In Love's Defense - Part 8
Title: In Love’s Defense
Spoilers: Takes place after ep 101 (8x09) soon after Pepa and Silvia have announced their engagement.
Rating: PG-13 for more angst. I’m a sucker for angst, I know! But remember, I do have a ‘happy ending rule’!
Pairing: Pepa/Silvia (Cuz they’re just an awesomely cute couple!)
Summary: As Pepa and Silvia look forward to their upcoming marriage, the precinct becomes aware of a lead on the Italian mafia, but at what cost?
A/N: The story and characters that inhabit the whacky precinct of San Antonio are not mine. Vale, I feel I owe an even bigger apology to any readers than last time - I seriously didn’t intend to freak everyone out so bad with that cliffhanger! Or as raven put it the PepSi comm would go ‘on a vicious rampage to skewer my ass’ if I kept it up! ;D I will try my best not to do that again - well, kinda…sorta…;pp
And I just literally finished writing this, so I’m guessing it’s rife with errors. I was intending to write more but I just found a good stopping point. This story is surprising me with how it unfolds sometimes.
[ Part 1] [ Part 2] [ Part 3] [ Part 4] [ Part 5] [ Part 6] [ Part 7]
"Papa!”
Sara ran headlong into Paco’s arms as he automatically embraced his daughter, squeezing her for all he was worth.
“Ooh, thank God hija!” he murmured over and over again as he kissed her wavy auburn locks, relieved beyond belief to feel her, solid and tactile in his arms. Paco ignored all the chaos around him - the special forces teams swarming around, calling out ‘All clear’, the sharp smell of gunpowder still in his nose, Don Lorenzo shouting out orders. All of that was drowned out, didn’t matter when he had his child safe in his embrace. He finally managed to separate from his daughter, looking into her eyes that were still filled with tears.
“You’re all right?” Paco used the pads of his thumbs to wipe at delicate cheeks that were dirty with tearstains.
A vigorous nod. “Sí, papa. I’m fine, I promise.” Sara’s hands moved from around her father’s neck to clasp his upper arms in reassurance. Her breath caught in her throat as her right hand came away, the fingers slicked with blood. “Dios! Papa, you’re wounded!”
“Hm?” Paco glanced down at his bicep, the sleeve of his shirt wet with a reddening, slowly growing stain. “Oh, it’s nothing, cariño.” He let her go and tested his arm, wincing slightly at the pain he was only now feeling. He had been so full of adrenaline, he hadn’t even noticed. “I think the bullet just grazed me.”
“You’re sure?” Wide, frightened eyes stared back at him, Sara’s mouth in an ‘O’ of horror. She tugged at his other arm fiercely. “Come on, we’ve got to get you to the hospital right now!”
The inspector resisted his daughter’s grip, holding in place. “Un momento Sara. I need to make sure that everyone’s all right first.”
“Dios!” Sarah ran an exasperated hand through her hair, the shootout having scattered her thoughts beyond comprehension. The special forces team had found her seconds after she’d hidden behind cover and her first instinct was to run to her father’s side when she’d heard his voice calling her name. “Aitor needs help! He was trying to save me and was shot in the leg!”
Paco wasted no time striding in the direction Sara had come from. “Show me where he is!”
“I’m fine!” Aitor appeared from around a corner, limping badly. He had detached the strap from his confiscated rifle and had tied it around it his leg as a crude tourniquet, his jeans soaked with blood from the mid-calf down. The rifle itself he used as a kind of crutch as he hobbled towards Paco and Sara. “Mierda! Another fucking ricochet, Paco!” He grumbled as he smiled grimly through the pain. “I seem to attract them like flies to shit!”
The young constable grabbed a passing Pablo Herrara, the head of the special forces unit that had infiltrated the building with them. “Agent Herrara, one of your guys is back there. He got hit square in the vest. He was out for a few minutes but he came to. He was bitching about getting hit as much as I was, so he must be okay.”
The burly man gave Aitor a smile. “Gracias, señor.” He clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll take care of my guys. You have your hombres take care of you.”
Don Lorenzo came up beside Aitor, grasping him under the arm and helping him sit on a low wooden crate. “Easy, son. You’re not Ironman, even if you think you are.” He glanced up at Paco’s knowing smirk. “We’ve got a medical team on the way.”
The commissioner reached in his pocket and threw a clean handkerchief to Paco, who caught it with his good hand. “For fuck’s sake Paco, put something on that wound before your daughter sues me for neglecting one of my best officers!”
Sara smiled as she neatly wound the cloth around her father’s arm, gently tying it off. “Gracias abuelo.” Her amused expression abruptly faded as the gravity of the situation began to sink in. “Where’s everyone else?”
