Out On the Edge

I'm out on the edge and I'm screaming my name

Like a fool at the top of my lungs

Sometimes when I close my eyes I pretend I'm alright

But it's never enough.

Echo, Jason Walker

You find yourself surrounded by an array of paintbrushes, including one that is so small, that you find yourself cursing it at its sheer existence, knowing it will provide little aid in painting a fifteen square feet room. There are two opened paint tins, the acidic odour stripping the back of your throat, causing your eyes to well up slightly.

You try to ignore the very strong possibility that your eyes are welling up for an entirely different reason. A reason not involving high concentrations of titanium oxide or polyvinyl acetate. An irreversible, permanent reason, that doesn't fade when you close your eyes, that permeates your every waking moment, and extends to the horrors you replay in your dreams every night.

It's been a month since Leo's funeral. So far, you've visited three times, because, regretfully, he's not as accessible as you'd like him to be. While it would have been convenient to have him close to you, buried in a cemetery round the corner, five minutes away when you needed him, just as he was in life, it wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be right to deny him his family, forever confined to an anonymous church graveyard, surrounded by strangers, like another body in the morgue. So he's back in Sheffield, buried with Theresa and Cassie, forming some sort of poetic justice. A family torn apart, but reunited in death, all three of their lives ending prematurely.

And in the three times you've visited, it was always a Sunday. It's become part of your routine now, driving up early in the morning, stopping at the florist round the corner, picking a fresh bouquet, before continuing on the cemetery, where you'd sit on the ground beside him, regardless of the weather. Sometimes you'd just sit and cry for a while, your eyes fixed on the name, as if watching it indefinitely will make it feel somewhat more real. Because in your five stages of grief, you've skipped anger (for the time being, anyway) and gone straight to denial, wavering upon its significance.

Other times, you'd bring some lunch; tell him about your week, about returning to work, about your refusal to even enter his office, your inability to even hear Mumford's words of condolence at your latest crime scene, all through denial. You sit, you lay flowers, you eat, you talk. It's a systematic process.

The first time you visited, you stayed for a good few hours, occupying your time with uncontrollable sobs, as Jack stood from a distance, awkwardly clutching an umbrella, not knowing you well enough to be able to offer any support other than physical presence. You didn't really speak on the drive up to Sheffield, apart from a few initial words about the radio and the reliability of the satnav, but the small talk died out somewhere between Watford and Milton Keynes, as the London roads blended into the M1 and the M1 blended into the cold, damp streets of Sheffield. You'd tried to snuggle down, get comfy, in the hope of falling asleep at some point, so you wouldn't have to cope with the dreadful silence. But closing your eyes didn't change the facts. It didn't remove the hurt and the pain and the anger and the questions.

On the drive back down, some of those questions got vocalised. The simple ones like why did you hold me back slowly developing into the why did he have to die – questions that wouldn't be satiated by a reply, half-rhetorical, half seeking, demanding an answer, a reason. The simple questions created arguments, you found. Because for the questions that actually could be answered, you didn't like what you heard, you didn't like the reply. You didn't want a play-by-play of how Jack held you back, whilst Leo selflessly, knowingly gave up his life. You didn't want to hear about how Jack didn't want to lose both of you. You didn't want to hear Jack talking about how it's what Leo would have wanted, how he wanted you to be safe.

That's the moment you couldn't take it anymore. That's the moment Jack saw the other side of you – the side reserved for the anger, the verbal abuse, the raw genuine emotion. Because what did he know, he was barely there for a few months, and he didn't know Leo, not like you did, and he didn't know what Leo wanted, under any circumstance.

And to his credit, he handled it pretty well. He took your insults, your screaming, your tears, even the slap across his face in the middle of the science room. He remained motionless, accepting it, the slap reverberating round the room, stunning everyone into silence. Everyone except you. A warning button in your head flashed, beeped, screeched incessantly for you to stop, but you couldn't. So you carried on, your voice hoarse and tired, until you eventually shocked yourself.

This is all your fault.

The pink in Jack's cheeks faded, his face turning pale. You covered your hand with your mouth, as if to prevent anything further leaving your lips, but you knew the worst damage was already done. You couldn't take back your words, pretend that you were joking, or mistaken, or even that he misheard you, misunderstood you. Because each word, each punctured, fragmented word that formed that sentence was said with the utmost clarity, the highest level of coherence. The most excruciating level of blame.

Letting out a shaky sigh, he simply wiped his eyes, furiously attempting to inhibit even the smallest degree of emotion from surfacing. With one clean, swift movement, he grabbed his jacket, draped over the back of the chair, and swept out of the room, slamming the door behind him, leaving you alone, static, in the middle of the office.

You apologised, of course, once you'd calmed down. Whether or not he forgave you is another matter – he said he did, but you wouldn't be surprised if he didn't. The clenched jaw, the square shoulders, all indicative of his need to remain closed up, as if speaking of his feelings would break him. You gave him a hug, all arms and awkward angles, with your hair probably scratching his face, and his right arm caught between the two of you, unable to hold you closer as you began to cry again.

