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The first few years were turbulence and moonshine. Makeshift households with make-due manners, Sebastián was far from blessed. And though these days his mind has woken to allow him recollection too far back into his bloodlines, Sebastián has always understood that memory was not a matter of what happened but how you react to it. So, he keeps his cool, moves on like some scorned boy over unrequited love and he builds castles rather than mountains. Memorials, to ignore the asterisks of all that was.
Lucita was there before Anaya and Elmer's fight even began. For all intents and purposes: she was the first mother he ever knew. Though cold and a perfectionist of the highest regard, Lucita knew how to rear a child. Even bastard children of stupid mistakes that could have ruined careers; and it did, or would have, if not for Anaya's desire to step down and out of any measures of limelight once her money had been made. Child star into teen actress, Anaya wanted just a little while longer to cement herself before it all finished going to Hell in a handbasket.
Sebastián remembers the first pregnancy, then the second. He remembers how slowly it built and became a family. There were articles and interviews they'd kept from him, until the introduction of their entire clan, the explanation: it all seems like a far off dream to everyone involved now. The admittance of an affair, the saintly grace of the wife, the beloved smile of the grandmother. And little Sebastián whose mother was buried and gone but had left so much in his face — all she'd had, really, after having run away from home so young and never looking back. An almost perfect family.
For most of it, Abuela Luci was matron saint of the household. Father gone on tour, or filming, and mother studying to work her way into becoming a lawyer left all three children underneath the thumb of the perfectionist. They spent their years traveling between seasons, splitting time between Miami and Puerto Rico, and early on enough it became a matter of the entire family together, throwing trips to Mexico into the mix. Home schooling was the choice because of it, keeping the questions minimal from who would be classmates; it made his siblings and cousins his own best friends and Sebastián learned to live off that. After all, there were plenty of ways to meet people elsewise.
It wasn't a lack of social skills that lead to music. Sebastián actually always found himself thrust into the middle of basketball games, stick ball runs and soccer through the streets. It wasn't even a matter of drive from his father, because Elmer could have done without any of his children ever having to live the odd life of an entertainer. It was just what happened, one day: Sebastián heard Isabella's grandmother playing a song and it stuck with him. The next day, he walked into his father's music room, picked up the guitar, and tried to find the notes to the song. Within an hour he was playing it himself and his cousin, Isabella, had wandered in to sing along to it. In a matter of weeks, they'd already learned and rehearsed a few songs to play for the family.
So it was like a nose dive into something, which became the habit of a lifetime. Nothing easy, nothing slow; if it was worth doing, Sebastián found himself drowning in it before long. From songwriting to love life, the whole of youth was spent in a plummet. From the first songs they wrote, simple lyrics with a simple melody, to the first performance on a radio station, their recording contract and eventually their smash debut, it has been nothing but head rush after sky rocket. Life itself never seemed to falter or lack much, even in Sebastián's youth, however; he could weave together enough fantasy from what he managed with friends and conversations with his father to help Isabella write a song and fit a melody to it. By their sophomore album all of the work belonged to them: lyrics, melodies, instrumentation, publishing, production all fell under their thumbs, fit into a category that they built on together for years to come.
Experimentation created only the slightest dips in life. The family around the young cousins and best friends was strong, vibrant; even when distance came in challenged waves with tours and music releasing there wasn't much room for anything to fall apart. First love rises, relationship crumbles, they were all little rollercoasters that continued the ride forward more than caused anything to fall apart. There was a gift in the songwriting, of course, in being able to sit down with his very best friend and turn the little bouts of pain and loneliness in their lives into songs that became little anthems that carried out over everything. Healing was easier, that way, with the whole of it poured into guitar strings and piano strikes.
A few years into the rise of inheritance and stardom was the first and only time trouble came through tried and true. 2013, in the middle of their Latinos Imparables tour that disaster became more than storybooks and films. After the penultimate performance in Laredo, Texas, they were waiting to board their van and drive onward to McAllen. But the shroud of the night shifted and the men who get into the car were anything but their usual roadies and manager; Sebastián was out before he knew it and when he woke, the sticky sweet scent of chloroform still rinsing through his sinuses. Wrists battened together in plastic and hard, wet rope, Sebastián looked around for anything in the dim lantern lights of the barn. No great storm to tow the animals around and yet Sebastián remembers the hooves, remembers the way they mangled into hay like heavy boots and rough accents.
Nothing sticks out quite as much as the way the shifts began, though. The tremble of fear as they finally spoke: as much as the children were worth, their parents were worth more and they'd be able to get more, but they needed proof. A toe, a pinky, whatever would work. Something trembled inside of Sebastián and began to glow, a light that dried the ropes around his wrists and ankles, a thing that made him feel so warm he could hardly take it. But the fear tripped like their kidnappers and Isabella's voice began to echo into places within Sebastián's mind he did not understand.
