Burn Before Reading
For Charlotte - Happy Belated Birthday, honey. I am sorry this is so late. It's really difficult to remember an entire fic once your laptop decides to delete it. But that's no excuse, so my sincerest apologies - hope you enjoy :)
Walking through the glass doors, you feel a sense of dread as well as intrigue. How much has changed since you left, how much she has changed since you left.
You honestly don't know how she's been getting on. Even in your conversations with Leo, be it via email or telephone, Nikki's name was scarcely mentioned. You'd ask how she was, he'd say just enough so you'd know there was nothing to worry about, and then he'd change the topic. As if he couldn't bear the fact that you needed to ask the question.
But you did need to ask that question. Every single time you spoke to him. Because when you tried to contact her, the guilt of leaving her behind consumed you, and just picking up the phone felt felt someone was suffocating you, slowly and painfully, as if the life was being sucked out from you.
So you didn't contact her. Well, you did, just once. You wrote her a letter, one night, the first night you landed in New York. You'd pretty much got everything settled, everything in the right place. But then it occurred to you that everything was in the wrong place, because it wasn't with Nikki. Your head might have been in New York, but your heart certainly wasn't.
You sat on your bed, for what seemed like hours, pouring emotions and unspoken feelings onto paper, not stopping even when your hand became claw-like and your eyes were becoming heavy. You didn't stop writing, even for a second, because if you did, you'd have time to think. To pause. Reflect.
And if you thought, and paused, and reflected, then that letter probably wouldn't have been sent at all.
But it did get sent. Albeit illegible and rambling, it got sent. And when you got no reply, that was the only answer you needed to all the questions you asked her in your letter. If there would ever be a chance for them again. If she would ever forgive him. If she understood why he had to go.
It's been two years and those questions have still been left unanswered.
Two years and you're still hoping that nothing has changed. That your departure somehow managed to freeze time. That there will still be a desk with your name on it. Waiting for the inevitability that you would return one day.
But as soon as you get to the door of the pathology department, you remember how much has changed. You no longer have a keycard to let yourself in, like you would every single morning. A sign that you are no longer here, no longer a member of staff, no longer a significant feature in the Lyell Centre.
Outside, the clouds were white, and there was a calmness in the air. The calm before the storm, as if snow was imminent. The coldness biting through the numerous layers of clothing you were wearing, and yet somehow, it feels colder inside. A different kind of cold. The empty kind.
Ringing the buzzer to be let in feels so foreign. It labels you as a visitor. Temporary, as opposed to permanent. When Leo lets you in, his face says everything you need to know. He's lost a bit more hair, and he has slightly more stubble than he's used to.
He's changed, as have you. You're fully aware that you've grown your hair again, while you still can, for you know that one day, you'll be losing hair, rather than gaining it. Gone are the grandad jumpers, replaced by clean, crisp, unpatterned shirts.
You make your way to the desk that was once yours, only to be greeted by the sight of four smaller desks, all separate, instead of the two desks against each other, when you and Nikki used to occupt them. You can't identify which desk belongs to Nikki; they are void of all sentiment, no photos, no mugs, or even just a bright pink highlighter to tell them apart.
"They're the trainee's desks," Leo smiles gently, noting your confusion, "When you left, we had to employ more people to keep us afloat."
"Oh," you nod, opening your mouth to ask the inevitable, but stopping before the words can leave your mouth. You're not ready to find out where Nikki is sitting. Because seeing Nikki means you'll have to talk to her. And that thought terrifies you more than the thought of actually leaving her did.
There's an awkwardness that wasn't there before. A silence which you're not sure how to end. You're not sure where to begin. But, suddenly, you don't have to, for an unfamiliar face comes bursting through the door, cheeks flushed and out of breath. You come to the conclusion from the relatively small stack of papers that she is carrying, this girl must be one of the trainees.
"Professor Dalton, is Professor Adams back yet? She said she'd look at my paper on congenital heart defects," the young girl gasps for air, flopping into the nearest chair and logging onto her computer.
"Jess, she'll be back later today. If you like, you can go and help Ethan with the Benson case. I'm sure he could use the help," Leo smiles, knowingly. You can't help but wonder how much this girl likes Ethan.
"Okay," she smiles, blushing, rushing off in the direction of the door again.
"Jess?" Leo called, gesturing towards you, who she had completely blanked since she entered the room.
