Final Charge
Fate looks upon Bradley Branning a moment too late. Droplets may fall upon the concrete of the Square, cries and scream ring in the ears of the dead. One final chance to prevent everything spiralling out of control.
A / N - This is my first and only attempt at an "Eastenders" fic, just something that I felt I had to write after the screening of the live episode, so if you haven't seen it, then I'd suggest not looking at this yet. The second segment of this chapter - much shorter than I usually write at currently, I'll mae up for it later on - I don't feel I did well enough. Usually, I would fall on the excuse that this was written during the early hours of the morning, but I won't. Regardless, I hope that you enjoy this story and review.
The bitter winds nipped at the reddened face of the fleeing young man. One ginger haired Bradley Branning, reaching for the freedom he so dearly sought with his beautiful wife locked in his embrace.
That dream had come under siege.
One mistake. One stupid mistake and he was on the run. Again, it came back to that man - that monster that had violated his partner. Archie Mitchell. That wrinkly bastard that had interfered with the lives of everyone on the Square, tearing apart the days that passed without tragedy and widespread grief. One person's troubles in Albert Square occasionally spread throughout the area, but not one individual had united every other resident against them with pure hatred. Everyone had been glaring daggers at him, wishing for his death, threatening to crush him until his final breath would brush against their face and he would lay lifeless, unable to stand as a threat any longer.
Someone had accomplished that mission. Someone that wasn't him. But the police weren't going to see it like that. What Bradley had done on that fateful Christmas Day was something that many a civilian living in the Square would wish to deal, but had no strength to do so. The young and loveable Bradley Branning had lashed out and punched Archie across the face, knocking a tooth out of his jaw, something that the elder man joked about. Bradley departed afterwards with a threat.
A threat that someone else carried out for him. For everyone else.
Now, almost two months later, Jack had come to him with the news that there had been a new revelation in the case and that he would have to run. Not even twelve hours had he been reunited with Stacey in holy matrimony and they were being forced to run for the sake of their lives together. DCI Marsen had been determined to solve the mystery plaguing the Square since that whitened day, leading her about several suspects; finally it was Bradley turn to come under the glaring eyes of the detective. She was desperate to end the case, she wouldn't listen if he admitted that he punched Archie and left it at that. His DNA was on the corpse of the slain man. Innocent Bradley would be deemed a criminal; the business that he had just set up with his father would collapse around them.
He wouldn't allow for the future he had made with his family to shatter.
That was what brought him to the roof of the Queen Vic pub that he had spent many pleasant days with those he cared about, two policemen crawling after him. Already things had spiralled far from control. He had been charging with Stacey for one last bid at freedom from the looming authorities that had been stalking the Square for weeks, watching out for the slightest slip-up. The grave blunder had been that Bradley hadn't put his mobile on silent, discovered by Marsen when Stacey had attempted to call him, forcing him to flee up the metallic stairs and onto the roofs of the buildings that had surrounded him for the past four years.
He didn't even consider what he would have been doing in Canada had he stayed with Syd and Noah. What mattered were his family and his home - this Square in London. This was where everything was. Now that had all come under siege.
He didn't know how. He didn't know why. All he knew was this was not how it was going to end.
From the ground, everyone that stood outside the pub gazed, Stacey and his father and uncle, Max and Jack Branning respectively, amongst them. And that same DCI that had been loitering about the Square for weeks. He was not about to let her have the satisfaction of ruining his life, to slap handcuffs over his wrists pounding with adrenaline gushing through his body. He was going to move on with his life, be with Stacey, his wife whom he had just been reunited with.
No-one would stand in his way. Not Becca. Not Marsen. Not Archie Mitchell.
No body could have that privilege.
Uneasily, Bradley stood atop the central entrance of the Vic, standing where no man dared to tread. The timid man that had emerged on Dot and Jim's doorstep four years ago was now daring stunts that no sane being would dream. He was not built for this, yet he continued to fight on. His heart made up for what he lacked physically. He had never been a burden before; people had enjoyed his company, his presence, his existence. And in the corner of his eye, he noticed the one who seemed to care the most.
