"Barbara, take my hand!"

"Wha – "

Before she can get the word out he's yanked her into a nook just barely big enough to fit the two of them. The sound of running feet gets louder and louder, gunfire echoing off the brick walls; his palm is sweaty in hers but she doesn't notice.

The steps come even closer, and she squeezes his hand instinctively, facing the final, awful truth; they're hidden temporarily, but they would be found. And what would happen then…

Suddenly she becomes aware of his chest heaving against hers, setting her heart to racing even more than it already is, and she looks up into bright brown eyes that are not just fearful, but abruptly thunderstruck.

"Oh dear God," he whispers, as though he's just had some revelation from the high heavens that changes absolutely everything and is kicking himself for not realizing it earlier. "Barbara, you know how they say that when you're about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes?"

She nods, wide-eyed and breathless, utterly lost in him. "Yeah. What about it?"

His eyes are burning into hers now, and he's looking at her as though he's never seen her before. "I should have done this a long time ago," he breathes, and without another word his mouth is on hers, kissing her as though the world's about to end and he wants to taste every part of her before it does.

Her whole body goes supernova, and she wraps her arms around his neck, holds on for all she is worth, and kisses him back with everything in her – with ten long years of passion and fury and friendship and unspoken love. They are minutes away from death, she has loved him for far longer than she cares to think about, and damn it, she will have this, just this once, before it's all over.

Good God, but this is one hell of a goodbye.

They survive. Of course they survive.

In every moment of beauty, after all, lies the practical joke at its heart.

"That never happened." Her words are flat, harsh, almost too harsh to her ears, and the look on his face breaks her heart clean in two.

"Don't do this, Barbara." His words are low, dangerous. "It did happen. Don't tell me to forget because I can't. I can't forget the one thing I never knew I wanted till I thought I'd die without having it. Don't… don't. Please."

"Never wanted it till you knew you'd only ever have to do it once, you mean," she bites out, and cuts him to the quick. "Don't try to spin this, sir. You wanted me because I was there. Not because you wanted me." Her words are cruel, deliberately so. He can almost see the spines rising from her back, like the terrified, broken-legged hedgehog she once coaxed out of hiding, ignoring its spines lancing her skin so she could get it to a vet before it got eaten.

She looks like she thinks he's going to eat her now.

And he wants to, oh God how he wants to, but not in the way she thinks. It's as though the world has suddenly come alive with blazing colour after decades of nothing but grey, and he…

…wants to push her up against the nearest wall, tug down her jeans, take her from behind as she falls apart in his arms…

…wants to lay her down on satin sheets and worship her by candlelight in a room smelling of roses…

…wants to shred the baggy t-shirt that hides curves he can only imagine, has only half-glimpsed in plain black dresses and oversized pyjamas…

…wants to wake up to her every morning and fall asleep with her every night…

…wants what he's never been able to have before because all this time, he was waiting for her.

"You think I could kiss you like that and not mean it?" His voice breaks, and he doesn't care.

"I think you meant it when we were two steps away from dying! But let's face facts." Her voice is dark and bitter and full of self-loathing that strikes him to his heart. "Deborah, Helen, Christine, Julia – you meant it with them too! All of them! And look how they worked out. It's not that I don't think you mean it now. It's that I know you're going to look at me in a year or two and wonder what you were thinking! I'm just a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and you're the Earl of Asherton. I won't fit into that world, into your world, and we both know it. I'm no well-heeled lady with a knack for the social graces! Eventually you'll get frustrated that I can't be what you need. You'll leave, you'll move on to someone else, and it'll poison the only thing that's ever made my life worth a damn! What we have, it's enough. Why fuck up something so good for something that can't last?"

"And if it's not enough? If it hasn't been enough for months now? Barbara, I love you. I think I've loved you since I saw you bleeding on a London street with a bullet in your abdomen. Hell, I may have loved you since I saw that boat speeding toward me in the North Sea! You're…" He throws up his hands in disgust. "You're different. You've always been different! Why can't you believe that?"

She wraps her arms around herself, looking terribly small. "Give me one good reason why I should."

Helpless, he stares at her in silence. He can't think of anything; she's right, and he knows it. She has no good reason to believe him. Not with his track record. Every accusation she'd thrown in his face had been the truth. Had he honestly expected her to fly into his arms with joy? His fey, suspicious partner?

Gutted, he sinks onto a bench. I should have known. After what it took just to get her to trust me, did I honestly expect this to be any easier? And the truth is, she's right. I can't explain why she's different because I can't even articulate it to myself.

"There, you see?" she says doggedly. "The truth is that – it's you. Damn it, it's always been you. Because I love you so much it's tearing me apart. And that's why I can't have you. If we do this, when it ends, it will destroy me. I can't do it. I can't love you and lose you and watch you move on, because I never will."

"Please." He is perilously close to begging now, and he doesn't care. "Please, Barbara. You're the best part of me."

"You're the best part of me, too," she says, and means it with everything in her. "But my answer is still no. Please, don't make this any harder." This is tearing her apart inside, he can see it all over her face, and more than anything else he wants to gather her to him and make all the hurt go away. But he can do none of that.

"All right," he says heavily. "All right." He can't stop himself reaching for her hand, and she squeezes briefly before she pulls away. "Are we – "

"We're all right," she says gently. "You're still what you've always been to me. You're still…" Her eyes meet his, love and torment roiling in those green depths. "You're still my reason to get up in the morning." Bowing her head, she scrubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. "But you know it can't ever be the same. I'm sorry." She rakes one searing, desperate look over his face, then turns and runs to her car, her hair blowing in the breeze. Carried on the wind he can hear the faint sound of crying.

"No," he says to himself, his eyes still fixed on her as hope still burns in his heart despite everything, because he cannot, he will not give up on the best thing that has ever happened to him. Someday, he swears, he will convince her, or die trying. "But maybe, someday, we can be better."