sin título part 1/?
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Title: sin título part 1/?
Pairing: Pepa/Silvia
Rating: 14-ish maybe? I'm no good with ratings.
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 an brilliant job portraying that other ending. No offence is meant to them in changing things around a little.
Spoilers: Definitely
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If people like the start, I may continue and we'll see where it goes from there. I might also come up with an actual title. I've never posted anything before, and this is written mostly straight through and unbetad. Read at your own risk.
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Part one
Today I attended the funeral of three of my colleagues and my friends. My wife stood beside me, my wife that I came so close to losing. I clutched her slender hand in mine as we stood beside the open graves and laid our flowers atop the coffins. Beautiful flowers, bright reds and yellows, never to be enjoyed by those they were meant to honour and serving only as a token by those there to mourn, making them feel as if they were doing something, anything.
She'd only been allowed home by the doctors this morning and she leaned heavily against me, still unsteady on her feet. She'd insisted on coming today and even though I wanted her to lie at home and rest, I knew why she had to come. Every so often during the ceremony, I glanced over to look at her face. Tears rolled down her cheeks in never ending streams. She made no attempt to wipe them, and I made no attempt to wipe mine. When the service ended, we joined the queue of people trudging slowly and sadly forward and threw a clump of dirt into each open grave. I winced at the thuds as each handful hit wood. People touched her arm gently as they walked past us. Some asked with voices tinged with grief and concern how she was feeling. Some said nothing. To everyone she nodded and tried to manage a small smile of thanks and gratitude.
It began to rain.
As we turned away from the terrible scene and walked toward the car she gripped my hand and arm tightly, but we didn't speak. We didn't need to. In the past week we'd barely spoken. Everything had been said with our eyes and the constancy of our hands pressed together, neither of us wanting to let go. I opened the door and helped her into the car, and we remained silent on the drive home. I looked over and could tell she was still crying, even though she'd turned her face away from me and was leaning with her forehead against the glass.
We reached home. I helped her from the car and up the stairs, through the hall and through our door, back to our bedroom. She sat on the edge of our bed silently while I slipped off her skirt and blouse and gently pulled a soft cotton tee-shirt over her head and the arms she could barely lift. She leaned back onto the bed, gingerly moved to the far side, and turned away from me again. I covered her with a blanket and sat beside her, stroking her hair and twisting soft locks of it round my fingers. She was shaking, trying to contain the sobs that I knew must be hurting her physically since the patched wound below her ribs was nowhere near completely healed yet.
"Can I bring you something, princesa?" I asked quietly.
"No." The answer was a barely a whisper.
"You should eat something."
She didn't speak but shook her head weakly to answer no again.
I settled the blanket up further over her and bent down to softly kiss her right shoulder. I could feel the warmth of her skin on my lips through the thin material. My heart began to pound as I thought of what might have happened had they not reached us in time. She would be with the others, cold and alone under metres of soil, lost from me forever. I could feel my chest tighten and burn as a wave of retained fear washed over me. I struggled not to break down. I wanted to be strong for her. I swallowed hard, pressed my lips gently to her shoulder once more and then pulled back.
"Cariño, you need to sleep but you should eat something first. You haven't eaten all day." I said, as I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and started to rise to head for the kitchen.
"Pepa!"
I turned back to see her turning over, painfully, wincing as she did so. Her face was drained of colour, making the mass of freckles stand out in ever sharper contrast to her pale skin, and her expression was one of sheer desperation. She reached for my arm and her fingers slid down to grasp my wrist. I could feel the hard metal of her wedding ring digging into my hand.
"Please don't go," she said, her tone almost begging. "Lie here with me for a minute."
I nodded and moved to lie beside her. I wrapped my arms round her, trying carefully not to move too quickly and risk knocking into a sore or tender spot, but she pressed up against me as close as she could, burying her wet face against my neck and clinging to me like a drowning person. She started to shake again and I felt a shudder run through her as she broke, in loud and uncontrolled sobs beginning to release some of the pain and emotion that had been bottled up and growing inside her since that horrible day that had started out so beautifully and ended so tragically. I cupped the back of her head with one hand and held her to me with the other as my own tears began to drip onto her copper curls.
For a week we'd been stunned into shock and numbness, but now we held each other tightly and cried together for what seemed like a very long time. We cried for our friends and colleagues. We cried for our lost day. We cried with relief that we still had each other. Eventually her choking sobs subsided and we fell silent. She felt limp and drained in my arms. Pushing herself back a little she looked at me, her dark eyes boring into mine.
I brought one hand up to brush a few damp strands of hair from her face and wiped at the streaks left by her tears.
"I want to go away from here for awhile." She said. "Take me away from here."
"As soon as you're better, princesa, I'll take you anywhere you want to go."
She nodded and fell forward, settling her cheek into the hollow between my neck and collar bone. Her warm breath caressed my skin in uneven waves. Eventually, her breathing became slow and even and I knew she’d fallen asleep. I tilted my head to rest against the top of hers, closed my eyes, and thought back to the first time I’d held her like this, almost three years ago. I remembered the nervous anticipation and restrained joy of that night. I remembered the way she’d smiled shyly up at me the first time I’d bent over her and made the first tentative touches of her bare skin. I tried to block out the images that flashed through my mind of her lying covered in blood in the wine cellar of the house that had been meant to host our wedding night, her face contorted in fear and pain. I squeezed my eyes closed as tight as I could but I could still feel the tears leaking out.
We lay together like that well into the night. I was in an awkward position that left my left arm tingling, but I didn’t want to shift and risk waking her just yet. She needed her sleep. At about 1am, it dawned on me that I’d have to wake her at some point in the evening to change her bandages and give her her medication. I ran my hand up her back and shook her gently.
“Princesa, we have to change the bandages,” I whispered. She nodded again, rolled off of me onto her back and grimaced as she gingerly began to lift her shirt.
"Let me do that, cariño.” I took her hand and moved it away and then reached up and brushed my fingers against her cheek. She brought up the hand I’d moved from her belly, covered mine with it, and turned my palm to kiss before letting it go. I looked down at her and tears began to sting in the corners of my eyes again.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “I’ll be okay.”
I pulled her top up high enough to peel off the bandages. Blood had seeped through and stained them in a pattern that in the half light resembled a spill of dark wine. I saw her bite her lip as I pried the gauze carefully away. Two red gashes laced with railroad tracks of black stitches, one the surgical cut and one that had resulted from the futile attempt I’d made to extract the bullet, marked her pale white skin and purple, yellow and green bruising radiated out from them. It was awful to look at. I tried to keep my hands from shaking as I did what I had to do.
When I’d finished, I helped her back under the sheets and blankets, then brought her medication and a glass of water, changed into a tee-shirt and crawled into the bed beside her. She lay down on her side and I slid in behind, my arms open for her. She sighed as she pressed her back tightly to my front and my arms curved around her. I laced the fingers of our right hands together and looked over her shoulder. A tiny ray of light from the window at the foot of the bed was hitting our hands and I saw the gleam of the gold of our rings.
As I finally drifted into sleep I whispered to her and heard her whisper back, "Te quiero, mi esposa. Te quiero."
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