Author's note: Cross-posted from AO3. Thank you so much to itziarituno_nyc on Twitter for beta-reading to assess the flow of this one-shot, your insight was instrumental! You helped me re-evaluate the big picture so I could tell the real story I wanted to tell! ❤️ That said, any grammatical inconsistencies here are my own.
"People's feelings are memories that transcend time." (Steins;Gate)
When Sergio is feeling particularly romantic, he wonders if the atoms which now make up his and Raquel's bodies were once in contact before they were even born, at the very beginning of time. Or perhaps their souls have known each other since then. It's improbable, but not wholly impossible.
Because when he speaks to her in the Hanoi, when she reveals all that she's endured, he feels a sense of recognition—of familiarity. As though he resonates with her story, realizes that she's borne suffering just as he has. And he'll feel as though he wants—no, needs—to know everything about her.
If there's something inside them which resonates throughout the ages, then perhaps there have been other versions of them. Other lives, in other universes; other timelines. He imagines lines of time stretching parallel to each other, and he and Raquel as little spots on each of them, sometimes head-to-head, sometimes not; sometimes they're born in different eras, or they make different choices.
Perhaps in some, they are warriors, like in a Greek myth; he as Achilles, and her as Penthesilea. He sees her across a field, and she is captivating in her ferocity. He slaughters many to reach her, and so does she; when he cuts her down, he realizes he's fallen in love, and he mourns her, even as his fellows mock him for his weakness. In others, perhaps they are not human, but two wolves, racing through a forest together; hunting, playing, courting, mating. At least in those, they would always be together.
In every world, he'll come to realize that he would readily die for her. Just like the wolf he might have once been, he would eventually run through a forest—not to hunt, but in a desperate race to sacrifice himself. Begging Raquel to get out, that he's coming for her, in the hope that it means she'll live.
Teruel, 1938
The stench of death is thick in Sergio's nose. He turns to see a Nationalist soldier raising his gun to Raquel's back.
In that moment, it didn't matter that Raquel has been lying to him for weeks. It didn't matter that he's just discovered her to be a spy in their ranks, an infiltrator from the Nationalist side of the war.
Sergio aims, and fires.
The soldier opposite him falls to the ground. He barely has time to acknowledge that he's killed, killed for the sake of a woman whose loyalties might lie elsewhere: because the enemy line is closing in on them, pushing them back towards the trench. They retreat, firing behind them. Raquel is undaunted, wielding her gun by Sergio's side against those to whom she had once sworn herself, and Sergio sees her—and himself—in a new light.
He has taken a life for Raquel. And he realizes—with a terrifying kind of certainty—that he would do it, over and over again. He would throw himself into danger, set a whole battalion of soldiers on fire if it meant it could save her.
Because he loves her, and they are in the midst of a war; and love and war has turned him into someone he would never have recognized five years ago. But they chose this, to fight and shake hands with death. And he likes this, this love—this wild feeling, the exhilaration of certainty coursing through his veins. Knowing that his true place in the world will always be at her side.
"I'm so sorry, Raquel. I shouldn't have called you a traitor," he gasps, as they throw themselves down in the trench, huddling down together. War and terror rages around them, but he is blind, deaf and dumb to anything but her. "I shouldn't have—"
"—no." Raquel cups his cheek with her free hand, holding her gun with the other. "I'm sorry I lied to you."
She has to stop speaking as gunfire rains out above their heads. He closes his eyes, gritting his teeth, and when he opens them again, he sees tears tracking their way down Raquel's dirt-streaked cheeks.
"Estoy contigo," she says, and it's enough. I'm with you.
There is no escape from this, not unless the enemy line falls back. And he knows they will not.
They are going to die.
"You were the only thing that got me through this war." He takes her free hand in his. "Marry me, Raquel. Say you'll marry me. I need you in my life."
He never gets to hear her answer.
There is a roar, then a defeaning blast, and rubble sprays over them, and everything is fire and blood and red: they've dropped a bomb nearby. His eyes burn with pain, and for a few moments, he can't see anything. He can't hear anything beyond the frantic thundering of his own heart.
He can only smell burning.
Then some of the world starts to trickle back in through his ears, and Sergio hears faint screams, cries of agony.
He hears another roar of a nearby aircraft, and he doesn't hesitate.
He snatches Raquel into his arms, throws himself over her back so he covers her with his whole body. He's crushing her, he knows, and she's shrieking, bucking frantically under him, but he can't hear her words over the ringing in his ears. Through watery eyes, he sees a military helicopter hovering somewhere above them, preparing to drop another bomb. Raquel pinches his arm, writhes under him again, but he forces her down with his weight, pins her wrists against her chest. If his body absorbs the shock, if his spine is shredded to pieces instead of hers, maybe there's a slim chance that Raquel will survive this.
In my next life, I'll find you again, Raquel. Again, and again, and again, I'll love you, marry you, grow old with you, he vows, and it's his last thought before—
—everything is gone, and their bodies are reduced to dust and an indiscriminate mess of red muscle and ruptured organs and splintered bones. They mingle with the soil that bore witness to their last moments. Months, years later, plants will absorb the matter which once formed parts of their bodies to grow tall and wide, to reach for the sun.
If Sergio had known of this, knew that they could be so intimately entwined in death, his first meeting with Raquel might have been very different.
Instead, he approaches her not as Sergio, but as Salva, a harmless businessman preoccupied with a cider project. When he offers his phone charger to her in the Hanoi, el Profesor is with him too, buried deep in his mind: cataloguing every anxious shift in her expression, in her tone. Comparing the way she speaks to him in person, with the way she talks to el Profesor, a man intent on unsettling her, on shaking her composure, on destabilizing her authority within the police tent, to give the gang more time. She is shrewd, and makes a fair opponent, but he is determined to win this game—has been refining his strategies for years.
But when she tells him her story in the Hanoi, her smile weary and her eyes battle-torn, el Profesor fades away from his consciousness. He thinks: how she's suffered. How she's endured. Then he thinks of his own pain, of how he lost his father, of the unfairness of the world around them, and he realizes that she is not merely a pawn in his plan; not merely his adversary. She lives and breathes, she feels, she aches.
They have something in common after all.
From that moment onwards, she is no longer just Inspectora Murillo, but Raquel.
This, I can help her with. I can save her from this. I can give her an out, an escape. She deserves a little justice of her own as well.
In other timelines, he doesn't always succeed. Knowing this would kill him.
Toledo, 1950
Sergio cannot stand parties like these. In bars with too much wine, too-loud music, and too many women. Hired women, at that, escorts and prostitutes from a brothel house in Toledo.
Andres knows Sergio's distaste for the prostitution business full well. He just doesn't care. He insists their investors wouldn't care for their shared company if they didn't provide them with the right incentive.
