A/N: Hello! This is the sequel to one of my other Broadchurch stories called Whatever You Make Me. You might want to read that before reading this. Or just power through and be confused every so often. Who am I to tell you how to live your life?

This chapter doesn't have any Ellie, but she will be in the next one. However, this chapter does have some non-explicit references to child abuse.

Disclaimer: I do not own Broadchurch.

Water. It always came back to the water.

It had been years, but the water still clung to him as he fought to keep his head above the surface.

He still clung to Pippa's heavy limbs.

The smell of her still clung to his clothes.

The memory of her bloated face still clung to his nightmares, waking him up as the water dragged him under and the need to breathe overwhelmed his survival instincts.

Hardy gasped as he sat up and tried to work out where he was. The room slowly pieced itself together in the dark as he blinked, cursing himself for sleeping with his contacts in. The cluttered shelves of new family photos and bright toy box combined with the scent of the blanket he was tangled in gave it away in the end. He was in Miller's front room.

He slumped back onto the sofa, rubbing his eyes. After the day he'd had, Hardy had expected to be able to sleep the whole night through. These days he rarely dreamt of the river and what had happened there. Knowing the truth, as horrible as it had been, had helped. He doubted he'd ever truly leave it behind though, but then he remembered how Cate Gillespie had slurred her words as she thanked him, and he supposed none of them would.

As he rolled over in the hopes of returning to sleep, Hardy heard a noise coming from the kitchen. He froze, so used to living alone that it didn't take much to set him on edge. Instead of an intruder, he heard a chink of glass, the squeak of a tap and the rush of running water.

At least he knew what had inspired the nightmare.

He waited for the person to make their way back upstairs, but after a couple of minutes they were still in the kitchen. Now fully awake, he wondered if it was Miller and if he should join her. Just the idea sent his heart into a weird spasm that made him infinitely grateful to his pacemaker. He had told her that they would talk later and it was technically later, even if it still wasn't morning yet. The main problem, the one that had him pinned to the sofa, was he had no idea what he was supposed to say.

Running various conversation starters through his mind, he found he couldn't get much further past "hi" before the whole thing dissolved into him making an idiot of himself. It wasn't until now that he could appreciate how simple the evening had been for him compared to what he now faced.

She'd kissed him so he'd kissed her back. It didn't get more straight forward.

Admittedly, this was Miller, so the moment she realised she was being vaguely nice to him, she'd flipped and stormed off.

Being left in the living room, feeling as though he'd just been thrown out of a plane, had been one of the more disorienting moments of his life. About three minutes before he'd been washing a plate and now everything in his life appeared to have changed.

He'd always been a man who knew his strengths and his weakness and Hardy knew in that moment he did not have the words or the charm to deal with the situation. Maybe a couple of months before he could've let her walk away, try and get some sleep and hope the whole thing would blow over, but he'd let too many things slip by him in recent years. It felt like all he did was throw himself in harm's way to protect others, and he'd do it again, but for once maybe he could do something for purely selfish reasons?

He had no idea when she went from being irritating to his best friend to the place his mind always drifted to, but he'd stopped denying how he felt about her a few weeks ago. Well, to himself, at least. He had no plans on telling her, seeing as she was still piecing her life back together and didn't need him.

But then she'd kissed him. Flirting wasn't exactly second nature to him, but even he could pick up a signalthat obvious. All he had to do was somehow communicate to her that he approved of kissing each other without insulting her, making himself sound desperate or going all out and telling her that he might possibly be a bit in love with her.

If you'd asked, even directly afterwards, how long he'd stood in the living room, building his resolve to just walk in there and kiss her, Hardy wouldn't have known. Though time had passed extraordinarily slowly at the time, it still felt like a blur in his memories, until somehow they were kissing in her kitchen.

Nothing could have stopped the smile spreading across his face as he lay in the dark.

It was a dim possibility, but there was a chance he might not ruin whatever was happening. He'd had a rough couple of years, but he was slowly turning it around. His mother's words came back to him as they had nearly every day since she had died: God will put you in the right place even if you don't know it at the time.

Not giving himself the chance to talk himself out of it, Hardy rose to his feet and made his way into the kitchen. Even squinting against the sudden light he could tell that he'd psyched himself up for nothing.

"Tom?"

"What're you doing here?" Tom asked with a gasp.

"Your mother said I could sleep on the sofa tonight," Hardy replied. He dug his hands into his pockets and noticed Tom was holding a box of ibuprofen along with his glass of water. "You all right?"

Tom nodded but everything from how he was holding himself to the way he was shuffling around the kitchen table said otherwise.

"Ribs hurting?"

"A bit."

"Didn't you go to bed with some painkillers?"

"Yeah, but they wore off and it woke me up," Tom replied through gritted teeth. "I just came down for some more. Sorry for waking you up. Didn't know you were here."

Hardy sighed. "Sit down."

It was a sign of how much pain Tom was in that he didn't question Hardy's instructions. Now that his eyes had properly adjusted to the kitchen light, he could see Tom's eyes were brimming with tears that he was clearly fighting to hold back.

"You taken the painkillers?" Hardy asked and Tom nodded. "Right, get your top off."

"What?"

Hardy ignored Tom's protest and moved towards the fridge-freezer. He rooted around and found a bag of frozen peas. Turning around, he saw Tom was still staring at him.

"Top off, I said."

"Why?"

Remembering that the boy was probably in agony was the only thing that stopped Hardy from snapping at him. "If you hold these peas against your shirt it'll get wet, you'll likely catch a cold and your mother will throw things at me."

Tom struggled out of his pyjama shirt without further argument. As Hardy passed him the bag of peas he saw the angry bruises spread across his side and winced internally.

