Set after Series 8 - Lucas runs into trouble and meets an AU character. Let me know what you think. This is completely separate from my previous Lucas North story. As always, I do not own any of the established characters only Haydence.


Haydence Todd turned off her television with a disdainful flick of the remote. " 'A future fair for all'. Hmmp! A future free for all is more like it."

Hayd's disgust at the PM's unabashed excuse for rhetoric had more to do with the state of Peckham Rye than the economy itself. She had silently labeled the youth on her road "YITs – Yabos in Training" after they had singled her out for their attacks many weeks ago. Ever since one of them had nicked a package that had her entire first name on it, she had been subject to their taunts. Her ground floor flat on Copleston Road had been egged, floured, and bog rolled multiple times with notes saying "U so dence u can't come out?" sent through her letterbox.

Haydence cringed that the YITs failed to spell correctly yet she still gave some hope for the future - at least the little buggers could decode basic sounds.

'Dence' this – 'Dence' that. Hayd had endured them with little fuss – mostly because she knew that nothing would come of going to the police. All that would happen would be an ASBO, which is just as useful as tits on a boar hog. She stopped herself and laughed at the thought. So many years of living in the UK and she still resorted back to the similes of her homeland in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Tonight the YITs had resorted to using her front door as a surrogate net for their football. Closing all her curtains, starting in her front room, and turning up Scheherazade, Hayd attempted to make the most of her evening – a glass of red wine and her quilting. She was ready to start knotting it tonight, so Hayd brought out her curved needle and started using her expert hands to make small precise punctures through the multiple layers of fabric. Her co-workers had a hard time understanding why someone who sewed custom made suits for a living would then go home and quilt. Hayd's only response was that she loved it. Besides it kept her calm on evenings when the YITs showed up.

Shutting herself off into her own little world was Hayd's best defense to what life threw at her. She was only just allowing herself to wonder if her haven had in reality become her cell. The thought that she was letting the little bastards win started to gnaw at her as she sipped her wine. Soon the music and the wine let her drown out the thuds of the football against her door as she drifted off to an uneasy sleep.

Lucas North was not having a good day. He felt like packing everything in. He felt used. Used by Harry, by Ros, but most of all by Sarah. He should have trusted his instincts. Should have known that there was something not quite right with that American. 'That American' – that's what he called her now in his mind. That's all he could bear to call her. But, the image of Sarah dead in hospital still choked him. Yes, she had used him, but he still felt something for her. He didn't know if what he felt was the loss of Sarah, herself, or the loss of the connection that he had made with her. He wanted so desperately to make some sort of connection again with another human being that he even wondered if he had allowed himself to be blinded on purpose.

Well, not again. He refused to be a pawn to anyone else's games. Lucas checked his flash drive hidden in the lining of his jacket cuff. Deliver the data from his routine meeting with his contact in the Russian embassy and he would be free for the night. Perhaps he'd even ask Harry for a couple days off. That was his last coherent thought before a bullet seared through his side. Unable to see his attacker, Lucas ran off into the darkness of the poorly lit Copleston Road. Just as he stopped and turned around to see if he was being pursued, Lucas checked his side. Bloodier than he had estimated, he became dizzy and tumbled into blackness.

Waking with a start, Hayd shook her head and tried to get her bearings. Instead of a thud, something had crashed against her front door. "Those little shites!" She could feel the blood rushing to her face as she scrambled to the front cupboard retrieving the worn but very solid baseball bat – a relic even when it was given to her in her youth.

" 'I was scared for my life, Officer. I didn't know that it was a kid's head I was bashing.' Will they believe it? Oh, it's worth a chance."

Poised to bring the bat down with all her considerable weight behind it, Hayd stopped herself as the crumpled form of a man fell across her door and into her flat. In his thirties, thin beyond being healthy, and with a face scrunched up with pain, it was obvious that the man was a victim and not one of her perpetrators. Quickly laying the bat down, she knelt down to him and inhaled then not unpleasant combination of fish, vinegar, and tea.

"Come on then. What did those little bastards do to you, eh?" Hayd maneuvered his arm around her neck and prepared to lift up.

Lucas North held out a hand to stop her. "Wait. Go and draw your curtains. All of them." His breath was short and laboured.

"Already done that hours ago, duck. Now, stop talking. I'm going to help you to a chair in my front room."

But Lucas shook his head. "Need to lie down."

"Ok. Bedroom it is then. Bit further but we can still make it. Ready?"

North nodded. Hayd lifted him and was surprised at how light he felt. Halfway down the hallway, she watched as he grimaced and weakened. "Come on, Strawman, not much further."

Lucas laughed through gritted teeth, "Whatever you say, Dorothy."