Things almost returned to normal after that. As normal as things could be without Leo. But the next week you visited Leo, you went alone. You told him about your fight with Jack, about how none of you were really coping, and how by being so bloody selfless, it was actually the most selfish thing he could have done, because he'd left you all alone to cope with it all. He'd saved so many strangers, and surrendered you to an eternity without him.

And that's about as far as you got that week. You left after about half an hour, because you'd travelled all that way, a four hour drive, just to get mad at him for leaving you, arguing with someone who couldn't fight back anymore. You left because you felt guilty. And even though Leo wasn't there physically, the idea of him looking down, shaking his head at you, somewhere on a proverbial cloud nine, way up in the sky, was truly daunting (if not a tiny bit whimsical).

So, when you came into work the next day, you resolved to do your job, like he taught you, all those years ago. But when you got the call from the powers that be, asking you to run the department in the interim, you froze. In the interim for whom exactly?

Leo certainly isn't coming back, that much you know. But frankly, you feel physically sick at the thought of anyone sitting at his desk, fiddling with the lever on his chair, putting their own sentimentalities on his shelves. Then again, you're equally repulsed at the idea of filling his shoes, replacing him. Even the idea of having to go into his office, touch his stuff, be surrounded by possessions that are so innately him – it took you another week before you could face it.

You could see Jack teetering around you that week – you were precariously balancing on the edge, and he didn't want to be the one to tip you over the precipice. Nobody wanted to be that person. Hell, you didn't want to be that person – you barely even wanted to be yourself.

But after visiting Leo again, the third week, after doing your flowers, food and flustered-account-of-the-week routine, it finally sunk in. The permanence of it all. Not that you didn't already know, of course. Your frequent breakdowns and not-so-frequent happiness since he died were suggestive as much. But that third week established the routine of visiting him, enforcing a regularity to your Sundays. The fact that visiting Leo's grave was routine, normal, came crashing down around you, unrelenting. You cried a lot less than in previous visits – you'd still cried, because, well, you didn't have that much self-control. But your tears were composed, collected, dignified. You didn't lose it or effectively fall apart or struggle to see straight, even on the way back home again.

Even sorting through his stuff – random paperclip chains, mementoes, even the papers on his desk – you still held it together. Almost.

Until you got to the photos. Some on the walls, a couple on his desk, even a couple tucked away in his desk drawer. And slowly, you crumbled, because every photo he had (all except the one of him, Theresa and Cassie) included you and Harry. There was one of you and Jack, out of courtesy, you presume, but the majority were you, him and Harry. Your little functioning dysfunctional family.

You quickly stuffed the picture frames into the boxes scattered around the room, careful enough not to break them, but hastily enough that your eyes didn't have to focus on them again. You sighed internally at the meagre amount of boxes, the derisory amount of belongings that filled them. If this were a true representation of Leo's life, one would have thought that he had done very little in his life. How mistaken they would have been.

Because not only have you lost a friend, a mentor, a father, god damn it, not only will he never again make you feel safe, but nobody else will have the pleasure of knowing him, nobody else will hear his words of wisdom, nobody else will hear him laugh, or see him smile, or give his knowing looks that are so bloody obvious.

You'd moved the boxes out of his office, balancing them precariously on your desk and chair, putting the larger items under your desk, for fear of them possibly becoming damaged. You covered the remaining furniture with some ghastly plastic sheets the builders left behind.

You remain static, lost in your own thoughts again, neglecting the paintwork needing to be done. You sit on your haunches, pushing the paint roller back and forth a few times for effect, before picking at the dry paint already on your hands.

"You've left me all alone, Leo," you whisper, looking up towards an apparent higher place of existence. (Because in all reality, if there is a God, how would Leo not end up in Heaven?)

You shake your head sadly, as a tear slips unbidden down your cheek, although you can't quite bring yourself to criticise him for saving all those people that day, no matter how much it may hurt you otherwise. You slowly clamber to your feet, unpleasantly surprised by the amount of effort it takes you, and paint, choosing a place at random to begin.

"Thought the builders were supposed to do that," a voice murmurs behind you. You don't need to turn around to know who it is. It's a voice all too familiar, a voice ready to be remembered all over again. (Like you could ever really forget it.) You can also guess that he's leaning in the doorway, looking so damn casual, you'd think he never left. You also give Leo a silent thank you, because you may be a woman of science, but it cannot be a coincidence that a minor miracle just happened.

"I kicked them out," you shrug at him, equally casual, replacing the roller in its tray as you turn to look at him. Although he doesn't look much different (apart from his hair being longer again), you're slightly taken aback by how much else has changed in a year.

"Why?" he laughs, stepping into the office precariously, over dripping cans of paint and random tools, of no immediate use.

"They were touching his stuff," you say, gesturing vaguely around the room, although you realise that Leo's room, in various states of disarray, doesn't look much better than when the builders left it.

