A/N: Well, here I am again…thank you so much to everyone who reviewed last time, you really brightened up my week!
Thanks again to Rach for being such a brilliant beta.
Disclaimer – No, contrarily to popular belief I do not own Spooks…
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Harry & Juliet – Falling Away With You
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And I feel my world crumbling
I feel my life crumbling
I feel my soul crumbling away
And falling away
Falling away with you
Muse, Falling Away with You
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There's something soothing about her he can't seem to forget. There's an air to her presence that just won't go away.
Whispers in the wind. Ghosts on street corners. A flash of dark hair, a snappish comment, a pair of deep blue eyes.
He can't sleep.
Jane wants to know what's wrong. He lies. His life is built on lies. One more won't change anything.
He opens his eyes and she's staring back at him. His slender fingers brush her chocolate brown hair away from her face and she laughs at him. Her eyes glow. Time freezes.
She seems to creep into everything. For a split second, the secretary looks like her. Amanda laughs like her. Clive says something, and his mind flies back to the time she said the same thing.
He feels like he's going mad. Like she's slowly but surely stealing his sanity.
He wants to scream: board the very next flight to Tehran, march into her office and scream at her to leave him alone.
But more than that…he wants to be close to her again. To know that her smile, her laughter, her love is all his. He wants to hold her and to…
He closes his eyes. Don't think, his mind tells him, don't think and it won't hurt. Don't think and she'll go away.
No, his heart whimpers, I can't.
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Her anger is all her own. It glows inside her like hot coals on a fire. Boils and bubbles deep inside. Sometimes it breaks out; flowing like lava from her forked tongue to anyone stupid enough to get in her way. But then it leaves her. She feels hollow and blackened – broken.
She wants to hate him for leaving her all alone... for leaving her to fall on her own. Freefalling hurts. It's lonely. The wind carries away too many tears. The ground never comes quite fast enough.
She's still falling - falling through a kaleidoscope. He's everywhere. Reflected a million, trillion times around her. At times she can hear him whispering to her, like petals on the North wind.
She only hopes he thinks of her too.
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Catherine is nearly a year old. She makes him smile. She's pigheaded and stubborn, but beautiful, in a wild, untameable kind of way. She makes him whole again – something Jane doesn't seem to be able to do anymore.
It's only a few weeks till her first birthday. He can't pretend he doesn't count the seconds. He's bought her everything a child could dream of, and more. Sometimes, Jane tells him, he spoils her. He can't help it.
He's sitting at his desk when she walks in. He looks up.
Chocolate thoughtfulness meets sapphire spirit.
She turns her head.
Souls shatter.
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She sends him a note. It seems like such a stupid, impractical thing to do, but she can't think of anything else at that moment.
Speaking is out of the question. It always has been.
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10 o'clock. On the bridge. Maybe the river will forgive us.
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His eyes scan the paper once. Then they re-read, recite, and remember...again, and again, and again. He can smell her perfume, engraved into the paper as firmly as the ink that slants across the surface.
He closes his eyes.
He can't do this. Not again.
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The rain pours down from the heavens as angel's tears. The wind joins in the crescendo, whipping it up into a frenzy. It lashes down, soaking her to the bone. The chill spreads through her blood, freezing her soul. The city around her is wrapped in a murky haze by the water.
She's alone: alone, on a bridge, in the middle of a city that knows better.
The minutes tick by...5, 10, 15.
She leans against the stone wall, her coat clinging to her slender form.
A tear seeps from her eye, mingling callously with the water until it's lost.
She closes her eyes.
"You said you'd fall with me," the river whispers to her.
She stifles a sob.
"Well maybe I just misunderstood," she answers finally, her soul shattering like ice in the cold.
She walks away.
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He's late. A terrible misunderstanding. A meeting that ran over.
When he gets there she's gone. He swears - yells her name - but she's gone.
"You said you'd fall with me," the river taunts.
"I know! As if I could forget," he answers angrily, the words burning through the frozen rain. "And, God help me, I meant it."
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She wishes she didn't mean it when she told him she loved him.
He wishes he didn't mean it when he kissed her.
But they both knew they did…and it scares them.
Smiling at her, he brushes a strand of dark hair away from her face. She nestles closer to him, leaning her head against his chest.
"I promise to hold you close," he whispers. "I'll always be here."
She smiles.
He kisses her gently, chasing away the cold.
"I know…" she replies quietly, "to hold me close and pray."
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And so I'll love whatever you become
And forget the reckless things we've done
I think our lives have just begun
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