Andres is sitting next to Sergio, and he has a woman draped across his lap. She croons some flattering words, and Andres laughs. She looks slyly at Sergio.
He avoids meeting her eyes. If she climbs onto him next, he will leave this bar immediately, and to hell with Andres' opinion.
He throws back the last of his glass, sighing. He just wants to get back to his work.
And so he thinks, even when the music starts again. Until he happens to glance up.
There is a woman on the stage in a red dress, her eyes closed. She moves with practised motions, in time with the beat of the music; there's an innate sort of grace to her limbs which makes her seem out of place in this dingy bar. Like she belongs on the stage of a theatre, telling a story through her movements.
He would never have admitted it aloud, but the sight of her is beguiling. He would be lying if he said that the undulations of her hips didn't stir him; that his eyes didn't follow the plunge of her neckline halfway down her chest, revealing the soft swell of her cleavage.
But there's something more that keeps his eyes on her, that keeps him from looking away. It's more than attraction. There is something in her eyes, in the hollowness of her expression, something he feels like he knows. She looks sad, achingly so, and it holds his attention.
For an instant, her eyes meet his, and his breathing stops.
Her eyes are full of soul and life. As though she's loved and lived. As though she's seen the world, been to war a thousand times over.
Andres leans in close, his breath tickling Sergio's ear. Sergio averts his eyes, breaking his stare with the dancer, as Andres says, "You want to fuck her, don't you?"
"Don't be crude," Sergio snaps, shaken. Despite himself, he pictures it: the dancer spread on a bed of silk, nude underneath him. Her battle-weary eyes indifferent to his touch, a fake smile painted on her red lips. Something inside him twists. "And I don't sleep with prostitutes."
"You can't fool me, Sergio. I see it in your eyes. You look at women so rarely, it's obvious when you finally see one you want." Andres looks at him knowingly, then glances back at the stage. "She's a little older than most, maybe. But still attractive." He clicks his tongue. "I'll bring her to you tonight."
Sergio splutters in protest, but Andres waves his hand. "My treat. That's the last I'll hear of it." And he turns back to the woman astride his lap, bringing her in for a kiss.
Sergio can't say anything else.
When Andres brings the dancer to his hotel room that night, she's changed into a black dress, covered by a long coat. Her eyes are downcast in an approximation of demureness.
But he knows better. He's seen the flash of spirit in her eyes as she dances.
Andres leaves, and she moves to the bed without a word, but he raises his hand.
"What's your name?"
"Raquel," she says, still not looking at him. Her voice is bold and clear.
"I'm Sergio," he says. "We don't need to do anything tonight."
She blinks, and then raises her eyes. That's when their eyes meet for the second time that day, and he can't look away.
"Do you mean that?" she says, her tone dubious.
He nods, and she merely stares at him. She doesn't believe him. She has no reason to believe him.
Anxious under the weight of her stare, Sergio looks around the room, until his eyes rest upon his chessboard, open on a table.
"Have you ever played chess?"
She says she hasn't, so he asks if she will let him teach her. She accepts, and they sit down together. After six rounds, she beats him fair and square, and her victorious smile takes his breath away.
Her mind is sharp, more-so than he expected, and he's both stunned and pleased. He's been playing chess all his life, and besides Andres, it's not often that he comes across anyone who is capable of matching him. His father taught him and Andres how to play the game, and his father is the best chess player he knows.
He congratulates her, and she beams at him. She opens up to him after that: she tells him of her childhood dream of becoming a dancer, of the lessons she used to take in all sorts of dancing styles. He tells her that he'd always wanted to be a violinist, but with the economy steadily dwindling, it wasn't the best idea, so he started a cider business with Andres.
Maybe in another life, she would have pirouetted to his violin's melody.
They talk late into the night, about lost dreams, about the state of Spain, about everything and about nothing at all. They share fruits and desserts which he orders from the hotel's room service. He is content, hungry for every morsel of her thoughts that she's willing to give—until she rounds the table suddenly, and leans down to kiss him.
She tastes sweet, like the cakes they've just shared. It's difficult to pull away, so difficult, but he reminds himself that she can't really want this. She just feels grateful to the one man who's shown her more kindness that she must've seen in years. It's not real, what she's offering him, and he doesn't want it if it's not freely offered.
His heart clenches in his chest. So he pulls away, shaking his head. "You don't have to do this. I mean it. You won't get in any trouble, I won't tell anyone that we didn't—we didn't—"
"—but I want to," Raquel interrupts, and she leans in again, kisses him. "Let me have this escape," she implores, and he can't possibly say no, not when she's looking at him like this, as though he's everything she's ever wanted. Her hands roam over his skin, sliding across his chest, and he's lost to her touch. His head falls back as she kisses her way down his chest.
He guides her back up gently. Then he carries her to the bed, and kisses her again. He rests part of his weight on her, settling comfortably in the cradle of her hips, and they kiss and kiss with their clothes still on. He's in no hurry, only exploring her mouth, enjoying the softness of her body.
Suddenly, with unexpected strength, Raquel flips them over, a mischievous quirk to her lips. Sergio blinks up at her, and then they burst into laughter together.
They undress, and Raquel straddles him again. Her hair falls around his face as she leans in to kiss him, and when their lips part, her eyes shine with the light above them. As she moves to take him inside her, his eyes are fixed on her. He's transfixed by the low moan that escapes her throat, the flutter of her eyelids, the shudder of her chest—his mouth drops open in awe.
Let me have this escape.
After they find their release, she curls up on his chest, and he runs his hand down her arm. She looks at him, her eyes bright with satisfaction.
"Do you really see me as an escape?" he asks her, curious, and she smiles.
"Yes. You make me forget where I am." She presses a kiss to his chest, splaying her fingers over his skin. "Like I'm somewhere else other than here. Like I'm living another kind of life."
They don't sleep. They talk, and hold each other, unwilling to part. He's been alone all his life, and content with his own company—but here he is, falling in love in the span of mere hours, unable to imagine being anywhere else. He's never felt this kind of pure happiness in his life. She makes him feel this way.
The next morning, he plucks up his courage. He finds Raquel's souteneur—Alberto Vicuña—and requests how much it would cost to release Raquel from the brothel.
Vicuña scoffs, tells him he could never afford her price. And he slams the door in Sergio's face.
Sergio starts to secret away money from his business, to accumulate enough to take Raquel away, to bribe whoever they need to to find her daughter, to run away with her and buy land somewhere. In the meantime, he visits her again and again, as often as he can, chasing the sound of her laugh, learning everything about her. They play more rounds of chess, and he teaches her all the strategies he knows.
Some days, she's bruised and crying, and it pains him, makes him want to kill all the men who laid rough hands on her. On those days, they just talk, without any expectations, and he holds her chastely.