"STACE!" Her eyes were drawn to him. "STACE, RUN!"
The plea echoed against the dead night air that remained still as those on the ground sucked in their breaths, watching the scene without any power to avert whatever would unfold on the rooftops. Gazing at his son, Max swallowed the lump that had built in his throat. The entire event felt surreal, this couldn't be happening.
Bradley gazed back, seeing the approaching authority figure dressed in a fluorescent vest over his uniform. Panic pounded through Bradley who attempted to grasp the roof tiles again. His fingers, drenched in sweat, failed to grasp the roofing effectively.
A single slip-up and his eyes were gazing at the black sky. Star twinkled eons apart. A gravely shriek rang in his ears - that of a girl. Stacey. The plunge passed quickly, yet much passed through his mind. His mother, his father, Tanya, Abbie, Lauren, Oscar, Dot, Jim, Stacey, Syd, Noah, Gumbo. Everyone. Everyone that had ever meant anything to him; be they family, friend or pet. His heart mimicked the cry that the air swiftly carried to him. Beneath him, merciless reality came to greet him. He didn't want to fall. He didn't want to be arrested for Archie's murder.
He didn't want to die.
When did things spiral so far out of control? When Lauren's tape of Stacey and Max kissing on the day of their first wedding was played? When Stacey told him that Archie Mitchell had raped her? When he punched that monster that had touched his now-wife? He didn't know the answer.
He didn't know anything anymore.
The descent was swift. Too swift for the tears gradually building his eyes to break free as he realised what was happening. There was no montage of his life in his eyes, only blackness when he finally hit the ground.
"BRADLEY!!"
Bradley: "Impact"
Max Branning's world collapsed the second he could see his son falling back from the roof tiles, his throat too tight to permit a scream to erupt from his throat as Stacey's had. Outside the yells and pleas to get to the fallen ginger haired man, silence seemed to linger.
"No!" Max eventually hollered, struggling furiously against the officer and his brother who restrained him. He wouldn't allow them to hold him back from doing whatever he could to help his eldest child.
From across the Square, there were others that watched, bewildered, unable to believe that Bradley Branning had plummeted from the roof of the infamous Queen Vic.
"Bradley!"
The doors opened like the fall had been a signal for a crowd to gather at the scene, Phil and Billy the first to appear from the doors, greeted by the shrill cries of Max and Stacey. Their eyes surveyed the scene, astonishment left them frozen on the outside.
"I want to see my son! Let me see my son!" No matter what he cried, the grips on his arms tightened, hindering him from dashing to his beloved son's side, to be there for him in the tragic moment. It was almost like the incident at the café all over again - he was forced to watch from the outside, unable to do anything while his son lay in perilous circumstances. "Let go of me! Let go of me! Bradley!"
The feeble cries of a distraught father greeted many more as they poured of the pub's doors as well as Ian, who had been a suspect in the case of Archie Mitchell's murder, his eyes wide with horror as he gazed at the scene, lost for words. Stunned to a greater degree than when Phil had threatened to tear his home apart only a short time beforehand. The cold chill danced down his spine.
Max's cries deteriorated into wails for his release, to see Bradley. The young man's body was out of his view, shrouded by bushes that had grown inside the small green in the centre of the Square. Stacey's pleas to see Bradley were drowned out by the man's recurrent yells of his son's name, desperate to make out the voice he longed to hear. Anything to prove that he was alive.
Many tragedies had befallen Max Branning, but losing his eldest son before his own life came to an end was something he couldn't bare to endure. A fate worse than death itself.
He pushed away the two restraining him, forcing their clenched hands from the sleeves of his shirt and darted between them. Freedom had been attained, now if only he could save his son from the taciturn jaws of death. His legs carried him quicker across the short distance to the scene quicker than any other time he had moved throughout his life. The lights from the Vic's face shone upon his own, highlighting every horror-stricken feature that creased his face before despair clouded him. Tears clung to the corners of his eyes as a heavy breath ejected from his dried mouth, an anaemic wail accompanying it.
