Shuriki x Esteban Requests

Winter Rose

Day after day, year after year, Esteban never told anyone he'd loved Shuriki. Admitting to such feelings, especially so soon after Elena, Isa and the abuelos had taken him back into the fold, surely would have been a death sentence.

So he hid his grief, mourned Shuriki's death in secret, to avoid causing rifts in-between himself and his family. He loved them all, but none of them would understand. He felt torn.

Shuriki had indeed committed a horrid crime by killing his relatives. Everyone in Avalor had called her a monster, but she wasn't the evil, heartless creature they'd believed her to be.

Esteban had seen a side of Shuriki that no one else had in despite of her best efforts to keep him at arm's length all throughout her reign.

Shuriki's delusions of grandeur, vanity, ill temper, paranoia, anxiety, inability to take responsibility for her words and acts, and sensitivity to noise were really symptoms of a long suffering illness of the mind. An illness no one could defeat - at least not alone - and he'd tried.

Esteban had done his best to get close to Shuriki, but she'd refused to let him. Getting in her head was simple enough, but she'd been too afraid and angry to allow him into her heart. She had been a human being with all the wants, needs, dreams, hopes, and fears natural to and expected of any real person despite what she'd said and done.

Which was exactly why Esteban made Shuriki an ofrenda every year for Dia de los Muertos. He'd wait until his family was busy with their own ofrendas then quietly sneak away to an uninhabited part of Avalor's old cemetery.

There hadn't been anything left of the sorceress after her battle with Elena in Nueva Vista, so he'd built Shuriki a vault from unused bricks where he'd hide and place the alter each year.

Esteban decorated said ofrenda with the strange flowers she'd brought with her from her home in the Northern Islands.

The winter roses looked as if they'd been forged from volcanic glass and crystal. They came in multiple colors: ivory, ebony, gray, cream, frost blue, and emerald green. The thorns growing along the stems of the roses made the flowers beautiful to look at, but painful to touch, much like the woman who'd loved them. Shuriki had ordered him to have an entire wall of them planted in the royal gardens.

Elena had ordered all the roses ripped out once she'd taken back the palace, but he'd salvaged a few of each color before replanting them in a secret section of the garden Shuriki herself had forged and hidden with her magic. He was grateful the spells were still in place after her death or he wouldn't have had any roses for her alter.

Esteban placed paella, gazpacho, vino blanco, pan dulce, torrijas and tsokolate there as well since they'd been her favorites.

"I'm so sorry..." he whispered kneeling in front of the alter.

Esteban bowed his head and recited a prayer then looked up at the portrait of Shuriki he'd set up. "I brought you here to Avalor. You were my responsibility. I should've told them the truth. I'm just as much at fault for it all as you. Tio Raul and Tia Lucia may have died by your hand, but I...I gave you the keys to the kingdom by letting you into the palace. We're both to blame for everything, yet you bore the brunt of everyone's wrath. I never wanted you or anyone else to be hurt. Shuriki, why did you go back on your word? If you'd only kept your promise..."

There was no point in holding onto his anger. Esteban had known she couldn't have changed even if she'd wanted to. He sighed. "I miss you. I shouldn't...but I do."

He gave a mirthless laugh. "I know why the frost blue roses were your favorite now. Why you used to tuck them in my coat when you had me accompany you to celebrations and public events. You were well aware of my feelings for you. The flowers...it was your subtle way of telling me I never stood a chance. You were the one thing I wanted, but could never have. Truly unattainable."