When they do make love, he discovers the secrets of her body. He learns what makes her gasp, how to coax the sweetest sounds he's ever heard out of her mouth. He kisses every scar he finds, strokes her hips, and that's when he learns the stretch marks on her belly are from a daughter who was stolen from her seven years ago. A daughter she named Paula. "I only got to keep her for two years," she says, her eyes filling with tears.
He promises her that he'll get her out, that they can find Paula, and raise her together. Whenever he says this, she bites her lip and looks away from him, not responding.
When Andres finds out about his frequent drives to the brothel house in Toledo, he's amused at first. He finds it hilarious that his serious younger brother is finally discovering the joys of women. But when it becomes apparent that this is about more than just sex, Andres grows concerned."Women like her, they're dangerous, Sergio. Falling for her will only land you—and her—in trouble."
Sergio doesn't give his brother's warning more than a minute's consideration. He's working on getting Raquel free, on saving her. Everything will be ready soon.
He's certain of himself. Until one morning, he arrives in Toledo, and requests to see Raquel—and the girls around him go quiet.
The red-haired woman at the front desk looks at him with fright in her eyes. She shakes her head, her eyes darting around the room.
His blood runs cold. He demands answers, and eventually, she relents. She takes him to a corner and whispers to him, tells him that Vicuña killed Raquel in a fit of rage after she refused a client.
It's his worst nightmare come true. He exits the brothel, walks to his car, and he cries and cries for what feels like hours.
Then he drives to the nearest petrol station, and phones the police to report a murder. And he drives himself home.
He works, and works. It's all he can do. His business blooms, and months later, his parents push him to marry, insisting on the importance of passing on Marquina blood and his newfound wealth. He refuses at first, but then they threaten never to speak to him or Andres ever again.
He doesn't lift a finger to help with the wedding preparations.
Andres was right all along. There was never any point to love.
When he finds out that the police have done nothing to arrest Alberto, that Raquel is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in a dingy old cemetery, he is filled with rage and contempt. There is no justice in this world, it seems, so he uses his hard-earned wealth to hire the most discrete, thorough assassin he can find to go after Alberto.
When he receives a picture of Alberto's body, beaten, with his throat slit, it doesn't take away the numbness inside him. But it's the first time since Raquel's death he's felt anything remotely close to pleasure; the first time his mind is distracted from the profound unhappiness that's made a home in him, even if for a moment.
One night, he finally remembers that Raquel had had a child. Paula. He hires a private detective to find her, to find a girl called Paula born in Toledo nine years ago. There are three: two living, and one dead.
One of the two living girls lives in a decrepit old orphanage in Madrid. He goes to visit her, and he is unable from stopping his eyes from filling with tears when she's brought to see him.
The girl is bedraggled and tiny, her clothes too small for her; but she has Raquel's hair, Raquel's brown eyes, Raquel's wary stare. She is unmistakably Raquel's daughter.
He is prepared to beg the matron on his hands and knees to sign the adoption papers immediately. He expects to do just that, in fact—although engaged, he is still unmarried. But to his astonishment, they allow him to sign the papers and take Paula without fuss. She's been here for seven years, they say, and older children eat too much, cost too much, take up too much space.
He takes Paula back home with him. He asks Andres' wife to help him buy clothes suitable for a girl of nine years, and word quickly spreads to his fiancée's family that he's adopted a child without so much as asking for their permission.
His fiancée comes to see him, the line of her mouth thin. "You barely even look at me. You don't court me, or bring me flowers, why did you even agree to marry me?" She cries, but then her dejection crystallizes into rage. "Then you take in some little girl. What are you, a paedophile? A homosexual? Are you even a man? You don't care about anything at all, do you?"
He doesn't. He simply leaves the room when she raises her voice.
The engagement is broken off, and he develops a rapport with Paula. He brings her warm milk every time she has a nightmare, listens to her when she has something weighing on her chest. He teaches her how to play chess, and she takes to the game as keenly as Raquel did.
The first time she calls him Father, he cries.
He wishes desperately he had a photograph of Raquel to show her. She asks about her mother all the time: what was she like? Do I look like her? What did she do? Why did she leave me at the orphanage?
Sergio tells her that her mother was a dancer, one of the best in Spain. That she was lovely and intelligent and kind, and Paula looks just like her. That she died from pneumonia when Paula was two, and she had no other family. That she loved Paula more than anything else in the world.
She believes him.
Over the years, Paula grows more and more like Raquel in her appearance and manners. With each passing year, it becomes more of a challenge for him to look at her, to keep himself from breaking down inside when he sees her. But he forces himself to meet her eyes, to smile and conceal the pain he feels around her. He wants to be a vehicle for all the love Raquel wished she could have given her daughter.
At seventeen, Paula decides she wants to be a nurse. She trains hard, and he had the privilege of watching her at work once: she moves with the same surety and presence in the hospital ward that Raquel had on stage.
Paula falls in love with one of the junior doctors at her hospital. The man eventually comes to see Sergio, holding his hat nervously and asking for Paula's hand.
Sergio wants to refuse him—he grills the man in an attempt to find some hidden secret, some negative quality, any reason to turn him down. But he is polite, articulate, good-natured, and does not challenge Sergio except to stand firm with his desire to make Paula his wife.
Paula is the last piece of Raquel he has. Saying yes means that Paula will move out, and he will be left with his own dark thoughts for company.
Raquel would want him to say yes.
He says yes.
He manages to keep up his act up until the day of Paula's wedding. She is breathtaking in her white dress, and he struggles not to weep as he walks her down the aisle.
"Take care of yourself, Father." She kisses him goodbye, and he smiles for her, nudging his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
He watches her new husband drive her away, then returns to an empty, silent house. He works late nights to forget his sorrow, to avoid being home as much as possible, until the day comes when he collapses during a work meeting.
It's humiliating, and he struggles to meet people in the eyes for days after. Hard-working Señor Marquina, the head of his own company: and he can't even cope with the stress he puts on his own shoulders.
The doctors say it's cancer, colorectal cancer, and it's spread to the rest of his body. That his body is destroying itself from the inside. They say that he doesn't even have a month, that he won't live to see Paula's first child. Regardless, he continues to work, until finally, Andres bans him from coming to the company building. Paula shouts at him until he agrees to stay in bed.
The day he breathes his last, he stares up at the ceiling numbly. He's all hollowed out on the inside, a pale shadow of himself. Andres is a grim presence at his side, and Paula is crying.
He doesn't pray. Not to God. He has nothing to say to God. He only thinks of Raquel.
I'm sorry, Raquel, I'm so sorry. I should have fought harder to save you, I should have given my life for your freedom.