The sight that greeted him to the front of the pub was too much, his pants devolved into wretches, his inability to cope with what his eyes had captured. Bradley was on his right, left hand laid flat in front of his blank face, a pool of blood swelling beneath his head, the right side of his face painted crimson.
This couldn't be happening. This couldn't! Not Bradley.
Stacey was first to his side, turning onto his back where she unveiled the horrific puddle as well as the amount clinging to his paling skin. She sobbed over him while Jack made his way to his nephew, laying his hand close to the young man's face. He, also overcome with grief and emotion at the horrifying turn of events, began to yell, demanding that his brother take the distraught girl from the body of her husband.
Without hesitation, he stepped around his fallen boy, slipping his arms under Stacey's, who thrashed violently in her bid to stay by his side.
"Come away!" he managed as he dragged her back, leaving the disbelieving onlookers a view at the two left. "Stace, come away!"
For Ronnie, who then appeared from the doors, it was a horrible reminder of the fate that had befallen her child less than a year ago. Danielle Jones, the supposedly deceased daughter that she had given birth to at the age of fourteen, mown down before her eyes moments after she accepted the truth that her father, Archie, had long denied her. She came to a halt behind Marsen, gazing at the sight. In the corner of her mind, she almost felt the need to question the DCI if she was satisfied with the capture of one of the suspects in the case, only to realise that she, too, wore a face of devastation, her bottom haw hanging in an otherwise unprofessional manner, gawping at the scene before her. That she had unintentionally brought about.
Across the green, Max led Stacey to the iron fence, the bars of which she grasped as though her life depended on it, sobbing inexorably.
"It's all my fault" she managed through the heavy sobs that clenched her throat tighter, suffocating her.
"Stace" Max called, reaching out to her, clutching her wrist firmly
"They've made a mistake. Bradley didn't do it" she wept, trying to make out Max's face amongst the hazy sea of colours that had been distorted by the tears filling her eyes. Max laid a hand against her hair; it was difficult to believe that some time in the region of two years ago; he was having an affair with this girl behind Bradley's back. But that was history and bridges demolished by it had been rebuilt, there was no time to reflect on the wretched mistakes of the past. Stacey's insistence that the police had made a grave error deteriorated into incomprehensive slurs.
"I did it" she managed after a moment, her voice strained by the flooding emotions that had suddenly erupted from the night that had taken the ultimate toll on the people of Albert Square. "I killed Archie… I did it".
Max's eyes widened at her. She had to be lying. She had to be!
He, Jack and Bradley had been stressing over what to do because the police were gradually being drawn to Bradley as a suspect for killing Archie. Max had been ready to turn himself in just days before! Why?! Why had she not told them?
He couldn't be sure if it was a reflex out of disbelief or repressed rage towards the girl, but he then did something that maybe he should have done a long, long time ago. He struck her across the face.
Instinctively, Stacey's hand rose to her face, shielding the throbbing cheek from the bitter wind. What Max had just done hurt, but in a way, she could understand what it was he had done - Bradley was lying, potentially dead, not far from them and it was because she hadn't told them that she was the true culprit in the case. She could have prevented the fatal downwards spiral that had led them to the current moment, mourning over the tragedy that had struck the Square, one in a long list, praying that by some miracle, Bradley could live to see another day. Just like the luck that had shone upon him after the rampage that Nick Cotton had gone on in the café, almost leaving him blind in one eye as he ventured back in with the rogue's survival as his top priority. Who knew if there would be a guardian angel with their arms wrapped around him this time?
"I'm sorry".
"You stupid cow" Max blurted, moving his left arm in the direction of his fallen son. "If the worst happens, then you haven't just killed Archie, you've killed my son!"
"Max" she pleaded tearfully, reaching out for him.
"No!" Max bellowed, taking a step out of her reach. "How could you, Stace? How could you? Bradley was doing everything for you as well as himself. And you didn't have the guts to tell us. We were fighting to protect Bradley; we would have done the same for you! But what… what? You wanted him to take the fall?"
