sin título part 3/?

[12avocados]

Title: sin título part 3/?

Pairing: The same and no other

Rating: 14/15 or however your jurisdiction describes it

Disclaimer: Please, if I owned these characters I'd never have had to write this. No infringement meant, I make no profit, etc. I have great respect for the actors who did a brilliant job portraying that other ending. No offence is meant to them in changing things around a little.

Spoilers: Everywhere!



PLEASE ASK before linking or archiving. Gracias!

Part 1 is here
Part 2 is here

I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter, but here it is.

*******

Part three

Another week had passed.  Twice I had run out to collect prescriptions, but otherwise I couldn’t bear to be apart from Silvia and didn’t want leave our house. People came and went in a blur, bringing us food and groceries or sitting with us for an hour or two, giving words of comfort that we thanked them for but which we couldn't begin to process.

It was a strange sort of existence.  I was used to action and I felt odd sitting around and doing nothing. At first she slept a lot and I tried to keep busy by reading or watching sports but I couldn’t concentrate on anything, so I spent a lot of time lying next to her and watching her sleep.  It was something that would have made her self-conscious in the past, but whenever she woke and saw me beside her she smiled, so I didn’t stop.

I had a hard time sleeping myself. I was plagued by nightmares. In my dreams she died over and over again. No one arrived to save her or resuscitate her and I would look down at my bloody hands and scream and scream and scream, wanting to never stop until the universe split apart, turned inside out and righted itself again. I would wake with a start, shaky and sweating, the screams still reverberating in my head. I worried about waking her but the medication seemed to hold her in a deep enough sleep to keep her from being disturbed.  If I woke and she wasn’t already in my arms, I would reach out frantically in the dark to make sure she was still beside me and then lean into her back and listen to her breathing for hours to reassure myself that she was still alive and here with me.

One evening I woke in that same state, trembling, the sheets twisted around me and pulled from the corners of the bed. I lay still for a minute or two and then looked over to see her asleep facing me, one hand thrown back against the pillow so that her head rested on her slender forearm.

My eyes adjusted to the dim light and I let them wander over the contours and angles of her face, admiring each familiar feature.  I smiled to myself. From the moment I’d met her I’d never been able to keep my eyes off of her. Even as a teenager, lanky and awkward, she’d captivated me. After I’d left home and run away I’d never contacted her, but all the time we’d been apart I’d never forgotten her. She had always been there in the back of my mind, the ideal by which every other woman who had passed in and out of my life had been measured. None had ever come close.

I never thought I would be married. It wasn’t the kind of thing that fit with my nature.  I didn’t like to be tied down or have the future mapped out for me. But after she’d asked me, I’d never wanted anything so much as to stand up in front of everyone and promise to be hers forever.

She had been so beautiful on that day. When she appeared in the doorway of the villa and began to walk toward me on her father’s arm I was dumbstruck with awe. The sun reflected off her bright hair and her white shoulders and her face shone with a sweet mixture of nervousness and happiness and love that was simply mesmerising. It wasn’t just me paralysed by the sight. Looking around I could tell she’d taken everyone’s breath away. When her eyes locked with mine as she walked toward me they told everyone watching that she belonged to me, and I was prouder and more in love than I had ever been.

When she stood in front of me looking up, I could barely breathe. Her face was so radiant and so full of love, it made me feel faint.  I couldn’t decide which I wanted more, for the moment never to end, or to take her arm and run away with her to the cosy room with the soft bed that awaited us upstairs, where I could look up at her as she arched her beautiful body into my hands before she fell forward onto me, her hair forming a silken curtain around us.

That day could have been one of the best of our lives, something we could tell our children about, but what could we do now? We could never hang our wedding portrait on the wall, or set it on a mantle. We couldn’t save our dresses in the back of the closet, to take out and admire years later. We couldn’t listen to our friends tease us over what might have transpired after they had left and we were first alone that night. The day was gone and our friends were dead or suffering like we were.

I remembered when I had shown her the pamphlet from the villa. I’d told her that no marriage that started in a place like that could be wrong. I had been so certain that I was right and that I could always protect her, and I had thought my fears were gone, but a nagging question had begun to creep into my mind.  Could any marriage that began like this survive?

***

Lola came down to Madrid from Barcelona. I offered that she stay with us but she said she knew we wanted to be alone and slept in Sara’s old room instead.

One morning when she’d come over to make us breakfast and Silvia was in the shower, Lola told me that when she had been shot before, the first thing Silvia did was try to go back to work.  She made no mention of that now. I didn’t say anything, or encourage her to go, or make any effort to go back myself.  As much as I burned for revenge, I didn’t want to face the empty chairs in the briefing room and I didn’t want to leave Silvia home alone.

“She’s not herself, hermana,” Lola said to me, “I’ve seen her go through many things and I’ve seen her go half crazy, but she’s never been like this.”

I didn’t know what to say or do. I wasn’t myself either.

When I’d come back into the room from my own shower, Lola had left and I saw Silvia curled up on the sofa, a large red photo album opened in front of her.