The day comes when Sergio lies down in Raquel's bed as she sleeps. He caresses her hair, tucks it out of her face. He lets his eyes roam over her, committing her to memory; memorizing the shape of her eyebrows, the arch of her cheekbones, and the shade of her skin. He breathes in her scent—it permeates her bedsheets, surrounding him—and he thinks of the way her features light up when she smiles at him.
He's lived and breathed his plans for the heist for the past years. But as he watches Raquel, he doesn't think about the heist at all. He's acutely aware of Raquel's scent, her presence near him, the tranquility of this moment. He's living purely in the present, in a way he never has before. It's a gift. A gift Raquel's given him.
And that's when he realizes that he's in too deep. That he's fallen in love for the very first time in his life.
This is not how he can win this heist, not without anyone getting hurt. There is no way either himself or Raquel could come away from this unscathed.
The line between his real self and his persona—between Sergio and Salva—thins with every moment he spends with her. He is flirting with danger. And yet, in that moment, he can't bring himself to withdraw his hand, pull away from her, and step away from the bed.
As he lies there, waiting for her to stir awake, he wonders if this pull he feels towards her was always inevitable.
It's a naïve thought, but a tempting one: it would absolve him of some responsibility, some guilt.
Galicia, 1976
Raquel Murillo is the eldest—and most treasured—daughter of the most dangerous man in Spain: Sebastián Murillo, the head of the biggest Galician mafia clan.
She's said to have killed dozens of men foolish enough to get too close to her. That she carries knives coated with lethal poison, sheathed against her inner thigh.
The second rumour might be true, for Sergio has seen pictures of the knives she's said to wield, but he suspects that the first is an exaggeration. She might not be a bloodthirsty murderess, but merely a woman who tries her best to defend herself in a world of men.
Mafiosos are not kind to women. His own mother was butchered by a rival clan when he was very young.
On this day, Raquel Murillo is clad in a sleek red dress. She dances through the hotel ballroom, speaking freely with everyone she comes across: Sergio watches her through the windows of the ballroom, through the eyepiece of his rifle. He's on the rooftop of the building opposite the hotel.
He's the best sniper in Spain, and it's his task to kill her, to take her down to destabilize her father, so the Marquina clan can take control of Murillo's monopoly over drug trafficking.
He directs his rifle to follow her movements through the ballroom windows.
She's too near many of the people he and Andres plan to ally with. It's far too delicate a situation. He'll have to wait for a moment when he can catch her at a fair distance from others.
He waits, but she is not the only brown-haired woman in a red dress, and at some point he realizes that he's lost sight of her in the massive crowd. He searches for her, but she's gone.
He frowns. Perhaps she went to the ladies' to powder her face.
He stays in position on top of the roof, waiting patiently, watching the ballroom through his eyepiece. He is a sniper: accustomed to waiting for hours on end.
The door to the rooftop creaks, and he jerks into motion, realizing that he's made a grave error in judgement. He must have been spotted.
He whips around with his handgun, but Murillo is already standing at a distance from him, cocking her gun in his direction.
She is stunning, staring at him with fire in her eyes. The photographs of her hadn't done her ferocity justice.
If she pulls the trigger now, she will shoot him clean in the head.
She's not alone. There are two men with her.
Sergio rolls for cover, and bullets rain out above his head. When they stop, he doesn't pause: he shoves himself up and fires in a horizontal line, rapid-fast. Murillo is smart enough to drop to the ground before he starts firing, but her companions aren't.
They fall. It's just him and Murillo now.
He drops back down to the ground, trying to pace his breathing.
He hears her footsteps, and he jolts up from the ground, aiming his gun upwards.
Once on his feet, he comes face-to-face with her. He is not close enough that he can pull on her gun to tug it out of her grip, but he supposes that she has chosen to keep her distance precisely for this reason.
"You plan to kill me," she states. She narrows her eyes. "Are you Sergio Marquina?"
"Yes," he responds, taken aback. "You know my name."
"I know all the names of the men who want to take me down. You're just like all the rest of them."
There is contempt in her voice, but he is not angry. He will prove her wrong: there are no men quite like him. Although, if she really has studied him, then she should already know this. He only smiles, and she bares her teeth at him in a snarl, before firing at his head.
He ducks, moving back across the rooftop, shooting at her. She twists out of the way.
As they fire at each other, fighting to get closer and closer, Sergio feels an odd sense of dèjá vu. Something about the way she moves is familiar. As though he's stood like this in a battlefield before, watching her fight. As though he's watched her dance before.
She is quick, elegant, and as savage as he. She makes this gunfight seem like an art. He could almost fall in love with the way she moves.
He remembers the tales he used to read as a child—not only Spanish mythologies, but also myths from the Greeks, the Celtics, the Chinese, from cultures all over the world. Raquel reminds him of Penthesilea, the ferocious Amazon queen, seeking justice. And if she is Penthesilea, he is Achilles, determined to kill her.
Maybe he was Achilles in a past life, he wonders. It would explain this inexorable pull he feels towards Raquel Murillo.
Her hair tosses freely around her head, buffeted by the night's cold wind. He is so mesmerised by it, by the way its wildness represents who she is, that he almost misses his opportunity: she's getting slower with exhaustion, and she's left an opening. She's more accustomed to handling knives, he assumes, to fend off close-range attacks.
He is a sniper, with a sniper's instincts. He never hesitates. He shoots her near her heart, without thinking.
Instantly, he regrets it, his heart plummeting down to his belly, but it's too late. His aim has struck true, as it always does. She gurgles, her free hand coming up to her chest.
He runs forward to catch her in his arms before she can fall to the ground. He holds her, and she stares up at him with wide brown eyes, stunned.
He feels a sudden stabbing pain in his belly, and he looks down, realizing that she's thrust a knife into him.
He recognizes the handle. It's one of her famed poisoned knives.
When he looks back at her face, she's already dead, her eyes sightlessly staring past him.
Tears come to his eyes, unbidden, and spill over his cheeks. It is irrational, absurd, mad: he hardly knows her, has only just come face-to-face with her, has just shot her heart—and yet, he is in love. He knows it. He stays there, bent over her, caressing her face until finally, he feels bile in his throat, and his body convulses. Once, twice, three times, and then he's shaking uncontrollably, and Raquel's body tumbles out of his arms, onto the ground. He collapses over her, gurgling, white foam coming to his lips.
His insides burn, and no one comes for him.
As the heist at the mint draws to a close, Sergio buys four postcards, and he looks down at them, thumbing his pen. Before he could think twice, he writes down the coordinates to a bar a few streets away from the house he would eventually buy in Palawan.
