parallax23 | This Is How A Heart Breaks (Reply)

This Is How A Heart Breaks

Episode: 4x06

Summary: Roque is heartbroken when he discovers Ivan and Julia planning their midnight escape.

“Can I know why the hell you’re being so hard on Julia? What did she ever do to you?” Roque demanded.

“To me?” Vicky replied unwaveringly. “Nothing. I just don’t trust her, period.”

Roque walked away from her in frustration. He couldn’t believe his friends were treating Julia like she was the enemy. When she helped them speak to Cayetano one last time, he knew that she belonged in their group of friends. Roque became closer to her as time went on, and then she told him about her father’s death and the visit from his ghost. It meant that she trusted him and liked spending time with him. Roque was sure if played his cards right, they would be dating soon… if his friends didn’t mess things up first.

“It’s funny that you trusted her enough to investigate Mateo,” Roque pointed out. “But not us.”

“She didn’t give me a choice,” Vicky replied. “She tried to mess with his head and got caught. Isn’t it a bit strange that he didn’t threaten her like he did to us?”

Suddenly, Roque’s phone buzzed at the arrival of a new text. Instead of continuing the argument with Vicky, he opened the phone to see what it said. “I was supposed to meet Eduardo in the library ten minutes ago. We have to finish our presentation on Marie Curie’s discovery of penicillin.”

Carol nodded. “Then you should get going. We’ll let you know if we find out anything else.”

“I’m sure you will,” Roque sighed as he left the room. He hated science class. And math. And literature. Well, it was a good thing Eduardo’s father was a chemical engineer, so he would be doing most of the work.

Roque could focus on convincing Marcos that they needed Julia as much as she needed them. With the loss of Cayetano, Roque and his friends were short a sixth member of their group. Julia was the piece of the puzzle that was missing. Roque could feel it. Even the Five Avengers had added a sixth member to their secret order. The sixth Power Ranger was usually the special one, but the most misunderstood. That was why Roque was going to have Julia’s back. In his opinion, she belonged wherever he was.

As Roque walked down the stairs, he thought he caught a glimpse of Julia walking toward the classrooms on the other side of the hallway. It didn’t make sense. She was supposed to be in the stables, finishing her punishment for interrupting Latin class with Ivan. Roque’s phone buzzed with another annoyed text from Eduardo, but he ignored it. Instead, he went in the direction he saw Julia walking. He turned the corner and saw her enter one of the classrooms. It was Saturday. Julia hated being stuck in class on a regular day, so why would she break into one during the weekend? The last thing Roque needed was for Julia to start developing stranger habits than seeing dead people, so he followed her to see what was going on. She had pushed the door in behind her, but it was left slightly ajar. It was a narrow view, but Roque would have to make it work.

“Is everything ready for tonight?” Julia asked someone inside. She was sitting against one of the desks facing sideways from the door, but there was someone else pacing back and forth inside the room.

Tonight? What was going on tonight? Roque wondered. Better yet, with whom? He couldn’t move without being caught spying, so he would have to be patient. He had believed that Julia wasn’t one of the bad guys, but it wasn’t impossible that she had been recruited. He willed the other person to move into his line of sight. He wasn’t sure who he was expecting, since Noiret was the only person they knew was working against them.

“We’ll go at midnight when no one’s around,” came the other person’s reply. “That should give us enough time to make it back before anyone can miss us.”

Noiret. Ivan Noiret. Roque felt his world shatter in that moment.

“I want to go now,” Julia said as Ivan moved to stand face to face with her. “I can’t stand this place.”

“You mean this isn’t one of the top ten vacation spots in Spain?” Ivan said, moving closer to where Julia leaned on the desk.

“Well, there are some recreational activities that help me to unwind,” Julia replied coyly.

“Really?” Ivan asked with mock curiosity. “Like what?”

Roque could see Ivan clearly now through the door, but Ivan’s gaze was focused on Julia. The tender intimacy of their voices was undeniable. What was going on? Time seemed to slow down as Roque continued watching them in horror.

Julia stood up straight and stretched her arms out around Ivan’s neck, pulling him closer to her. Their behavior was unlike anything that they had ever exhibited in front of Roque. The scene before him seemed almost impossible to imagine, since he was so used to them yelling or exchanging barbed comments at each other. Ivan put his hands on Julia’s waist, and Roque willed Ivan to push her away. Ivan was supposed to push her away. He had promised not to get involved with her.

Instead, Ivan stood there as Julia leaned in closer to him. When their lips met, it took every ounce of self-control Roque possessed for him not to burst into the room and separate them. All he could do was watch his hopes and dreams vanish with that one kiss. Roque shut his eyes because he couldn’t watch anymore. She would never be with him. He knew that for certain now.

In all the time Roque spent with her lately, Julia didn’t look at him the way that she gazed at Ivan. She certainly hadn’t thrown her arms around Roque and made out with him in a classroom. Roque was overcome by a strange sensation. It was as if something inside him had broken and the pain felt overwhelming. He moved away from the doorway and leaned against the wall for support.

Roque couldn’t believe that they could do this to him. Julia knew how he felt about her. Ivan was supposed to be his best friend. He had promised to keep his distance. Yesterday, they could barely stand near each other without screaming or swearing, but today, they were inside the classroom flirting and cooing at each other like a pair of lovebirds. They had lied to his face about everything. As Roque remembered that afternoon when Ivan swore there was nothing going on between them, he realized that they must have been hooking up back then... That was why Julia wanted to know if Ivan was over Carolina. It was why Ivan was so desperate to insist that he wanted nothing to do with her. They were trying to cover up that they were fooling around.

Ivan had never taken Roque’s interest in Julia seriously, and he never missed an opportunity to point out that Julia out of his league. Every joke or insult that Ivan made about his crush on Julia rang in Roque’s ears. He was sure that was what Marcos, Carolina and Victoria thought as well. He was sure that no one would laugh at Ivan liking Julia, because pretty girls belonged with good-looking boys. Growing up, girls were constantly fighting for Ivan’s attention, occasionally Cayetano would get his cast-offs, but they barely realized that Roque existed.

Suddenly, his phone buzzed for an incoming text. It was probably another angry message from Eduardo.

“Did you hear something?” asked Ivan’s voice from inside the classroom.

Roque knew that he had to get out of there. He was pissed, but spying on them was still creepy. And Ivan would probably kick his ass for it. He made a quick dash for the corner, hoping that they wouldn’t come out to investigate. Luckily, Ivan saw no one in the hallway when he opened the door. Roque pressed himself against the wall around the corner.

“Someone probably just walked by,” said Julia as she pulled him back into the room.

Roque heard the door slam shut and he knew that he was safe. In the corner, when his sense of relief faded, anger and jealousy warred inside of Roque. He hated himself for being a coward. Why didn’t he have the guts to confront them? They were the ones who had something to hide, not him. Still, he wasn’t ready to deal with them.

His two best friends had stabbed him in the back. He wasn’t sure what his next move would be, but he finally knew what it felt like to have his heart break. He would never be able to forgive them for that.

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A/N: I know, another Roque/Julia/Ivan love triangle story. I have too many of these laying around, so that's just the way it's going to be. I thought this ship and this episode in particular caused a ripple effect in the course of the show: