A/N: This is my version of the showdown between Molly and Charles three years after Bangladesh. May not be my most original story as others have already written that so brilliantly, but I felt I finally wanted to tackle the elephant in the room that end of S4 is to me and try to answer the question 'what the f*** was he thinking?'. This follows the screen plot except one little detail at the end of this chapter.

This is planned to be two parts, inspired by two songs I'm listening to at the moment and my February mood which rarely is light. I'm not made for living in a place as dark and cold as Sweden this time of year, often feeling like I'm getting by rather than living – but writing helps. So, warning, sadness ahead but you know I never leave it like that in the end.
First part is Molly's thoughts on a winter's night.

Would recommend listening to the songs while reading if you can to set the mood, first one is Sorry by Halsey.

The wonderful characters belong to Tony Grounds and BBC and even if I may not always agree to what happens to them on screen, I'm very grateful they were created in the first place so I can borrow them for a little while.


Chapter 1: Despair


So, I'm sorry to my unknown lover

Sorry that I can't believe that anybody ever really

Starts to fall in love with me

Sorry to my unknown lover

Sorry I could be so blind

Didn't mean to leave you

And all the things that we had behind

Someone will love you, someone will love you

But someone isn't me

Sorry - Halsey


I sat on the bed, knees pulled to my chin, arms hugging them, like I was protecting my own naked body. The only light in the room came from the streetlights outside, casting a dim light through the window, distorting everything with long shadows and illuminating the naked man lying sprawled over the crumpled sheets. He was sound asleep since long. I had tried but failed. First lying close to him, with his arm around me but I'm not a cuddly sleeper these days. I only ever was for a passing period in my life - or maybe it was with one specific man rather than a period of time. Then tried discretely moving away from him, still lying down, but sleep just would not find me. Now I have been sitting here, maybe an hour, maybe longer, watching, thinking. Sometimes I see him and even let my fingers trail a path over his broad back, sometimes I'm lost in the distant past or an elusive future just staring out the window. Thinking about what the two of us are, what he is to me. What he is not.

It saddens me that he is blissfully unaware what is on my mind but that I will have to let him know when he wakes up, when the cold light from the streetlights is replaced by the even colder light of winter dawn. I would like to run instead of staying and tell him it is over, but I have to be brave. Have to be better than... no I'm not ready to let my thoughts go there.

Maybe he knows already. I have not been kind to him lately. Even making love tonight was because I wanted to sooth harsh words I said to him, because I could not bear the sadness in his eyes. I wanted to hold him and let him know everything is okay, but it is not. He probably loves me, and he is so good to me, but because of that I need to run away. I run away when things are good, because if I stay and love I'm sure I will get hurt – again, and I cannot stand that.

I did not think he would fall for me, because I never really expect anyone to do that. It happened once, a long time ago but it did not last and what is there to fall for, really? A cockney who moved up a notch in the world when she joined the Army and got herself the MC for actions I cannot even be fully proud of? A girl who fell madly in love with her commanding officer and to everyone's amazement married him thinking he loved me too? A woman who still is grieving being left behind by the husband she adored, not knowing for sure if it was PTSD or another woman who made him end it? I'm all those things but I'm not sure if any of it is worth to love and I'm afraid he will wake up and see that one day. Then I would rather leave before. That is what I do these days, run before someone can run away from me.

I just realise I have stayed a little too long this time, he might actually love me already, and I will inevitably hurt him when I leave. I never planned on breaking his heart, but I will, to protect my own which is already too bruised.

Once I trusted one man completely with my heart. You. I allow myself to think of you now, it is difficult to keep the thoughts at bay at this lonely night-hour even if I'm pretty skilled at pushing you to the back of my head during the days now when years have gone by. For some time, I thought we would last forever, that I had the fairy tale. I have never been so happy. It hurts to think of how young and naïve I was when I did not believe anything in the world could come between us. It turned out so many things could; distance, our different backgrounds even if you had assured me that would never happen... death… your illness… cheating... Although technically you were not cheating because I had told you that you were free to go, but I never thought you would. I thought you would come back to me. Always. You had promised me you would adore me for always and I believed you.

God, I never really understood the way you laid your eyes on me in ways that no one ever had before. Like I was someone wonderful, someone who meant something very special to you, like I was a precious gem you had found, not just some little gobby girl from a council estate in Newham. I guess that was why it hurt so much when you stopped looking at me like that. Somehow proving me right in what I had known all along, that I was not worth to be looked at adoringly with your brown chocolate eyes. But I fell for it, fell for it so hard - and I wanted to believe.

I'm not even sure why you stopped. I'm not sure if it was when your best friend was killed, or when you thought you constantly had to be there for the girlfriend he left behind, or when I did not manage to measure up to what you needed when you were I despair. Because despite all the things I blame on you, I can see now with the clarity that time and experience ads to my perspective, that I was not there for you either when you needed me. I fell in love with a strong man, one I adored and idolised. I did not handle it well when you were not that man anymore. When you withdrew inside yourself, became silent instead of charming, angry instead of my safe haven and, finally, blank, devoid of any emotion, least of all showing any love.

