A Note: It's been a long time since I've written fanfiction...but I missed it. I've been rewatching Broadchurch and found myself captivated by the characters all over again. I hope you enjoy this despite the fact that it's quite short. Please do leave feedback, I enjoy reading it and look forward to talking to other fans of the show.
Intersection
The wind whistled over the hills, a high and lonely sound that echoed through his chest. It was accompanied by a crispness that had Alec Hardy burrowing his hands deeper into his pockets. All around him, ringing the edges of the field he was trudging through, the suburbs of Glasgow were quiet under their blanket of snow. This suited him just fine: he was in no mood for strangers. Once North Lanarkshire had been home, but that had been a very long time ago. Now it was merely a resting place.
He made the pilgrimage every year or two, tracing his way through neighborhoods, across a field and into a quiet churchyard. Through the stones toward the back, the names familiar because families here didn't leave, not often. Finally he stood on a too-familiar patch of ground. The grave was buried in the snow, and he scraped it from the letters on the headstone with numb fingertips. Slowly a name appeared: Catherine Hardy, loving wife and mother.
This stone, these words: all that remained of a life.
"Hello mum," he said quietly, running his thumb over her name, feeling the cold ridges catch his skin. He looked up at the sky, thinking it was the sort of sparkling blue she would have appreciated. A beautiful day, considering it was the depth of winter.
He'd wanted to bring Daisy for the longest time, to show her where he'd grown up. Teach her a bit of her northern history. But the time had slipped away, lost to long workdays, poor timing, a failing marriage. Funny because he knew better than anyone how precious time was. Pippa and Lisa, Danny: they'd taught him that lesson with a brutal finality that lingered in his dreams.
He closed his eyes. What would his mother say to him now, if she could see him here? Marriage wrecked, his daughter almost a grown woman and half a stranger. Two murder cases which had swept him aside, leaving him behind like flotsam in their wake. Alone now, always alone.
"I'm sorry I don't visit more often," he said after a long silence. The only answer was the whistling wind. "Been busy. Moving, uhm…moving south, I think. Further south. Near the sea. You liked it, Broadchurch. I remember you liked it when we visited. That's where I've decided to move. It's just the same as it was back then. I haven't told anyone I'm moving yet, avoiding a real bollocking from a…from a friend. It's a bit far from Daisy but there's a train and she's a grown up now. She doesn't want her dad following her around like a lost puppy."
There's another long silence. He stares out at the field, ignoring the civilization just on the other side of the tree line.
"I miss you, mum. I'm alright. I'll be alright. But I miss you." He ran his hands over the top of the headstone and squeezed his eyes shut again, picturing her. He gripped the marble hard under his fingers, then let go.
A whispered goodbye and then his footsteps crunching through the snow. The past behind him, the ghosts inside him…but, for the first time in a long time, the future ahead of him.
He phoned Ellie Miller the next morning to tell her he was coming back, nodded when she called him a bloody idiot for leaving in the first place. Her voice was still ringing in his ears when he caught the train south and headed...home.