The lone statue

[Marta]

Marta wished the stranger a Merry Christmas as well and then Matias showed up. Marta knew Ricky well enough to know that his mind was probably going fast. She noticed the tension in his body and was fairly surprised his hand hadn't gone towards the gun she knew he had at his waist. She approach and put a hand on Ricky's shoulder to calm him down.

Marta nodded. "I do. Ricky, this is Matias. He's cool." she said, hoping that should Matias give his full name, Ricky would understand. "Matias, this is Ricky. My guardian." That should hopefully alleviate Matias anxiety, which she could smell as much as Ricky's tension.

Marta looked between the men - all of them likely protective people. It amazed her how many good people she was finding - especially now that she was opening up more. Splash came and sat down beside her, and Marta realized that since she had spoken to the stranger, her hand was no longer on Splash's handle.

Marta turned back to Ricky. "Matias and I met when I had religious Ed at St. Basil's. We talked a bit about faith," Marta said, giving more to alleviate Ricky. Granted, Ricky generally trusted her judgment. She turned to Matias, a light smile on her face. "So you see, I'm quite safe, and as you know, Christmas is a Holy Day of Obligation. Where else would I be but at Mass?"

[Jensen James]

Jensen had almost reached the street when he heard a man call out in Spanish. He paused, turning just enough to see Marta being approached by a dark-haired stranger. The man’s stride was steady and deliberate that it was almost intense in his approach. The guardian beside her stiffened, and Jensen’s instinct sharpened in response.

He lingered near the gate, half-turned as if admiring the angel statue, but his eyes stayed them. Marta’s hand rested calmly on her guardian’s shoulder, her posture easy. Whatever tension had sparked seemed to settle under her steady voice. Still, Jensen couldn’t quite bring himself to leave.

Matias, she’d called him. Jensen felt a strange pull, a resonance he couldn’t explain. Not danger, exactly. Just… recognition.

[Matías]

Matías’s relief came like a tide retreating. Marta’s composure and the calm way she reassured her guardian eased the tension that had crept up his spine the moment he’d seen her surrounded by men in the dark. He’d seen too many bad nights start with less. Least of which for young girls circled by wolves.

He nodded once, the gesture small but genuine. “I’m glad to see you’re well, Marta,” he said, his voice a low baritone softened by their shared language. “And in good company, it seems.”

Turning toward the man she called Ricky, Matías extended a hand. “Matías Amengual,” he offered. His tone was steady and polite, meant to sound like nothing more than a regular introduction. Still, part of him tensed, as he always did when the name left his mouth.

[Enrique]

Ricky relaxed as Marta told him that she had met. Her statement that he was "cool" spoke well to that. Ricky trusted her judgement on most people. Her wolf senses gave her an intuition into people. She could smell if people were good or bad - mostly anyways. But the tension returned quickly as the man offered his introduction and offered his hand.

Amengual.

That name brought the tension back immediately. The Amegual Cartel was no more, and even if it wasn't the Amenguals that Ricky had rescued Marta from, they still had perpetuated the circumstances that had led to her kidnapping and enslavement. Ricky had grown up in Texas, but had lived most of his adult life in Mexico, and he had watched them destroy lives and families. Ricky's movement was slight - a step back to solidify his stance as he turned his gaze to Matias' hand. He felt his jaw clench in anger and his hands ball into fists. The only thing that kept him from going for the revolver he carried was Marta. She was here - and he wouldn't let her see him do it, but backing off wasn't happening easily.

[Marta]

Matias introduced himself and she noticed the change in Ricky immediately - in both his scent and stance. She saw him become tense, saw his jaw and hands clench. Marta saw him look at Matias' hand, disdain in his gaze. She watched as he looked up to meet Matias' gaze, anger in his eyes. His scent was full of anger. Ricky was close to blowing. She had to stop this before it started. At the very least it was only her, Ricky, Matias, the stranger, and the silent one behind the fence. This could be worse, although not by much.

"Ricky..." she said, her voice twinged with anxiety. Ricky didn't move. Marta increased her volume. "Ricky! I'm thirteen - don't make me be the adult here!"

