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 83
Light Up
By Misty Flores
Have heart my dear
We're bound to be afraid
Even if it's just for a few days
Making up for all this mess
- Snow Patrol, Run
When tragedy strikes Silvia Castro, it never does so with a light hand. She has endured so much, and has emerged broken but healed. She has come to accept such things as matter-of-fact. Things happen. She moves on.
Until Pepa. Pepa brings her to life, sparking happiness inside her so quickly it feels like she's been jolted – like one of Frankenstein's creations.
Silvia is allowed fourteen months of bliss, and then she is revisited by what she knows is an old friend.
When it happens with Pepa, it hurts her so much she can't even breathe.
It makes her hate the woman she loves. It makes her want to hurt Pepa because it makes her ache like she's dying.
It's easy to revert to form. Silvia has been no stranger to heartache; has developed a coping mechanism that would rival the Special Force's trauma training.
Shut down. Stop feeling. Get lost in work.
It has been her staple. It has worked time and time again. It allows her to … exist.
It's easy to break up with Pepa. One look at her, and the fury comes rushing back – because Pepa can have a child. She can feel life growing inside her, and what Sara has told her that Pepa is doing takes Silvia's dream and perverts it. She hates Pepa for that. So she recites a speech she has memorized and does not allow Pepa to get a word in edgewise, because to do that would invite Pepa to dissuade her, and this is all too much.
She does it. She ignores Pepa's tears and her strangled voice. She remembers every single horrible thing that has happened in the last few days, and she thinks of her shattered dreams and her lost child and just like that, it's done.
Fourteen months of heaven and three days of hell.
And Silvia can do what she has always done before. She will move on. She will exist. This will be just like all the other disappointments and tragedies in her life.
Except it isn't.
Even when she discovers what has happened with Pepa and Aitor – it isn't the same.
Silvia has motivation. She has gumption. She has resolve. She has everything she thinks she needs to get over this and in the end, she finds herself failing in the face of one simple truth: she loves Pepa.
She LOVES her. So much that it tears at her resolves and her gumption and every reason she's given herself for staying away from this woman of extreme bliss and extreme hell.
It takes one look. One look into the eyes of her damaged beloved, and suddenly Silvia's world comes crashing around her, because it's a look she knows, but has never seen on Pepa.
Her Pepa is destroyed. And Silvia is the reason.
In that simple comprehension comes their salvation. Silvia's reasons and stubborn self-defense mechanisms falter. Her arms circle around Pepa; she breathes her in like air. And she can BREATHE. She can breathe for the first time in three days. It nearly shatters her to recognize this, because that means that this is uncontrollable. This is beyond her.
This is beyond them both.
She pulls back, looks into a bruised face and sees the sputtering of hope that begins to shine in Pepa's brown eyes.
"Silvia," Pepa whispers, strangled and weak – so timid and unsure, because Silvia has destroyed her.
The tears that sting her eyes are only superficial markers of the deep pain she feels inside. The utter regret. And this is NEW, because Silvia can see and recognize everything that Pepa has done and yet she only clings tighter.
She leans up, presses her mouth against Pepa's, and nearly sobs at the contact.
Pepa's lips are dry, frozen against hers, until she hears a mangled groan that rumbles through the back of Pepa's throat and into her mouth. And then they're kissing deeply. Desperately. Slender fingers tighten around her waist, reel her in with so much force Silvia gasps for breath against Pepa's mouth.
Pepa is clutching her hard. Her sides are nearly bruised with Pepa's grip. Silvia does not tell her to let go.
To do so would be the ultimate tragedy.
And Silvia will no longer accept it.
The End