Raquel may or may not uncover his lies, he thinks. Either way, he hopes that she would remember him—with love, with conflict, as he thinks of her—and look for the physical reminders of him she has, the postcards. Hopes she would turn them over, and see his sprawled writing. And decide to come to him.
He can't imagine a life without her, can't imagine any lasting joy in Palawan to be found without her at his side. He has never hoped for anything so badly in his life.
She gives him hope.
Urals, 1988
When Sergio exhales, he can see his breath forming a white cloud before his face.
Raquel's skin is frozen cold, and she's shivering even more violently than Sergio, although he's already given her two of his jackets. Women get colder more easily than men do, he knows: they have a lower metabolic rate on average and generate less internal heat. She needs the extra layers more than he does, to survive this cold.
He holds Raquel. Holds her, and tries not to think about how they're trapped here, in this cavern of ice, with no way out.
"No one's coming for us," she whispers, and he can't deny it, so he says nothing. Their phones are out of battery, and their research expedition to a series of ice caves in the Urals was expected to last two months.
Occasionally, he would wipe the surface of his watch clean of frost to see the time. So he knew they'd been trapped down here for six days. They were barely a quarter of the way through their two-month period. No one would come looking for them yet, not until the one-month mark, when they were meant to report their progress via telephone.
Their meagre supply of food and water had finished yesterday. They could have licked the walls of the ice cave, but it was too cold and he'd almost burnt his tongue trying in a fit of desperate thirst. If only we had a lighter, to melt down some ice…
Raquel's hypothermic, and so is he. He knows the tips of their fingers are already black, like coal, like death, death that's slowly creeping down their fingers, towards their palms. He's careful to wrap her hands in his, so she can't take their gloves off and see it.
Her teeth chatter as she continues to speak. "Do—do you think we would have gotten married? In another time?"
"Yes," he says, and it's a dream, but he loses himself in it. He imagines her in a long white dress, himself in a suit, and in his dream, Andres is there, with Raquel's mother.
"Do you promise?" He can tell that she's trying to sound playful, but she's failing. Her voice is plaintive.
"I promise you." He presses his nose to her cheek, yearning for her scent, but he can only feel the cold piercing deep into his nose. "If we get out of here, let's get married." They'll have to quit their jobs, of course—their company has a strict policy against colleagues marrying—but it'll be well-worth it.
He's staring death in the face, regretting all the things he never got to do before in his life. If they're lucky enough to get out of this, there's no way he would not marry her, as soon as they were able to climb out of their hospital beds without aid. Even if they would no longer have any fingers to wear their rings.
"Y—You won't even ask me p—properly," she complains.
Sergio shakes his head. "Not here, I won't. Let me propose to you properly, under the sun," he whispers. "On a beach, standing on warm sand, with the ocean all around us." He can almost feel the warmth of the sun bathing his skin.
"That sounds h—heavenly." Her voice comes in a whisper. In the dimness of the cave, he sees her eyes close. "As long as we're together…"
Her head falls against his shoulder.
"Raquel?"
She doesn't respond.
"Raquel, we can't sleep." He shakes her, and she's still breathing, but she barely responds. Panic sets his nerves alight. He shakes her harder, slaps her cheek, makes her jump up and down in his arms, walks them back and forth—but her legs drag over the ground, and her body is limp in his arms. She's fainted.
He can only keep up his efforts at keeping them in motion for so long before he starts getting exhausted too.
He hates this, this powerlessness, he thinks, as he sits down, bundling Raquel up in his arms, shivering hard.
At least they're together. Selfishly, he's glad she's here with him, even if he would willingly choose to die this very instant if it meant that she would survive.
But he would be frightened of being here alone.
As long as we're together…
Her presence is the only thing that gives him any strength, any hope at all. Every time ice cracks, he jolts, desperately hoping that it's someone working to break them out.
He tries to stay awake, but it's difficult. So difficult. Eventually, he succumbs, his eyes slipping shut one last time.
They die in an embrace. Decades later, they will find their clothes and bones wound around each other, and they will present them to the world as the Lovers of the Urals. The documents on them indicate that they are Spaniards, not Russians, but naming their bones after the Urals gives the local area an air of romanticism instead of fear—a reputation sorely needed after the Dyatlov Pass Incident, when nine hikers mysteriously died in the Ural mountains, a fiasco which attracted immense international scrutiny.
They have no descendants, no living family, and no one comes forth to claim their bodies, to request their return to Spain. So their skeletons are carefully preserved under glass, and rearranged in a museum in the same position they were found. Tourists walk up to the exhibit with their remains. They sigh wistfully, trace their fingers over the glass—they don't think of the way the two lovers had suffered from the biting cold, from debilitating thirst and hunger, in their last moments. They imagine how they had faced death together, in love, in the comfort of each other's arms.
In all their lifetimes, they must have died a thousand deaths. Even when their lives had reached a natural conclusion, they would have gone through many les petites morts, many little deaths together: chasing the bliss of being intimate, over and over again. Stealing little moments of ecstasy to forget about the world around them, to pretend that nothing else exists outside their embrace.
When Sergio goes to the Hanoi for the last time, he finds Raquel looking down at the postcards he'd prepared for her, and he feels pleased to have surprised her. He finds his voice pitching low and gentle in a way that has her looking up at him with soft eyes, and he kisses her in greeting.
He tells her about Palawan, and in the middle of his speech, her expression shifts, as though she's seen a ghost.
He doesn't realize then that he's been careless in his eagerness to see her; that a strand of orange hair on his suit jacket has damned him. It's the moment when everything begins to go terribly wrong.
He asks her if she's alright, and she doesn't answer, instead excusing herself to the bathroom. When she returns, she seems a little distracted, but she invites him to go to the ladies' and wait for her there. That she will improvise a surprise for him.
He instantly forgets about the queerness of her manner. He took steps to make their dream of running away a reality, and she wants to express her gratitude—well, he can hardly deny her. His mind runs ahead of itself, and his heart beats faster. Would she take him in her hand, run her nimble fingers over him? Kneel and swallow him down? Let him take her against the wall?
Just when he thinks he knows her, she finds a new way to astound him.
She has always had him in the palm of her hand. One look, and she will drive him wild with the fervour he has for her, lose his hard-won self-restraint.
In the ladies', Sergio runs a hand through his hair, smiling to himself. His body is alive with anticipation, and he doesn't even question how strange it is that a police officer would propose to have sex in a public bathroom. Raquel has never been a stickler for the rules, he thinks. If she knew who he really was, if he confessed to her… Maybe she would be able to understand his motivations for carrying out the heist. How everything he's done, all his lies, was all to balance the scales a little more—
Then she comes in, and he hears the cock of her gun.
Passion has its limits. When he realizes that he's been manipulated, that Raquel's caught on to his true identity, he shoves his love for her in a box at the back of his mind, allowing el Profesor to come forth. Salva's guileless smile drops from his face.
