the letter, part 1/?
I've rewritten part 6 of sin título/untitled at least two times already and I'm not happy with it yet. So here's something a little different begun a long time ago, alternate universe now, but at the time I first had the outline in my head it was speculative. I thought of reworking some of it to return to canon, but I decided I like the outline I set out already so I'm going to leave it as I'd originally intended, even though it didn't work out this way.
Title: The Letter 1/?
Pairing: Really this one is more about repairing
Rating: 15
Spoilers: To episode 86
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or claim to own them. I make no profit except the happiness of occasionally making their little fictional lives better, no infringement intended, etc., etc. standard disclaimer stuff.
Note: The introduction is in third person, but the narrative shifts to first person for each of the following chapters. Part 1 includes the introduction and chapter 1.
Please ask before linking or archiving. Gracias!
Introduction
The look on Silvia's face as she rushed from the room broke Pepa's heart, but she could do nothing but sit and watch her go. The entire room grew still and silent. The mediator glanced back and forth between the three others left in the room, Pepa and the two lawyers, but it was clear she had no idea how to proceed. The lawyers gave confused looks to each other. Eventually, Pepa simply stood and walked out, leaving the others to decide her official fate without her.
She was unsure what to do after she’d left the room. She knew she couldn't follow Silvia and she didn't want to go to the locker room or anywhere else she might run into her and risk a scene. She paced in the corridors just outside the interrogation room for a few minutes and then, suddenly, she turned sharply and began to stride purposefully toward the place she knew she would find the person who currently filled the role of second least likely to want to see her.
A short time later she found herself in Don Lorenzo's office, slumped over in a chair, feeling and looking tired and worn and asking for personal leave.
Don Lorenzo looked her up and down, shook his head and began to shout, punctuating the end of each sentence with a shake of the finger he was pointing at her face. "Miranda, I don't like you. And I hate that you've hurt my daughter. But you're a good cop and I can use you in the precinct. I don't understand why the fuck you two can't work something out."
Pepa looked down, "I'm sorry Don Lorenzo. I don't know why either. Maybe it will take some time is all, but I can't be here right now. I'm putting in for a transfer back to Seville." She sighed. It wasn’t like her to feel so hopeless, or be at such a loss as to what to do. Don Lorenzo shook his head. This woman was fucking crazy. "Whatever, Miranda, but I'm not accepting a transfer yet. Take a week and think about it, but don't expect holiday pay! Fuck. Get out of my office!”
She could hear him continue to mutter obscenities nearly half way down the hall after she fled.
***
Back at Sara's, where Pepa had been staying since being locked out, Sara tried to stop her as she packed to head back to Seville. "Pepa, please! Don't leave!"
She tried to grab Pepa’s arm, “Please!”
"I can't stay here any more, Sarita,” Pepa said, as she tossed whatever random nearby items of clothing she could reach into her bag. “It hurts too much. Your abuelo won't accept my transfer yet, but maybe after a week he will. I'll call you when I get there and find a place to stay."
Sara hugged her tightly and kissed her cheek. "I'll miss you, tita. Don't forget to call me, please."
"I won't. Just give me a few days, ¿vale?"
"Vale." Sara looked disappointed, but tried to smile, "Be careful."
"Sí, Sí. You'd think you were the aunt!"
She gave Sara another hug and kiss goodbye, and headed down the stairs. She felt heavy and her head pounded. She wasn’t in the move to drive, but all she could think about was getting away. It was an old defence mechanism, one she had thought she’d abandoned in the changes that had come over her since she’d been with Silvia, but nothing else had worked, so in a way she had simply given up and fell back into the old mindset, into the old habits. The only thing she knew was that she’d never be able to get Silvia out of her mind if she stayed in San Antonio.
In the garage, she tossed her bags into the back seat of the car and reached over to pull a long, thin envelope from the messenger bag that lay on the passenger seat beside her. She had one more thing to do before she left the city.
***
Pepa thought nothing of the fact that she did not see Silvia's little silver Peugeot parked in its usual spot in front of her building. Silvia would, of course, still be at work, and that’s what Pepa wanted. She pulled the envelope from her bag and headed toward the door. This is the end of the best thing that ever happened to me, she thought sadly, as she slowly walked up the steps, clutching the envelope tightly, almost as if the very act of letting it go would seal the door to this part of her life forever.
