'Calm down now, stop and breathe a second. Go back to the very beginning'

"I understand if you don't want to tell me..." She said and Jake finally lifted his eyes from the ground to meet hers. They'd been so silent for so long, she had to say something.

He hadn't been expecting her. He hadn't been expecting anyone. He had contently fallen into his usual routine, which recently consisted of his mind drifting as the room went dark around him. Her knocking at the door had brought him out of that. Brought his thoughts out of whatever dark depth they had found themselves in this time.

And suddenly, he was acting normal again. As normal as he could. It was a reflex. A mask. There was a dark cloud looming over him it seemed, a sombre haze that didn't seem to be going anywhere. Even as he tried to hide it, it controlled him. Isolated him. Crippled him, in so many ways.

She saw straight through it. She tried to make conversation at first but there was an elephant in the room, he knew there was something she really wanted to say. She just seemed to be struggling to find the right words. Or she was struggling to find the confidence to say whatever it was.

Then finally, she had asked him. 'Are you okay?'

In panic, he'd become defensive. He was fine. There was nothing wrong. He didn't know what she was talking about. Everything was fine. But...Kate knew him better than most and she could see through his lies in a second. He knew it. But still, he denied it. Tried to dismiss her concerns. Tell her that she was worrying about nothing. But she wouldn't give in.

That's how the argument had started. Empty words about prying into business that was none of her concern, about how she was making something out of nothing. At first, she argued back. Her natural reflex to stand up for herself. But then she stopped. She let him rant. Shout at her. She let him get angry and frustrated because all it did was prove her point more. The usually calm, collected person she knew was not the person arguing at her now. She knew that and deep down, so did he. So the arguing stopped.

That was how they ended up like this. Sat opposite each other on the floor. She watched him. And he watched her. Observing each other. They had become so attuned to each other's movements and senses at work, but here, this was different. Because suddenly there were no defences to hide behind. For the first time, it was truly just the two of them, no distractions. No quick escapes. Something was changing and neither was quite sure what it was. This wasn't a situation they usually found themselves in. But here they were.

He avoided meeting her gaze for as long as he could. Scared about what he would see if he did. He didn't like the vulnerability he was so obviously displaying. This wasn't him. Not at all. He wasn't like this. But now, he was. And he hated it. All of it.

"I understand if you're not ready to tell me... " She went on and he noticed the slight tremble in her hands. This was difficult for her. It was hurting her. So why was she doing it? Why was she putting herself through something that was clearly distressing, for him? "Just...don't lie to me. Don't say...that you're fine if you're not..."

"I..."

"I don't know what's happened. I don't. I can't pretend to understand whatever it is that's going on in your mind because I don't know what it is..." She bit her lip, knowing she was revealing more about herself. "But I know what it feels like to be drowning...I know how paralysing it can be..."

"Kate..." He didn't know what he was going to say. He just felt the need to say something.

"I just wanted you to know that...I care about you. Because you're...my friend. And I'm worried about you. This...isn't you...and if you ever did want to talk to someone, I'm here..."

He watched the way she pulled her sleeves nervously over her hands, she was trying so hard. She had always been a genuine-seeming person. She didn't try to hide too much of herself away. Or at least, that's how she had seemed. She wasn't afraid to get angry or upset. She wasn't slow to express her opinions or fight her own battles. That's what he liked about her. But he could tell, by the way her voice seemed to shake as she spoke, there was a lot more to Kate Barker than he thought.

"I'm not very good at talking about things..."

"No..." She nodded. "Neither am I..."

A silence fell between them. Neither knew where this was going. It was as though all their cards had been laid out on the table and neither knew their next move. Because suddenly it wasn't just about him anymore. In trying to reach him, she'd let her own guard down and he'd seen that there was a sadness to her past just the same. A trauma maybe. Something that had happened that made her want to run from her own memories but meant she couldn't leave him when he was like this. Almost as though she was sacrificing her own peace of mind for him. No one had ever done anything like that for him before. No one had ever got close enough. He hadn't let them. But she was different.

"Everyone has a story, something they don't tell anyone. Some horror lurking in their past..." She looked down. "And...no matter how fast we run from them, they always catch up with us in the end..."

"You think?"

"Yeah..." She nodded.

"Are you running from something?"

"I've been hiding...hiding from things I didn't want to think about. And I've been running from the reality of it all for so long...because stopping means accepting and accepting means accepting the pain that comes with it. And that is hard..." She paused. "I could tell you the story of a lost little girl. Someone with a heavy burden on such young shoulders. Who watched her family crumble and fall apart. Who promised herself it wouldn't last forever. And almost destroyed herself in the process..."

"Kate..."

"There are a lot of things you don't know about me..."

"You and me both..." His voice was quiet, defeated. So unlike him, he was almost a stranger to himself. This wasn't how he had thought things would go. He thought she would leave, almost hoped she would. Then he wouldn't have to explain. He wouldn't have to say anything. They could have gone to work the next day pretending this never happened. He paused a moment, wondering just how much he was going to say, how much he was going to reveal. "There's a reason I can't...can't tell you what's wrong..."

"What?"

"Because I don't want you to think of me differently..." he looked away from her. "I don't want things to...it's not something I talk about, to anyone."

"You don't have to tell me anything..."

"Why are you even here?" He asked, looking back at her suddenly.

For a moment she couldn't say anything. He knew why she was there. He just didn't seem to believe it. "Because...I care about you."

"Why?"

She ran her hand over her face. "Because I do...we spend every day together, it's hard not to..."

"Kate..."

"We're getting distracted..."

"Are we?"

"I..."

"You came here."

"Because I was worried about you." She said. "You've been so different...so distant and I...I don't know why...I didn't know if it was something at work. Or if it was something else..."

"The Aaron Hardaker trial..."

Her eyes snapped to meet his. Her brain thinking back to that trial. It fit the mental timeline she had of the change in her partner.

"Jake..." she started, remembering the trial so clearly. It had been a gruelling trial. They'd lost in end. Somehow. It had been awful. A case between a son and a mother who should never have been a parent.

"That's where...it started..." he paused and she waited for him to go on. "Losing that case...I let that kid down..."

"You didn't..."

"I'd been in his position, Kate." He said, not being able to look at her as he said it. "He'd been let down once...I failed him just like every other adult in his life..."

She shook her head. "We were both in that courtroom."

"I was in charge. My lead, my failure..."

"Jake..."

"His mother destroyed him. The mental...abuse he suffered..."

"I know..."

"It doesn't leave you..."

"I can imagine..." She could see he was reluctant to say anything. She took his hands in her own, surprising him. "If you want to tell me...just tell me as though it all happened to someone else."

And so he did..