I'd give anything to hear you say it one more time, that the universe was made, just to be seen by my eyes.' – Saturn, Sleeping at Last.

An unreliable firework.

That's what she was.

One that caught alight all by itself, filling the inky darkness with an alarming and unexpected burst of colour. One that that wouldn't go off even if you tried everything you could think of to force it.

Purple and gold. The kind that went straight up into the air with a tiny, disappointing pop of purple, only to explode out of darkness again in a shower of golden rain.

Watch yourself though.

Beautiful, yes. Dazzling, yes. But if you are caught standing too close when she explodes you might burn; scalded skin, irreparable damage. Or you might stand in the dark with golden droplets hailing down around you.

Risk.

Go to Iman's. Find the photos. Find something. Prove your innocence. Freedom. Freedom. Go back to her.

Sounds simple.

Right?

Wrong.

In the movies being caught involves a lot of flashing lights, sirens, the screech of multiple police cars, yelling and a lot of guns.

That is not the case.

There is only one police car. Two policemen. They are hopping out of their cars, guns drawn. She could outrun them. She looks around wildly, sweat glistening on her temples, brown hair escaping from its ponytail. She could.

The single siren screams in her ears, reverberating around and around in her skull like a pinball. She is stuck in the middle of the street, chest heaving, eyes rolling like a frightened horse. In front of her there is one police car and two drawn guns. Further in front of her, past the cops, just down the street, is Iman's house. Is her freedom.

She closes her eyes for what feels like an age but in reality, it is less than one second. One second. That is how long it takes her to come to terms with what she has always known.

She would rather bleed out in the street than get put away again.

The mouths of the policemen are moving. She cannot hear them. All she hears is that fucking siren. All she sees is that house at the end of the street.

If she can just fucking get there. If she can-

She puts her hands in the air, palms open, fingers stretched out for just a second – she has nothing. And then she is running. Sprinting. Towards the guns that are pointed at her chest. And wouldn't that be ironic? If she got shot trying to prove that she did not shoot someone else.

She is level with the cruiser now, the red and blue lights just starting to creep into her peripheral vision rather than immediately in front of her. And maybe by some miracle, she will make it. Maybe she-

And then she is thrown to the ground.

Cheek pressed into bitumen and she can feel the burn that means skin has been torn from her forearms. The weight of a policeman on top of her. As her arms are being pulled behind her she does not hear the policeman begin his spiel, 'Franky Doyle you are under arrest for-'

Instead she lies on her stomach on the road, siren loud in her ears, neck craning, eyes transfixed on Iman's house.

She can see it.

'I didn't do it,' she says so calmly, evenly that you would think she was sitting in an office answering a simple question instead of lying in the street answering for murder. Answering for her life.

Dragged roughly to her feet and turned around she loses sight of Iman's house. Blue and red are bright in her eyes. A cop on either side of her, holding each arm and she raises her face to the sky as she walks. She breathes in deep and takes it all in. The world.

She has five more steps before she is pushed into the vehicle. She sees it all. She sees it the way it could've been. Sees herself at her own desk in legal relief. Sees Tess running out of school and diving into her shitty little car. Sees her own house. Sees herself smiling, laughing. Sees a blonde woman standing on the edge of her back step in nothing but a robe, eyes on fire with the bright orange of dawn, whispering, 'Come back to me.'

And then she is in the backseat of a police car and she feels nothing.

No. The movies are wrong.

All there is to being caught is a soul crushing weight that settles deep within her chest.

She was never one to go down easily.

She pokes holes in their case as best she can. Furiously refuses to change her plea to guilty, even for a reduced sentence, because she did not fucking do it.

But all of this is like poking air holes into a box in a place where oxygen doesn't exist.

She knows that it is coming, and she feels despair fill her up like it is trying to drown her. It is an oil, thick, viscous and inescapable.

When the courthouse goes silent and her sentence rings out though, all she is is numb.

Francesca Doyle you are sentenced to 40 years without parole for the murders of Mike Penisi and Iman Farah.

She stares at her wrists as if they aren't a part of her own body when the cold metal handcuffs click shut.

Her face does not change an inch from the moment she hears this conviction to the moment she steps inside her cell. She had vaguely recognised the shapes of people, lined up, waiting for her when she was escorted back to her unit but she had not even made eye contact.

