DISCLAIMER: I own nothing.
A/N: Tissue warning for the faint-hearted.
Dedication: to all the OHT – and especially my surrogate sister – for continuing to patiently bear with me even though I can be a complete pain in the ass.
I Will Find You
by Joodiff
Peter Boyd is neither drunk nor distraught. On the contrary, he is very sober and very calm. The night is icy, though the harsh artificial lighting steals its heavy darkness, and below him the river is sleek and sinister, a black and silver serpent that winds through the great city. It's late November, a bitter night in more ways than one, and he has no doubt about how brutally cold the water is. If the drop doesn't kill him, the instinct to inhale sharply at the shock of the freezing temperature and the subsequent flooding of his lungs will. He's enough of a coward to hope that if the impact doesn't break his neck it will knock him unconscious and that he will drown gently and insensibly, but actually there's no real fear in him. An edge of anticipation and apprehension, an instinctive touch of rebellion against this counter-intuitive thing he's going to do, but no fear, not in the way he understands the word.
Midnight has come and gone, and there's very little traffic crossing Waterloo Bridge now, but even so Boyd knows he can't afford to wait too long. Londoners are ghoulish, curious creatures, and sooner or later someone will gleefully call the police to report the suspicious figure standing alone on the bridge staring meditatively at the river. Suicide is a morbid spectator sport, but one the masses always seem to enjoy getting involved in. The longer he waits the more chance there is of blue strobes appearing on the horizon. Still, Boyd is not quite ready. This is not a thing to be rushed, even if the decision was quietly and firmly made days before. He's gambling on not attracting too much serious attention until he's actually standing on the parapet, and he thinks he has a few more safe minutes.
He is empty. That's all. True, he's probably still deeply traumatised, but he doesn't feel it, not superficially where the clawing pain should claim all his attention. No rage, no fear, no sorrow. Not anymore. Just empty.
This is not a grand gesture. This is a quiet thing, a private thing only done publicly because this is the right place to do it.
Boyd has been a police officer for too long not to hope that they find and recover his body quickly. It won't matter to him, of course, but it gives him a slight nauseous twinge as he looks at the water, the unpleasant knowledge of what days of immersion can do to a corpse. Let nature take its course once he's in the ground, not before. Primitive reaction. Superstitious.
It's not really that important. But still.
She's not here to berate him, to tell him he's being stupid and selfish. She's not here, full stop. Not here, not anywhere. There's just a void where she used to be, a blank nothingness. If some part of her still exists somewhere, it's nowhere he can reach. Not yet.
He won't acknowledge it, not even just to himself, but maybe there is a tiny part of Boyd that hopes that there's something beyond this mortal world. Hopes that there's an infinitesimal chance that what ends here tonight is just the start of something else. He doesn't actually believe it, but maybe he secretly hopes it.
It's been less than twelve hours since he sat in grim silence listening to the sentence being passed. Fifteen years. It's nothing. Just a heartbeat of time. No recompense. Experience tells him that Hutchinson will serve less than ten of those years. The knowledge doesn't anger him; he's too empty, too blank. The law of the land, the law he pledged to serve, has been observed. Boyd doesn't think in terms of justice. Not now. Justice is a word that has ceased to have any meaning for him. There could never be justice for what has happened.
He's up on the parapet. Has no conscious memory of getting there.
No drama. Nothing. Just the river, cold and inimical, patiently waiting for him.
No fear, no regret. Hollow.
He will go into the darkness without a qualm, and he will go alone because she went there ahead of him.
Boyd feels nothing as he prepares to step out into empty air. Nothing at all. Not even relief.
-oOo-
It's an ordinary summer morning. Clear blue skies, brilliant sunshine that doesn't yet hold the blistering heat that will come later in the day. Grace wakes first, and she makes the most of it. She doesn't know that she'll never have a chance to get bored with seeing him sprawled out next to her, but she's still so entranced by the phenomenon that she makes the most of it anyway. He's a big man, tall and square-shouldered, and he sleeps untidily stretched out in all directions leaving her very little of her own bed to enjoy, but she's not yet at the stage where it's more infuriating than enchanting. Nor will she ever reach that stage. Oblivious to what lies ahead, Grace simply does what she does most mornings – she lies still and quiet and she watches him. His breathing is deep, slow and regular, and now and again he snores softly. It doesn't irritate her. In time to come – if there was any time to come – it might, but not yet.