I thought I tried, I really thought I did, but truth was I expected that you somehow could snap back into the man I first knew if you only wanted it enough. That was why I set ultimatums when I thought I had tried everything, when I had supported, begged and cried. I had tried to be there in your grief, but you pushed me away, I begged you to seek help but you would not listen and when I finally humiliated myself, crying, you gave me a hard stare and told me to grow up, turned and walked out the door for your transport to Brize. That was the last time I saw you.

Now that I'm older and wiser and have learned that everything is not black and white, I'm not so sure anymore that I did everything. But I have tossed and turned every scenario and I still do not know what I could have done different to not make you leave that day, or to make you come back to me. I ended it during an international phone call with crappy connection, because I thought that threat would finally send you running back to me, but instead it sent you to her bed. So, you can rightfully claim I was the one to end it, but I know it was not over for me until you slept with her. Maybe for you our relationship started dying slowly the day when Elvis fell from that roof and took a piece of your soul with him, love disappearing gradually until nothing was left. For me it died when you slept with her and my love still remains like a dull unwelcome pain.

I do not even know if you only shared her bed once, or if you started a relationship afterwards. One of the guys in 2 section warned me already while that Bangladesh tour lasted, wrote me an e-mail, and I did not stay around to find out more, just fled when you were still gone. Could not bear the thought to face you or anyone who had been there. You never came after me. Six months later I sent you the divorce papers which you so kindly signed without even trying to contact me. After all, it was routine to you, you had done it before. I cried when I got one copy in return, with your beautiful signature on. Cried until I felt like and empty shell. Stroke over the signature with my fingertips as if it would bring you closer to me, when it really was then end. I wondered if this felt any different to you than with your first wife, if it was all just about moving on for your part. Wondered how you so easily could discard what we had. But you did, it was there in wet ink. For us it was the end, but I have not been able to move on.

It is so hard to leave you behind. Three years have passed since I packed my bags and walked out, but I still know your birthday and your mother's favourite song. Why does the brain hang on to such useless, unwanted information instead of freeing the space for more important things? I still know how you like your coffee and when Nespresso omitted Rosabaya from their assortment of coffee capsules I fleetingly wondered how you would get by and if you still saved the box I once had given you. The one you said you cherished too much to ever open it or even untie the red ribbon. Maybe you just finally cracked it open and invited her for a cup when you got back from tour. I still know you prefer plain white cotton briefs and that you are a bit obsessive when ironing your shirts, never able to leave the smallest crease. I know you always use Marc Jacobs' Bang aftershave and like to sing along watching Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge and I remember how I laughed in surprise the first time you did and the way you kissed me then. I do not know how to forget.

I know I still love you, that's why it hurts so fucking much and I'm so, so tired of it. I wonder if I will ever be able to let you go. If I have it in me or if you have left a burn mark on my heart. I wonder if it is even human to feel that kind of all-consuming love more than once in a life-time. Probably not. It is like lighting a fuse, once the fire reaches the end there will not be much left after the explosion.

For a period, I tried to hang on to the illusion that if I closed my eyes when making love to another man, I would be able to pretend it was you. Pretend you were with me again for a few precious moments. Only if I were very drunk did I ever manage that even for a split second. Even with eyes closed he would smell different, his skin would feel different under my fingers, the soft texture would be different, and the scars would not be there. Not the first scars that I loved because they reminded me how you had survived to be able to be with me, marry me, nor the later ones which reminded me how you time and again chose the Army and others over me, inflicting you more injuries and pulling you further away from me. Not even the back feels the same on another man, the one I know so well because I used to cling to it when we made love, later in the relationship stare at the muscular tense surface when you slept with it turned to me. You, who had said we would never be one of those couples sleeping back to back, smilingly spooned me and wrapped me in your strong arms. So many sleepless hours I spent staring at that back, wishing you would turn and smile and everything would be like before.

And even if I was able to disregard all that with eyes closed, no one - no one - ever moved like you.

We spiralled down together, I can see that now. Unable to break it, unable to be there for each other, but I had not given up when you gave up. I will never forgive you for that, or how you did it. Tears burn behind the back of my eyelids now, wishing I was not doing this to myself. Torturing myself with the memories. Wish I could cast you aside like you did me and fall asleep hugging the man beside me, but I know the signs, know what this means. When you reappear in my mind as vivid as this, I'm already on my way and nothing he says or does can change it, because he will never be you.

Night is turning into morning. I finally slumbered restlessly for a short time, but now I'm awake again and despite that I'm lying down my pulse is racing wildly with angst over what I must do. How could I be so blind that I let it go this far, that I allowed him to fall for me. I do not have the right to make someone fall for me, when I know I will never return the feeling. It is not the first time I make this mistake, but I pray it will be the last.

As daylight slowly comes, I cannot wait any longer. I must get the words off me, must get this done. Must leave him, because I do not dare to let him love me and love him back. Must leave because I still, after all, love you.

Someone will love him, someone will love him for sure, but someone is not me – because I do not have it in me anymore.

I touch his sleep-warm shoulder, shaking him softly.

"Bones, wake up, we need to talk."