"Moonlight Fades to Dawn"
A/N: Inspired entirely by Switchfoot's song 'What It Costs", and somehow due to that I wrote an Alec/Ellie pairing. This is probably the only time I will ever do so, but I had fun writing it.
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Time slips away from them again, just as it has since the beginning. They sit together on the porch looking out at the sea he still professes to hate and watch the stars together. She's curled up in his lap, head resting on his chest; she's feeling the still-odd rhythm of his heart as is her habit. His hand is absentmindedly running through her hair, picking at the rats that have gathered there from the seaside wind.
Frailer now. Aged.
They've grown old together. Still bickering. Still fighting. But still very much loving.
Even if that loving is in their own very unique ways. No chocolates on Valentine's Day. No flowers on the anniversary.
There's a bag of grapes (seedless, always seedless) in the refrigerator. A small handwritten note addressed to 'Wanker' still sits on the kitchen table which will eventually make its way to his sock drawer along with all the others. An abundance of never-opened wine bottles sit in their respective places in the corner.
Tiny little things that hold little romantic significance.
But they hold a hell of a lot of importance.
Alec and Ellie have never been ones for romance. Or at least Alec never has. Too busy, is his excuse. Takes too much time. Ellie has learned to be content with what she has. Anyway, he cares where it truly matters. They very rarely kiss in public but his hand is always brushing hers if not already gripping her fingers. Over the years it's become habit for him to treat her to a Friday or Saturday night out at the movies and dinner.
He still calls her 'Miller'. But that's okay, because she still calls him 'knob'.
Twenty-four years. Their own personal joke had always been to ask how long they could stand to live with each other. How long could their love and affection last?
Still counting.
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The phone call comes when he's heading down the main street of Broadchurch, picking up a few things for dinner that night. (He doesn't do the cooking. Ellie had learned that the hard way after needing to cut his singed bangs.) It's their quiet evening together, the day he looks forward to the most. They've had a busy week at work, and he wants some time simply to relax.
It's then that everything shatters around him.
The hospital calls but he barely hears the woman explaining that Ellie is in emergency surgery. He hates hospitals, hasn't been to one in years, but he goes without hesitation.
Struck by a drunk driver while crossing the street. That's what Alec is told. That's all that he's told. They don't know if she'll make it. He spends five horrible hours waiting in one of the uncomfortable chairs in the lobby, imagining only the worst possible scenarios, trying to hide the roiling of his stomach and of his trembling hands.
Finally he's told he can see her. The room is quiet, eerily so, and his skin breaks out in goosebumps. It's too still. Ellie is laying white and still as death in the bed, hooked up to so many machines that for a moment he can only gape at the sight. He doesn't know what to do. It's hard to grip her hand with everything around her and he thinks wryly that this time it's him doing the waiting at the hospital. Idly he wonders (hopes) that when he had collapsed on Briar Cliff Ellie had been genuinely worried about him, even if she hadn't been particularly pleasant to talk to when he woke up. Following his pacemaker surgery he'd known for certain that she was worried for him because with him her concern shown through as sarcasm.
It's still a near thing, the doctor tells him at the doorway. If the driver had been going any faster she would have been certainly killed on impact; she was suffering from a ruptured appendix, cracked ribs, bruising to her kidneys… so many other injuries Alec can't process them. And then the doctor mentions her uterus. 'Heavily torn,' are the words, 'and that was our main concern. I'm sorry, we couldn't save the child—"
Alec stills with a sharp intake of breath. The doctor realizes too late what he has unintentionally revealed. "Child?"
"She was nearly four months pregnant. We tried our best but she was hit primarily in that area. It's likely the child died immediately."
It's the harshest, most gut-wrenching blow he's ever received in his life. Worse than finding out about Tess's affair and her losing evidence, worse than Daisy's near two year silence. Worse even, and he's vaguely surprised, than finding Pippa's body in the river. This is choking and horrific, an ache deep in his gut that threatens to swallow him whole.
He's sick in the trash can. Sensory overload, he can't handle it. He's dealing with the near-loss of Ellie but now he's discovered the loss of his child he hadn't even known about.
Tears don't come. He sits beside her bed, clasping her hands in his, head bowed on top of the mattress as he tries to process what's happened. He can't stop trembling.
Beth and Mark come in a couple hours later. Alec and Ellie have been 'together' for close to five years now, and the Latimers have been there with them throughout it all. Mark is pale and Beth's crying as they step into the room. Alec leaves the room, wanting nothing to do with human contact until Ellie wakes up. He goes outside. It's beginning to rain but he doesn't mind it, barely even registers he's wet as he paces up and down the sidewalk restlessly. When he finally tires himself and he can't escape his feeling of being trapped he collapses in a bench sitting by the curb, thoroughly soaked and his hair dripping water into his eyes.
A solid presence sits beside him after a long time. He knows who it is but he studiously ignores her, clasped hands held to his mouth as he leans forward.
Beth has never been one to be ignored. She's quickly becoming as wet as he is and he wants to tell her to go back inside but he can't around the tightness in his throat.
She understands his silence. She stands but it's not to go back inside. She comes around behind him and he feels her arms come around his neck and shoulders, giving him a mother's comforting hug. She's stroking his hair and through her tears trying to assure him that things will be okay. She knows about the lost child and so he tries to believe her. She knows what it's like to lose a child, after all. She knows how to get back from that. He clings to Beth's arms and tries to breathe.
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Ellie wakes up three days later and it's awful when she has to be told what has happened. What has been so tragically lost. She breaks down in tears and has to be sedated before she hurts herself even more. Tom is there, and wee Fred (not so little anymore), and Alec allows them their time to talk with their mum when she is awake again.
It's late night before they get time to themselves. Ellie lays small and trembling underneath her blankets, trying to blink back tears.