His nerves are on edge: he needs to return to the hangar soon, to communicate with Berlin. He stares back at Inspectora Murillo, calculating his possibility of escape. If he can overpower her and wrest her gun from her, without drawing any attention. He'll have to use his words, persuade her to take him somewhere private. If she takes him directly to the station, everything will be lost.
Raquel meets his eyes with trepidation, even while she orders him to put on handcuffs. Her voice quivers as she reads him his rights.
She's hit her limit too.
Madrid, 2005
"Professor," Raquel says, her voice slurring a little with drink. "Professor Marquina. Are you listening to me?"
"Yes, I'm listening," Sergio says. He takes their bottle of wine, chugging some of it back, and then passes it back to her. They were celebrating the successful conclusion of the international symposium they'd spent months organizing together.
She hums sceptically. "Well, I've only got a few months left till the final defense of my thesis… My supervisor tells me I'm almost ready. Almost."
He watches her as she continues to speak, her voice avid with passion for her work. He's enchanted.
At one point, he makes a witty comment, poking a little fun at her current supervisor's critiques of her progress, and she throws her head back, laughing. He watches her, pleased to have been the one to coax that sound out of her.
The light in this private meeting room isn't particularly flattering, but nonetheless, he would remember this moment for a long time: remember her in this dark red dress, her voice full of passion, her smile a beacon.
He loves her. He's never felt love before, but he's self-aware enough to realize this much. She's intelligent, just as much as he. And she's beautiful, so beautiful in body and spirit that it makes him ache inside. He knows all she's suffered under the supervision of Professor Vicuña in her previous university, how she had to uproot her life to switch supervisors in the middle of her PhD programme. He knows so much of her, just as she knows all he's been through, how he lost both his parents and Andres too early.
And then there's the unguarded way she looks at him when they're alone, like this.
She looks at Sergio as if he is her focal point in a blurred-out world. As though she'd do just about anything for a good word from him.
He's flattered by it, and it stirs him. But he also feels repelled—not by her, but by his own reaction to her regard for him. She's twenty-six, pursuing a PhD, with a promising talent for research and her whole life ahead of her; and he's forty-two, his hair already streaked with silver, a professor halfway through his career.
If any rumour of their feelings got out, it would bring a momentary halt to his life. But he would be able to recover.
It would ruin the trajectory of her own career utterly.
She shivers.
"You're cold." Sergio stands to fiddle with the remote for the air-conditioner.
As he raises the temperature setting, Raquel takes another swig from the bottle they'd been sharing. Then she walks over to him, her steps unbalanced in her heels.
He looks at her warily as she comes up close to him, and then sets the remote down on the table.
She steps up to him, looking at him steadily. She's close.
Too close.
He can see her eyelashes, the brown in her eyes. The openness of her expression. The upwards tilt of her chin.
She kisses him.
He doesn't respond at first, knowing he should push her away, that she would regret this once she sobered up. But he's been longing for her for months on end, has dreamed of her countless times, and his inhibitions are weakened with alcohol. So he kisses her back, letting his hands rest on her hips.
Her lips are soft, and she smells alluring, a mix of her perfume and her natural scent, a little musky with the day's work. He wants her so desperately, his head spins with the force of his desire. He's been dreaming of this for weeks and weeks. He moves his hands to her curve of her waist, then slides them to the small of her back, letting his hands roam all over her. Wanting a taste of her, if only just for this moment.
Raquel gasps into his mouth as he touches her, pulls her closer to kiss her deeper. It's a breathy, feminine sound, and as she fists her hand in his hair, vivid images flash through his mind—of bending her over the desk with a firm press of his palm, his eyes devouring the way her back arches under his touch. In his mind's eye, he follows her down with his chest pressed tight against her back, nosing the skin of her neck, chasing her scent and her warmth. She whimpers, shifting her hips back against his. He hikes up her dress to expose her to him, pushes her legs apart with his feet. Then he unzips his trousers, draws himself out, before sliding deep inside her, to the hilt.
Arousal jolts through him as he imagines it, imagines her soft and warm and tight all around him, imagines drawing more of those feminine gasps out of her. In the present, his hips rock against her body instinctively. She moans with abandon against his lips—a loud sound, one that sounds like it's come from a siren, from one of his dreams of her.
Then she speaks, sighing: "Profe—" Her breath chokes off, and his eyes fly open to see her staring back at him with disbelief. "Ser—" she tries again, and then shakes her head, raising her hand to her mouth. Her eyes fall to the ground.
Her visible conflict shocks him out from his lust-addled daze.
To her, he is not Sergio. He can never be just that. It doesn't matter if he invites her to use his first name or not. To her, he will only ever be Professor Marquina.
He pulls away from her, putting distance between them. A wave of guilt washes over him.
Raquel deserves better than a quick, drunken fuck over a library desk. She deserves more than secluded rendezvous, or knowing glances traded from opposite ends of an auditorium.
She deserves more than anything Sergio can ever offer her.
Their breaths are ragged.
He's lived a life of restraint, of intellectualism, of discipline. He has always prided himself on it, on his capacity to subdue the animal desires inside him; while other men allow their base instincts to rule themselves, trampling on the lives of others in a mad pursuit of pleasure. Like Andres had: Andres had chased after love and women, and he had only crashed and burned.
He's never felt like this. Raquel drives him wild with desperation, fascination, desire, love—when he's around her, he wants to listen to her speak for hours on end, learn everything about her he doesn't already know. To pick at every thought she's ever had, so he'll know her inside and out. He wants to kneel at her feet, swear his undying devotion, ask her to stay with him. To have her strip for him, and let him map her skin, give her pleasure after pleasure.
He's never felt so—so present, so alive.
It kills him inside to know that this can't continue. That he has to return to his life of solitude, even after knowing it can never have the vibrant colours he sees when he's with Raquel.
Kissing her was a taste of a bliss he could never have, could never keep. A taste of torment.
"I can't!" Sergio bursts out, and Raquel flinches from the volume of his voice, as though he had struck her. He turns away, runs a hand through his hair with agitation. "We can't do this. This—this is the very height of foolishness. Raquel, we have no future."
"Not now, we don't," she acknowledges, but he shakes his head.
"Not ever."
"I know this isn't ideal. If we're being truthful, this is the last thing I wanted for myself." He blanches, unprepared for such blunt honesty, but Raquel holds his gaze unflinchingly. "Professor Vicuña tricked me, assaulted me, exploited my skills for his own publication metrics. Do you think it's easy for me, to feel this way about another man, another man in the same position, who could do just the same to me? But you, you listen, you make me feel safe. And you're not my supervisor."
