No lies, just love.

Not at the same level at the moment, in more than one aspect.

Editing places Mafin in #578 in between Maulea trying to support Paula who finds herself ill, without a job, without a family - perhaps a background of Fina's experiences in Argentina that have her so adamant now to be independent?

Fina, don't look at the apartment ads, look at those ankle boots!

But the sound layer at 00:06:02 (Mafin Driv Cut) cites the "Fina has a home" Motif that was present in the darkroom scenes when Fina spoke of her parents, and of never being along because the colonia colleagues and Digna and Marta were her family. (I see. we start with the stabbing today)

Also the "Fina finding her profession/passion" swell chord from the darkroom sequences is back (00:06:20) when Fina states she has found a job (in Marcos' studio, apparently? "Yes, she still prefers me to you, Marcos, althoug I've been (b)ranching out lately"?!)

Fina isn't looking forward to photographing family events (she had all her family ties severed and doesn't feel safe to truly reestablish any yet, so that is a good meta commentary), but she mentions "a few industrial campaigns", so let's bet in a contract photographing liquids soon (cleaning chemical or perfumes).

But Marta still smiles at Fina like she hung the moon.

Marta still looks at Fina likes she hung the moon. Marta is so proud.

Marta still does that little lip bite when she doesn't know what to do with all the feelings she has for Fina.

But are those feelings for the woman next to her at the table, or for a woman of the past, who may still have a similar smile, but who has changed a lot, and who also studiously keeps Marta away from getting to know the woman she has become?

"You're looking for an apartment?" cimes with a searching look:

And when Marta says, "Let me dream for a ittle longer about living together", the Empty Fifth Chords make a return (around 00:07:50).

This could be a joyous project in a different context, Fina striving for something she has long since wanted. But now, it's not just "I never had the chance to do this, and now I can and I want to!" Instand, it's a disappointment for Marta who senses someone who evades her trying to move even further away.

Marta doesn't feel as safe in the relationship as she wants to, and while part of it may be her abandonment fear, another part is Fina's distant behavior.

It looks as if Marta wants/needs Fina more that Fina wants Marta at this point, and that lack of balance is also hurtful to witness. There is fondness and familiarity to their exhanges and the moment, but no sense of balance, and much less the inevitability they they had up to 561.

(Writing Room, can you please kick Ingmar Bergman out of the group chat before he breaks something that cannot be repaired?)

It's sad coffee date time (and that will continue in #581) and Marta has sad cold coffee dates in thick coats when she is in relationshups that are not what she needs, no matter how much she might try.

But the stakes, for Marta, are lower. Her primary concern about Fina moving out (other that wanting to stay wrapped around her at all hours, after the months without her): Marta doesn't want to sneak around for trysts. Whereas Fina's concern is to stand on her own two feet in life (something Marta has never needed nor wanted to worry about. Golden Cage and all that).

Marta, at this point, would be happy to spend her life in bed with Fina. Possibly with added stretches of curling up on the couch with Fina. Fina, emanwhile, is sorting through many more aspects of her life, culimating here in her question, "Do you understand that I need to be free?"

...and to Marta, that seems to translate late "Free of ties, including those to me":

At 00:10:43, Marta is willing to put in her share: "If it is what you want", and it is underlines with the initial chords of Warehouse Swagger Motif, and for Fina's "This won't change anything between us" (you're not exactly in a good place right now, Fina, so that's not very promising) comes with a tiny varint of the Fifth Frop Love Motif, but Marta's smile is sad:

In the later scene of Marta musing, and then spaking with Andrés about how Fina has changed, Fina's Haunted Flutes Motif appears in Fina's absence (00:30:14), with an equally haunted and lost Marta out of focus in front of the windows, curtained, with no perspective to be seen. The red of the flower in the bouquet seems to pleed into Marta's red-orange skirt, as she seems to be searching for something...

"I know I should understand it" shows Marta's discomfort at the situation, but saying it to Andrés also underlines that she doesn't dare to bring it up with Fina.

And Fina's wish for independence is one thing, but it is a separate issue from making Marta feel unwanted (or nto wanted enough) to the degree of confounding the two. Of course Marta has abandonment issues (Fina left her in the middle of the night before), but also Fina is keeping her at arms length ever since her return, minus those first 24 hours.