The day ahead is already planned. Boyd is heading to Greenwich and his own house to tackle the very last of the pre-sale decorating, and Grace is having lunch with an old friend before joining him via a casual detour or two. It's not settled, but the idea of an early dinner at one of their favourite restaurants has been mooted. This is how they are living. He's starting to come to terms with the alien concept of being retired and she's still teetering on the verge of making the crucial decision that will shape their future. But it won't actually shape anything, because today is the day Grace goes forever into the darkness.
She lies on her side watching him, and she is warm, comfortable and content. She has no idea that she will never sleep in her bed again – nor that he won't, either. All Grace knows is that it's a fine, sunny day in London and she's with the man she loves. She thinks – wrongly – that it won't be long before she finally agrees to marry him, and that they will then have a quiet and strangely appropriate autumn wedding. She thinks they will continue to argue about nomenclature, but that she will eventually let Boyd have his own way. He will think he's won, but she will know the truth – that she will take his name only because she wants to, not because she's listened to his strident protests about how bloody ridiculous both Boyd-Foley and Foley-Boyd sound. None of it will happen.
He stirs slightly, as if becoming aware of her intense scrutiny. She waits, patient as ever, and is eventually rewarded by a slow, sleepy blink and a rough throat-clearing noise. He asks, "What time is it?"
"Gone eight," Grace tells him. Still early by some standards, but for years they've both been used to much earlier mornings than this one. Impulsively, she reaches out to stroke a wayward lock of silver hair away from his forehead. To her certain knowledge he hasn't been anywhere near a barber since well before the day he officially retired. He'll go in the end, no doubt, but for now he's growing shaggier and more leonine with every passing day. Amused, she has so far refrained from saying a word about how unkempt he's starting to look. She will never say anything about it. After the inquest he will attend her funeral looking immaculately well-groomed, and well-meaning people will quietly comment afterwards about just how well he seems to be coping.
Boyd rolls onto his side to face her, and for a few moments he says nothing. He doesn't need to. There's nothing she can't read in the depths of his dark eyes. Eventually, however, he asks, "Marry me…?"
"No," she says easily. Every day he asks and every day she refuses. They both think that the day when she agrees isn't too far ahead, but they're both wrong.
He doesn't take offence, simply grins at her in the knowing manner that plainly suggests he thinks it's just a matter of time. Left to themselves, without any outside intervention, he'd be right.
Who reaches for who first is irrelevant. It doesn't matter which of them is the instigator, the result is the same. A gentle but surprisingly intense tumble under the already disarrayed bedcovers. Heat and desire, but far, far more than that. Love and lust and something that goes far beyond the physical. It is what it is, and it suits them both. Love and sex, good and open and happy in the morning sun. Grace has no idea that this will be the very last time. Nor does he.
-oOo-
It happens mid-afternoon in Kentish Town, not very far from Highgate Road, an area she knows well. Perhaps it's the summer heat, or her momentary inattention. Perhaps it's just circumstance and coincidence, but when she leaves the main road, Grace unwittingly puts herself on a collision course with Gary Hutchinson, a violent young man with a long history of substance abuse. It might just be her age that seals her fate. Perhaps she looks like an easy target, a small, slim woman in her sixties, fit enough, but hardly built to fight off a determined young assailant. It's her bag he lunges for, but he hasn't bargained on how stubborn she is. He doesn't know that she's a lot tougher than she looks, and he doesn't know that her friends say that she has a will of iron. He doesn't know that she's not easily intimidated, or that she's learnt a thing of two in all the long years she's worked side-by-side with police colleagues.
Grace doesn't think. Grace simply acts on instinct, and her instinct is to fight for what is hers. She hangs onto the straps of her bag with steely determination, and for a few moments they tussle and tug in the near-deserted side-street. There is no reason for Hutchinson to draw the knife tucked into the waistband of his dirty jeans. No-one is rushing to intervene, and Grace does not have the physical strength or stamina to resist him for much longer. He doesn't think, just as she didn't think. She is nothing to him, just an obstacle in his path, one that could prove a real threat if she keeps struggling and shouting. He stabs her twice, once in the chest, once in the abdomen, and he savagely tears the bag from her failing grip. He doesn't wait to see what happens next, he simply runs.
She thinks, from everything she's ever read, everything she's ever heard, that there should be no pain. She's wrong. It hurts. It hurts like diamond-edged fire that screams right through her. There's nothing else in her world, just that intense, searing pain. She isn't really aware that she's on her knees on the hard, sun-baked pavement, not until she keels over sideways and the resulting storm of agony steals away what little breath she has left. She can't scream, can't cry, can't do anything except fall into that bottomless well of pain and fear.