What Pepa did not know, however, as she silently slipped the envelope under Silvia's door, under the door that used to be their door, was that Silvia, who had also suddenly been overcome by the urge to be as far from San Antonio as she could, had not 5 minutes before left for Barcelona. And Pepa did not know that 15 minutes later, as she merged onto the motorway to head south and west to Seville, that Silvia, at that moment merging east and north on the opposite end of the city, had realised that she'd left her mobile telephone sitting in the centre of her kitchen table and after a few seconds of internal debate, had turned back for it.
*******
Chapter One (Pepa)
As I drove through the night, I grew more and more restless. I had been certain that getting away was the best thing for me, but I felt none of the sense of relief I’d expected, only frustration and more hurt. Silvia’s angry words resounded over and over in my ears and scenes played out in endless repeat in my mind. Tears burned the corners of my eyes as I relived every moment, that stupid conversation with Paco, Silvia’s hard slap to my cheek, my own terrible and unexpected response. No matter how hard I tried to push them out and clear my head, they remained, taunting me, accusing me, reminding me that no matter what she’d done, my reaction had destroyed us. As I neared Seville the pang in my heart grew sharper and sharper until it was almost unbearable. My silent tears turned to sobs and I could barely see the road in front of me.
I turned off the main road, pulled over and killed the engine. Leaning my forehead forward onto the top of the steering wheel, I let go. Great wracking sobs shook me and turned my stomach until it lurched uncontrollably. I quickly opened the car door and threw up on the stony ground, then leaned back into the car and closed my eyes. What a fucking mess this was. As I sat, tears rolling down my cheeks, I thought of what I’d written in the letter. Did I really feel that way? Or had I just written what I thought she’d felt? I was no poet, so maybe it didn’t even make sense. Of course in the end it was irrelevant. She already hated me, and the letter was delivered. I couldn’t take back my words now.
I opened my eyes and looked out at the night sky. The stars shone as brightly as ever, completely unaware of everything that happened beneath them. I wanted them to be dimmer somehow, to feel my sorrow and mourn with me. So many times Silvia and I had looked up at these stars together. They had been the witness to the progression of our relationship, from that first moment after I’d returned to San Antonio and she’d asked me to stay, to countless expressions of love and affection in moonlit walks or country drives, or views through an open window into a blackened night as we lay drowsy and sated in each other’s arms.
I thought of one warm summer night, on a long weekend at my friend’s secluded house in Conil, where I’d gathered every blanket and quilt and duvet in the place and piled them together to make a soft bed for us in the garden. For a moment I was there again. I could almost feel the curve of her side, the soft round of her breast beneath my lips and my hands, the sharp angle of her hip against my palm. I could see the glow of her white skin in the moonlight and the look of wonder and delight and pure pleasure on her face as her body moved with mine.
Later, holding her as she moulded herself tightly to my side, I’d whispered into her ear, “Can you still name Ursa Major?”
She laughed. “Of course!” and said, pointing upward. “Here, this star....and this one, it’s kind of a rectangle, and here, off to the side...those there. And the legs are here...the head....”
“I don’t really see a bear.” I admitted.
“You have to use your imagination.” She said, and then continued, “I know some others. Here’s Perseus....and Cygnus....Virgo....Libra.....” When she was finished, she closed her eyes and snuggled closer to me. A breeze washed over us, she shivered, and I pulled the quilt that lay at our waists higher and tighter around us.
“I know one too.” I said. “It’s the best one.”
She laughed again, and I felt her warm breath against my neck. “The best one? Okay, show me.”
I raised my hand, and she slid her palm slowly up my arm and fit her hand into mine so that I could point with her finger. I motioned our joined hands to a trio of stars, then another two curving off to the side, the five together forming a gentle arc.
“Do you see these here?” I asked, “These three, and this one, and this little one? This little arc here?”
“Mmm....yes,” She replied sleepily.
“That’s my favourite,” I said.
“I don’t know that one. What’s it called?” She asked.
I bent to kiss the top of her head. “Silvia’s smile.” I whispered into her hair.
She began to giggle into my neck.
“What?” I knew she wasn’t making fun of me, but I feigned a little hurt and pouted.
She shifted to lean over me, and her fingertip began to play along the line of my shoulder and collarbone. “That’s the silliest, sweetest....and most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”
She kissed me, lay her head back in the hollow between my shoulder and my neck, and then titled it upward. The heat of her breath brushed against my ear as she whispered, “I am so very much in love with you.”