"Oh, God, sorry. I did it again, didn't I?" Jess cringed, walking back towards Leo and Harry.
"Just a little bit. Jess, this is Professor Cunningham. He used to work for us a while back."
"Hi," Jess smiled, holding out her hand to you, whilst sweeping her fringe out of her face, "Sorry, ignoring people has become a bit of a habit now. Professor Dalton's trying to keep it in check,"
"Harry," you smile, shaking her hand. You begin to talk to her briefly about New York and your professorship, but her attention is soon divided as a young man walks into the room, carrying a large stack of books, that you can only presume are from the library. You can also presume that this man is Ethan, as you gauge her dazed reaction to his entrance.
"Come on," Leo whispers, ushering you into his office, in order to give the young doctors some privacy. As you step into his office, you notice that his office is larger, and there is an extra desk occupying his room.
"What, you need two desks now?" you quip, looking round the room, until Leo taps the gold plaque on the door.
Professor L. Dalton
Professor N. Adams
"Ah," you nod, understanding, "So, this elusive Professor Adams - where is he?" you ask, puzzled at his absence at 11am on a Tuesday morning.
"Professor Adams is a she. And she's been on her honeymoon for the past two weeks. She should be back today though," Leo replies vaguely, sifting through the files that litter his desk.
You get the feeling that he's leaving something out. In all the time you've been back in the office, you'd seen neither hide nor hair of Nikki. Leo certainly hasn't mentioned her. And unless something is seriously wrong with her, she would always be at work on time. You know she must still work there, as there is a picture of her and Leo hanging on the wall. You notice that it has replaced the picture of the three of you when Leo got his MBE. You didn't just disappear from their lives, you disappeared from the memories too.
"Leo!" she suddenly appears in the doorway, rushing over to Leo and giving him a big hug, as if your mental thoughts have conjured her up in reality.
"How was it?" Leo asks her, handing her a stack of papers, much to her dismay, as she has barely come into the office.
"Perfect. Just, perfect," she smiles, sitting on the edge of his desk. She still hasn't noticed you, as you're leaning against the filing cabinet, which, positioned just behind the door, she has her back to.
"Hi," you say, clearing your throat, straightening up slightly. As she turns around, you take her in for the first time. She remains virtually unchanged, although her clothing is slightly smarter, and her hair is neater, with fewer stray strands of hair adorning her face like you're used to.
As her eyes come to rest on yours, her face is the epitome of shock. You're not entirely sure if it's a good kind of shock or not - her face isn't giving anything else away. Her mouth is open slightly, as if she is on the verge os saying something, but she remains speechless. She opens her mouth again, but quickly closes it again, deciding against saying whatever she was thinking.
"Oh my gosh, you're back. Could you look at my paper on congenital heart defects when you've got a minute?" Jess rambles at the door, leaving all of you confused as to how long she's actually been there.
"Jess, manners, she's just got through the door!" Leo cries incredulously, much to the amusement of Nikki, who grins at Jess.
"Oh, sorry," Jess groans, as if mentally reprimanding herself again, "I'll start over. Professor Adams, how was the honeymoon?" Jess smiles broadly.
Nikki's grin quickly fades, as she shoots a quick glance over at you, before composing herself, "It was lovely, thank you. The weather was beautiful," she smiles warmly. Jess nods curtly, before lingering in the doorway again, flipping through her research pointedly.
"Jess, just give me five minutes to take my coat off, okay? I'll be right with you," Nikki smiles, folding her arms as Jess grins and goes rushing out the room again, startling you slightly at the amount she rushes around.
You look around the room, noticing more and more things that belong to Nikki, that you did not focus on when you first entered the room. If you looked closely enough of her desk, sure enough, was her mug, although your stomach churns slightly at the thought of the mug being left on that desk for the past two weeks.
You run out of things to pique your interest in the room, as you feel her eyes burning into you. Looking over at her, she smiles, almost nervously, as she doesn't appear to have anything to say. It's the awkward silence again, becoming harder to break as the seconds tick by.
"I'll...err...go and see if Ethan needs any help," Leo clears his throat, gesturing towards the door. It doesn't go unnoticed just how obvious he's being - he wants you and Nikki to talk. It becomes even more obvious when he shuts the office door behind him. And takes Jess with him to avoid further interruption.
"So, you're back, then?" Nikki asks, being the braver person, and initiating a conversation.
"You're Professor Adams?" you reply quickly.