Instead she closes the door behind her quietly and she folds her civilian clothes, sits them carefully on the end of her bed, and she pulls on the teal.

She looks at herself in the mirror. Teal tracksuit, teal singlet. Tattoos. She studies the reflection of her left arm. The phoenix adorning her white skin like some kind of victory.

She will have to do something about that.

And there it is.

Her anger had never been cold and calculating. It had always been immediate, violent and terrible. A bushfire on the driest of summer days.

Oil and fire are a dangerous combination.

The second that she lets herself feel it all she is alight with the rage of injustice. She has trashed her cell before but this is different. This is destruction.

Everything that falls beneath her hands is reduced to nothing. The kite on the wall becomes trampled underfoot. Her case file notes float in shreds in the air around her. She tears her curtains from the wall as if they are the only thing separating her from the outside. And when everything she owns is lying in pieces at her feet, she starts on the walls. She is not stupid enough to believe that she can ruin those too, but the burning sting and ache of bone as her fist meets brick is better than nothing.

Blood runs down her hands and is spattered across the wall when her cell door flies open and arms wrap around her from behind.

'No Franky, Franky, please, please don't.'

Boomer.

And Franky pushes down, struggles against the arms that hold her and she feels Boomer's arms tighten around her, face pressing into the space between Franky's neck and her shoulder.

'Stop Franky. Franky, please.' Dimly something in Franky registers that it sounds as though Boomer is crying.

She pushes harder. Bloodied and broken hands screaming in protest. She loves it.

Eventually she shoves away, stumbling forward, mouth in a grim line. She stands in the middle of her cell, shaking finger jabbing the air in front of her face harshly when Boomer makes as though to come to her.

Boomer's face is red, screwed up with tears and she moves forwards and backwards indecisively, cannot look anywhere else but Franky's bloody and trembling finger in the air in front of her. But it is too much for her, flapping her arms in frustration she steps forwards, hands patting at Franky's face, her hair, in an attempt to soothe her.

Every cell in Franky's body trembles with fury, desperation, devastation, but she stands in the middle of what used to look like her cell, red and purple hands by her sides, and she closes her eyes. One tear slipping down her cheek.

Boomer continues to pat at her.

'Please Franky, please,' she whispers.

She is slotted for three weeks. Both for escaping and then for trashing her cell.

It is Miss Bennet that eventually comes to collect her, Channing nowhere in sight, and Franky knows that if had been left to him she would've been left to rot for a lot longer.

She squares off in the electrically lit doorway of her slot unit, 'Miss Bennet?'

Vera turns, surprised that Franky is not immediately behind her, 'Franky?'

And Franky hears the use of her first name, tries to steel herself against the gratitude that slips through but doesn't quite manage.

'Will I be allowed to collect a visitor's request form?'

One hand on her hip, the other coming up to rub her forehead Vera scrunches her face, sighing.

'You did escape prison you realise?' She sighs again, a nod that is halfway between curt and concession, 'I'll try.'

Everything seems heightened. The scrape of other inmate's chairs. The laughs, snippets of other conversations. The air conditioner blowing on her bare arms. The ache she feels in the centre of her chest. The slight grooves in the plastic coating of the table at which she sits.

Her eyes do not leave the doorway. She cannot afford to miss even a millisecond of this.

And when she spots movement on the other side of that door she is on her feet. Not moving, just standing. For once in her life she in not thinking about anything else. A feeling she had only experienced with –

There.

Bridget slips through the door and hesitates for the briefest of moments as she scans the room until she finds what she is looking for.

And Franky will take this moment. Bridget unaware, her hair a little longer than the last time she'd seen her, top strands even with her jaw now in a stylish bob. Jacket, jeans, boots, she was all there.

And then Bridget finds her, and she's walking quickly, efficiently and she stops exactly two steps in front of Franky, one hand on the back of the chair she will sit in, the other across her stomach.

They stand there a little longer than normal, both wanting to pull the other in, both recognising this as impossible.

And Bridget pulls her chair out and slides in easily, but there is something about the way she holds Franky's gaze, the look on her face, and the high angle at which she holds her head that makes Franky tear up a little.

Bridget knows exactly why she is here.