A shiver ran through me, just as it had then. At the time I had never felt so lucky, hearing the woman I loved more than anything whisper those words to me. Now I knew I’d never hear those words again. It made me think of all the wonderful moments we’d shared, moments that would never repeat.
I saw us at Christmas, her in her bright red coat, walking through the decorated streets, laughing, and smiling at a display in the window of El Corte Inglés as she leant back into me. I saw her curled up asleep in my arms in a hotel room in Venice. I saw her sitting beside me on a Portuguese beach, her head on my shoulder as we watched a golden sunset together. I saw her tugging me through el Prado for the hundredth time, where I feigned interest in the art, also for the hundredth time, just so I could be beside her, holding her hand and listening to her. I’d loved to listen to her describe and analyse each painting. It didn’t matter to me that I didn’t understand half of what she was talking about or her fascination with each work and its history. To me what I saw was either a pretty picture, or some sort of abstract toss of paint on a canvas that somehow passed as ‘art’. But I could spend hours watching her eyes light up as she gave explanations of the significance of this or that turn of the brush. It made my heart race, and filled me with the same sense of admiration and pride I felt watching her solve some plot point in a case, or decipher some encrypted message or chemical formula at work. I loved just watching her think like that.
I had loved it, I sadly corrected myself.
Suddenly my mind did a fast forward and my memories returned to the more recent past. I saw her refuse to look at me that day in the briefing room, so full of anger she was practically shaking. I saw the pain in her eyes when she learned of what had happened with Aitor. I saw her telling me “I don’t want to be your girl anymore,” and I saw her back as she turned and walked away from me.
I sat there in the car for what seemed like an eternity, with snippets of our year together and that year’s end playing out behind my tightly closed eyelids and twisting my stomach and heart more than I thought could even be possible. I felt hollow and lost, and the stars, a thousand pinpricks of light in the velvety blackness, mocked me. She was somewhere under those stars too, but not with me.
Finally, another car sped past me on the deserted side road and brought me back to the present. I sat for a few more minutes, then started the engine and pulled back out to the pavement. A few minutes later I’d rejoined the motorway and was headed into the city, to the one place I knew I could go and not be judged. The house I’d been heading for was dark when I arrived and all the curtains were drawn, but although the woman who owned it wasn’t expecting me, I knew she’d open the door for me any time day or night. I grabbed my bag and started up the walk.
Title: The Letter 1/?
Pairing: Really this one is more about repairing
Rating: 15
Spoilers: To episode 86
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or claim to own them. I make no profit except the happiness of occasionally making their little fictional lives better, no infringement intended, etc., etc. standard disclaimer stuff.
Note: The introduction is in third person, but the narrative shifts to first person for each of the following chapters. Part 1 includes the introduction and chapter 1.
Please ask before linking or archiving. Gracias!
Introduction
The look on Silvia's face as she rushed from the room broke Pepa's heart, but she could do nothing but sit and watch her go. The entire room grew still and silent. The mediator glanced back and forth between the three others left in the room, Pepa and the two lawyers, but it was clear she had no idea how to proceed. The lawyers gave confused looks to each other. Eventually, Pepa simply stood and walked out, leaving the others to decide her official fate without her.
She was unsure what to do after she’d left the room. She knew she couldn't follow Silvia and she didn't want to go to the locker room or anywhere else she might run into her and risk a scene. She paced in the corridors just outside the interrogation room for a few minutes and then, suddenly, she turned sharply and began to stride purposefully toward the place she knew she would find the person who currently filled the role of second least likely to want to see her.
A short time later she found herself in Don Lorenzo's office, slumped over in a chair, feeling and looking tired and worn and asking for personal leave.
Don Lorenzo looked her up and down, shook his head and began to shout, punctuating the end of each sentence with a shake of the finger he was pointing at her face. "Miranda, I don't like you. And I hate that you've hurt my daughter. But you're a good cop and I can use you in the precinct. I don't understand why the fuck you two can't work something out."
Pepa looked down, "I'm sorry Don Lorenzo. I don't know why either. Maybe it will take some time is all, but I can't be here right now. I'm putting in for a transfer back to Seville." She sighed. It wasn’t like her to feel so hopeless, or be at such a loss as to what to do. Don Lorenzo shook his head. This woman was fucking crazy. "Whatever, Miranda, but I'm not accepting a transfer yet. Take a week and think about it, but don't expect holiday pay! Fuck. Get out of my office!”
