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The lighter clicked twice before sparking. Deimos hunched over in the alley behind a building, shielding the flame from the wind. The cigarette caught, a thin red glow blooming at the tip. He took a long drag and held it. For a second, it was like pressing pause.
Noise blurred in the background. Gunfire, grunts, incoherent shouting somewhere in a gravel-dragged voice.
But Deimos didn’t care. He blew smoke into the stale air and looked at the sky, that washed-out Nevadan red. It didn’t feel like home. It never had.
He didn’t know what home was supposed to feel like, not really.
“¿Qué estás haciendo aquí?” his mother’s voice echoed in his head. He hadn't heard it in years, but sometimes it rang louder than the gunshots.
What are you doing here?
The answer had changed a hundred times. Now, it was simple.
Trying not to think.
His fingers played with the black chain around his neck, half-hidden under his hoodie. A cross hung from it, dulled and scratched. His mom had given it to him before he left.
Not left like went to the store. Left like disappeared. Ran away.
She had cried. He hadn’t. He didn’t cry anymore.
...
"Deimos!" Sanford’s voice snapped him out of it.
Deimos flicked the cigarette away. “Yeah?”
Sanford popped around the corner, gun in hand, sweat streaking his face. “We got a situation. You good?”
Deimos hesitated.
“Yeah. Just.. needed a minute.”
Sanford didn’t press. He never did. That’s what Deimos liked about him. They fought together, bled together. You didn’t need to spill your guts to earn trust here—you just needed to survive.
Later that night, Deimos sat on the hideout roof with an unopened beer and a cigarette half-burned between his lips. His hoodie was unzipped. The cross hung visible now, and with it, the memories.
Growing up, he’d hated speaking Spanish in public. Hated how teachers mispronounced his last name. Hated how white kids mimicked his accent whenever he slipped. He’d erased pieces of himself one by one, like scraping stickers off an old laptop.
Even now, he barely spoke the language. Could understand it fine. But speak it? It felt too.. raw. Too close to something he'd buried.
He remembered his abuela's kitchen, warm and loud, full of love and soap operas. She used to call him 'mijito'. Her voice had love in it, even when she yelled.
She’d died before he could say goodbye.
That guilt gnawed at him more than the people he’d killed.
In this world, the violence made sense.
The past didn’t.
“Should I have stayed?” he whispered to the beer in his hand.
Would he have been an electrician like his tío? Married someone local, had kids, grown fat and bored and old? Would he still have all his teeth?
He laughed bitterly.
This world had given him purpose, sure. But it had taken things too. His identity had become.. liquid. Undefined. Redacted.
“Deimos” wasn’t a name from his heritage. It was a code name. An erasure. A rewrite.
He didn’t even remember the last time someone said his real name.
He looked at the cross again. Was it hypocritical to wear it when he hadn’t prayed in years? When he’d blown up more buildings than he could count?
But it was the last thing she’d given him. It smelled faintly like her perfume, if he held it close enough and imagined hard enough. It was stupid. Sentimental. But he needed it.
Footsteps scraped behind him.
Sanford again. Holding two beers this time.
“Thought you might want company,” he said, sitting beside Deimos.
Deimos gave him a tired smile. “You psychic?”
“Just read you like a book, man.”
They sat in silence. Crickets buzzed. Somewhere far off, a chopper flew low.
“Was thinking about home,” Deimos said finally.
Sanford cracked his beer. “You mean Mexico?”
Deimos flinched a little. “Yeah.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
Deimos shrugged. “Not really. But also… yeah.”
Sanford didn’t say anything. Just waited.
Deimos pulled his hoodie tighter. “I feel like I lost it. Like.. it was mine once, you know? The food, the music, the way my mom said my name. And I let it all rot. On purpose.”
“You were a kid.”
“I could’ve kept it. Spoken more Spanish. Called home. Worn my flag like a badge instead of hiding it.”
He lit another cigarette with shaking hands.
Sanford watched the smoke curl. “Maybe. But I don’t think it’s gone.”
Deimos scoffed. “Feels gone.”
Sanford pointed at the cross.
“..You still wear that.”
Deimos looked down.
“Means something, right? Even if you don't pray. Even if you don't talk about it. You're still carrying it.”
He wanted to believe that. Wanted to believe his bloodline wasn’t just some footnote on a file or a half deleted memory in his head.
“I can’t go back,” Deimos whispered.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t carry it forward.”
They drank in silence again.
Deimos thought of his mom’s voice.
Her smile. The smell of her cooking on Sundays.
He whispered something under his breath.
''Gracias, mamá.''
Maybe she couldn’t hear it. Maybe it didn’t matter.
But it made him feel whole for a second.
Just one second.
And that was enough.