Heaven Knows - Chapter 1
Disclaimer: Sea Patrol and its characters are property of Channel Nine and McElroys All Media. No infringement is intended by this fanfiction.
A/N: This chapter is set after the final episode of season 4 and approximately few weeks after the end of the prequel. Also, please beware that there are a lot more angst in this story than the prequel. It would be quite a bumpy ride for Dylan and Kate. Please let me know what you guys think.
Happy reading!
"If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were." – Khalil Gibran
A lone man stood in the middle of a training room. His shoulder slumped. After a few minutes, he swept the sweat that trickled from his brow and raised his gloved hands again, punching the heavy bag with all his might. The slapping of his gloves against the surface of the bag and his grunts created a sound in an otherwise empty training room.
Dylan Mulholland was angry. No... angry wasn't the right word. Hurt. That was the correct one. All he wanted to do was to punch the other guy who was taking Kate away from him. But, he couldn't do that. Not only because Mike Flynn was his Commanding Officer, but also because he had been through an extremely distressing ordeal for the last 48 hours. So, he punched the next best thing, the heavy bag at the local gym.
Professional or personal?
He had correctly guessed the answer for his own question to Kate. Her transfer request had been for personal reason. At that point, he had been elated. He thought that they might make this work after all. However, as he popped his head into that God-forsaken cabin in Gorsky's yacht and saw the kiss, he realised that he was not her 'personal reason'. Mike Flynn was.
He had been a fool.
That night on his sofa, he should have trusted his instinct. He should have demanded more explanation from her. But her kisses and her touches had made him turned a blind eye.
No more...
He should have known that fairy tale would never come true for a jaded guy like him. He was hopelessly falling in love with Kate McGregor, but he now knew that there would never be a future for him & Kate, because she clearly loved another man.
Kate sat exhaustedly on her bunk. Her stare was fixed to the opposite wall in her cabin while her finger absentmindedly caressed the pink wrapped present on her hand.
Dylan...
During the chaos that ensued after Mike went missing, her brain, her heart and her action had been all focused on saving Mike and later on avenging his supposed death. She hadn't had the chance to even open the present from Dylan, let alone thinking about their future. Dylan had supported her. He had stood by her through her ordeal today. He had been a constant presence; a wall that she could lean against. She knew that she had feelings for him that went beyond what was appropriate between XO and Buffer; a feeling beyond friendship. But she also knew that she was still in love with Mike by the despair she felt when she thought he was dead and the overwhelming joy of finding him alive. And then there was the kiss...
She suspected that Dylan saw the kiss. His body language told her so. She could also tell that she had hurt him. His glassy eyes and sad smiles in the locker room were a dead giveaway. At that moment, she really wanted to hug him. She longed to comfort him, to say that she was sorry for everything. Not only that, she selfishly craved the safeness and the assurance his hugs always gave her. She definitely needed those things after the day she had. But she knew she couldn't do that anymore. She had hurt him bad enough to ensure that a new scar would be forming in his heart. Nothing would ever be the same between them from now on.
Her thought was interrupted by a knock on her door. After a muffled 'come in', Charge's head popped into the room.
"X, some of us are going for a drink to celebrate the end of this patrol. Would you like to come?" Charge looked at her warily. "No offense Ma'am, but you look like you could use one."
She smiled softly at him. "I probably need my bed more than I need a drink, Charge. But thank you anyway."
"Well, if you change your mind, we'll be at the usual place." Charge said while he started to pull her cabin door closed.
"Charge..."
"Yes..." He stopped his movement.
"Has the CO gone to hospital yet?"
"Yes. Swain went with him in the Ambulance. I saw Commander White's car following them as well."
"Oh..."
"If you wanted to go to the hospital, I could go with you, X." Charge offered, trying to make things as easy as possible for his XO.
Kate contemplated his offer for a moment. But the feel of the present on her hand reminded her of her need to see Dylan.
"It's OK Charge. I just realised that I have somewhere else to be."
On this particular day, Dylan was glad that his garage door had a manual mechanism. Because even after a two-hour-session of bag-punching, he still felt the need for aggression and his annoying garage door was the perfect target for that.
Few pulls and shoves later, he locked the garage and grabbed his bag. He stopped briefly to check on his mailbox before climbing the stairs to his apartment. But a flash of blonde hair stopped his movement. Sitting on the top step was Kate. Her sea bag was lying on the floor beside her. Dylan felt anger and pain coursed through his veins once more. "What are you doing here?"
Kate flinched at the venom in his voice. "I need to explain everything."
He huffed. "There is no need to explain. That kiss was pretty self-explanatory." He continued his journey upstairs, ignoring her as he walked past.
She got up from the stairs and grabbed his arm, forcing him to stop short from the door. "Dylan, please."
"Look Kate, I'm sure you would want to be in the hospital with the boss," he paused, "as for everything else between us..." He looked at her sadly. "It would probably be easier to just forget it."
She was stunned. Forget it? How could he say that? Doesn't he know that I care for him?
Her grip loosened slightly from his arm, allowing him to pull away and finally reached his door. Fishing his key from his pocket, he tried so hard to ignore her presence. But the wind blew strongly, bringing her scent to his nostrils, almost paralysing him with his need to be close to her. Struggling to control himself, he gripped his key tightly, imprinting the palm of his hand with the key's sharp edges.
"That's it? You are just going to walk away?" Anger slowly seeped through her heart at his attitude. "You're not going to even listen to what I am going to say?"
He stood still in front of the door, keeping his silence, resisting the urge to turn around and face her.
"Don't you want to know what I was thinking when I saw the sub blew to pieces?
He closed his eyes tightly. You would have been devastated for the thought of losing the man you loved...
"I was shocked, I couldn't think. But then I saw how close the RHIB was to the sub and my next thought was whether my sailors were hurt, whether you were hurt!" Her voice started to tremble with the memory. "Those few minutes when you didn't answer your radio and when the RHIB wasn't visible because of the smoke from the explosion were one of the longest minutes in my life..."
He slowly turned around and lifted his eyes to look into hers. What he saw broke his heart.
Her sunken and teary eyes were looking at him with despair. Weariness was enveloping her body; she looked as if she was barely able to stand up straight. I'm a selfish man... This is not about me. This is about her...
"Kate... I..." He put his bag on the floor and moved forward to reach for her. But she held her arm in front of her in a brace position and moved a step backward.
"In that yacht, when Gorsky was taken away in cuffs, it finally dawn on me that Mike was really gone. The devastation hit me all at once. All my being was hurt. It was hard to breath, let alone standing and going up to the deck." She took a shaky breath before continuing. "When Swain asked me whether I was OK, I could only say that I needed a minute alone." Tears started to trickle down her cheeks. "But what I really wanted to say to him was for him to go upstairs and get you to come down below deck." A sob broke from her throat. "I needed you..."
Those three words broke the barrier between them. He took a few steps forward and pulled her to his chest.
Her fingers grasped his shirt in a fist, trying to suppress her sobs to no avail. So, she simply buried her head to his chest, letting her tears seeped through his shirt.
Feeling her body racked with sobs, Dylan tightened his arms around her. He then lowered his lips to the top of her head, planting a series of small kisses to soothe her.
"Ssshhh, Kate... Everything is going to be alright..."
However, as he whispered those words softly to her ear, he knew that he just lied...
To be continued...