“What are you looking at, pelirroja?’” I asked, towelling off my hair.

“Old photos,” she answered. “Come here and look with me.”

I moved to sit on the sofa, turned sideways and spread my knees apart so that she could lean back against me. She set the album in her lap and began to flip through it and I rested my chin on her shoulder so that I could see and we could look through the pictures together.

She stopped at one page and ran her finger over the figures. The photo was of a woman with dark red hair holding a tiny baby, Silvia and her mother, who in the picture  beamed with joy as she carefully angled the baby to be visible to the camera .  I’d only met Silvia’s mother a few times, but I remembered she’d been a very kind and gentle woman, who’d hugged me and given me chocolate and generally gave the impression that she was a complete contrast to her grouchy husband who seemed to always be stomping around in the background in a bad mood.

“She was beautiful,” I said.

She stayed on the page for a minute more and then turned it and began to flip through the album again.

"Do you remember the first time we met?" she asked.

I started to run a million scenarios through my head. First time? First time? Was it when Lola and Paco took us to the zoo? How old were we then? 8? No, it was the beach. We were 9? No, maybe it was 8? Or maybe it was the park with the carousel? Joder!

I soon realised I'd been thinking too long without answering and that was an answer in itself.  I tried to think of a way to save myself, but it was too late. She leaned forward and turned in my arms, and when she looked at me I was sure the expression on my face only made it clearer how guilty I was.  She rolled her eyes and shot me a look of bemused annoyance.

"I think it was..." I started.

She shook her head again and turned back to the album.

"We were 8," she said, leaning back into my arms.

"The beach?" I asked.

"Yes, the beach. Do you remember?"

I smiled and tightened my arms. I remembered.

She turned a few more pages and stopped at a photograph of two small girls on a beach, a young woman with dark curly hair standing between them, one arm around each girl’s shoulders. Us, and Lola. We were frowning, while Lola smiled. Silvia’s arms were crossed defensively and I mostly looked annoyed.  I smirked to myself. We weren’t exactly the best of friends that day.

Suddenly she rose from the sofa, set the album down, and walked across the room to the closet. She took a small box from a back shelf, rummaged through it, palmed something I couldn’t see and returned to lean back into my arms.

"You gave me this." she said, and opened her hand to reveal a small shell. It wasn't particularly fancy or beautiful. It was a shell like any of a thousand others you would find on any of a thousand different beaches.

"You saved this for 24 years?" I asked incredulously.

She nodded a yes and rolled it over and over in her hands.

"Why?" I asked.

She laughed. "Because you gave it to me!"

"Why did you never show it to me before?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"You didn't even like me!"

She wasn't facing me but I could tell she was smiling. She twirled the shell around in her fingers a few more times and then set it the coffee table and reopened the book.

"Maybe I did like you!"

"You didn't act like it." I said. "You wouldn't go swimming. All you wanted to do was identify birds and talk about properties of the ocean. You wouldn't play with me."

She laughed again, "I was afraid of you. You were wild!"

She stopped flipping through the album pages again and turned to look at me. "What did you think of me?"

"I thought you were weird," I answered honestly.

"And now?" she laughed.

"Now," I said in a serious tone, "Now I think you're hot."

I paused for a second or two, and then continued in the same tone, “But you’re still weird.”

She broke into a deeper laugh that made her snort but suddenly she stopped short. I heard her breath catch, and she winced, bent over and clutched at her side. The painful reminder that she'd been hurt brought us crashing back to reality.

She swallowed and closed her eyes, closed the album and pressed back closer to me.

"Are you all right, cariño?” I asked softly.

She nodded a yes, but she didn’t speak and she kept her eyes closed. She took a deep breath, exhaled heavily and brought up her arms to cover mine as they held her. She was warm in my arms, solid and alive, but I shivered with a flashback of the way she’d felt when I’d held her after she’d collapsed, cold and lifeless. She’d felt hollow. Transported to and trapped back in that moment of horror, I was paralysed by the same sinking feeling I'd had in my stomach when I thought she was gone from me forever.

She turned her head to lay her cheek against my chest. The motion startled me and saved me. I tried to shake myself back into the present and when I moved my head I saw the tiny shell still lying on the table.

I leaned down and placed a light kiss against her ear.
 “If I had known you would be my wife I would have looked for a prettier shell” I whispered.

“I love this one” she said. “It’s perfect. I wouldn’t want a different one.”

She managed a tiny smile but it faded quickly from her face and I could tell she was lost in thought. Slowly her face twisted, tears began to leak from the corners of her tightly closed eyelids , and she began to cry.  I held her close and stroked her hair, but I knew there was nothing I could say or do to comfort her, so I simply allowed her to cry, thankful that she could at least release some of the hurt and not keep it bottled up inside her.

After a few minutes, she turned her head and looked up at me.

“Why did this happen to us?” She asked through her tears.

“I don’t know , princesa,” I answered sadly, “I don’t know.”

***