This is just something that came to me today when watching 'A guilty mind' for the 100th time :) It's based on the dialogue from the episode, but with my own stuff added in around the edges, and the next chapter will be my own work entirely. This will be a 2 parter, and I'll get back to Sunset in SA straight after, don't worry! Just needed some H/N fluff/angst, and this wouldn't leave me alone :)

The title is Japanese (I seem to be giving you a language lesson with each new story title, sorry!) and means 'the bee always stings when you're crying. It's basically saying that sometimes things have to go from bad to worse before they can get better, and I thought it summed up the last H/N scene of the episode quite well. Credit goes to my mom for suggesting it :)

Will upload part 2 tomorrow night, provided I get enough reviews :) And if you haven't checked out my other oneshots yet, then please give them a go, they're on my profile page: Om te hou haar veilig, N verhaal van Verlating and Intaka Yakha Ngoboya Benye. One day, when my gcses are over, I promise to write a fic with a title I don't need to explain the meaning of. Honest!

I think I've rambled enough, so please review, hope you like, and I'll be back with part 2 soon,

Love Florencia xxx

Nakitsura Ni Hachi

He found her perched on the back of the ambulance outside her apartment block, a small figure wrapped in a red blanket, shivering violently, though whether that was from the cold or the shock, he didn't know. As he approached her, he could see one of the paramedics handing her a steaming paper cup and taking from her a crimson-stained tissue. Harry sighed, stopping beside her and waiting for her to look up at him, to acknowledge his presence. But she didn't. Nikki just stared down at her feet, warming her hands against the cup as she recoiled further into the blanket around her shoulders. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen her look as lost as she did in that moment and the very sight of her made him want to break down, right then and there. But Harry knew he couldn't. He knew she was relying on him, and he wasn't going to let her down, not now, not after everything she'd already been through. As to whether she was on the verge of a mental breakdown or had already slipped over the edge, he couldn't be sure, but he knew that either way, she was in a fragile state mentally. And he was going to do everything he could to help her.

"Brought some scrubs for you," Harry told her gently, holding out a bundle of light blue fabric. She looked up at him now, the same drained, hurt expression of desperation as the one he'd seen that morning back at her flat etched across her face. God, had it really only been that morning? It felt like a lifetime ago.

"Great, thanks," she said hurriedly, forcing a smile as she accepted the scrubs from him; an attempt to convince him she was OK, but Harry saw right through it. He knew she was far from OK. How could she not be, after the day she'd had? He wasn't going to be fooled that easily. And so he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and sat down beside her, pulling her close and letting out a silent sigh as he saw her face fall, despair creeping back into her features. Poor Nikki. Why was it always her?

And yet there was something new in her eyes amongst the pain and anguish, something which hadn't been there earlier, not before Naomi. But he couldn't place it; he couldn't work out what it was. He only knew that something additional was troubling her, no doubt an end result of watching Naomi Silverlake try to commit suicide in front of her. Hadn't she been through enough?

"Did she say anything to you?" he asked, studying her face for a reaction. She paused for a moment, as if debating how much information to give him, and Harry sighed. Why, after 7 years, was she still yet to realize that she could tell him anything, however shocking? Why couldn't she see how desperate he was to make all the pain go away?

"Yes, lots of things," she said finally, after giving him the slightest tint of a nod, a blink-or-you'll-miss-it confirmation that she had actually heard him. That was so like Nikki; to answer the question but hold back the details. And Harry wasn't letting her get away with it, not tonight. She needed to talk about this, or else it was going to consume her, it was going to send her into a black hole of depression, one which the psychologist said she had entered into already. And he couldn't lose her to the darkness.

"Like?" he pressed her, bending over further to study her face as she let out a soft, sad sigh, before bracing herself.

"What's the point in me?' was memorable." She turned to look him in the eyes now, reminding him of a small child searching for the answer to an impossible question in their parents' eyes, still at the age of innocence at which it is possible to believe that parents have the answer to everything. Maybe that was the problem, he reasoned. Dr Banks- the psychologist- had said that she thought part of Nikki's trouble was that she believed in an idealistic world, one in which natural order and justice always came out on top in the end, one in which bad people got what they deserved and there was no grey blur between good and evil, one in which hope was in abundance and love could triumph over evil. Maybe, in that fairy tale world, he, Harry Cunningham, had the answer to everything, taking the place of a dead mother and a useless father. In a funny sort of way, he hoped so. He hoped he meant that much to her.

But Harry didn't have an answer to everything, and he certainly didn't have a miraculous cure for all the pain and anguish. And so he did the only thing he could, the one action he always seemed to fall back on when Nikki was having a momentary lapse of faith. He pulled her in closer and pressed a kiss to her forehead, deciding it wasn't exactly the right moment to recreate their kiss from that night in the pub. The circumstances of this occasion were so different, the emotions driving her to the point of despair in an entirely different league, and yet she needed him in exactly the same way she had all those years ago. She needed him to be there for her, to show her that she wasn't alone, that he would always be there to make it all better for as long as she wanted him to be. And in that moment, sat there on the back step of an ambulance in the midst of hopelessness, somehow their closeness, the smell of her perfume that reminded him of spring flowers, the feel of her slightly shaking body against his own… it felt right, in a way nothing, no one, had ever felt before. Even under such horribly grave circumstances, even when she was so visibly upset, she somehow managed to make him feel complete.

"Julia's going to be fine."

Leo's voice made them both jump slightly; each of them so caught up in their own little world that they hadn't even acknowledged his approach. Harry looked up, his arm still draped around his best friend's shoulder, holding her a little too closely, but he didn't care, knowing that Leo was more than used to the way the two of them behaved around each other after 7 years together.

"Naomi?" Nikki asked softly, her voice giving away her exhaustion. How she could even spare a thought for Naomi Silverlake after the evening's events Harry didn't know, but it made him admire her even more. How could she be so selfless under the circumstances?

"The surgeons have stopped the bleeding," Leo explained gently, looking down at the pair of them. "She's in critical care. Under police guard."

Nikki just stared up at him, her face changing slightly as she took in the news, but otherwise no new emotion displayed on her face. Harry responded by pulling her in even closer, as if hoping that the tightness of the hug would give her some added comfort.

Leo looked down at the pair of them awkwardly. "Do you mind if I make a move?" he asked. "Janet's going to be wondering where I am?"

"No, no, you go ahead," Harry insisted, forcing a smile. "We'll be fine, won't we?" He addressed the latter part to Nikki, who just nodded, staring at her knees.

"Take the day off tomorrow, both of you" Leo said as he turned to leave. "I think you've earned it." He looked Harry directly in the face, mouthing a 'look after her', before turning and heading back towards his car, leaving Harry to revert his attention back to the woman in his arms. He couldn't leave her alone for the night, not after today. He just couldn't.

"Come back to mine tonight," he told her softly, hoping she wouldn't notice the blush that he could feel spreading across his cheeks, as if he were a schoolboy again, asking his girlfriend out on a date. "Please, it'll do you good to get out of here for a while. And if Leo's serious about giving us the day off tomorrow, then we can go out, take your mind off things. It's been a while since I took you to an air show, after all."

And for the first time in almost a week, Nikki Alexander looked right up at him and smiled.