That did it. Ricky shifted, turning to face her. His gaze softened even as the tension still coiled in him body like a spring. "Marta this..."

"I know who he is, Ricky." she interrupted. "He's not one of them. Not anymore."

Ricky looked at her, his eyes stunned. She had never spoken to him like this. Her breathing began to quicken as she turned to look at the statue. Memories began to flood into her. The needle scars on her forearms began to burn. Her hands rubbed at them in an attempt to dissipate the phantom pain. She was drawn out of her thoughts as a weight leaned against her leg. She looked down to see Splash there, responding to her emotional state. Marta put a hand on her head. Her scars still burned, and her face did as well. She wiped her cheeks to find tears there. She had started crying.

Marta looked back up at the statue, gathering her courage. She knew what she had to do and she would need her courage. She turned back to face the men, looking at each one individually, including the silent and hidden one in their midst, all looking at her. Marta had told the stranger the angel in the statue was a healer. Tonight - on the night they celebrated the birth of the one who would redeem mankind - the angels would witness the healing of a soul. Maybe even two. But it would hurt. God, it would hurt.

Marta took a step forward towards Matias, facing the memories of her past in earnest. One hand held on to Splash's vest, the other still remained on her forearm. She began to speak, her voice quiet but full of authority. "Matias, your family has done some very bad things. Things that can never be erased," she passed Ricky then, who placed a hand on her shoulder in a protective gesture. She pushed it away gently. She wasn't angry at Ricky - he still saw Matias as a threat to her.

She took another step, holding back tears by sheer will even as they continued to gather in her eyes. "I may not have been hurt directly by them, but I know first hand what they did to those like me. Marta was standing in front of him, within reach. "But I see you. I see your regret. I see you trying - trying to make amends. I see you looking for redemption. True repentance." She looked down, letting out some softly choked sobs. "I can't speak for other victims. I can only speak for myself, but I..."

The tears could no longer be contained. She squeezed her eyes shut and wiped them away, feeling as she did the dark contact lenses in her eyes shift. More sobs broke the quiet. She knew what would happen when she opened her eyes. The lenses would fall out, and they would see. They would all see. But she had to do it. She had to look Matias in the eyes as she said her next words. He had to know she meant them. She opened her eyes. Her vision was blurry for a second as she blinked and the contacts fell out.

Marta looked up, her lupine eyes meeting Matias'. "I forgive you. My forgiveness is yours - if you will accept it." Even the wind seemed to silence then as she waited. Hoping he would accept and that his healing could begin. Hoping that he wasn't scared of her now that he had seen the golden eyes. Hoping that he knew her words for the truth they were. Even as she was afraid, she felt the pain in her diminish and the burning track marks receded. Her hand dropped to her side.

[Matías]

He watched the tears trace paths down her cheeks, saw the involuntary, frantic rub of her hands against her forearms. A visceral, horrifying display of phantom pain that he knew meant something far worse than a simple bruise. A physical manifestation of the crimes his lineage had sanctioned, facilitated, and profited from. The crimes he, by his presence alone, had implicitly condoned. He’d hadn’t turned many weapons for the cartel, never been the architect of a bloody scheme, but he hadn't stopped it, either. Silence, in the face of such monstrous cruelty, was its own kind of blood.

His own hands, gloved and still, felt suddenly heavy and useless. He didn't flinch, didn't move to defend himself, didn't offer the shallow platitude of an excuse. He just listened, remaining entirely focused on her.

Her forgiveness struck him with the force of a physical blow not that she was forgiving the cartel’s atrocities, but that she was focusing that raw, agonizing grace upon him. Upon Matías, the man who had done nothing more than exist in the periphery of that sin. He felt the immense, almost crippling weight of it, recognizing the truth he had read in the stories of his family's faith: forgiveness was not a gift to the recipient, but a liberation for the one who offered it. A severance of the chain that bound her to the bitterness, the pain, and the memory. She was releasing her own spirit, and in doing so, offering him a chance at breath he hadn't earned.