"I was going to surprise you," she whispers in the darkness. "I'd only known a few weeks myself, but I—"
"Shut up," he says softly, and ignoring the doctors' warnings he crawls into the bed with her. The hospital beds have always been a bit too small for him—his feet dangle over the edge—but he draws Ellie close and simply lets her cry again.
"Is this our punishment?" she finally manages to choke out in the silence. "For even being together?"
He feels an icy fist squeeze his heart and he swears he feels it jump like it did before his pacemaker surgery. "Don't think like that."
She shudders in a breath, her face buried in the pillow. Her voice is muffled, broken. "How do we get through this?"
She had been recovering. He had seen her healing, the sunny personality he remembers from Danny's trial slowly making a comeback in jokes and smiles and kitchen battles at night. To see her so torn apart now was worse than when he had had to tell her of Joe's guilt because by now he had shared her bed and her heart for five years.
But he finds the answer. He leans over, beard tickling her neck, and he whispers in her ear, "We'll get through it together. Just like always."
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It's been a long road. The loss of their (only) child had been only one of many things that had caused them heartache. They were never able to have another—her ovaries had been too damaged. They had devoted even more time then on Tom and Fred, and on each other. Then there had been the time when Alec, back on active duty, had almost been stabbed by a robber high on cocaine; a few years after that Ellie had had a cancer scare.
Joe had come back on the fifteenth anniversary of Danny's murder, still baby-eyed and bleating his innocence. He had been hoping for reconciliation with Ellie—or taking Fred, whichever was easier.
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"We told you to stay away!" Ellie cries, furious and steely-eyed. She's a little stooped—a physical reminder of the car accident—but Alec feels sure she will be able to set upon her ex-husband as violently as she had in the police station.
He's content to simply watch.
"You can't keep me away! I have every right to be here!"
There's murder in her eyes. Alec's glad Beth isn't here. Or Mark. "You're leaving. Tonight. If you so much as look sideways I will kill you myself."
"Do it then," Joe challenges her, sneering. There's something dangerous in his flat eyes. "You were so eager to before!"
She doesn't. Fifteen years hasn't cooled her fury or disgust but it's given her Alec and an attempt at picking up the pieces. She won't lose that. Not now.
She lashes out as only Ellie Miller can—soon Joe is left unconscious on the floor with a broken nose and what will quickly become a brilliant black eye. They take him to the police station and put him in one of the cells, stating he's broken Ellie's restraining order.
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They haven't heard anything from him since. Joe had finally started to discover that his ex-wife was not one to be messed with and talking with Paul had told them that he had left Britain altogether. Further investigation had confirmed that the exiled child-killer had retreated to the United States, and Ellie's anger and disgust had finally cooled.
They never told Mark and Beth about Joe's 'visit', although Alec suspects that Mark had discovered it for himself.
Who knows? It's been long enough now that perhaps Joe is dead.
Many of them from the time of Danny's murder are gone. Maggie Radcliffe passed in her sleep shortly after Jocelyn did, still just as sharp as always. Both funerals had been ones Alec and Ellie attended, even if at that point the town was still gossiping about the two detectives' new relationship. Alec still grins to himself in quiet moments about the fact that it had been Maggie that Jocelyn was talking about all those years ago.
Olly is in London, has been since the close of Joe's case—he's only came back once, when they buried Lucy on a rainy Saturday afternoon.
Paul still sits in his church, preaching his sermons on Sundays. It had been he who had first discovered Alec's and Ellie's relationship all those years ago, ironically enough. He's never moved from Broadchurch even though he's been asked by several different churches to be their vicar. He's loyal to the town, even that Alec has to admit.
Beth and Mark have struggled but have pushed through, raising their two remaining children as best they can. Chloe is still nearby, living with Dean. Lizzie, darling dark-haired Lizzie, is sunny and as tough as her mum, only just graduated from college with a bachelor's in history and literature.
A picture of Danny remains on their mantle. Every other month Alec and Ellie join the two Latimers and they share a quiet evening with drinks in remembrance of the boy who was lost—the boy who had somehow ended up pulling them all together.
Ellie never says anything about it, but she knows that Alec always drinks one for Pippa.
She coughs now, huddled against his chest. She's wrapped in a blanket, her skin too thin to handle even the chilly evenings anymore but she loves the outdoors too much to stay inside. She's tired, and she can feel her age now; her bones ache and her once-dark hair shines a bright silver. They're all grey-headed now. Poor Mark is receding dreadfully. Alec's hair never thinned but is a snowy white; his beard still has flashes of brown.
His hand trails through her curls again. "Don't cough up a lung, 'cos I won't clean it up for you."
"Wanker." Ellie reaches blindly and smacks his arm without moving from his embrace. "You could hand me a glass of water, you know."
"I would," he retorts good-naturedly, "but someone's sitting on me." His Scottish brogue has not lessened with age.
She smiles slightly. Funny to think that this bickering and sniping would be so comforting and familiar now, but it is. It's what has helped them through griefs, the thing that they both know will always be there at the end of the day. Their endearments are spoken through words meant to be insults. And that's completely right for them.
The sky is lightening in the east. They'll watch the sunrise and start their day just as they have for the past twenty-four years. Soon—very soon—there will come a day where Ellie will not wake up for the sunrise and another grave in the church's plot will be filled. Until then, however, they are content with what they have: silent, secluded moments and each other.
There will be griefs later on when that final moment comes and two will be down to one. They know this, however. Life has taught them the biggest lesson of all.
Loss is what love costs.
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Hold on to me, carry me through.
Our story is the pain that we outgrew.
Yeah, you can't call it love until you've lost.
If you love someone this is what it costs.
"What It Costs", Switchfoot