"Yeah, I...err...after you left, I got promoted. Two professors plus newly qualified pathologists bodes well financially," she smiles, although her eyes are firmly fixed on her computer screen, as she starts work on the sea of papers Leo has given her.
You sigh out loud. She doesn't understand what you're getting at.
"No, I didn't mean the Professor bit. I meant, you're Nikki Adams, now?" you ask, clarifying your point, and making her as uncomfortable as you possibly can, whilst trying to sound disinterested.
"So, how long are you back for?" Nikki asks brightly, blatantly changing the subject, as there is no avoiding the fact you have dragged the elephant into the room by its tusks. Her dismissal of your question confirms your suspicions.
"You're married?" you ask, sounding entirely deflated, searching her eyes for a flicker of something, anything, to suggest that the Nikki that once felt something for him is still there.
"Don't do this," she warns you, her voice strong. She's changed, become stronger. She's no longer putting up with your crap. And why should she? It's been two years. What were you expecting? Of course she's moved on.
"No, let's do this. Why didn't you tell me you got married?" you ask, your voice raised, failing to keep your emotions in check, like you told yourself you would on the plane home.
"Does it matter?" Nikki says, nonchalant, still not looking up from the files on her desk, organising post-it notes on her desk. (Good to know some things don't change.) But her manner, she just seems so...unbothered by it all. She doesn't seem to care what you think anymore.
"Of course it bloody matters!" you hiss, your face contorted, "I had a right to know!"
She freezes, putting down her highlighter and brightly coloured post-its, and looks at you for the first time since Leo left the room. Actually, no, she doens't look at you. She glares. Her glare is cold, uninviting, glassy, piercing the last shred of warmth inside you. Standing up, she walks towards you, her eyes shining, almost glazed over, emotionless.
As you become increasingly aware of her proximity to you, you think for one fleeting moment that she might just kiss you. That is, until you feel (and hear) the reverberating slap across your face, that stings like bloody murder.
"You had a right to know?" she murmurs, "A right to know?" she repeats, her voice much louder this time.
"That hurt," you mutter, instantly regretting your words as she hurls her stapler at you.
"How dare you! You lost the right to know anything about me the minute you walked out the door and went to New York!" she cries, pulling her hair out of her tight ponytail, and jabbing one solitary finger into your chest.
"I had to go to New York. You know that. I told you in my letter. I guess I didn't explain it as well as I thought," you sigh, trying to reason with her, and calm her down somewhat.
"I didn't read it," she mutters, sighing, resuming her work at her desk.
"What? What do you mean, you didn't read it?" you ask, confused.
"I got your letter, saw the New York postmark and threw it away. Although you know what our recycling is like, I throw away some paper, it'll come back as a plastic bottle," she rambles, her voice hoarse from screaming, continuing to quote statistics about recycling and landfill sites.
"You threw it away. Why?" you interrupt her.
"You leaving was hard enough. I didn't want to see every single reason of why you left me written in great detail," Nikki sighs, shrugging her shoulders as if in resignation.
"Do you love him?" you ask boldly, saying it before you talk yourself out of it.
"Excuse me?" she scoffs, not quite believing what you're saying. You don't repeat yourself, it doesn't need to be said.
"Answer me," you say earnestly.
"I wouldn't have married him if I didn't-"
"No. Do you love him the way you loved me? Does he make you feel the way I used to make you feel?" you persist, practically pleading with her.
"Okay, let's talk about that. How about when you left? Do you want to know how you made me feel then, Harry?" Nikki cries, raising her voice again, and coming dangerously close to you, so much so that you take a step back, just in case she tries to hit you again.
"I'm sorry," you sigh, rubbing your temples, as if trying to erase time in your head. Erase the two years you spent without her, the two years you spent hurting her. And times before that, erasing Hungary, erasing Penny's death, erasing every guy she's ever dated.
"You're sorry?" she chokes out a laugh then, shaking her head in disbelief. She sits down at Leo's desk, putting distance between you, as she puts her head in her hands. You think that she's still laughing, but it's only when she wipes her face with her sleeve that you realise she's crying.
Hoping you still know Nikki as well as you think, you go to her desk drawer, and sure enough, is a packet of tissues. Taking them out, you begin to close the drawer when something catches your eye. An envelope. Distinctive enough to grab your attention, it looks oddly familiar. Pulling at it slightly, you see the postmark. The date. The scrawled handwriting on the front of the envelope.