"And I accept it:" spoken as if an unbreakable contract was struck. A slow, deliberate nod settled upon him. His jaw remained taut, but his eyes softened with a genuine, profound sorrow and respect. He couldn’t speak the words of apology that had been stuck in his throat for years. They felt cheap, inadequate for the scope of the harm. But he could accept the gift. He would accept the freedom she was granting herself, and the impossible mercy she was extending to him.

He reached out a gloved hand, not to touch her, but a slight, almost imperceptible gesture of acknowledgement toward the pain on her forearm. Wishing he could do something to take that pain away, but he was proud that she could use it. Transform that pain into determination. Then, he let it fall back to his side, letting her keep her space, her power, her moment.

He had not made his peace with his past. Not truly. That was a mountain he would have to climb alone, for years. But for Marta, right now, he could simply be the landing point for her grace.

As the heavy emotion of the moment settled, and the silence stretched tight, his focus shifted. It was a faint, almost subconscious shift, pulled by an unseen tether.

He lifted his gaze past the small group, past the statue of the silent angel, and caught the eye of the man who had lingered by the gate.

The air around the other man seemed thin and distorted, as if the cold night air was a pane of glass reflecting an impossible geometry. The sight flared, not with the heat of a warning, but the cold clarity of a pattern. He saw this stranger, but then saw echoes layered on top of the physical man: armored, a messenger standing resolute against an impossible surge; as a quiet, caring father, his hands gentle; as a fractured mirror, each piece showing a different life, a different path, all leading back to this single, quiet man in the shadows of a Moscow church.

Matías didn't see him as a threat, not in the direct, physical sense. There was no malevolence in the stare, only a strange, open curiosity, an unsettling quietude that seemed to absorb the entire scene without comment. But the prophetic echo was vast. A great, complicated tapestry of pivotal roles. This man, the one who had simply left a moment ago, was many things, and all of them were threads that would weave into Matías’s own future, and perhaps the future of others in this cold, alien place. The stranger’s quiet watchfulness felt like the turning of a great, invisible wheel.

Matías simply returned the stare, his face unreadable, his mind reeling with the silent, complex visions the sight was showing him. He saw a hundred possibilities, but no clear purpose. Just the man who previous walked away, was somehow still here, and was fundamental to all of them.

“Are you alright, sir?”

[Jensen James]

The name Amengual had already frozen Jensen to the gate. He watched the girl, Marta, wrench a tearful absolution from her own memory, offering a piece of her soul to a man who shared a bloody surname. The sight was enough to keep him tethered, immobile.

He had lived the nightmare the name represented. Not as a victim, but as a horrified witness to that of Jay Carpenter, ground to dust by the cartel’s relentless, casual cruelty. The memory was not a fading scar, but an active, searing image burned onto his mind’s eye. The blood and the silence, the horrifying efficiency of the slaughter. It was like it was happening again, right there in the churchyard.

Beneath the familiar layer of  disgust, a new, colder emotion surfaced, coiling and tightening in his gut like an anchor chain dropped into the dark. It was fear. Not the terror of being harmed, but the dread of seeing the past and the things he thought left behind resurface, untouchable. He couldn't move. He only stared.
Then, they turned.

Matías Amengual’s eyes, deep-set and intense, snapped toward him. The other man looked at Jensen, and in that gaze, Jensen felt the chill of an impossible recognition. A flicker of something more than just sight, as if Amengual wasn't just seeing him, but the consequences of him.

He pushed off the cold iron gate and started forward. His steps crunched on the icy pavement. He gave Marta and the protective guardian, Ricky, a passing regard, but he stopped just short of Amengual.

“I was there,” he announced, his voice steady, stripped bare of its gentle drawl. “I know what the cartel did to Jay Carpenter.”

The declaration felt like a challenge, a throwing down of a gauntlet he hadn't planned to touch, but it wasn’t. He didn’t recognize Amengual as a killer, and he didn't seek revenge against this specific man. He sought an accounting for the lineage, perhaps, or merely an explanation for the profound, unsettling echo he sensed between them. What did he need from this exchange? He couldn't say.