A part of her mind refuses to accept what is happening. This is the sort of thing that happens to other people, not to her. She's seen colleagues injured – even killed – in the line of duty, but has suffered very few physical traumas herself. None of it seems real. Except the screaming agony pulsing through all her nerve-endings.
There are people. Suddenly there are people. Pale, frightened faces peering at her from all sides. They open their mouths, but Grace hears no words. There's only pain, only fear, only shock. She doesn't know that she is, at last, screaming, or that the breath she's wasting is very, very precious.
She wants Boyd. Wants Boyd in all his bristling impatience, in all his protective fury.
He doesn't come.
-oOo-
They try their best to save her, the doctors. The paramedics have done the best they can, and she is delivered alive to the team who try to save her, but somehow they all know it's too late. They fight because that's what they are trained to do, paid to do, sworn to do. They do everything they can, even when they are interrupted by a shouting madman who's somehow managed to get past security and into the room where the floor is bloody and the tension is high. He's dragged back quickly, the interloper, but he fights the men holding him with a fury that seems to border on the psychotic. He fights, they fight, but no-one's going to win. Not on that summer afternoon.
There's a flicker of hope when she fleetingly seems to regain consciousness, but she isn't with them. Her eyes are on the man who's fighting so desperately not to be manhandled out of the room. Whether she sees him, they don't know, but she certainly seems to be gazing at him. Right up until the moment her blue eyes close for the very last time.
They do what they can, but it's not enough. Nothing works. They fight to stabilise her, to get her to a point where the surgeons might be able to perform a miracle, but though they fight hard, they don't succeed. They bring her back the first time, and the second, but they know that the battle is lost. The third time they don't try to bring her back again. There's no point. They give her the dignity of not pulling her back from the darkness, and when they step away from her small, still form, when they start to strip their bloodied gloves and exchange weary glances with each other, the captive madman at the door screams abuse at them.
They understand. It's never easy to see a loved one die, but to see a loved one die in such terrible circumstances… they are all glad they have no personal experience of such a thing. When the police arrive and the man is taken away, they shake their heads. It's a shame. A damned shame. But sometimes miracles simply don't happen, even if they should.
-oOo-
The day Grace Foley dies the weather in London breaks. There are storms that night; sheet lightning ripping the city sky to shreds. They were forecast, those storms, but even if they were predicted, they feel like a tribute. To everyone, perhaps, except Boyd. He barely notices the brilliant flashes, doesn't register the growling thunder. They refuse to leave him on his own, his former colleagues, but he still feels like the last living soul on the planet. Everything he feels drives in on itself – a fact Grace would certainly have predicted. He is quiet, he is still. He says very little, but he doesn't sleep. Not even for a few exhausted minutes. When morning comes, he walks away, out into the city streets, and no-one dares to follow him.
He spends a lot of time walking. The hours become days. Sometimes he sleeps – not at her house, but at his. Sometimes he remembers to eat, but mostly he walks. When he's told Hutchinson has been arrested and charged, he walks. He attends the inquest and he walks. He arranges the funeral and he walks. He doesn't think very much, he just endlessly puts one foot in front of the other, not caring where he ends up. It's not even self-destructive, what he does. He is simply empty, stripped of everything.
Her family doesn't amount to much, a few distant relatives, a half-brother and his glacial wife. They are polite and they thank him for all that he has done, but the funeral is a cold, bleak affair. There are tears – a great many tears – but not from him. Boyd sees her into the ground with stoical composure, and those who know him exchange uneasy glances, frightened by his calm, but even afterwards when he is alone, he doesn't break down.
There is steel in him. It sees him through every raw day of Hutchinson's trial, through every brutal detail of her death recounted before the court. He sits in the public gallery, a quiet man; a tough, hard man. He sits in silence through the short hours it takes for the jury to reach and deliver their verdict. His decision is already made.
The day he hears the sentence passed, he leaves the court alone, and he walks. For hours. Eventually, he walks to Waterloo Bridge, and then he stands, staring at the cold, dark water.
-oOo-
He's lucky. They find his body on the foreshore the next morning, and the post mortem that follows confirms his neck is broken. There's very little water in his lungs. Peter Boyd didn't drown.
His family have already been informed, but it is Spencer Jordan who breaks the news to all their former colleagues. He tells them what he knows, and though his words are received with shock and sorrow, no-one is really surprised.
It was always the two of them, always Boyd and Grace. Never just Boyd or just Grace.
There was never going to be a future for just one of them.
His family grudgingly agree to bury him next to her. It's enough.
-oOo-
You were the better part of me. If you're anywhere to be found, I will find you...
- the end -