It is a risk, but before she knows it Franky is scooting her chair a little closer to Bridget and a little further under the table, her long fingers reaching out to grasp Bridget's waiting hand.

They just stare at each other for a while. Both very effective communicators. Both articulate women. Both finding that there are, in fact, not words for this.

Bridget runs a finger underneath one of her eyes gently, smiling softly in a sort of frustration.

'I hired that investigator,' her voice comes out softly, but strong, one of Franky's favourite paradoxes within this woman, 'and we proved that Iman and Penisi knew each other, took that to the police. But they- they couldn't find anything at her place.'

Bridget's lips are pursed together and she shakes her head quickly, just once, in an effort to hold it together.

And Franky is already broken but she breaks again witnessing this. Imagining Bridget trying to come to terms with it on her own.

Her other hand slides underneath the table, encasing their joined hands and squeezing. Hard.

They don't say much for a little while. Just hold hands under a cheap plastic table in a prison visitors centre.

And then Bridget starts to talk about little things. Her mouth talking small, while everything else about her spoke big.

Franky will let her do this. Even if it is for the selfish reason of wanting more. So she watches. Eyes on Bridget's face like it is a law textbook that she can learn back to front. Thumbs tracing unconscious patterns on the back of Bridget's hands.

'-I mean I won't pretend it wouldn't be interesting, it just wasn't something I'd ever thought I'd do.'

'You'd be a great lecturer Gidge., if that's what you decide you want.' Franky smiles softly, imagining it.

But Bridget turns her head to the side noncommittally, and when she looks back she is quick to say, 'Do you need anything?'

Franky just shakes her head, brown ponytail moving against her back. She doesn't.

And Bridget pauses again. Studying her. A little unreadable. And then she sits up a little straighter and starts telling Franky how she was thinking of changing the splashback in the kitchen.

'I'd sort of forgotten how annoying it was to clean. I got spoiled there for a while.'

Franky's laugh is diluted.

And then the officer on the door calls the last five minutes.

They both still.

Bridget tips her head back, chin raised, jaw set, and she speaks before Franky has found her words.

'Don't you fucking dare.'

And if this wasn't it. If this wasn't forever, then Franky would've tipped her head back and crowed, because this was Gidget. And god, didn't she love her.

But this was it.

So instead she hiccups out this tiny laugh with a couple of tears sliding down her cheeks, leans forward in her seat and cups Bridget's face quickly, gently, with her hand.

Bridget speaks again, but only barely, like the words were being forced from her lips, 'Don't you even-'

Franky's hand is gone now. And it's just their fingers twisted together under the table. For some reason the image of Bridget rubbing her hand cream in every night before bed pops into Franky's brain.

'I want you to have the best life Gidget,' she smiles and raises her eyes to the ceiling briefly while a couple more tears drip down her cheeks, 'This is it, yeah?'

Bridget's posture is ramrod. Back straight up against the hard plastic of her chair. Franky knows she does not belong there.

The only change in Bridget's countenance is a quick tightening of her fingers when Franky's hand slips out of her own underneath the table.

Franky stands, pushing out her chair a little roughly.

Bridget stays seated. Expressionless. Legs crossed. Right hand hanging by her side. Left resting over her stomach.

Franky burns this image into her memory.

Burn it there. Keep her there. Remember this. Remember her.

She will not see Bridget Westfall ever again.

And as the other visitors start to stand, and the other prisoners start to make their way back through the doors, the hand hanging by Bridget's side comes up to her face, her fingers pressing gently over her mouth.

Franky turns her back. Walks a few steps.

And she hates herself. God she hates herself. But she cannot have Bridget think- because she does.

So she turns back around quickly, hands flopping out at her sides, Bridget is standing now, still watching her.

Franky's voice is a little shaky when she speaks into a nearly empty visitors centre.

'You were it for me.'

She disguises what could be a quiet sob as a laugh, 'You didn't ever let me down.'

She nods like she can prove the exact truth of what she's saying with her own vehemence, 'I love ya. You're the only woman I've ever-' she chokes, presses her eyes shut tightly, makes fists with her hands by her sides and settles again for, 'I love you.'

Bridget takes one step forward.

Franky's vision is blurred by tears but she still notices. And then she has turned around and is wiping her nose on her sleeve and the heavy prison door shuts behind her with the smallest click of finality.