"It's not like that" Stacey breathed.
Max turned his back on her and stormed back through the green, fury replaced by despair and grief when he identified the body of his beloved son amongst the shadows that were spread across the concrete, Jack continued to kneel over him. Max's legs carried him faster again, a fatigued jog across to his immediate family. He fell to his knees by Bradley, laying his hands on his shoulder, despite the mild glare he received from Jack.
"Come on, Bradley" he pleaded breathlessly. "Hang in there. Please Bradley, please… Bradley".
His head hung lower, inching closer to his child's still face. Peaceful. It looked as though he had evaded the pain of colliding with the ground. No… he couldn't be dead. That wasn't acceptable! Bradley had to be alive!
Bradley couldn't be… dead.
Blackness enveloped him. There were no senses to rely upon. Was this death? Was this the proof that his spirit had escaped the collision with the ground of London? There were no cries and screams. There were no bitter winds. There were no policemen chasing him.
Perhaps… he had attained the freedom he had sought. In a different way. Without Stacey. Without Max.
But… that wasn't freedom. He had been separated from those he cared about. He didn't want to be alone.
"But you are not".
The feminine voice was one that didn't register in his memory of life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Had he eyes, he would have opened them. Yet he could observe the light before him.
"You have ascended to a place where the five senses of humanity apply no more, Bradley Branning".
"Wh- who are you? What happened?" he inquired, in his human life, he would have raised an eyebrow. "Am I dead?"
"Your earthly ties attempt to bind you to the planet you call home, to those you call your loved ones" the voice responded. "But the inevitable will lead you here. Yes, this is a plain beyond that which you call 'death'".
"Wh- what?" Bradley cried. "No… this has to be some kind of dream. Everything that happened after the wedding… I have to wake up".
"But you have awoken… this is where you awoke after your time as a young man in London came to an end".
"But what about dad? And Stacey? And everyone else?" Bradley protested.
"Life continues on. They shall mourn you as you have mourned those you have lost".
"I can't believe it… I'm dead"" Bradley sighed, attempting to take deeper breaths to calm himself and failing. "You've got to be lying. This can't be! But why am I here and not where I'm meant to rest?"
"It appears as though a power beyond that of your planet's awareness has declared the fate of your human self as questionable. Almost like they wish to begin again".
"So I'm going to live again?"
"Not quite. You see, Justice has not yet been delivered upon that place you call home. It seems that as a new addition to the life after life, you have been selected to discover the truth to the previous crimes bestowed upon that place. Usually, your police forces are capable of identifying a killer before another fatality occurs. This is a rare case where you have become a victim of that assassin".
"I don't understand" Bradley murmured. "You control the world and fates; why don't you have the police expose who killed Archie?"
"Even with our influence over your planet, we cannot interfere with matters directly".
"So… you want me to uncover who killed Archie from here? How can I go back when I'm dead?" Bradley asked. What would have been a gasp in his human life followed? "Wait… does this mean that I didn't die when I fell from the roof of the Vic?"
"No. This changes nothing about your fate. However, you may be capable of altering the fate of another Bradley Branning".
"'Another'… Bradley?"
"There are many roads that each person can walk along in their lives. Each road leads to a new world where that possibility blossoms into reality. There is not merely one universe, but many. More than you could imagine. We could possibly send you to another and see your capabilities at preventing another tragic fate from befalling you in another world".
"In that world… I would then be able to leave Walford with Stace as we planned, before or after the police arrive like they did".
"This is highly unorthodox, however, these are rare circumstances and we wish that you uncover the sinful being that slaughtered another man and led to your demise".
Bradley couldn't be sure what to say when the full extent of the task imposed upon him became known. Did things like this truly happen to those after they departed from the world of the living? Who knew? Before he could inquire any further into the matter, the light that gave him a faint view of the blank plain he found himself fin faded like the final sunset.
Blackness enveloped him.