A slight facial tic was the only emotion evident on Don Lorenzo’s face as he answered. “Most of our radios are still pretty spotty, so we have to account for everyone by hand. They’re coming around.”
“Don Lorenzo!” Curtis and Kike came up from the commissioner’s left, wearily holding their empty shotguns. They looked somewhat victorious but exhausted.
Curtis came up and offered a half-hearted salute, his normally jovial features visibly weary now that the danger had passed. “We were able to hold our positions comisario, but we’ve got a quite a body count over there. I think at least six.”
Don Lorenzo nodded curtly. “We’ll worry about all that later. As long as you two are all right.”
“Amen to that!” Montoya’s voice joined in agreement as he and Rita joined the group. Like Curtis and Kike, the pair were noticeably drained and shaken, but physically unharmed. Montoya looked on, not objecting as Povedilla dashed up, engulfing Rita in a crushing embrace. They’d all just been through hell after all - personal, petty jealousies and conflicts could wait.
Rita warmly smiled at her ex-husband, her eyes taking in the gash over his left eye, the blood having trickled down to stain his wrinkled shirt. “Jose Luis, are you all right?” At his nod, she glanced to her right, seeing the wreck of the surveillance van. “You sure how know to make a hell of an entrance. I was wondering what that crash was.”
Povedilla shrugged. “I just had to make sure you were safe, Rita. It didn’t matter how I got in here.”
“Vale.” Don Lorenzo nodded in grateful acknowledgement as Nelson and Mariano walked up. His heartbeat accelerated rapidly as he noted the palpable absence of his daughter and her fiancé. “Dónde esta Pepa y Silvia? Has anyone seen them?”
Small, apprehensive shakes of the head ‘no’ from the group. It was not the answer Don Lorenzo was looking for. “Right, spread out and search the sectors that haven’t been swept by special forces!” He barked, going into his authoritative mode. It was the only way he could keep from falling apart inside. “Find them, now!”
“PEPA!!” Silvia’s scream reverberated throughout the entire warehouse, the agonizing sound almost causing Don Lorenzo to collapse to his knees in sheer reflex.
Oh no! No, no, no, no, no!!! his mind repeated incessantly as he readied his gun, running as fast as he could towards his stricken daughter’s voice, the rest of the group following quickly behind him. Don Lorenzo knew with certainty that Silvia’s blood curdling scream could only mean one thing - the worst had happened.
___
Please God, please! Let this be a dream! Silvia’s mind cried in despair as her fingers pressed deeper into the tender flesh of Pepa’s neck, then moving down to clasp a motionless, warm wrist. There was no hint of a rhythm or throb of blood through the veins. Nothing. Pepa’s full lips were parted slightly, but no breath issued forth from her lungs.
Think Silvia, think! The tiny, rational part that was left of Silvia’s thoughts screamed through her senses, coercing her to think like a doctor, a healer. Vale, get the vest off so you can administer CPR and find the site of the major injury and treat it.
With a deep breath, Silvia reluctantly let go of putting pressure on Pepa’s arm, the bandage already having soaked through. With blood soaked fingers, she quickly tore the Velcro straps open on Pepa’s vest, her right hand taking a second to carefully probe the wound on Pepa’s temple. A tiny bit of tension shaved off Silvia’s rigid shoulders as she assessed that the wound was not indeed a gunshot but a severe graze. The heavy bleeding was due to the number of veins in that part of the body. The redhead took care to gently lift Pepa’s head as she pulled the vest off. Her eyes were greeted with the somewhat reassuring sight of no blood on Pepa’s torso.
Thank God those weren’t armor piercing rounds! But where’s the source, why isn’t she breathing? Silvia pulled open her fiancé’s denim vest and with one mighty yank, tore the now crimson stained white t-shirt in two, baring the skin of Pepa’s chest and torso. The sight of Pepa’s bruised and battered skin caused a strangled gasp to choke from Silvia’s throat and her eyes to flood anew with tears as a terrifying revelation was made abundantly clear. The Kevlar vest had protected Pepa from actually being shot, but the bullets still had marked and heavily injured her skin, most likely cracking or breaking the bones underneath.
A bullet had hit Pepa in the vest with such force directly over her heart that it had stopped completely.
Silvia started CPR, ensuring that Pepa’s airway was clear and administered two breaths, forcefully blowing her own life into the brunette’s lungs. Placing her hands on top one another, Silvia began driving compressions upon Pepa’s sternum, needing, willing the vital muscle to start pumping again. The forensic scientist counted the compressions in her head even as she began to speak out loud, begging her partner to come back to life.