She could hear him continue to mutter obscenities nearly half way down the hall after she fled.
***
Back at Sara's, where Pepa had been staying since being locked out, Sara tried to stop her as she packed to head back to Seville. "Pepa, please! Don't leave!"
She tried to grab Pepa’s arm, “Please!”
"I can't stay here any more, Sarita,” Pepa said, as she tossed whatever random nearby items of clothing she could reach into her bag. “It hurts too much. Your abuelo won't accept my transfer yet, but maybe after a week he will. I'll call you when I get there and find a place to stay."
Sara hugged her tightly and kissed her cheek. "I'll miss you, tita. Don't forget to call me, please."
"I won't. Just give me a few days, ¿vale?"
"Vale." Sara looked disappointed, but tried to smile, "Be careful."
"Sí, Sí. You'd think you were the aunt!"
She gave Sara another hug and kiss goodbye, and headed down the stairs. She felt heavy and her head pounded. She wasn’t in the move to drive, but all she could think about was getting away. It was an old defence mechanism, one she had thought she’d abandoned in the changes that had come over her since she’d been with Silvia, but nothing else had worked, so in a way she had simply given up and fell back into the old mindset, into the old habits. The only thing she knew was that she’d never be able to get Silvia out of her mind if she stayed in San Antonio.
In the garage, she tossed her bags into the back seat of the car and reached over to pull a long, thin envelope from the messenger bag that lay on the passenger seat beside her. She had one more thing to do before she left the city.
***
Pepa thought nothing of the fact that she did not see Silvia's little silver Peugeot parked in its usual spot in front of her building. Silvia would, of course, still be at work, and that’s what Pepa wanted. She pulled the envelope from her bag and headed toward the door. This is the end of the best thing that ever happened to me, she thought sadly, as she slowly walked up the steps, clutching the envelope tightly, almost as if the very act of letting it go would seal the door to this part of her life forever.
What Pepa did not know, however, as she silently slipped the envelope under Silvia's door, under the door that used to be their door, was that Silvia, who had also suddenly been overcome by the urge to be as far from San Antonio as she could, had not 5 minutes before left for Barcelona. And Pepa did not know that 15 minutes later, as she merged onto the motorway to head south and west to Seville, that Silvia, at that moment merging east and north on the opposite end of the city, had realised that she'd left her mobile telephone sitting in the centre of her kitchen table and after a few seconds of internal debate, had turned back for it.
*******
Chapter One (Pepa)
As I drove through the night, I grew more and more restless. I had been certain that getting away was the best thing for me, but I felt none of the sense of relief I’d expected, only frustration and more hurt. Silvia’s angry words resounded over and over in my ears and scenes played out in endless repeat in my mind. Tears burned the corners of my eyes as I relived every moment, that stupid conversation with Paco, Silvia’s hard slap to my cheek, my own terrible and unexpected response. No matter how hard I tried to push them out and clear my head, they remained, taunting me, accusing me, reminding me that no matter what she’d done, my reaction had destroyed us. As I neared Seville the pang in my heart grew sharper and sharper until it was almost unbearable. My silent tears turned to sobs and I could barely see the road in front of me.
I turned off the main road, pulled over and killed the engine. Leaning my forehead forward onto the top of the steering wheel, I let go. Great wracking sobs shook me and turned my stomach until it lurched uncontrollably. I quickly opened the car door and threw up on the stony ground, then leaned back into the car and closed my eyes. What a fucking mess this was. As I sat, tears rolling down my cheeks, I thought of what I’d written in the letter. Did I really feel that way? Or had I just written what I thought she’d felt? I was no poet, so maybe it didn’t even make sense. Of course in the end it was irrelevant. She already hated me, and the letter was delivered. I couldn’t take back my words now.
I opened my eyes and looked out at the night sky. The stars shone as brightly as ever, completely unaware of everything that happened beneath them. I wanted them to be dimmer somehow, to feel my sorrow and mourn with me. So many times Silvia and I had looked up at these stars together. They had been the witness to the progression of our relationship, from that first moment after I’d returned to San Antonio and she’d asked me to stay, to countless expressions of love and affection in moonlit walks or country drives, or views through an open window into a blackened night as we lay drowsy and sated in each other’s arms.
