The Void
She felt like she was sitting in a void. A dark, choking void that seemed to suck the very breath from her lungs. Nikki had thought she'd felt this before, sat within this swirling black, but now she knew she'd only ever glimpsed it. When her father left her, when her mother died, through every stab of betrayal she'd ever felt, even her father's death she thought had been enough to push her into this gloom. But, no, she'd only ever stood on the side-lines before. It was only now, sitting alone on the plane, staring at the wooden box across from her, the whir of engines around her, that she could truly feel the enveloping darkness surround her. It was as if she was fighting a current, but with every stroke, the black waves would only pull her under more fiercely, and every mouthful of air became salty, sour, black water in her mouth. It took her a few moments before she realised the salty taste on her tongue was actually tears.
Once she could have almost laughed bitterly about it all. She used to worry so much, about her father, about the cases, even about such petty things like clothes and money. She let such tiny things fool her into ignoring how happy she truly was back then. When there were the three of them. Her and her two perfect men. Even through the tears that were clouding her eyes, she could still smile as she thought of him. Harry Cunningham, the only man who caused her such anger and anxiety, fear and fury, who made her so sad and cynical. But the only man who had ever made her laugh so loudly, who had made her love so fully. They could never have a serious conversation, but the silences she would share with him seemed to comfort her, seemed to tell her everything she needed to know. Not everything. They never told her that all it would take was a professorship and he would be willing to fly hundreds of miles away. All it took was a professorship for him to kick Nikki from the blinding light of the life she thought they would have together, into the swirling void with a fractured heart and a shattered dream.
She'd have to phone him, she realised with a stab in her gut, Harry needed to know. He'd find out eventually. Maybe from some tiny news article in one of the high-flying newspapers he, no doubt, read now he was in America, sat at his kitchen table with some cheap blonde from the night before. No, she would phone him. But that would make it real, make it all real.
Every day, she dealt with dead bodies. She received them from families or the police or the court. She'd cut them up, take them apart, measure them, talk about them, then sew them up and bag them as if they were only pieces of meat that had not been awake and alive only hours before. It was never real. This was though. She stared at the box before her, with the sinking realisation that this was truly all real, not the nightmare she was praying for. Within that box, there was a dead body, just as she had seen so many times before. Except, this one was her mentor, her friend, the closest thing she had ever had to a real father. Leo Dalton. They'd disagreed, they'd argued, he'd even doubted her before, but none of it had ever truly mattered. Every time he'd questioned her had only made her better, stronger, more determined. And he'd taught her so, so much more. More than merely post-mortems and blood splatters. He'd taught Nikki so much about life, its potential, its purpose. She'd been there when his wife and daughter died, when he met Janet, when that had fallen through. And he'd supported her through her father's jail sentence, his cons, and his death, through everything with Harry. It had seemed it would be them two forever in the Lyell Centre lab. There would be new colleagues, new cases, but she thought she would always have him beside her. Yet now, even he'd left her, just as they all did.
And now, she sat alone, whirring engines overhead, but she could hear nothing. The coffin before her, but she could see nothing. Nothing but the enveloping darkness that surrounded her, engulfing her, strangling her. And Nikki was too tired to fight any longer.
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