BACK DOWN TO EARTH
Harry finds his way back to London, and to Nikki, following the (horrific) events of Greater Love.
Disclaimer: As always, nothing belongs to me.
In the end, it's two days after the funeral before she gets out of bed. That seems like a long time, and in the past, when she's ever heard of someone behaving like that, grief having that effect on a person, she's never understood, she's always thought she'd be stronger than that. But without Leo, and now they've finally put him in the ground beside Cassie and Theresa (almost as if that's a finality, an underlining), time seems to have lost all meaning; it in fact takes her about 24 hours to even notice she's been in bed for an abnormally long time.
When she finally gets up, showers and dresses, and gets herself in her car, she's halfway to the Lyell Centre before she even realises where she's going. She doesn't think anything of it, however, even then, because it's not like there's ever been anywhere else that would be her first place to go, once she was ready to go somewhere.
Jack's out the front, a cigarette between his fingers, and that doesn't seem strange to her, not right now, not after everything they've been through in the last couple of weeks. He shrugs slightly when he sees her, and when his eyes meet hers she sees the fatigue in them, and seconds later she reads the bags under his eyes and the new lines on his face as revealing he hasn't been sleeping, not at all, these last few days.
He doesn't say anything, but she's almost glad of that, because she doesn't think she could have come up with anything to say to him right now either, and they simply nod at each other as she goes past him into the building and he takes another long drag, another moment of his most extreme vice; it only happens in moments like this, moments of near enough hopelessness.
Clarissa looks up as she walks through the lab, and again, it's merely a nod in greeting, like everyone's run out of words right now, like there's no way of vocalising anything in these moments.
And she walks through into Leo's office (and she'll always think of it as Leo's office, no matter who they put there, and for how long they last) because that seems like the only possibility, the only place to go.
She hadn't, however, considered the possibility that there'd be a man sat at his desk. And not a replacement already, it's a man she knows all too well.
For a moment, she freezes.
Harry Cunningham is sat at the desk, staring almost blankly back up at her, his eyes full, tear tracks running unashamedly down his cheeks.
She sinks, wordlessly, into the chair opposite Leo's desk, her hands shaking, and a thousand things that she's been wanting to say to Harry for the past months catching in her throat and vanishing there, as if they were never anything of any importance, anyway. It's Harry that breaks the silence, in the end.
"I'm sorry I didn't get here for the funeral. I only heard yesterday, from someone at work."
She shakes her head slightly; unable to start thinking about Harry referring to 'someone at work' that wasn't her. Her or Leo. She shudders. That thought hurts. "It's alright." She says, and she's surprised at how steady her voice sounds; she's screaming inside.
"I came straight away." He breathes, and he leans on his hands on the table in front of him, and she almost doesn't want him to be in what should have been Leo's leaning space, "I didn't know what I could do… but I suppose I… I suppose I couldn't believe it was real…"
There's silence for a moment, because she's familiar with that. Every moment she's woken up in the last twelve days she's had a few seconds of thinking she might just be caught in the remnants of a dream, a nightmare, and none of this has happened. She needs to be fully awake before she's hit by the reality of the situation, and she supposes he needed to be back here, back home.
Suddenly, she's ready to tell someone about what happened, and despite everything he's done, despite his cruel exit, Harry Cunningham's been the person she's found it easiest to talk to for years. It only seems fitting.
"He knew." She starts, her voice catching a little on those words, "He knew, he was taking Daniel away…"
She tells him everything, simply and matter-of-fact, as if she's retelling the events of a case. Maybe that's the way she has to tell it, to detach herself enough to get the words out. It's not until she finishes telling the story and starts talking in a lot more familiarity that she starts to struggle, her voice starts to catch.
"He was so happy, Harry… he turned around the Lyell Centre, when he was worrying about that, and he met someone out in Afghanistan, a research scientist, and he'd asked her home with him… she was thinking about it, and I think she was going to come home, and I think…" she chokes completely then, and she looks into her lap, and when she looks up at him, there are tears running down her cheeks. "He… he so hadn't finished, not yet… there was so much more he was going to do… and he was going to keep being happy…"
She's properly crying now, and there's nothing he can think of to do in those moments but reach out and take her hand in his, squeezing it as tightly as he can, as if to reassure her that he's still there, he's still with her.
She freezes, then, and looks straight up at him, her eyes wide in shock as if she hadn't remembered what his flesh felt like, entwined with hers.
For a moment, there's a pause, and impasse, a stalemate; they both simply stare.
Sorry if it's not that good, it's written in the early hours of the morning, in my ridiculously over-emotional state at what happened in Greater Love. There should be more up soon, but I'm quite busy with studying and that at uni, so the updates may be fairly slow!
A review's always greatly appreciated.