years after her abuela’s death that Maria found it. Stacked on a book shelf that her father never used, wedged between administrative tomes that he had never read, sat an old, battered copy of Don Quixote de La Mancha. A sharp and inquisitive twelve year old who had long since mastered advanced Spanish and English novels, Maria could, nonetheless, remember no book that she had loved as much as Don Quixote. It had been her abuela’s book, so she was surprised that her father hadn’t thrown it out with the rest of her belongings-although she guessed that that had less to do with his fondness for books and more his general disinterest towards them. Most likely, her father hadn’t touched the book at all and her abuela had placed it back on the shelf weeks before her death.
Maria slid out the thick work, wincing as the pages crackled under her touch, and examined the faded cover nostalgically. The same, absentminded knight was still staring back at her and although, at one point, this would have annoyed her, now the image simply served as a bittersweet reminder that the quixotic never had been and never would be anything more than naïve fools.
Turning the pages of the old text, she recalled the many nights when her abuela would beckon her to come to her room and snuggle close under the covers. These were usually the nights when her father was out indefinitely, because he wouldn’t come home and take his frustration and anger at Maria’s abuela out on Maria herself afterward.
“Venga aquí, Maria,” her abuela would call to her, beckoning her to come into the room. Maria would happily oblige because for all of the disappointing people she had encountered in her small world, her abuela was not one of them. “Do you want to read about Don Quixote de La Mancha?”
Maria would always reply, “Sí, abuela”, not because she had a particular interest in the absentminded, bumbling fool, but because her abuela did and that was all that really mattered at the time.
“Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing,” Maria’s abuela would begin reading and Maria herself would sit perfectly still from that point on. Her abuela’s voice was soft yet strong and every time Maria’s mind began to wander, because the man of La Mancha was, in her young opinion, a complete idiot, her abuela’s inflection on a particular word or character voice on another would firmly guide her attention back.
“Abuela,” Maria had said once, “Don Quixote es un tonto. He is easily misled and tricked. A complete fool. How can he be the hero of any story?”
Her abuela had smiled down at her, her eyes crinkling at the corners, before saying, “He is a hero because he believes in people and the world, mi tesoro.
“What is there to believe in?” Maria had asked in return and even though she was only ten years old at the time, she noticed how sad her grandmother’s eyes grew at the question.
Maria’s abuela marked the page they had been on with a bookmark and sat the book down on the side table before beckoning Maria to come closer.
“Come here, Maria,” her abuela said and although Maria was at just the age where she was too old to be crawling into her grandmother’s lap, she did so anyway.
“Abuela?” Maria looked up at her questioningly after she had settled close to her under the warm covers.
“Mi tesoro, there is so much to believe in. Why would you ask such a question?” her abuela’s voice came softly, tinged with a sadness that Maria rarely heard there.
Maria squirmed uncomfortably at the foreign tone, feeling as though she had violated a sacred trust with her grandmother or that she had, at least, played a part in disappointing her. She would have taken back the entire sentiment if it had not been for her abuela’s hand stroking through her hair. Somehow the gesture calmed her, as it always did, because it was always in such little gestures and phrases that her abuela showed her that she would always love and never judge.
“Las personas son débiles, abuela (People are weak, grandmother),” Maria replied, her hands twisting the old Indian quilt as she spoke.
“Cómo?” her abuela asked, placing a finger firmly under Maria’s chin and tilting her head up so that she could look more clearly into her granddaughter’s eyes.
“They-” Maria hesitated, unsure, for a moment, whether telling the truth or telling a lie would be better. Lies were so much weaker, yet so much more comfortable and convenient for both parties involved. But how could she lie when both the presence and absence of her own father showed her how very weak humans could be? “The Don Quixotes of the world will always fall victim to the greed and selfishness of the Sancho Panzos. Alonso Quixano es un hombre estúpido. (Alonso Quixano is a stupid man.) For trusting someone who could not care less.”
“But there are always more Alonso Quixanos in the world than Sancho Panzos, Maria,” her abuela said sternly.
Maria said nothing, but the steely look in her eyes belied the fact that her grandmother’s words were nothing more than idealistic notions to her.
“Not every human is like your padre,” her abuela’s expression and voice softened. She let go of Maria’s chin and turned her face, but Maria could see what was written there very clearly. “He is in the minority, little one. Most are like your mother, caring and sweet.”
“Mi madre no está aquí, abuela (My mother is not here, grandmother),” Maria replied and even she was surprised by how hard her voice sounded for one as young as she was.
Maria’s grandmother shook her head slowly, eyes becoming slightly unfocused as she seemed to concentrate on someone and some time long ago.
“No, no lo es. But where she is, we will both go to one day if we are deserving.”
The young girl shot her grandmother a curious look. It took a minute, but Maria’s abuela shook her head and smiled again. She ran her hand through the girl’s hair once more before adding, softly,
“Con nuestra verdadera dioses. (With our true gods.) Not the Christian one.”
A chill ran down Maria’s spine as she thought of the implications of those words. Although she had seen pictures of Huitzilopochtli, the concept of the sun god was grander and far vaster than anything she could have traced in one of her abuela’s old books. For all of the Catholic beliefs her father had tried to instill in her from an early age, she had never quite feared the singular Christian God, nor believed in him for that matter, so much as she had the ancient, forgotten Aztec one. What she saw when she traced pictures of Huitzilopochtli was something akin to truth; a belief in a great power that could dwarf human will in the fires of the sun. Perhaps that was why her father was always so frightened of her grandmother’s artifacts - perhaps he too realized the truth in those inky black lines and cold, fiery eyes.
“En quién confiar, entonces? (Who to trust then?)” Maria finally asked, setting Huitzilopochtli aside for someone who was far more important and far more tangible.
“Trust in me, mi tresoro,” Maria’s abuela replied after a brief silence. She smiled kindly and leaned forward to give her granddaughter a loving kiss on her forehead. Then she settled back and opened Don Quixote again, this time on Maria’s lap, and began reading where she had left off.
Maria settled against her grandmother, actually listening to the story this time. She listened as Alonso Quixano lost himself in his own delusions, chasing after a character and version of himself that had never and would never truly exist. She listened as Quixano, now Don Quixote, freed slave boys and battled with traders over imaginary duchesses and fell deeper and deeper into his own brand of madness. And, of course, she listened as Sancho Panzo, his supposed friend, did exactly what he had to do to gain, while leaving the quixotic, fool of an old man in a pool of melancholy so deep that it left him completely broken.
She would trust her abuela, the only one to ever prove worthy of such a thing, for two more years; until she too left Maria behind. Then, the young Mexican girl would find that the only person she could ever truly trust was herself-and even then, sparingly.
///
It would take her a decade or two or more or less than a full century before she would eventually realize that it was not Don Quixote nor Sancho Panzo nor, certainly, her father who had shown her that a human being could be decent, but her abuela. Unfortunately, she would also realize that there were not nearly enough humans like her abuela to account for the ones like her father. So a century later, Maria strived to change the nature of the human race entirely.