Marta might be happily apartment hunting with Fina and picking out darkroom equipment if it didn't feel like Fina distancing herself, even though it is translating to spactial distance what is already there in emotional distance.

All those searching looks are killing it (and me). Both Brunet and Belmonte are giving fantastic performances of growing distance (especially knowing that they can also do the opposite very easily)

The many months of Fina's absence had a very clear goal, and with Fina's return, it has been smashed within 24 hours. Sure, they are together now, but the way they are staged right now, they do not feel inevitable any longer And that makes what came before lie. Or undoes it? One currently chooses independence over commitment, the other chooses a past version over the present.

This is not "mi mujer" energy any longer. Neither of them has said that since Fina's return.

Now I do believe, in the long run, that the sole reason to create all this distance is to enable a long, long run towards each other again. Possibly only in Season 4. This is the long game.

But it still hurts to watch now, and it's playing with fire in terms of stretching a narrative rope that might tear: Making palpable “I will always choose you” was magic. Snuffing it out, even if temporarily, takes away the "always", and that takes away the magic. Unless there is still some glint of ember that says "inevitable!"

And at the moment, I find myself searching - like Marta seems to do here - for that glint of ember.

((Most of this I have already said, though less congruously, in tagging eze’s beautiful gifsets: how Fina is not fully in this bed, much as we want her to be and Marta believes her to be. How Fina doesn’t fully move in and clearly needs more time. How Marta would need the parachute that Fina still hasn’t strapped out of. How Fina grapples less with the intimacy of sex than with the intimacy of talking and trusting. How Fina is again trying to solve things on her own and keep Marta’s peace by keeping silent, but when will Fina be at peace? How the nuance in dialog keeps a subtle shadow. But also how that shadow lifts once there is an outside obstacle to face.)

Fina is currently at ‘we’re lucky’ and searching gazes, while Marta is blissfully unaware of the distance they still have to bridge.

One of them is fully at peace. The other is not.

What is more painful: one of them is at peace because of the other, but that other is a chimera because the other is not the same any longer. Fina has changed, but she doesn’t let Marta meet this new version of her and see whether their connections holds. She tries to keep Marta happy by being as much of the old one as she can. (This will explode. Marta will be devastated. Fina will finally have to talk openly about what she wants.)

 One of these two is blissfully happy, but with a person that isn’t quite there any longer. And Marta doesn’t see it and doesn’t want to see it;  Fina cordons herself off, not giving Marta the chance to catch up, either. It is unfair to both, and as adorable as they are here, I think they are slated for a (temporary) breakup.

Editing agrees and puts them in between Salva’s vandalized bar and Nieves’ and Pablo’s chasm called a breakfast table, and Pablo’s first line after Marta and Fina disappear with smiles under the blanket is, “do you still think about telling them the truth?”

Next to the angsty undertow, the scene is adorable and toes the line. The camera work is intimate, not showing the room, just the bed and them. It could be anywhere. The sound intro (00:05:27 in the Mafin Drive Cut) quotes the final of the Warehouse Swagger Motif.

Overall, there is little motif work on the sound layer, just at two key points after this, the rest is illustration. The long periods of quiet also add to the intimacy of the moment, and to the peace Marta confesses – vulnerable and honest without any safety net (she will crash so hard oh God) – Fina’s presence gives her.

But what does Fina do in return? She stays, but she stays silent, she stays, but she does not reach out. Marta – which I found to be a very poignant detail – strokes her own arm at this:

...and when she reaches out, her palm remains turned toward herself while Fina does not reach up to take that hand:

Fina keeps her hand under her face, the blanket drawn up, a less open pose, and when she looks at Marta – especially in the moments where Marta looks away, thinking out loud and sharing herself without reserve while Fina does not – her gaze is searching, and searching, half-muted, half-desperate. (Brunet should get far more credit to how she plays Fina with the handbrake on) And when Marta looks at her, she retreats behind that smile that doesn't give away too much.

And Fina covers up her opaqueness with joking, which hurts doubly since it suggests an intimacy that isn’t fully shared: it takes the weight out of it. "“I don’t make noises!” and "Watch your nails!" rings with 574’s “I love you mo-ore!”

