Wrote this a while ago; I had loads of ideas for it, but never really got round to writing any more than one chapter. Please leave a review and tell me what you think; I might write some more if anyone is interested. For Never-Clip-My-Wings-x, because she owes me rather a lot of Waterloo Road fanfiction ;')

Watch Me Come Undone

Tom's palms were damp. He pounded the bed, and he realised the pillow was bleeding feathers. They fluttered up above him, then drifted down and came to rest in his hair, and in his water glass.

He wished he was a feather: so light, so free, and so purposeless. Nobody could ever be disappointed in you if they expected nothing in the first place.

He lay still for a moment, because his heart was pounding against his ribs, and he was worried it might somehow force its way out of his body and fall onto the mattress beside him, a lump of quivering blood-filled organ. He wasn't sure that was entirely scientifically possible – he'd have to ask Sian – but the image frightened him anyway.

Still, maybe if he didn't have a heart any more, he wouldn't feel all of these things. He wouldn't be lying here sobbing, rocking, trembling with fear and guilt, because he wouldn't have any emotion at all. Just a hole inside him where all of those things should have been, just emptiness.

If he didn't have a heart, he'd be dead, and things would really be quite a lot easier that way.

XxXxX

Sian was leaning against the fence in the graveyard. A single fresh tear trickled down her cheek, and Michael was incredibly tempted to lean into her and wipe it away, to feel her soft skin against his.

"I can't believe it."

"I know," he said.

She was beautiful even when her cheeks were stained with raw streaks, even when her tangled hair fell limply over her shoulders. She raised a hand and pressed it against her stomach. All she'd ever wanted, to be a mother, to love a child unconditionally without restraint. And now she had that opportunity, she felt sick at what it might bring. This. A parent's world caving in.

Michael nodded towards the huddle that had congregated around a newly opened pit in the earth. The soil still moist where it had been thrown up. A worm's crushed body half-concealed in the shadows. "We should..."

Sian stepped forwards, allowed him to support her. He felt her trembling, her normal steadiness gone; each step she took was more cautious, as though she was walking right into her death. Perhaps she was, in a sense.

"Tom isn't here?"

She looked at him. Something like incredulity.

"I thought he might want to pay his respects."

"Were you not there yesterday, Michael? Did you not see him?"

He pulled her a little closer. Yes, he'd seen him. He wasn't sure it had been reciprocated; Tom had appeared to stare through both of them, appeared barely to realise they were there. His eyes empty, as though he'd pushed away all emotion, become a person that existed rather than lived.

The vicar was talking. Nobody else had wanted to do the speech. Not a single person gathered around the grave as the coffin was lowered in had dry eyes. Sobs echoed through the grass.

"Tariq was a boy with a troubled background, but rather than letting his past ruin his future, he put bad things behind him. He was a cheerful boy, who did everything in his power to make others happy too; he was friendly, and had a soft side beneath the gruffness."

Finn had his arm wrapped around Trudi's shoulders as she wiped her eyes with a mascara-smeared tissue. A few feet away, Naseem was picking petals from a rose and throwing them down on top of the coffin.

The Siddiquis' father had died last year; it had just been the three of them, and Tariq had transformed from a troublesome schoolboy into a young man desperate to protect his sisters. What was going to happen to them now? They were so, so young.

"Miss. Sir."

Sian spun around. Josh stood behind them, looking uncertain. His eyes were dark, perhaps with too much crying or too little sleep; a layer of stubble had grown up on his unshaven chin, his hair curly and bedraggled.

"Hello, Josh," Michael said. He sounded about as surprised as Sian felt.

The boy was wearing an oversized black hoodie, the word WHATEVER printed in large white writing across his chest. His eyes didn't seem to be saying whatever. They were pleading.

"Can I..." he paused, glanced around again, "Can I stand with you?"

"Of course you can."

Sian had always felt close to Josh, always wanted to protect him. She'd known him a long time now, she supposed – she'd seen him grow up, seen him fight his demons and come out of the other side damaged, but not broken.

"I thought I should..."

"Come and say goodbye?" Michael suggested softly.

"Yeah."

"So did we."

Sian leant against Michael again, and he held her close. She knew she shouldn't do this; it was like torturing him, giving him false hope for something that was never going to happen. She didn't like him as he liked her, and she tried to make that clear to him, but it wasn't easy.

She was a coward. She needed someone to be there for her, someone to trust, throughout all of this. It had always been Tom before, but now... Now that wasn't an option, and so she had to rely on Michael instead.

Seeing Josh here filled her with fresh pain; his eyes were so like his father's it made her eyes sting just meeting his gaze.

Teachers didn't have an easy job. Responsibility; endless marking; a salary that couldn't be described without very rude adjectives. What were all these years of dedication for? So that things like this could happen, and tear the world they'd carefully built up around them down? Happiness tumbling like Lego?

Sian reached out and took Josh's hand. Whether they liked it or not, this was the downfall of Tom Clarkson, and they were going to have to be there to catch him when he hit the ground.

XxXxX