DISCLAIMER: Los Hombres De Paco and its characters are the property of Antena 3. No infringement intended.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
SPOILERS: Through episode 82 (7x03).
How To Be Dead
By mightbefound
Please don't go crazy, if I tell you the truth
No you don't know what happened
And you never will if
You don't listen to me while I talk to the wall
This blanket is freezing, it's been out in the hall
Where you've had me for hours
Till I'm sure what I want
But darling I want the same thing that I wanted before
So sweetheart tell me what's up I won't stop no way
Please keep your hands down
And stop raising your voice
It's hardly what I'd be doing if you gave me a choice
It's a simple suggestion can you give me sometime
So just say yes or no
Why can't you shoulder the blame
Coz both my shoulders are heavy
From the weight of us both
You're a big boy now so let's not talk about growth
You've not heard a single word I have said...
Oh, my God
Please take it easy it can't all be my fault
I haven't made half the mistakes
That you've listed so far
Oh baby let me explain something
It's all down to drugs
At least I remember taking them and not a lot else
It seems I've stepped over lines
You've drawn again and again
But if the ecstacy's in the wit is definitely out
Dr. Jekyll is wrestling Hyde for my pride
Staring out the window, lost and broken and trying desperately not to think (and wasn't that a first for her?), Silvia was startled when she heard the scrape of keys in the door. She and Sara had enough time to shoot quizzical glances at each other before the long, lean form of Pepa was moving through the hallway. Pepa, always a good cop, glanced into the living room as she passed. She saw Silvia and Sara, slowed for a brief second, then kept moving.
Silvia couldn't read her face. It had been a long time since that was the case.
They heard the bedroom door open, then what must have been the closet, then drawers opening and closing.
Silvia felt the familiar roll of fury tighten her gut, and welcomed it. Pepa hadn't come home since that horrible, horrible day at the hotel, and she had the gall to come now and walk in and not talk and act like everything was normal?
Her breathing increased. For the second time that day, staring a hole in the wall and thinking of Pepa, Silvia actually saw red.
"Silvia...." Sara looked nervous and her voice, cautious and low, matched the gentle hand she was reaching out. But Silvia bucked her away, neatly sidestepped, and then was gone, blowing like a hurricane through the hallway until she reached the door of their--her, dammit, it was her fucking apartment--the bedroom.
Pepa was packing a medium-sized duffle bag, her back to the door. Silvia felt a horrible, ugly feeling crawl up her stomach, to the back of her throat, and felt her fury turn into something more, something blazing. Wasn't this just like fucking Pepa. Always running the fuck away when things got too hard, too serious. Like having a kid. Because apparently that was really fucking hard, and something to be avoided at all costs.
"Where are you going?" She sounded...so unlike herself. Her voice was cold, cruel, tight.
Pepa didn't turn around, didn't stop folding the t-shirt she was clutching. "Undercover," she answered, and her voice was neutral. She grabbed another shirt.
Silvia snarled. Actually curled her teeth back over her lips.
"We're suspended for the next week, remember?" Her voice was insulting and ugly and demeaning and the "tonta" hung unsaid between them, but it was there, so there. Silvia was gratified to see Pepa's hands tighten, bunching the fabric of the shirt.
It made Silvia feel good. At least something was getting to her--to Pepa, making her feel even a fraction of what Silvia had been feeling. At least something was making her feel that way. Which apparently a baby fucking couldn't.
Pepa took a long breath. "It's not for our precinct," she said shortly, and resumed folding, tucking the t-shirt neatly away and grabbing a sweatshirt. (It has--had--always fascinated Silvia, that Pepa was so messy in just about every other aspect of her life, but insisted on neatly, precisely folded clothing. Who would have thought that laundry, of all things, would be where Pepa got anal?)
But Silvia was still so furious and hurt and a thousand other things, so she leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms. "Oh?" she asked mockingly, sarcastically, as Pepa threw in a pair of jeans.
"No," Pepa's voice was neutral, so neutral, and she zipped her duffel up, shouldering it. Only then did she turn around, face schooled to calm, but Silvia could read her eyes, could see her pain, and felt satisfied, felt a horrible vicious pleasure from deep inside. "Commissioner Recena asked me to help out on a mission back in Sevilla." Pepa crossed half the distance to the door and faltered, stopped. Silvia didn't move, intentionally filling the doorway, crossing her arms.
Pepa met her eyes for the first time, and her jaw tensed. "I should be back in a week," she offered before wincing, changing the shoulder her bag was resting on. Silvia, though, was still transfixed by the massive black eye eating what seemed like half of Pepa's face, swelling her eye almost completely closed. Sara hadn't said....
"Pepa--" she began, voice gentling, taking a soft step toward Pepa and lifting her hand to Pepa's face, intending on she wasn't even sure what yet--
And Pepa flinched back.
It was subtle, but it was a definite recoil. Silvia dropped her hand, suddenly felt sick. The anger was gone, replaced by nausea and guilt and a creeping, cloying sense of shame. Pepa had flinched back. Flinched away. Backed away from Silvia, her girlfriend, the woman who should at the moment be taking care of her bruises, her aches. Pepa had flinched away from her. From the hands that had held, caressed, loved her thousands of times. Because earlier in the day Silvia had, she'd, and Pepa hadn't fought back, had barely even defended herself as Silvia had, when she'd--
And now Pepa, who wasn't afraid of anyone or anything, had backed away from her, and Silvia, who had seen too many battered women in her years on the force, was all too familiar with Pepa's body language, with the head looking down and away and the expectant tense in her shoulders and Pepa's harsh breathing and the way her hands her clutching the straps of her bag.
Oh, God.
Silvia felt something crack deep inside her.
"Pepa?" Her voice was choked now, it warbled a little, and Pepa's head came up. Pepa met her eyes and they were looking at each other, really looking, for the first time in days, and Pepa's eyes were so expressive and oh God this was too much to feel all at once and there was a look in Pepa's eyes, an expectation, a hope, a blind hope, and she was waiting, just waiting, for Silvia to say something, anything....
But because she was Silvia Castro, because she didn't do things like this and didn't know how to get past her stupid pride, because she was still hurt and angry, because without Pepa she fell back on a lifetime of old habits, Silvia didn't say anything. Couldn't. She inhaled sharply, then exhaled slowly, and saw a birthing hope die in Pepa's eyes.
Pepa just looked at her, and now there was an awful, dead look in her eyes, and Silvia found she couldn't keep looking. So she dropped her gaze to the floor, shut her eyes, moved out of the doorway.
She heard Pepa sigh heavily. "I'll be back in a week," the other woman repeated, and took care not to brush Silvia on her way out the door.
The End