"This'll help numb the pain before the pills kick in," he explained as he settled into the chair across from Tom. "Should help a bit with the swelling as well."

"How do you know all this?"

"You're not the first one to get a good hiding."

Hardy regretted answering when he saw Tom's eyes go wide. He'd forgotten how inquisitive children could be.

"Why did you get beat up?"

"I'm a policeman."

"Mum's never been beaten up."

"Your mum never worked in Glasgow."

"Oh," Tom replied, readjusting the bag against his side. "Is that why you don't live in Scotland now?"

For a moment, Hardy was lost in memories of tense visits to his parents' house after his mother died and how it felt less like a home then than it had ever done before. He stood and walked over to the kettle to make himself a cup of tea as an excuse to not reply. As the water boiled, he noticed how similar the move was to when he'd ran away from Glasgow at the first opportunity for an excuse not to rebuild the relationship he barely had with a man he could hardly recognise.

Thankfully Tom was better at taking hints than Miller and the pair of them lapsed into a comfortable silence, only broken by the rustling of the bag of peas and Hardy making tea. He was halfway through drinking the cup when Tom spoke again.

"Thanks again. For showing up."

Unsure of what else to do, Hardy took another sip of tea. "Don't mention it."

"I know, but…" Tom frowned as though he couldn't find the words. "You didn't have to go the hospital. You could've just - I dunno - phoned someone else. It's not like you're even my mum's boss anymore."

Though he tried to stop it, Hardy's mind went straight to just how unprofessional his relationship with Miller had become in the past couple of hours. He was strangely tempted to confess all to Tom, to ask for some kind of approval or insight into what his mum could possibly be thinking, but even he knew it would be a disaster.

It didn't stop his eyes wandering over to the spot where he'd kissed her. If he concentrated he could still feel her breath against his lips, her hand twisting his shirt…

"Yeah, well," he coughed. "I meant it. You can contact me any time for anything, okay?"

Tom grinned. "X-Box games?"

"Don't try your luck."

The beginnings of dawn were starting to creep into the kitchen by the time Hardy had finished his drink. He took the half-defrosted peas from Tom as he cleared his mug away and returned them to the freezer. He doubted he'd be able to get any sleep with the birds making a racket outside but it made sense to try. Once Tom had assured him he felt better, he wished him "goodnight" and shuffled back to living room.

He'd barely sat down when he heard a knock from the doorway.

"Hardy?" Tom said, his voice shaking slightly. "Can… can I ask you something? But you can't tell my mum?"

Hardy met his eye before replying. "'Course. But I will tell your mum if I think I need to."

"Why would you need to?"

"If you're in danger," Hardy told him with a shrug. "Or if someone else is."

"Right." Tom frowned at his bare feet, still hovering by the door. Hardy waited patiently as he steeled himself to look up again. "I-I've been doing research and stuff. Into people like Joe," he clarified.

"Ah." Hardy sat forward and clasped his hands together.

Tom hesitated. "It's just… I read this thing that said that it - it's like an illness? Something's wrong in their heads? And that's why they do… that."

"Aye," Hardy replied softly. "It's one of the theories."

"So if something went wrong with his brain and - and I'm his son, then doesn't that mean that…" Tom's voice cracked and he squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, they were void of tears but the fear was unmistakeable. "Couldn't I-?"

Hardy shook his head. "You're not him, Tom."

"How do you know?" he fired back and Hardy could almost feel the pain radiating off him. Since finding Danny's body, all those months ago, he'd seen how that one crime had ruined so many lives. It sickened him to his stomach that the ripples were still being felt now, that Joe Miller's actions were finding new ways to hurt people even without him around.

With Tom looking at him with such desperation, he wondered what he should say, if anything at all. In the end, he settled for what he would've wanted to hear: the truth.

"Joe could have ended that trial any time he wanted," he began. "He could've plead guilty to start with. He could've changed his plea at any point. Instead, he sat there and watched as his friends, his colleagues, his family - even you - were torn apart by his solicitors. Every minute of every day of that ordeal, he sat there in silence, hoping to save himself like the coward he is.

"Why did you call me yesterday?" Hardy asked.

Tom blinked, clearly not expecting the question. "Couldn't get anyone else."

"No, you couldn't get your mum, aunt or Olly," he corrected. "What about Beth? You've got the Latimer's number, yes? Or Mark? You've got his mobile. He drives, works locally and he's self-employed. You're telling me he wouldn't have helped you?"

"Probably, but…" Tom swallowed.

"He'd have wanted to know why you'd been hurt," Hardy finished for him. "Rather than bringing up Joe and Danny and hurting them, you went to the hospital by yourself. Very brave thing to do."

"Yeah, but-"

"You're not like him, Tom. Not where it counts."

For a second, Tom looked as though he was going to argue. Instead, he stood in the doorway looking more like a lost child than the teenager he'd spent most of the day with. Eventually, he gave Hardy a stiff nod and shuffled away.

Hardy listened to his footsteps heading upstairs with a heaviness in his chest. For someone so young, Tom had been handling Danny's death and the fallout from it remarkably well from what Hardy had seen. He knew there were probably times when he hadn't been, but Miller hadn't mentioned it.

It was only as he covered himself in the blanket once more that he realised that if he did manage to start a relationship with Miller, then Tom and Fred would be part of that package. Strangely, the idea didn't faze him as much as he thought it might. After all, he was one of wee Fred's favourite people - somehow - and Tom apparently trusted him.

As he felt himself drifting back to sleep, it occurred to him that being a part of Tom and Fred's life didn't even feel like an obligation, but something he wanted to do, despite his still shaky relationship with his own daughter.

God will put you in the right place.

For the first time in a long time, he hoped that wherever his mother was now, she could see him.

Thanks for reading!