"Harry, what are you-"
She falls silent as you take the letter out of her drawer and hold it up so she can see it clearly. The envelope feels heavy in your hands, as if you can physically feel the emotions jumping off the page and swirling around the room. Seeing the envelope makes it feel so fresh, the pain, the guilt, the hurt. But it also renews your hope.
She may be Nikki Adams by name, with a new husband to boot, but she's kept the letter. Granted, it's still unopened, but turning it over, you see the edges of the envelope are curled up, like they have been carefully tampered with several times. She's holding on to Nikki Alexander.
"The closest I came to opening it was the day before my wedding," her voice suddenly appears next to you, "I was having doubts. About whether I really loved him," she sighs, "I don't know, it just made sense. You didn't know about the wedding - I told Leo not to tell you. I just...I needed to hear your voice. And we hadn't been speaking at all, so the only thing I had left of you was that letter."
"Okay, so if that's what you were thinking? Why didn't you read it? Why did you go ahead with the wedding?" you inquire.
"Guilt," she groans, shaking her head, "It was the day before my wedding. And instead of being so happy about my future with Will, I was doubting it. I was marrying the man I loved, or was supposed to love, and all I could think about was you and how much I loved you-"
You can't hear anymore. Like the thought of calling her in New York, hearing the words come out of her mouth are equally suffocating. After all this time, it's taken one word to bring you crashing back down to earth.
Love.
One word to realise what you want. What you've always wanted. Her. It always has been, and always will be, Nikki. Listening to her talking about the future, and you talking about the past, it strikes you. You're not talking about the present. The now.
And right now, you just want to hold her, to hug her, to kiss her. So you do. Taking her by surprise, you crash your lips against hers, pulling her flush against you. And she responds for a moment, at least, before realising what she's doing and pushes you away, her hands against your chest for added effect.
"What are you doing?" she murmurs, her lips slightly swollen, struggling to get her breath back.
"One last time, I swear. Do you love him?" you say, your voice barely audible.
"No," she replies, shaking her head, "But I married him. That counts for something."
"Does it?" you sigh, stroking her cheek, "Nikki, why did you marry him?"
"Why did you leave?" she counters, her eyes glistening, leaning into his touch briefly, smiling contentedly, before moving away again, creating the distance that you both need to be able to think logically.
"I'm going to go back to New York for a while. Sort some things out-"
"Harry, you can't-"
"Listen to me. Only for a while. And the minute you realise what you want, you call me, okay? When you realise that he isn't the one, I'll still be here, Nikki, waiting for you. I'm always here. Whether it be here or New York or Timbuktu, I'm here," you smile gently, kissing her on the forehead.
"You can't wait for me. It's not fair. I didn't wait for you," she says, choking out a sob, and once again, wiping the tears away with her sleeve.
"It is fair. And it's not like I'll be waiting a long time. Will doesn't seem that great," you smirk, earning an eyeroll from Nikki.
"Behave," she chides, giggling slightly.
"I'll see you soon, okay? Really soon," you smile, your lip quivering, as you pull her into a big hug, her small arms gripping you tightly, as you kiss the top of her head. Left incapable of words, she simply nods, burying her head in the crook of your head, ensuring she gets the goodbye that you robbed her of the first time.
As you open the door, you take another look at the plaque on the door. Tapping at her name on the door, you shake your head at the sign.
"Change that. Professor Adams? Is doesn't look right. Change it back to Professor Alexander," you call back to her loudly as you walk down the corridor, as you hear her groan loudly in disapproval. Glancing back to watch her briefly, you can see her every move as the blinds are open. She sits down at her desk, picking up your letter discarded there, and opens it.
It's taken her two years, one month and sixteen days, but she's reading your letter.
And you know that the minute you touchdown in New York, you'll be writing her another one. And you'll sleep soundly knowing that she'll read that one too. And the next. And every letter after that until you come home.
I cannot tell you how much of a labour of love it was been writing this. Still not entirely satisfied with the ending, but I didn't want it to be neither angsty nor fluffy, so this is the end result. Incidentally, this is also the longest oneshot I have ever written - close to 4000 words. And that's huge for me.
Thank you to everyone who has reviewed Somebody That I Used To Know - totally overwhelmed once again by the fabulous Witness Army :)
As always, loved or loathed, please review!
Ems xxx