#reader is latina from an alternate latine reality

[victorian-platence]

As the months creep into each other, Yuri starts letting you out of his sight more often. Not without watching you closely with SSS equipment unlawfully focused on you, but he just can't keep watching you waste away just in case you try sonething dangerous. At this point, if you decide to embark in treasonous business he will just make sure to stop you himself and do away with the evidence.

There's no particular reason for that.

You start dancing lessons because you miss dancing. You don't much like ostanian dances but you like your dance teacher. You tell Yuri all about how pretty she is, how strong her hands are when she guides you. Yuri sort of wants to have a little less than kind chat with her. But he doesn't. Partly due to a lack of opportunity and partly because you would go back to wasting away if he ruined this for you. He can't bring himself to.

Yuri also starts babysitting his niece more often. At first he keeps telling you about how she is the dumbest kid in the world. Then, slowly, he starts comparing her to Yor when she was a kid, and starts having short bursts of tenderness towards the kid. By the time he notices, he is already bringing her cookies and complaining about (but still watching) the spy propaganda she calls her favourite show. You want to meet the kid. Because she looks adorable in pictures and because you know she drives Yuri crazy and you want to high five her, befriend her maybe, plot against Yuri...

In any case, one unremarkable day, Yuri asks you about home.

He says "How was it? Your home I mean" you give a sigh, assaulted by a thousand memories of sunny days, cracked veredas, dirty streets and clean streets and trees lining all the sidewalks. You think about tilos, pines and jacarandás, lilac and magestic. You think about beaches and mountain lakes, you think about cumbias, reggaetons, traps, ballenatos, bachatas and you think about La gozadera. It tugs a teary smile out of you. There is so much you love and hate about home. You love the people, you hate the people, you despise the goverment, you love the biomes, you hate the sexist boys of when you were growing up, you love the women who enpowered you to want better, god, you miss the food.

"It was beautiful. The skies were always blue, except when it rained, obviously, but here it's almost always rainy or cloudy. Back home the skies were azure and spring smelt like life. I remember it better before the dictatorship. We used to go out clubbing with my friends, not that often cause we were all broke, but we would drink vodka and twerk all night, and go home clutching our keys between our fingers. We stopped going to parties when the dictatorship started. There were still a few, you know, but it became too risky."

"What's twerking?" You blush and give a little high pitched laugh.

"Uh, haha, its a sort of dance. You probably wouldn't like it. Reminds me of my best friend, she was the best dancer and the best friend I could ask for, she was really good at belly dancing, she tried to teach me but I never got past the basics. I hope she still sneaks around to parties, she always tried to get me to go with her, but I never dared. I'd do anything to have gone at least once, to listen to her screaming at me to divorce the movement of my hips from my torso. Did you know she's the one who taught me how to make coffee with spices? I feel so lost without her," you hang your head, spread the palm of your hand over your face. "she was bit like my mum." Yuri doesn't know what to say, so he goes for the first thing he picks out from your diatrive.

"I thought you didn't get along with your mum."

"We were complicated I guess. My mum grew up in the dictatorship before mine. She was obsessed with being descreet, with being so thin she'd disappear in the shadows, so perfect no one would question her. She tried to make me like that, partly because I never thought I would live through what she lived throuh but I don't think anyone could iron me straight. And by god she tried. My mum and my best friend, they were both obsessed with cleaning and perfect things. But my friend understood that I would never be perfect and still loved me. My mum, she could never accept me, but that's okay, because she would call me her 'bebita', her tiny big bebita and she would hug me very close when I cried. I wish I had told her something like 'te quiero mucho, mamita' the last time I went out her door. She must be so heartbroken to have lost yet another part of the family. " Yuri ponders about the families he has separated in the same way yours has been.

Finally he just says:

"I never really knew my parents. My sister raised me and she worked herself bloody at butchery to keep me fed and clothed and if I somehow found myself somewhere where I knew she didn't exist, I think I too would be heartbroken."

"Sometimes I wonder if I'm alive. Do you?" And Yuri thinks you are. You are the most alive thing in his house. You scream, you sing and cry and laugh and gather cats like a cat siren and you make so much noise it's impossible to confuse you for anything other than a living, breathing being.

"You are."

"I didn't mean me."

"Then, sometimes, I guess."

Yuri feels human when you get into this conersations.

"Yuri, I want to go out." You say, and your eyes say please, don't keep me prisoner. Yuri doesn't stand a chance.

"Get changed, I didn't want to cook anyways."

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