Once Upon A Song And Against All Odds (Coco AU)

|Chapter 2|

He was home again, in his own bed. Hector stared up at the ceiling with eyes still blurry from sleep. He could feel Imelda shift slightly beside him. Knowing she was there instantly put him at ease.

The room was warm, but a breeze came through the open window, so it was bearable. Cozy, even. Nothing like the horrible hotel rooms that he and Ernesto had stayed in during their tour, drafty and stuffy all at once.

Imelda mumbled something quietly and he turned his head. He couldn't see her face, but she sounded like she might be speaking to Coco. A few notes of a favored lullaby soon followed the whispered words.

For a brief moment, Hector wondered how he wouldn't have noticed the child climbing up into the bed with them (as she would have had to climb over him to do so) and almost dismissed it as his wife sleep-talking when- Oof-! A tiny, well placed kick hit him square in the ribs.

He winced audibly, now fully awake, and rolled onto his side so he was facing Imelda's side of the bed, blinking at the darkness. Once his eyes adjusted, he saw his wife looking at him almost apologetically. Socorro was snuggled close to her mother, just barely fallen asleep, by the looks of it.

"I'm sorry if I woke you. She couldn't sleep, so I brought her to bed with me." Imelda whispers, adjusting the little girl in her arms so they would both be more comfortable.

"A bad dream?" Hector replies softly. Imelda nods.

"You never came home. In her dream, that is. She worried that something was wrong."

Hector looks between them at his daughter and smiles sadly. To think that he worried her so badly..what a shameful papá he was turning out to be. He hated to imagine her little worried expression.

'I'm sorry, mija. I won't leave again, I promise.' He thought to himself.

"Was he angry with you?" Imelda's voice cuts through the quiet.

"Ernesto?"

"Sí." Hector moves closer, careful not to wake Coco as he does. The room seems suddenly darker. Clouds covering the moon, perhaps.

"Well I wouldn't say that he was exactly happy about me cutting the tour short in Mexico City. But I guess he didn't take it too badly?"

"Hector?" Imelda's tone has shifted slightly. She seems uneasy.

"Yes, my love?" Hector feels uneasy himself. Something doesn't seem right. He can't see anything anymore, but still attributes that to clouds, or perhaps a new moon. His wife takes a deep breath and lets it out before speaking.

"I want you to know that I'm not angry with you. For a time..when you first left..I was furious. But-.." Imelda's voice sounds different. Almost as if it were reaching his ears through a filter of some sort.

"Once your first letter came..how you spoke so dearly of coming home, you couldn't wait to be back..I knew that being angry with you was pointless. Your words told me that you could never abandon me. Or Coco. I knew you would come back to us..."

These last words fade away from him and suddenly Hector realizes that he isn't in his bed any longer. The warm mattress has turned to hard, cold dirt beneath him. He reaches an arm out and it hits a solid wall of earth in front of him. Hector's vision slowly returns to him and he finds himself lying in an open grave.

'What?! How- No. This isn't right..-' His thoughts are interrupted by an intense, stabbing pain in his stomach. Unable to stop himself, a cry escapes his lips, and he curls in on himself, hands pressed tightly against his abdomen. He feels like he's dying. Like something is trying to rip his guts apart from the inside.

As Hector rides out the wave of agony, he feels his stomach turn and quickly forces himself to his hands and knees before being violently sick in the dirt at the bottom of the grave. He grows dizzy at the sight of his own sick once he realizes that nothing but blood is wetting the soil beneath him. He touches his chin with one hand and goes limp upon seeing it stained red.

Too shocked to continue supporting himself, Rivera collapses into the dirt, falling first on his side and then rolling onto his back. He's shivering now, like it's the dead of winter and someone left him out in the cold.

He looks up to the sky and sees grey clouds above him outside the edges of the grave. Suddenly made too weak from the pain and loss of blood to climb out himself, Hector yells with every ounce of strength he has left in him.

"Help!! Please..- Somebody! Anyone, PLEASE!"

After some time, his pleading is met unexpectedly by footsteps from above. A swell of hope blooms in Hector's chest. A moment later he can see that those feet belong to none other than his best friend. Surely Ernesto had heard his cries and come to his rescue.

"Ernesto! Please, I need help! I..-I fell! I think-...Please. I'm hurt, mi amigo! I-..I think it's bad..something's wrong.." Talking is painful, and occasionally brings more blood flowing from his mouth, but he's so relieved that for a moment he doesn't care.

De La Cruz looks at the bottom of the open grave with a solemn expression, but doesn't respond. He doesn't even act like he heard Hector.

"Ow-..OW-!! Ernesto? 'Nesto, it's me!"

The pulsing of his stomach is bad enough now that it brings tears to his eyes, but really, who would be able to tell with the pouring rain.

'Since when is it raining?! Where did that come from??'

Squinting through the storm, Hector sees Ernesto's mouth moving, but can't hear what he's saying, or who he's speaking to.

'Sí. This is Señor Rivera.'

Lightning lights up the sky above him and for a split second, Hector gets a good look at himself. Gone is the beautiful golden suit that his wife had made specially for his performances. In it's place is a blue jacket in horrible condition and torn brown pants. These are not his clothes. He isn't even sure where they came from.

The rain picks up overhead. Hector notices that he isn't wearing a shirt under the jacket when he grasps at his abdomen as another pain rips through him. Another flash in the sky and he can see a pulsing black spot on his belly, and it spreads with each worsening throb from his insides.

"No- NO!!" Hector cries in shock, but he's abruptly pulled from his terror by being hit in the face by a slopping heap of muddy soil. He barely has time to react before being pelted by a second, and then a third. Rivera barely gets a chance to look up before the fourth shovelful hits him in the chest.

They were burying him alive!!

"Ernesto!! Please!! I'm alive-! I'M ALIVE! Tell him to stop! I need a hospital, not an undertaker!"

With the last of his strength, Hector reaches a hand up towards Ernesto. It turns to bones before his eyes. Hector screams in horror, and then faints.

Ernesto stares at the bottom of the grave as if nothing had happened. He makes the sign of the cross and then leaves the grave digger to his work. Hector lies still and unconscious as the man continues to bury him alive.