Raquel pauses, takes a breath. "And when I'm with you, you see me in a way no one else does. I can't pull away from you. There's something between us I want to hold onto, even if our situation is far from ideal."
He feels pinned in place by the blaze in her eyes.
"Don't you feel it?" she breathes. "I know you do. I see the way you look at me."
Yes. Of course he feels it. This electricity between them is undeniable. Her mind pulls his to her; she intoxicates him.
But this is dangerous. They can't stay together. He can't be with her, can't offer her marriage, can't offer her a family: if he does, he's condemning her. Whispers will always follow her wherever she goes: Did she sleep her way to the top? Has she fucked Professor Vicuña too?
The world of academia is the furthest thing from merciful.
He has to let her go. Even if the idea of her marrying someone else—looking at someone else the way she's looking at him now—turns his stomach with upset, makes him want to throw something across the room.
"I said, we can't. You have to set yourself free," Sergio says, trying to sound firm. "You're not seeing clearly. This feeling won't last for you. Five, ten years from now, you won't want me anymore."
Her eyes harden. "Don't insult me. And don't presume what I'll want. If it's what you really want, I'll leave." She tilts her chin up, and her eyes shine with tears. "But I'll find you again, Sergio. When I graduate, when I've established myself in this field, I'll come back to you."
He can't stay to hear her words. He can't, especially not after he's heard her say his name for the first time.
His name sounds like it's made a home in her mouth, on her tongue. As if she's said it a thousand times before. As if the genes which had commanded the shape of her lips, her tongue, her vocal folds, had been precisely encoded so she would be able to speak his name in the most exquisite way possible, in a way no one else could ever match.
He snatches his briefcase from his chair, fumbling with its handle.
"And you'll see you were wrong. Sergio, I lo—"
It's too much.
He can't stay with her. He can't give her hope. He can't give himself hope.
Before he can hear her confession in full, he strides away, shutting the door behind him. He doesn't pause. He keeps walking down the corridor.
He knows it's too soon. He knows the slam of the door closing shut must hurt, like a dagger driven right into her heart.
He hears her cry, sobbing tears so wretched he can hear them even as he walks further and further away. His heart wrenches, tears jumping to his eyes. He pictures her body crumpling to the floor, her face buried in her hands. Her heart utterly shattered.
And he has to live with the knowledge that he's the one who did that to her.
He knows it's the right thing to do, that it's best for Raquel regardless of what she says, but it feels as though he's fighting against every instinct in his body. Everything in him wants to turn back time, walk back to her, take her into his arms and never let her go. To give her comfort and love and warmth and security and everything in the world she could ever want, everything he can give, as paltry as his offerings are.
But he doesn't turn back, even though it makes him feel like the cruelest man on earth, as though he's shot her and left her to die in the dust. He keeps his legs moving, forcing himself to block out the sound of Raquel's sorrow. She might not remember every detail of their conversation in the morning, but she will surely remember the pain he's inflicted. He knows he's left a scar on her now.
She won't forget it. She'll never forgive him.
A better man would regret that they'd ever met.
He doesn't. But then again, he never claimed to be the most moral of men.
Sergio didn't know this then, but it's not the only time he's felt cruel in loving her. Perhaps it's why this guilt feels so visceral, so crippling: because he's done this countless times before.
The last night he makes love to her before they part, she breathes out: "Salva." Sergio kisses her, sinks into the moment with her, but somewhere inside, he longs to hear her say Sergio instead.
Afterwards, she curls her fingers against his beard and looks up at him with raw adoration in her eyes. She lays herself bare before him, body and heart and soul—and it's a gift. A gift of an intimacy so profound that his breath might stop. But it also feels like a stake in his heart, driven deep into his chest cavity. She doesn't know that he's not really working on making cider, that he's the thief she's after. Or that el Profesor is inside him.
There are innumerable worlds where he lies to her, and there are there are as many where she'll lie to him.
In all their lives where he's tricked her, she'll scream with rage when she strips away his facade, discovers his true face. In this one, she tries to puzzle out who he is: Salva, or Sergio? Or el Profesor? Is he a man who loves her, or one who used her?
It is both, he wants to tell her, but even he struggles to reconcile this reality, and wrests with his own conscience.
But such is his nature, Sergio thinks: it's one where two apparently antithetical facets can coexist. He loves his brother Andres, yet he punishes his subordinate Berlin for spilling blood. He loves Raquel, yet he must dissociate himself from his love to maintain control of the heist.
It's Raquel's nature as well: she is the bravest, most enduring person he's ever met, but simultaneously the most vulnerable. She is filled with wrath, threatens to kill him and burn his corpse; but she lets him drive away from the mansion in Toledo without even attempting to shoot him.
Because she loves him. It's as good as a confession.
I can't pull away from you. There's something between us I want to hold onto, even if our situation is far from ideal.
And he loves her.
Loves her so madly, he'll lose his sanity when he believes that she's dead, that she's breathed her last. It matters not if he hasn't seen her body fall for himself: the mere auditory suggestion of her death, of her gone from his world, is enough to crush his spirit.
Algeria, 2023
Sergio has been in this cell for more than five hundred and fifty-two days.
He knows this because he used to scratch tally marks into his bedframe with his nails, until Inspectora Sierra visited him unexpectedly. She must have spotted his work, because the day after, they removed his bedframe.
Now he sleeps on a mattress on the floor. His meals are brought at inconsistent intervals—sometimes two hours apart, sometimes twelve, sometimes much more, enough that his stomach feels like its walls are being corroded inside out with acid, and he struggles to stand.
Sometimes, the lights are never turned off, and he struggles to sleep.
He doesn't know what day it is. Or what year. It might have been a year since he and Raquel were caught during the heist at the Bank of Spain, while trying to escape the police, or it might have been five years. Or ten.
He doesn't even have a mirror, to see his face, to catalogue its changes. Sometimes, he brushes a hand through his hair, and some strands fall—most of the time they're black, but sometimes they're silver.
It's just stress, he tells himself. And malnutrition. The food here is terrible.
He doesn't know where Raquel is. He doesn't know what they're doing to her. He doesn't know if she's alive. He doesn't know what happened to Paula or Marivi, although he left Marseille with a long list of instructions to keep them safe. He doesn't know if the rest of the band completed the heist successfully—whether Palermo managed to get them all out, and if they survived. Or if they were all gunned down by the police.
He can only pray that they're all safe, and try to resist madness. Try to keep his body and his mind active until he has an opportunity to escape.
Sergio exercises as frequently as he can. He has also counted the number of imperfections on the painted walls around him, over and over again. The scratches in the concrete floor. He has approximated the dimensions of his cell; estimated the amount of cement and water needed to coat the floor with concrete.