And that is easy to say because it needs no explanations and leads to kisses that prevent talking, and that is not lying, but it is avoidance. And it is suggesting an intimacy that isn't fully mirrored emotionally at the moment.

“That’s why I put you in the room at the end of the hall,” Marta says when they are almost discovered, and Fina jokes, “We weren’t in any state to change rooms last night,” to which Marta agrees, “No, we weren’t.”

But that is the closest to their legendary chemistry we get here (they wouldn't need a bed, they could undress each other with one glance across the the storeroom); it remains at simmer stage and it is acts told, not shown: Directing and Performance keep it banked.

Still, the moment they are almost discovered is the moment they are the most at ease with each other: there is an outside threat, and they immediately band together and have each other’s backs, under giggles. They are instinctively good together when they aren’t brooding. The domestic intimacy is light and truly playful.

After this, it is the only moment in the scene where Fina moves closer physically, shifting on her elbow towards Marta, even if not by much. And when Marta is “curious” and wants to talk, Fina, despite trying to state the opposite, is not ready to share. Marta attempts to talk, to work through her doubts and her jealousy; Fina evades it.

There is a difference: Fina had consciously discarded the possibility of Marta, while living through a lot of new things. Marta never discarded the possibility of Fina.

For Marta, physical and emotional intimacy fall into on here, whereas Fina has learned that she can separate the two. She has done so sleeping with Marta while she was still half in Buenos Aires in her head; she is doing it again here when she is still unable to talk, but clearly does not want to hurt Marta, and not talking is so easy. She may have been doing it with Bianca, with some part of her heart locked away in Toledo so deep she could ignore it?

The Haunted Flutes of Chacracore return at 00:07:16 when Fina speaks of her life with Bianca, and when Marta tries to sound out the competition: “Rich Bianca?” (that’s easier, more playful, than “So, was Bianca rich? Did you replace me with someone who could offer you all the same things? What remains about me that is unique to you?”)

There is a romantic little flute motif at 00:07:45 when Fina talks about her meet-cute with Bianca that makes me want to knock a box of flacons and soaps off a counter. And when Fina calls their conversation an “interrogatory” because Marta asks and she answers (which is normal when you try to reconnect, after one person has made a wealth of experiences half around the world?), there is a sound comeback to the Empty Fifth Chords (which I use because it sounds so much like Evil Sith Lords) which is the music which signals the chasm between them. Is this bed as wide as the Salazar breakfast table?

When Marta says, self-deprecatingly “Oh, so it was love at first sight then”, the Empty Fifth Chords do a shift to minor (00:08:07). Ouch

(Fina's look here? Doube ouch.)

But when Marta states, “The important thing is that we’re together”, their first love motif – True Flutes Awakeing – makes a full return (at 00:08:43). Unbreak my heart, Sound Department!

And before Marta pulls the blanket over their heads, Fina even gets to do a little “Sssh” like back in the Darkroom.

Well, not everything has changed, even though the mood is so different here, with Fina staying on her side of the bed and answering to Marta’s “The important thing is that we’re together” with “We’re so lucky”, which is not the same. And it is not the same as Marta’s “we are fortunate” (and it is much less than Marta's "Fina is my destiny", said to Andrés, later in the episode, with a supremely relaxed bearing.)

“Claro que sí,” Fina agrees.

But she doesn’t start with any statement. All the starts come from Marta. Fina reacts. And her reaction is not, “being with you is the most important thing for me, too.”

It is important, sure. It was important enough to come back to Spain, and to stay, but Fina is still holding back, still searching for who she is, now, next to Marta. Not yet fully with Marta (and that will take time, and they would need to talk, but this being a soap, they probably won’t talk).

None of this here is at “Quiero que seas mi mujer” and “I will endure whatever it takes to be with you”.

And while Fina is protecting Marta from having to deal with the pain and the insecurity over the distance between them, it is not “that’s what I’m doing: protecting my wife”, as Fina once told Pelayo.

And Pelayo’s legacy – and that bind of a wedding ring – may get its due yet, just as Fina’s abandonment issues but also her growth.

Is this still “I will always chose you”, aka the North Star Narrative?

Time and scripts will tell. But I think so. Because what is more romantic than "She is my destiny" (as Marta says to Andrés about FIna later in this episode)? It's "I will always choose her, and trust her to choose me in return."