Flavia and Javiera walk in silence, close enough to touch, holding hands. Javiera never let go of Flavia’s hand today and it’s not that she doesn’t want to, it’s that she can’t.

Fernanda, Emiliano, Teresa, Joaquin, Melissa, Mateo, Flavia can’t let herself talk about them, can’t think about them. Last night she decided she would be selfish for a while, that she would do it to save her life, now that there’s something worth to be saved and even more so now that she promised it to the angel that came to walk her towards the Heaven gates, far from the abyss. Javiera isn’t looking at her, she’s gentle and she doesn’t want to intrude on the other woman’s intimacy. She’s not looking but it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t see. Each one of Flavia’s steps hurts, each one of her breaths blows out an invisible, black smoke. It’s invisible, yes, but it doesn’t mean that Javiera cannot see it.

The door opens and somehow the air inside room 24 is clear.

The door closes behind Flavia’s back and somehow the air is still clear.

Javiera was wrong, it’s not that she couldn’t let go of Flavia’s hand, she didn’t want to. Those delicate fingers now slip away and Flavia takes her coat off. She sits on the bed and unfastens her shoes, sets them aside, stands barefoot on the soft carpet.

“Me voy a duchar, huelo a hospital” she says and Javiera nods with a tight smile.

Flavia regrets it, all of it but most of all she regrets running from Javiera’s eyes. She would like to turn back, to run in her arms, to kiss her and smile at her beautiful, beautiful face but she is unable. She turns her back to her and feels Javiera’s concerned gaze on her shoulders until she closes the door of the ensuite. In room 24 the inspector exhales a heavy breath and slowly blinks.

Something hurts somewhere.

It hurts when Flavia takes her clothes off in front of the mirror and her scars and bruises look back at her, when the adhesive stitches on her head scold her and she knows that they’re right, when she thinks about the gaze staring at her through the door and thinks that she almost brought herself to lose it all. She thinks about the times Javiera admired her picture in this same mirror when she was doing her makeup, she thinks about how the lipstick was always the last thing she had to apply because her partner would have kissed it away before she could finish. She doesn’t know it, but Javiera loves watching her taking her makeup off a little more, loves the scent that the cleanser leaves on her skin, loves the smooth softness it lends it. Now Flavia looks at the swollen area on her cheek bone and hates it, hates herself for it. She gulps and turns her back to her own figure reflected in the mirror and steps inside the shower. The spray of warm water rains on her head as she stares at a corner of the shower box and her vision gets blurred and her breathing gets faster, gulping gets harder.

Water makes her hair heavily fall at the sides of her face and under those drops Flavia feels cold. She brings a hand to cover her mouth to prevent a sob to escape but it’s too late, she presses both of her palms against the wall to sustain herself and cries. She’s tired of crying, she’s tired of feeling this weak and small but she just can’t help it, each of her sobs takes a new brick down and she feels so stupid for letting herself fall but she's unable to stop it. The pounding of water on her head covers the sound of her idiocy, she thinks, but it doesn’t cover the click of the door as it gets open and closes again. Ashamed, Flavia rapidly covers her mouth with one hand and holds her breath. Her heart beats like crazy in her chest when the door of the shower opens behind her back and Javiera steps inside. A part of Flavia hopes that she didn’t hear her, that she’s here just to wash her back and take care of her like she often does, but a part of Flavia knows and aches.

Javiera doesn’t say a word, she just closes the door behind her, lifts both or her hands to gently brush the other woman’s shoulders and slip down her arms. She gets closer and places a soft kiss on Flavia’s back, squeezing her arms a little, before leaving them back to hold her waist.

One of Flavia's palms pulls back from the cold wall and rests on a way warmer and softer forearm, the same that pulls Flavia's waist a little so she turns around. Her head is the first, then her eyes. Javiera is standing still behind her, an angelic vision in her pure nudity, and she's silent as she looks right at the other woman, because she doesn't need to say anything.

Flavia gulps, she forces her aching throat to, she tries to use the same violence on her own voice but it escapes and leaves her alone.

"Te prometo que vamos a salir de esto" Javiera pronounces with a strength she didn't know she had and Flavia feels her tears joining the water falling on her face. She tilts her head to the left, slightly, like she often does and turns around to face her partner, her saviour, her blessing. She lifts a shaking hand to caress that face, that flawless, pure, enchanting face and doesn't understand why it happened to her, why God decided to save her, why like this.

Javiera holds her and Flavia falls, because she knows she can, because she's sure that Javiera won’t let her body hit the ground. All of her broken bones, her slashed skin, her livid gut can finally rest in the most gentle and most steady embrace. Flavia knows that her ghosts won't leave anytime soon but is sure that she's never meant to face them alone ever again. Her whole life she spent in loneliness, her whole life she spent grieving a dead that was never born, so she got used to the black veil on her head, between the world outside and her eyes. Javiera set fire to that veil, made her face the corpse of a girl that had always hunted Flavia in her mirror, in her dreams, in her fantasies. That girl woke up, somehow, and stole Flavia's eyes, killed her maybe, but made the eyes she stole see the world without the gloom shadow of the funeral veil for the first time.

Flavia knows now, that girl was never born so she never died.

She is as new as the life she owns now, taking the first uncertain steps in a land that stopped spinning around. Flavia Betancourt ran, she has ran since she can remember, hoping that she would be faster than shame, faster than truth, but both truth and shame lay in the only place you cannot run from and now it's crystal clear to her. Flavia stopped and found a way to save herself so she's not afraid anymore. Under the water raining on her head and shoulders Flavia feels like it's finally over, that it's time to move on, to start anew and to do it properly, she only needed a steady point to begin with and in Javiera she found it. She lets those arms hold her so tight that all of her shards are put back together and it's like being born again. A new dawn is coming and in this embrace she can hear it loud and clear, this marvellous woman is the closest to salvation that can ever exist and Flavia has to, wants to try walking this path. Javiera holds her under the warm spray of limpid water and Flavia lets her.

“Welcome home” her body whispers.