“Pepa, por favor!” Silvia pleaded, her voice tinged with grief. “We’re about to get married! We’re going to go down the aisle and come back down with all those beautiful petals being thrown, remember?”
Two more breaths, more compressions. Pepa’s chest rose when Silvia breathed into her, but she was still unresponsive, gone to the world.
“And the wedding bands…” Silvia beseeched her unhearing lover. “You love those so much. I’m going to make you so happy when I put yours on. I promise I’ll make you happy.” I promise I’m going to save you…
A full minute had passed since Pepa had been shot. Two slowly ticked by. Two and a half. Three.
Silvia rocked back on her heels from giving Pepa more breaths, her body now shaking uncontrollably with fear. At the brink of a full blown panic, her blood stained hands raked through her hair, staining the red strands an ugly crimson. She took Pepa’s limp hand and threw her head back, screaming Pepa’s name to the heavens itself, sobbing and begging with any deity that would listen to return the love of her life back to her side.
Frantic footsteps reached Silvia’s ears as she glanced up to see the face of her father round the corner, his gun pointed in front of him.
Don Lorenzo’s skidded to a stop, his face going ashen as the horrible sight that appeared in front of him. His feet were rooted to the ground as he found himself unable to move. Silvia, his baby, was surrounded by the bodies of dead mafioso, holding Pepa’s hand, the taller woman’s body in a pool of her own blood.
“Papa! Papa, help me!” Silvia cried plaintively. Don Lorenzo reflected that for a second that she was akin to the terrified, vulnerable child who had skinned her knee on the playground, looking to her father to make everything right in her world.
Silvia bending down to continue CPR was the action that broke the commissioner out of his temporary paralysis. He turned his head to see his agents who were all struck dumb by the sight of one of their own that had fallen. “Get those fucking paramedics and ambulance here! Right away, god dammit, NOW!!”
Montoya unclipped his radio from his belt, one of the few which still had with a clear signal, forcefully yelling into the device to repeat Don Lorenzo’s orders. Sara had to plant her feet to hold Paco up, whose knees threatened to collapse under him. Father and daughter held onto each other for dear life, weeping inconsolably.
Don Lorenzo cast his gun to the side and knelt on the side of Pepa opposite his stricken daughter. “Tell me what to do, hija.” He spoke urgently yet quietly, hoping his presence could calm and steady her. “How can I help?”
Silvia looked up as she continued compressing Pepa’s chest. “Papa, the bullet hit her so hard, her heart stopped! It’s been over three minutes and she’s not responding!”
Seeing how she was about to completely break down again, Don Lorenzo put his hand on her shoulder, forcing Silvia to look into his eyes. “Vale, sweetheart. Just keep going. We’ll get your girl back to you, no matter what.”
The commissioner swiftly stripped his vest off, his fingers quickly reaching to loosen his tie. With the utmost care, he encircled Pepa’s upper left arm with the strip of cloth, tightening it to form a makeshift tourniquet. “How bad is her arm?”
“Bad. The bullet’s still in there.” Silvia managed to choke out. “I think it hit the brachial artery.”
Don Lorenzo had already ripped his button down shirt open, the buttons carelessly popping off and spilling to the floor. Undressed to his undershirt, he took one end of his shirt in his teeth, ripping off strips and folding them to press tightly against Pepa’s wounds. He bent to whisper in his agent’s ear. “Any second, cariño. Help is on the way.”
Silvia breathed two more breaths into Pepa’s lungs and took a moment to press a tender kiss to her forehead. “You hear that, Pepa? Please, come back to me.” Another desperate entreaty.
The redhead was forced to pull back in utter shock when Pepa’s entire body jerked in reflex as if it had been shot through with a powerful electric current. Pepa’s chest suddenly, miraculously stirred on its own.
Pepa felt like she had been running a mile a minute and had suddenly hit a brick wall at full speed. Her whole body shook with the shock of unspeakable agony that shot through every nerve ending. A horrible wheezing, gasping sound reached her ears and she belatedly realized that it was her own breath as she struggled to take in gulps of air. The brunette didn’t know where she was, if it was heaven or hell or somewhere in between. She could only see a blurred mass of color, could only feel the physical pain that she felt would brand her very soul for all eternity.
And then she felt droplets on her cheeks, her forehead, her lips, her tongue automatically reaching out to taste a salty fluid. They fell intermittently at first but then dropped faster and faster like a spring rain. And Pepa knew right then that no matter how much she hurt, no matter the pain she had to go through, that everything was right in her world. Her deepest desire had been granted. She could feel Silvia’s tears shower down on her face, could feel her hand holding her own, hear her voice, filled with equal parts anxiety and love, whispering in her ear. Pepa let her eyes slip shut, weary as she had never been before. She was with her Silvia. She was home.