"Dare I ask if you need a hand?" he replies, his eyes coming to rest on the dishevelled state of the half-painted wall.

"Well, I wouldn't want to get your tie dirty," you mock gently, "What, you couldn't wear ties here? You have to go cross-continent before you learn how to dress yourself?"

"Oh, really, you want to talk about dressing properly?" he scoffs, walking over to you, and tugging at your oversized paint-splattered shirt, "You look like a painter."

"Hey, I'd be careful about the criticism here. This is your shirt, by the way," you retort, swatting him away from you, as he begins to pull at a loose thread, coming dangerously close to robbing the shirt of a button.

"That's my shirt you're wrecking?" he cries, walking around you in a circle to clarify. You turn, so that you continue to face him, but he firmly puts his hands on your hips to hold you still, "Oh, yes. So it is. Thief."

"Professor Cunningham, you have a fancy job, which pays for your fancy flat, which is filled with your fancy clothes. Surely you don't miss one shirt?" you tease, tugging at his tie gently for effect, which, even after years of experience, is still slightly crooked.

"It's the principle," he huffs, "I'm gone barely a year, and you're a permanent fixture at my desk – now I find you're stealing my clothes."

"Look, I'm busy. So, are you going to help, or continue to be petty?" you sigh, offering him a paintbrush, as the amount of work to be done dawns upon you. He takes the paintbrush, positioning himself next to you, as you continue painting the wall you hadn't yet finished. It's almost domestic – your shoulders occasionally bumping against each other, a comfortable silence between you.

"Why did you come back?" you murmur after a good few minutes, unable to even look at him, for fear of spontaneously falling apart, "I mean, I know why. But - why now?"

He sighs, putting down his paintbrush, walking round to Leo's chair to slump into it. However, on approaching Leo's chair, he apparently seems to think better of it, choosing instead to perch awkwardly on his desk.

"I don't know-"

"You don't know?" you cry accusingly, interrupting him before he can barely speak, "Harry, you missed his funeral. You didn't even come to Leo's funeral-"

"I couldn't, okay?" he spits back at you harshly, and you're shocked at how quickly this conversation has descended into pure anger, "I didn't even say goodbye to him, to you, when I left. And now, what, he's dead, and I'll never get to say goodbye anyway. A funeral isn't saying goodbye, Nikki, not properly. A funeral is for all the people who didn't know him well enough to say goodbye beforehand. Like all the people you put on a Christmas card list, but never actually think about for the other 364 days of the year. Or the people you went to school with and lost touch-"

"You think I got to say goodbye?" you yell, slamming the paint roller blindly into its tray, "You think any of us got to say goodbye to him? He pulled that man away from everyone, away from me. He saved my life, and I didn't even get a chance to thank him," your voice quietens considerably, stopping yourself before you can say the word 'dead' or 'bomb' or 'hero', because you're barely keeping it together right now, and just one trigger word will irrevocably push you over the edge.

He pulls you into a hug suddenly, an awkward hug, and you pull away instinctively, so you can relax yourself into the hug, but his grip on you is vice-like, pulling you tighter against him, so you sink into him as much as possible.

"And I was scared," he mumbles into your hair, "Of whether there'd be anything left for me to come back to."

You pull away from him then, despite your body screaming at you to do otherwise, feeling cold as soon as you shrug yourself out of his arms, away from their comfort and safety. But you needn't have worried about feeling cold, for the moment you pull away, you feel his hand graze the back of your neck, keeping you close to him.

"Always," you breathe inevitably, because in all fairness, this moment was never going to be anything but clichéd. His lips graze gently against yours, a feathered touch so light, you feel the urge to pinch yourself to make sure it's actually there. But of course, you get impatient quickly, because for god's sake, you've been waiting for this for ten bloody years.

You crash your lips into his, and he stumbles backwards to regain some modicum of balance. He tries to look irritated at you (really?) but the smile on his face doesn't allow it for more than a second. And yeah, you haven't really discussed him staying, returning to the Lyell Centre, but you don't need to hear it. Not right now anyway. (Not when his fingers are curling into your hair, and there's another hand just lightly dancing across your waist, pulling you impossibly closer, and oh god, how the hell are you still standing?)

You already know.

It's your almost instinct.

Because what survives of you is love.

(And dear god, have you been waiting long enough.)

So, I wrote this heaven knows how long ago – probably eleven years? Because like a good little student, I decided to finish my AS English coursework instead. But not entirely surprisingly, writing 3000 words about my OTP is easier than writing 2500 words about the bastions of Victorian society, and random musings about Chekhov and Ibsen.

So, here we are. Thanks to everyone who continues to read and review, and leave the lovely little PMs that make my week! Do the same again? You know the drill, guys…

Love Em xx

PS/ New chapters of Catch22 and Somebody That I Used To Know have been written - sorta. I'm just not happy with them yet. I swear, I'll have at least one up by the end of the week, because I sound like a broken record rambling on about my exams :)