The pain was devastating. Like every bone in him broke at once and the whole of his heart shattered into glass to drift through his veins. But it amounted to little with what came next: the way the bindings tore off Sebastián's body, the way he could taste rich, dirty blood as hay dripped from him. It was the worst feed he'd ever have, his first, the sound of gunshots flying, the feel of knives still able to cut into flesh that hadn't finished the transition. By the time it was done, all said and over, Sebastián was dripping with gore and unsure of anything; he blacked out, after, and two days later came to under the guise of coma made mess from the stress of being kidnapped.
It was a bad cover-up, like most things like it in their field, but neither cousin much minded that. What did mind to matter was figuring out what happened. The way an animal had supposedly gotten loose in the barn to give them enough time to fight their way to survival was fine, the timely arrival of police who had taken far too long in reality, all the lies they could manage, at first. But it couldn't last long at all when impulse was suddenly driving them, when impulse had been all that saved them. So they tested the world that loved them and told everyone the truth: and though the first few shows after were hard, difficult to find anything but familiar faces in, time changed things.
Sebastián as vampire was difficult enough to swallow but Isabella was bruja was just as bad to most. They changed the nature of their visions, however, with the help of Safe Haven. Learning of what happened, the truth of it, the way that Sebastián burned a mark into his skin because of Isabella's will, the way that pure heart had turned into chaos and vampire, all of it came in slow and steady lessons like detrimental mathematics. It could be fixed, one day, maybe, but it would take time; time to learn themselves, their place, and perfect their guilt. And while Sebastián was suddenly full of knowledge, it became difficult to know where to stop allowing it to guide him. What the Haven lacked in learning of vampire, however, he found himself drawn to elsewhere.
The same way Isabella had filled places in his mind he didn't understand, Sebastián found himself drawn back to his home island in hunger and need. It was in Yunque National Forest where he finally found peace, and lessons more than he ever needed. While on break, Sebastián followed his urges there, dragged into the night by creatures and shadows. The Yokahu Tower, it turned out, was more than fable: the ground beside it opened into the soil and voices called for Sebastián from beneath. He walked into must and rot and found himself overwhelmed, until the light grew and the voices solidfied. Vampires. A whole coven of them, who knew when he came to being but did not fully understand how, or why. Their questions were difficult to answer at best, uncomfortable, watching their hunger strange.
But they gave him knowledge, in their thirst; they asked him who his maker was, who started his line, and Sebastián replied sincerely unsure. Learn from your blood, they said, and forced his mind into a frenzy to draw back through his genes further than he'd ever understood before. Mother, father, ancestors on fields of labor and war. They asked him how he walked in day and he searched for that, too, before he came to a simple understanding: that vampire was a title thrown upon him but not earned, a title he did not have to champion. The others, they did not like it, no appreciation for what came; they demanded respect for the age of some, for the courage of others, and Sebastián gave none in turn. It became a battle. Not for life, or survival, but a kind of honor; Sebastián was not like the darkness and they would not get him to act as such. There, in dirt and toil, Sebastián realized the whole of his place as Leader, the first and only of his kind, and marked his truth: they would not touch him, they would not feed where he stayed, and they would get to live their misery out thereafter. If monsters was what they became, by creed or by nature, then that is how they would live but not he.
Feeding was necessary, even when Sebastián tried to avoid it. But he learned to ration, learned to give back and turn it into something of benefit toward them both. Sure, it wasn't easy, but it sure as Hell beat becoming a monster. And with being out and about as vampire and singer-songwriter, things came to pass easily, with time; there's only been two more deaths Sebastián has had to partake in since Puerto Rico and only one came of violence without warning, a vampire who had stepped into California and tried to feed where Sebastián did not allow it. He did not want to simply leave and so... the rest became history, a simple course of nature.
For better, or for worse, every day is new learning. It's new trials, new tribulations, and he has yet to learn a reason to stop diving in toward drowning when it comes to these things in life.
• espacio sideral • ya no quiero • volveré • llegaste tú … produced two gold singles, two telenovela opening themes and a latin grammy nomination for best pop album by a duo
• adiós • electrcidad • chocolate • si te vas … produced three top fourty hits, and the first of three successful tours through the americas. first album composed by them.
• me voy • ¡corre! • la de la mala suerte … six singles and four latin grammy awards. also recieved nominations @ grammys & premio lo nuestro.
• ecos de amor • no soy una de esas • dueles • 3 a.m. … produced six singles. recieved four latin grammy nominations, one win & wins at @ grammys & lo nuestro.