Cut Through the Heart

by Toaverse

Summary:

“Agustín, you may not be the baby’s father…”

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An AU where Julieta cheated…

Notes:

One I had in my WIPs but eventually forgot about!

Enjoy!

“Agustín, you may not be the baby’s father…”

Those words still haunt the man to this day, even 21 and 15 years later when he’s slumped against the wooden floor and walls of the small hidden room he lives in, drunk as hell. Especially when drunk…

Agustín takes another swig of tequila, wanting to feel numb again. Aside from the bees that also live in the walls, alcohol is his only friend. It’s always there when he needs it, it can’t judge…

The man knows alcohol isn’t a good way to cope with his pain, but he hasn’t cared in a long time…

Alcohol will never stab him in the back like Julieta has done twice…

Agustín remembers it like it happened yesterday. He was so excited when Julieta told him she was expecting, excited to become a father. For those 5 months, he helped her with setting up the nursery, he did her chores when needed, he comforted her when it all got too much for her, everything!

Until one day, out of the blue, Julieta told him that he may not be the father of her baby…

Apparently, Julieta was really exhausted during chores, and really needed some relief. One of the men she healed that day was really grateful for her help, and decided to hit on her. Tired and wanting to be selfish for once, Julieta accepted his advances…

That broke Agustín’s heart. All the joy he had felt before that confession was completely sucked out of him. Sadness quickly turned to anger, and he demanded a divorce. Even if the baby turned out to be his, Julieta had betrayed him in the biggest way possible for a wife to do, and Agustín wanted out of the marriage.

Alma and Pepa disagreed…

They yelled at him, ordering that he should “man up” and take care of his wife like a husband should, that it shouldn’t matter if the child was his or not because of his marriage with Julieta, that he would destroy the Madrigal’s reputation if he left.

Alma threatened the man with shame, telling him she could make sure he’d be hated by everyone with nowhere left to go if he left Julieta…

Pepa even said that it was Agustín’s fault her sister cheated, because he had to have done something that made Julieta go to other men for comfort, because he was a bad husband…

Julieta agreed with her mother and sister, like always…

So it was settled. Agustín had to stay with his cheating wife who may or may not be carrying another man’s child. The end. That’s it.

The next 3 months were full of doubts for the man. Every day, he questioned if he was the father of the baby his wife was carrying, doubting it more and more by the day. His heart was already broken by Julieta, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt anymore.

It still hurts to this day…

That was until August 7, the day Isabela was born, that Agustín finally saw what the child looked like.

She had dark skin, jet black hair, and dark brown eyes, with a beauty mark on the left side of her cheek. Isabela looks like a spitting image of Alma and has a lot of Julieta’s appearance, not a single feature of Agustín present.

When he confronted his wife and mother-in-law about this, they brushed it off.

“Isabela is your daughter regardless of blood. Now be a good husband to my daughter for once.” Alma had told him, Julieta nodding obediently.

What a coward…

Agustín’s thoughts are cut off when he hears some of the bees buzz right near his ear. After living with them for ten years, the man knows they do it on purpose to get his attention or to check if he fell unconscious again.

It’s pathetic to admit, but at this point he sees the bees as his best friends…

“I’m awake…” Agustín reassures the bees, tightening his grip on the half-empty tequila bottle.

The bees notice this, and some of them quickly fly inside the bottle, a common tactic they use to stop the human from drinking.

“Great…” Agustín sighs, letting go of the bottle. Now he has to deal with drunk bees again, something he wasn’t looking forward to today…

Now it’s him and his thoughts again…

Alma demanded him and Julieta to conceive more children, more Madrigal blessings to use for free labour…

While he tried to avoid interacting with his cheating wife as much as possible, the threat of shame and having no one still hung over his head, so Agustín agreed…

At least Luisa looks a lot like him. She has his skin tone and hair color, and she has grown pretty tall. As far as it goes, Agustín is still sure Luisa is his daughter.

Something he still doubts about Isabela, and especially Mirabel…

Agustín remembers it pretty well. The day Mirabel was born was pretty similar to Isabela’s. As a baby and when she got older, the girl looked like a carbon copy of Julieta, with no features or traces of the accident-prone man…

Once again, Agustín asked his wife if she had cheated again, to which she heavily denied.

He took her word for it, though he decided to not get his hopes up…

For those five years afterwards, Agustín raised Isabela, Luisa, and Mirabel as his own, regardless of blood. But the man promised himself that if Mirabel wasn’t his after all, he’d leave the Madrigal family, hopefully with his daughters.

It wasn’t their fault their mother was a puta…

But then came Mirabel’s ceremony, where her door faded right in front of her eyes. Rumors spread like wildfire in no time, ones where Mirabel was adopted, or wasn’t worthy of the magic.

Or one where she was an affair baby…

After the villagers were sent away, Agustín confronted his wife and in-laws for a final time, asking once and for all if she had indeed cheated again.

Alma’s and Pepa’s excuses and justifications aside, Julieta nodded with shame in response…

Something in the man snapped that evening. He was done with this family, done with everything. So, when everyone was asleep, Agustín slipped out of his wife’s room, and snuck in the walls, and found the room behind the kitchen…

If he was going to be alone for the rest of his life, then he wanted it to be with his three daughters nearby.

The first week was hard at first. Agustín had to hear Alma and her daughters complain about him, and hearing Luisa and Mirabel ask why their papá left them was almost unbearable.

But the man quickly found a routine. At night, he’d steal food and water from the kitchen so that he wouldn’t starve, along with all the other necessities to live as normal as possible. He had to use water from the pipes to wash himself, had to take toilet paper and a bucket to properly do his business in, and proper clothes to wear which he stole from his own closet.

And only a month later, he stole alcohol as well…

The reality of his situation, as well as frequent gossiping about him in the kitchen, got too much for him to bear. So he turned to the only thing that would soothe his pain, if only for a little while.

It later turned out that some bees lived in the walls as well, and decided to keep him company. Agustín didn’t like that at first, mainly because he didn’t want to be stung again. Luckily, these bees didn’t do that.

But they were aware of his addiction, somehow. And the bees tried to stop him from drinking.

Even now, ten years later…

“Don’t come near the lights…” Agustín warns the bees as they fly everywhere in the room, some of them indeed flying into the lights. The man sighs as he sees that happen.

Sometimes, he asks himself what he’s still doing here, why he just didn’t go back to his parents and move in with them. He wonders why Dolores hasn’t ratted him out yet, or why the family refused to believe her if she tried.

But he’s still here, drinking his pain away in this small rotten room near the kitchen as he sees his daughters grow up, two of whom maybe aren’t even his.

And if the Madrigal family continues to treat him as the bad guy, Agustín likes to keep it that way… 

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Other AUs