a/n Hello! This is my first Hollyoaks fic so I hope it's alright.

This is set on the day of Becca's funeral and the speech in this has been taken from that episode.

Hope you enjoy and any feedback would be greatly appreciated. :)

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing (apart from the mistakes. They're all mine!)

Title: Lost Love

Pairing: Justin/Becca

Rating/Warnings: T and mentions of death

Summary: It's a Tuesday the day they bury Becca – Oneshot – Justin/Becca

Lost Love

It's a Tuesday the day they bury Becca.

The weather's miserable, as if it is in mourning too, the grey clouds seemingly stretching on forever. The rain slices through the sky as Justin wonders how the hell his life has turned into this. He's not at the funeral, of course, though he wanted desperately to go, but it would have just caused even more problems. So he sits here, wishing he was there, but knowing that he doesn't deserve to be. Knowing that is by his hand this day has even come about at all.

He can feel the coolness of the stone against his back as he sits, his knees dragged up to his chin, staring out through clouded eyes at the morose scene in front of him. He knows that he shouldn't be out in the rain – can hear his mother now, you'll catch your death out there, Justin – but really, he doesn't care anymore.

He twists so he's staring at the careful gold lettering on the gravestone and speaks softly; talking to himself in an attempt to come to terms with the path life has taken him down. "She was so beautiful," he says, because she was. She is the most beautiful woman he's ever met and he has a feeling that no matter what happens now, she'll always be.

He can already feel the tears threatening to overwhelm him, trickling down his cheeks, but he accepts that today he can allow himself to cry. Today is different.

"She was different."

He turns back around so he's leaning on the stone and can't see the inscription that breaks his heart every time. "She respected me," he adds, a moment later. His throat feels tight and the words are a struggle to get out, but he soldiers on, determined to finish what he wants – needs – to say. "She gave up everything," He pauses, sobbing gently because he still can't believe it. "for me," he continues, the tears falling unbridled now. "and I just threw it all back in her face." He shakes his head, his knees still tucked up to his chin like the kid he used to be.

"I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to make her suffer and now I don't know why," he murmurs, a second later, because he doesn't. He has no clue now why he did what he did. He was angry, he knows that – but it's no excuse for how he destroyed her life and, ultimately, took it away from her. That's why, half way across the village, they're holding her funeral – because he was a immature kid who was angry and who didn't understand the far reaching consequences of his actions. He's sure he heard someone on telly once say that every one's a genius with hindsight. It hurts, but he knows it's true. Now, he knows that what he did was wrong and that it never should have happened. He'd been trying to put it right – that's why he'd changed his statement, near enough admitted he was lying – but it was all too late.

He knows now that if he'd just walked away when Becca told him it was over, they'd have had a second chance. The anger would have faded and he would have realised that what she said was true – that he was still just kid, that he needed to grow up. And he knows - sure as anything, sure as the sun comes up in the morning and sure as water is blue – that they would have come back together.

Because he knows that, even for all her protestations to the contrary, she loved him. He can still remember the first time she said it and Justin knows that she meant it. Things between them wouldn't have lasted as long as they did if she didn't love him – probably wouldn't have even started – because, as Nancy and Jake are certainly saying at her funeral - she was a good woman, a kind woman; not a woman who, even though he stood up in court and said the opposite, took advantage of her pupil. They both wanted it and he knew from the start how torn their relationship made her, and yet they continued anyway – because they loved each other.

But he needed to grow up before he could fully understand what being in love meant. Now he does though, it's all over. She's dead and she hated him anyway.

He knows now that there is a thin line between love and hate.

They both crossed it. And Justin came back over but she didn't.

He knows that he did wrong but he can't go back now. He wishes he could but it's impossible. He has to live with his mistakes and the things he did that are bigger than mistakes but don't have a word to describe them.

He has to live with this tragedy. This...this Becca dying – because there are no more words that adequately describe it other than simply stating what it is – has split his life apart, in just the same way as his sisters' deaths did. He felt guilt then, but it was a sort of generic guilt, unfounded because there was nothing he could have done to save them – but now, oh there was so much he could have done to stop it and the guilt is nowhere near unfounded. It is his fault no matter what he tries to tell himself.

"Sophie, Mel," he starts, feeling choked, addressing his dead sisters', who have been cold in their grave for far too long. "if you're with her now can you tell her how sorry I am for taking away the life she deserved." He lets out a sob when he finishes his sentence, the weight of what he did clinging to his shoulders and dragging him down. "What's my life worth now, eh, now she's gone? Now you're gone," he adds, a second later, speaking the truth because he doesn't know what he's going to do now. Seventeen nearly eighteen years old and already so much tragedy and guilt on his young shoulders. He's grown up now, he's sure of it. He's had to, after what life has thrown at him. He told Becca he'd changed but she hadn't believed him, but it's the truth. "And I did it." Tears are stilling running down his cheeks and he's unable to stop them even if he wanted to.

"I killed the woman that I loved," he says, softly, knowing that he killed her just as surely as he'd held the knife that stabbed her. Her blood is on his hands and he is certain that no matter how hard he tries to wash it off, it's always going to be there – Becca's ghost haunting him with what might have been.

Later that day - after they've buried her, after she's joined Mel and Sophie in the cold, cruel earth - he lies in bed and when he turns over, just for a second, he expects her to be lying next to him. He goes cold, just like the empty side of the bed, because she hasn't been next to him for months and she never will again and yet for some stupid reason he was expecting her to be.

It breaks his heart that bit more, but he knows it's all his own doing, that it's all on him. It's his fault and he can't change it. First Becca left him and then he lost her for good and then she died. All of it is his fault and it's too much for him to bear alone.

Justin Burton doesn't cry, but over Becca Dean, he does.