He tries to remember all the books he's ever read, from the first to last page; recalls the poetry he'd memorized to murmur against Raquel's skin as they made love.
He plays chess in his mind. He plays against Raquel, or Andres sometimes—but mostly Raquel. He taught her how to play chess in Palawan, and she'd been a natural. She had much more patience for the game than Andres ever had.
The door to his cell opens.
It must be the guard, bringing his food. He doesn't twitch from where he is, lying on his mattress and visualizing his chessboard, Raquel sitting across from him: she's waiting for his next move with a little smirk on her lips.
"Sergio."
It's Raquel's voice. He would know it anywhere. His eyes snap open.
Surely it's just part of his daydream. Maybe he's hallucinating—he's longed for her so much in the time he's been here, prayed he could apologize to her after they argued in the van. The last words she spoke to him, I'll kill you if they catch you, echo in his mind. He could only be thankful that she still loved him enough to care for his safety, even after he'd spoken to her like some brute: I beat you, Raquel.
He sits up.
Raquel was standing over the mattress. At least, she looks exactly like Raquel does: she has her hair, her eyes, her nose. She even looks at him the same way he remembers, with that distinct mix of adoration and love.
But she can't be Raquel. It's impossible.
Why would she be here now?
"Raquel," he breathes. "Is this a cruel dream?"
"No, cariño, I'm here," she chokes, bending down so she's sitting at the end of his mattress. And then she throws herself at him, and he catches her in his arms.
It's her. It's really her. Her scent, her voice, her hair, the feel of her skin. It's all the same. He runs his hands over her, through her hair, touches her face. Her cheeks are wet—she's crying.
"Raquel, Raquel, Raquel," he chants, like a prayer. He wants to say her name, over and over and over again, wants to hear her speak more. He hasn't heard her voice in so long. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for what I said to you. I've wanted to tell you that for years. Where have you been?" He kisses her, and kisses her, tasting the salty tang of her tears, and she holds his face, shaking her head without words. "Are you okay? What did they do to you?"
She kisses him, not answering.
It's over too soon. The guard in the room tries to pull her away, and she starts to weep. He holds on to her tightly, and she clutches at him.
"Where will you take her?" he demands, but he receives no response. "Speak!"
"Sergio, I love you," Raquel cries, and her words send a fission of pain through him, because she's not answering any of his questions, because she's only just offered the forgiveness he's been longing to receive for years, and it hurts. He doesn't have time to reply in kind, because they're forcing her away from him, breaking away their tight hold on each other. Another guard is pinning him down to his mattress, and he's entreating them to let her stay with him. The marks he leaves on her skin are enough to bruise her for days, and the drag of her nails over his arms will scar him. But he doesn't care, and he knows neither does he.
He wants to scar. He wants to feel the reminders of her presence on his skin, to have proof that they fought to keep each other. He wants to know he didn't imagine Raquel, and their too-brief time together.
They take her outside, out of his line of sight.
He hears her shriek in pain.
Then a gunshot. Then, silence.
He screams until he's hoarse, until he can't breathe.
Raquel. Raquel. Raquel. Forgive me.
The love of his life is dead.
He cries, and cries, and cries, even when the guards pound on the door with their batons. He cries until he thinks he'll die of anguish.
Whatever he feels must be nothing compared to what they must've put Raquel through while she was away from him. Compared to what it must have felt like, to get shot in the head, in the heart, wherever they'd aimed. The thought makes him howl, until he sounds like an animal, until he can't hear himself anymore. Until he can't breathe, until he has to choke for breath.
He doesn't play chess in his head. He doesn't exercise. He refuses to eat. He refuses to drink. He has nothing left.
Seeing Raquel had been the last time in his life he would ever see the light.
When Sergio has Raquel tied up in his hangar, he feels bone-weary with a sort of grief he cannot quite name. For once, it's not for his father's sake, but for himself and Raquel: for their love which feels as though it has lived and died a thousand times in the past hours.
In hindsight, he would wonder if their love has indeed seen infinite beginnings and endings, in different timelines. Maybe in some, they lead simpler lives.
But in this one, he mourns the loss of Moscow from his team. He's exhausted, sleep-deprived, sorely in need of a shower, and his hand throbs from Raquel's agonizing bite. Nonetheless, he tries, one last time, to sway Raquel.
Don't you want to escape?
As he pleads with Raquel, watching her face crumple with emotion, he longs—hopes, prays—for her forgiveness. For her understanding. For one moment in the future where he can finally find a moment of pure, unadulterated joy with her.
He would treasure it.
Rodrigues, 2025
Raquel laughs brightly as she flings herself over him on the sand. He laughs with delight, brings his hands up to pull her hair out of her face in a practised motion. He kisses her once, twice, three times.
If joy had a taste, it would be the taste of her mouth; if joy had a face, it would be her golden smile; if joy was a thing, it would be the way the wind tossed her hair freely.
He has never been so grateful in his life that she's with him, here to enjoy this moment by his side, that she chose to come to Palawan. Chose to stay by his side, to journey across the world with him in a mad adventure to rescue Rio, to avenge Andres and everyone—everything—they lost. Estoy contigo.
They are happy, in love, and free: gloriously alive. Paula and Mariví laugh in the background—he glances around to see them staring, giggling behind their hands.
It is this moment for which all their struggles have been worth it.
Sergio and Raquel chase each other like children across the beach, heartened by Paula's peals of laughter. Struck by joie de vivre, Sergio pulls Raquel with him into the ocean, grinning. She squeals—just the same way she does every time he did this in Palawan, in Huelva, in Sochi, in Paris, everywhere in the world they've ever been—and he bursts into laughter.
"Sergio," she says, playfully admonishing, and he relishes the sound of his name in her mouth. It's his favourite thing to hear her say. He wants her to say his name, over and over and over again.
He kisses her in the water, and words flash through his mind.
In my next life, I'll find you again, Raquel. Again, and again, and again, I'll love you, marry you, grow old with you—
It feels like a memory. It feels like he's done this an infinite number of times.
It's impossible, surely.
I need you in my life, he thinks with conviction, as though every possible version of him is with him.
Raquel chuckles as she lifts her hand to brush his wet hair out of his eyes, and the golden band on her right ring finger gleams brilliantly in the sun. He takes her right hand in his, languishes her palm with kisses, and she watches him with soft eyes, her laughter dying away. He kisses each of her fingers, then sets his lips at the base of her ring finger, pressing a kiss to the ring he'd bought for her.
The golden band that's a perfect complement to his own.
My wife, my life. In every life, I'd choose you, Raquel.
She beams, as if she can hear his thoughts. In the daylight—with the sun rays highlighting the golden brown of her hair—it's as though she is the sun itself.
Her smile is as familiar to him as his own name, but seeing it stuns him every time.