This is my first fanfic EVER, so i'd really appreciate feeback, advice and reviews - no matter how critical. One thing though, I know the reactions may not be realistic, or how you as readers may have imagined, but this is my interpretation of where i think SKINS would've have taken things next. Thankyou for reading (:

Cook, the one who adored him.

I thought it would be easy. I'd had a lifetime of breaking promises, breaking hearts, breaking friendships.

But breaking a person. Breaking her. Fuck me, Freds. I was naïve to think such a thing.

The way she'd sat bolt upright in her bed. The way her eyes dilated with horror. The way she looked at me with such venom for telling her the one thing she never wanted to hear. That you were gone, and never coming back.

That you were…

She slapped me then, said I was talking bullshit, was talking sick. And I wanted more than anything to throw my head back, let out a fucking guffaw, punch her on the arm and ask her where her sense of humour had gone. I wanted more than anything, Freds, to take her by the hand and lead her downstairs, where you'd be waiting for her, with some fucking dodgy garage flowers and that trademark sheepish expression on your 'andsome little face.

But I couldn't. All I could do was sit there and fight back the already visible tears. Watch her watch me.

Watch Effy die inside. Watch her charge from the room, watch her run from her house and into the night.

Watch her sink to her knees on her pathway and shake uncontrollably.

I didn't know what to do with myself. I tried to think of the situation in reverse. If that was me, in that bloodied body bag - how would you comfort her, how would you comfort each other if that was me?

I wondered if you'd even need comforting at all. You'd probably feel relief more than anything else. A burden lifted. I'm always a burden, ain't I? And now I carry your burden, too.

I just sat and watched her cry. I watched the strongest person I knew undo herself, and unstitch the years of unpenetrated protection she had wound around herself. It was like watching a stranger, man. Effy's heart didn't break, she said so herself. Effy had episodes, had crazy fits, had bad spells. Effy did psycho. Effy did cold. Effy did cool.

She didn't do love.

But she did with you. She only ever broke for you.

Breaking a person isn't easy, Freds. But letting yourself break, that's even fucking harder.

She really is the strongest person I know.