I thought of one warm summer night, on a long weekend at my friend’s secluded house in Conil, where I’d gathered every blanket and quilt and duvet in the place and piled them together to make a soft bed for us in the garden. For a moment I was there again. I could almost feel the curve of her side, the soft round of her breast beneath my lips and my hands, the sharp angle of her hip against my palm. I could see the glow of her white skin in the moonlight and the look of wonder and delight and pure pleasure on her face as her body moved with mine.
Later, holding her as she moulded herself tightly to my side, I’d whispered into her ear, “Can you still name Ursa Major?”
She laughed. “Of course!” and said, pointing upward. “Here, this star....and this one, it’s kind of a rectangle, and here, off to the side...those there. And the legs are here...the head....”
“I don’t really see a bear.” I admitted.
“You have to use your imagination.” She said, and then continued, “I know some others. Here’s Perseus....and Cygnus....Virgo....Libra.....” When she was finished, she closed her eyes and snuggled closer to me. A breeze washed over us, she shivered, and I pulled the quilt that lay at our waists higher and tighter around us.
“I know one too.” I said. “It’s the best one.”
She laughed again, and I felt her warm breath against my neck. “The best one? Okay, show me.”
I raised my hand, and she slid her palm slowly up my arm and fit her hand into mine so that I could point with her finger. I motioned our joined hands to a trio of stars, then another two curving off to the side, the five together forming a gentle arc.
“Do you see these here?” I asked, “These three, and this one, and this little one? This little arc here?”
“Mmm....yes,” She replied sleepily.
“That’s my favourite,” I said.
“I don’t know that one. What’s it called?” She asked.
I bent to kiss the top of her head. “Silvia’s smile.” I whispered into her hair.
She began to giggle into my neck.
“What?” I knew she wasn’t making fun of me, but I feigned a little hurt and pouted.
She shifted to lean over me, and her fingertip began to play along the line of my shoulder and collarbone. “That’s the silliest, sweetest....and most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”
She kissed me, lay her head back in the hollow between my shoulder and my neck, and then titled it upward. The heat of her breath brushed against my ear as she whispered, “I am so very much in love with you.”
A shiver ran through me, just as it had then. At the time I had never felt so lucky, hearing the woman I loved more than anything whisper those words to me. Now I knew I’d never hear those words again. It made me think of all the wonderful moments we’d shared, moments that would never repeat.
I saw us at Christmas, her in her bright red coat, walking through the decorated streets, laughing, and smiling at a display in the window of El Corte Inglés as she leant back into me. I saw her curled up asleep in my arms in a hotel room in Venice. I saw her sitting beside me on a Portuguese beach, her head on my shoulder as we watched a golden sunset together. I saw her tugging me through el Prado for the hundredth time, where I feigned interest in the art, also for the hundredth time, just so I could be beside her, holding her hand and listening to her. I’d loved to listen to her describe and analyse each painting. It didn’t matter to me that I didn’t understand half of what she was talking about or her fascination with each work and its history. To me what I saw was either a pretty picture, or some sort of abstract toss of paint on a canvas that somehow passed as ‘art’. But I could spend hours watching her eyes light up as she gave explanations of the significance of this or that turn of the brush. It made my heart race, and filled me with the same sense of admiration and pride I felt watching her solve some plot point in a case, or decipher some encrypted message or chemical formula at work. I loved just watching her think like that.
I had loved it, I sadly corrected myself.
Suddenly my mind did a fast forward and my memories returned to the more recent past. I saw her refuse to look at me that day in the briefing room, so full of anger she was practically shaking. I saw the pain in her eyes when she learned of what had happened with Aitor. I saw her telling me “I don’t want to be your girl anymore,” and I saw her back as she turned and walked away from me.
I sat there in the car for what seemed like an eternity, with snippets of our year together and that year’s end playing out behind my tightly closed eyelids and twisting my stomach and heart more than I thought could even be possible. I felt hollow and lost, and the stars, a thousand pinpricks of light in the velvety blackness, mocked me. She was somewhere under those stars too, but not with me.
Finally, another car sped past me on the deserted side road and brought me back to the present. I sat for a few more minutes, then started the engine and pulled back out to the pavement. A few minutes later I’d rejoined the motorway and was headed into the city, to the one place I knew I could go and not be judged. The house I’d been heading for was dark when I arrived and all the curtains were drawn, but although the woman who owned it wasn’t expecting me, I knew she’d open the door for me any time day or night. I grabbed my bag and started up the walk.