She wakes on the fifth anniversary to an empty bed.
Unsurprised, she flops over into the fading warmth that lingers, closing her eyes and breathing his scent. Dark hair and laughing eyes dance in her mind, and for a moment she can't tell if they are his, or Helen's.
They're off work today. They always are, on the anniversary. It's a request she'd made, quietly, when they were promoted, and for once Hillier had listened. Somehow, working today just wouldn't seem right. Wedding anniversaries, birthdays, they'd work through them all - except this one.
Except the start of the avalanche.
The floor is cold, hard wood under her feet, and she wraps herself firmly in her dressing gown and slippers before she goes any further. This is London, after all; there's almost always a chill in the air.
He's sitting in an enormous armchair, big and fluffy, dark burgundy against the glowing light wood of the walls. She's always loved that chair; it can just fit the two of them together, if they settle properly, and for awhile it's as though they can hide from the world.
He holds out his hand to her, his eyes lighting, even a small smile curling the corners of his mouth as she comes near. "Good morning, Barbara," he says, low and rich, and she smiles and takes his hand and curls up with him, tucking her head under his chin and draping her legs over his lap and sighing softly.
They don't say anything for awhile, content in the silence that is not quite a silence; her breath, his heartbeat, the soft sound of his fingers in her hair, fill the quiet, but nothing else disturbs them.
"Why do you think we couldn't make it?" he asks her eventually, and she doesn't have to ask what he means. On this day, there's only one thing he could be asking.
In a way, she's been waiting for this for years - since that night in her little flat when he had come to the one person who might understand. But now that the time has come for her to answer, she closes her eyes for a moment, and reminds herself to trust their connection to explain what words cannot.
"Because," she says carefully, not stopping to wonder how or why she knows this, "marriage isn't about love. It never has been. It's about choosing to build a life with someone. And part of that is - part of that is sharing your life with that person. Not just sharing theirs, but letting them share yours. And that's where it went wrong, you see. Because you were happy to share hers, but you couldn't let her share yours. I don't know why, but..."
"I do." He cuts her off, quiet but firm. "I know exactly why, looking back, though I didn't at the time. I couldn't let her share my life because someone else already was."
His kiss to her temple is so gentle, his words so kind and true, that she tucks her face into his shirt as the tear rolls down her cheek. "It wasn't your fault," she manages into the soft cotton of his shirt. "And it wasn't hers."
"No," he murmurs. "No, it wasn't." He can accept that now, in a way he never could before; his relationship with Barbara has healed wounds so old he'd forgotten they existed. "We tried so hard, but it was never meant to be. Because all the long while, I was waiting for you."
"We were waiting for each other," she corrects him, gentle but firm. "You know as well as I do that we had to wear down the sharp edges before we could come together like this."
"It will never be easy for us, will it?"
Unconsciously, her hand comes to cover his heartbeat. "No. But it doesn't have to be, does it? Because we know the fights will come and go, but the love will always be there."
"Yes," he says, more to himself than to her - and isn't that a silly thought, when they're one and the same? "Because it always has been, hasn't it, darling?"
Her eyes close at the stroke of his hand on her hair. "Yes. Oh, yes. Maybe not that first case, or the second, or the third. But by the time we went to Cambridge I'd have torn down stone walls barehanded for you."
She can feel his head shaking. "And I've always wondered what I did, to deserve that from you. I was a right prick to you, more often than not."
"I wasn't much better," she reminds him. "But the important thing - the one thing I always saw, even when I was so furious at you I could have bitten your head off - was that you were only ever a 'right prick' to my face. To anyone else you defended me as though… well, as though I was worth defending. And that…. that erased so much, Tommy. I could still get furious at you, but I always trusted that when it mattered, you'd be on my side. I didn't deserve you either, but somehow I think we deserve each other. Don't you?"
"I want to say no," he admits, moving to look her in the eyes now. "I do, because a part of me can't conceive that I might possibly deserve the miracle you are to me. But when you look at me, Barbara Lynne… when you look at me, I believe it."
"Oh, Tom," she sighs, and drops her head back to the warmth of his chest. It's a name only she has ever called him. "Do you believe in miracles?"
"Yes." His response is instant, and it is sure. "Nothing else could have brought you to me when I needed you most."
"Two birds with one stone," she murmurs sleepily. "I needed you just as badly."
Her eyes flutter shut, and he bends to press a kiss to her shining hair. "Soul mates," he says, wonderingly. "If ever they existed, you're mine." Another kiss. "Sleep, darling. Just sleep. You're safe."
The steady thunder of his heartbeat in her ear, she does.