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Everything's a blur.
One moment, she can feel Marga's tears against her skin, meeting hers. The next, she's being pulled on her feet, somehow gently dragged away with soft words she can't make out.
Her eyes don't leave Ángeles. Couldn't even if she wanted to, she thinks.
In the end, it's not her choice, anyway, because she's carried away, and Lidia is going in another direction and then doors close and it's pitch black as the car drives away, fast, so fast.
There's words, cries, the sound of tires underneath them. She can still see the blond locks and closed eyes. She sees Gemina, too, just like in her nightmares, where she can still feel the rain on her arms and the blood on her fingers, and suddenly Lidia realises she's suffocating.
She can't - she just can't breath.
She closes her eyes in the darkness, her silent panic raising at the realisation. It's too much, her fingers start trembling, but then a hand grabs them, soft, impossibly soft.
Taking both of hers gently but firmly, stilling them on her lap, and it's then that she realises the weight of his other arm around her shoulder, realises he's talking to her. Has been for a while, now.
He holds her close, so close as their bodies suffer from the broken roads, and she can barely make out Carlota and Pablo further away in the small, closed space, but his voice - his voice, she can hear now.
"It's okay," Francisco lies, his lips grazing her ear, her temple.
He covers her face with light, slow kisses, his deep voice almost soothing, in the mid of this chaos.
"I'm sorry - I'm so sorry, but it's going to be okay."
His thumb traces circles on her joined hands, and as the tears start flooding again, Lidia turns her entire body towards him, her face buried in his neck and, as his arms close around her, she breaks down.
The sun is barely up, but she knows there's no more time already.
Her heart tightens painfully, so painfully in her chest as she looks at them for the last time, their perfect faces crumbling as they try to be strong, too.
Finally turning away from the girls - her girls - Lidia blindly reaches for Francisco's hand, and holds tight as they leave Madrid behind.
The road to Lisboa is long, but she doesn't sleep at all. Can't seem to close her eyes without everything she wants to forget playing before her eyes.
From time to time, his fingers reach for hers.
He keeps his eyes on the road, his support silent and comforting, and she's reminded that everything's not all bad.
"Well, someone seems to take after her mother: the girl is quite fond of him, isn't she?"
Francisco's already outside, charging Eva's luggage in the car. The smile the little devil gave him was almost brighter that the one she, her own mother, got.
Such a beautiful little traitor, she thinks.
Lidia smiles, placing a hundredth kiss on her daughter's forehead as she holds her close.
"I think so. When they met two days ago, he got the eyes and the chuckles - the whole thing."
Victoria nods, smiling as she draps Eva's coat around her small body.
Looking back at her, she places her hand on Lidia's cheek. "Take care of yourself, cariña."
Her eyes drift to Francisco outside, a cigarette tugged between his teeth as he helps Asunción in the car.
The older woman then takes her own cigarettes' holder from her pocket, and for some reason, puts it in Lidia's coat.
She frowns, but before she can say anything, Victoria speaks again. "For your man - it's his, after all."
She sighs, smiles. "I've always known he was the one, you know. I'm happy for you."
She looks at her, then, a million things unsaid behind her eyes. Lidia can feel her own watering as the woman gives one last kiss to her daughter, and backs away.
"You're going to be okay, Alba. You're going to be happy - and you deserve it. Now go, before you miss that damn boat."
As they board, the enormity of what's happening finally dawns on her.
The emotional rollercoaster of the last decade. The pain, the tears, the betrayals, the heartbreaks. These beautiful women that became her family, the one that left and took a piece of their hearts with her. The horror of having the two persons she loved the most in the world taking away from her, the pure, intense joy of having them back.
And now, she's leaving her country and everything behind, and moving on far, far away, just like she's been dreaming of for the past year, during the long nights she's spent at his side at the hospital, her fingers gently going back and forth in his hair.
If only the price to pay hadn't been so high.
She's exhausted.
On instinct, she reaches for him, and as he turns to look at her, the feel of his hand holding hers warm her everywhere.
Taking a deep breath, she lets him drive her forward.
"Are you okay?"
His words are so soft, she could almost miss them in the ocean wind, if he wasn't so close.
She can feel his hand on her back, the soft material of his jacket as she holds on to it, his forehead against hers. His breath tickling her face.
For the first time since Carlos' betrayal, since Ángeles' death, she feels that happiness again. The same one that broke through her entre body when she found Francisco, alive and well, in her living-room, only a few hours before.
A happiness she probably hasn't felt since she was a kid, running after a train that would lead her to another life with the love of her life, she realises.
She's exhausted, yes, she's hurt, but -
"Yes."
Looking up just enough to meet his eyes, his beautiful, deep, brown eyes she's missed for so long, Lidia kisses his nose, his cheek, the corner of his mouth.
His grip tightens around her, and she smiles. "Yes - I'm okay."