Author's note – And here it chapter two! I hope you enjoy.

I like to thank everyone who reviewed chapter one, it's really encouraging to receive feedback and I love hearing what you think.

Also, I don't know much about prisons. This will probably become apparent as the story goes one. I have tried to research where needs be but the internet only gets you so far, so if there are any inaccuracies or mistakes I am sorry.

And finally, I have decided that Monday will be my update day from now on, so, see you next Monday!

DISCLAIMER – I own nothing!

Two – Helen Dryden

She's tired and annoyed when she wakes up, a new day dawning. The early morning light is creeping in and she sighs and stretches out her muscles. Sitting up in bed, Lindsay wishes she is somewhere else – anywhere else – but here. She hates in here. Lindsay's been in here for three months now, every day the same, and every day ahead exactly the same again. Fifteen more years at least stretch out in front of her – every time she thinks that, it always almost gets too much for her.

The whole world around her seems to be slowly turning grey, slowly grinding to a halt. Before she ended up in this mess, in this prison, she was quite an active person. She liked going shopping and going to the gym, she liked eating in pubs and staying in hotels. Now, all she has is one drab cell and an empty exercise courtyard.

She's always been a quite solitary person, preferring her own company to that of others. That's not to say she didn't have friends – she did – but none she would trust her life with. No, she was never comfortable giving others her everything, scared of being burned. Maybe it was because of her father – her father who had walked out on his family when Lindsay was only three years old.

Now, all these years later, Lindsay doesn't remember a single damn thing about her father.

Maybe it is because of him that she has always been terrified of forming long lasting relationships. Or maybe it's something more basic, something wrong with her that means she cannot commit to anyone – a primitive reason why she cannot have a deep meaningful relationship with anyone bar her mother.

Except that that's not completely true, is it, she thinks to herself, wistfully. There was one person who she committed to, but with Lindsay being Lindsay; it couldn't be anything but dysfunctional. To be honest, describing it as dysfunctional is being kind. Her relationship – if you could even call it that, the secret meetings in hotels and the fleeting visits to her home – with Mike had been only time she had ever managed to connect with a human being on a more than basic level for a long time, and she'd allowed herself to dream, to imagine a future where she was, finally, happy.

But then he'd pulled the wool from her eyes and her entire world had burned beneath her feet, crashing down and splintering into a thousand tiny pieces. Mike hadn't just broken her heart – though he'd done that too – he'd destroyed her whole world with one word.

That one word had been 'no'.

Dwelling on her doomed affair makes her remember what came after, and she really doesn't want to go there. With a sadness that makes her heart ache, Lindsay puts her hand on her stomach and let's herself wonder what if. The moment is only fleeting, because it breaks her heart too much to think about it.

Lindsay was telling the truth – a rare occurrence, it seemed, after the ambush – when she'd told Steve it was the worst thing she'd ever done, and it would be for the rest of her life. It was worse than agreeing to Akers' plan, worse than driving Prasad into that wall with the car, worse than anything that had gone before and would come after.

Shaking her head and sighing heavily, Lindsay tries to drag her mind away from Mike, because, even a year after their affair ended, it still hurts to think about him and what he did to her. Five years it had lasted, and he hadn't given her a damned thing the entire time – she'd given him her all, she'd given everything. And for what? Nothing. Up until then, Lindsay had thought that she always got what she wanted, but Mike Dryden had proved her wrong.

He'd cast her away like she'd meant nothing to him. Which she must have, Lindsay concedes sadly. She was nothing to Mike and yet, for five years, he'd been her everything. She'd loved him. He'd become the first person in a long time that he'd let in, and he'd destroyed everything and left her with nothing. And for that, Lindsay hates him.

And she knows, with certainty, that the feeling is mutual.

Thinking about Mike makes her think about her only visitor: Helen Dryden, his wife. Lindsay doesn't want to dwell on that and yet she can't stop her mind drifting.

She sighs, remembering. It had been strange, meeting Mike's wife for the first time. She had been nothing like Lindsay had expected, and yet everything, all at the same time. Mike had never talked about his wife – it was like an unwritten rule between them, never mention Helen – and because of this, Helen Dryden had remained a shadow to Lindsay – albeit a shadow that hung over her every time she and Mike had met.

She wonders how it feels to be so detached from normal human emotions, like Helen had been, with her cold, impassive stares and icy tone, with her sharp tongue and harsh words. Lindsay wonders why Helen ever stayed with Mike after news of his affair hit the papers. Maybe it was because of love, – but, thinking back to her brief brush with the woman, she doesn't think Helen Dryden is capable of loving someone other than herself – maybe it was because of an obligation to stand by the husband who had always stood by her or maybe it was because Helen Dryden loved the money that her husband had provided her with.

The truth is, Lindsay doesn't know, and will never know what makes the woman who has everything that she once wanted tick.

After meeting her, with her cardboard smiles and icy words, Lindsay knows that she does not envy Helen Dryden anymore.

She swings her legs off the side of the bed and leans against the wall, resting her head in her hands. Lindsay always thought she was made of tough stuff, but now, prison is slowly wearing her down – just like it's meant to, she reasons. She wonders, shaking her head, how her life has ended up like this.

She's not a criminal. She caught criminals. She was a good guy.

She knows now that no one really is a good guy. There are just bad guys and slightly less bad guys.

There are some rare exceptions on that rule, Lindsay thinks to herself, and she thinks that maybe she met all the good guys when dealing with AC-12. It takes a special kind of cop to investigate other cops, and to Lindsay, they all were good people, just doing their job.

Hastings is honest, does his job, and catches all the right people. He isn't bad, he isn't corruptible. The only thing Lindsay could accuse him of is being a little loose with his finances, but compared to her that's nothing.

Then there's Steve. He never gave up – and Lindsay knows that his job means a lot to him, it does to everyone in AC-12. It's a tough job, but only the best get the gig, and Steve is the best. He played her good and proper – for the first time in a long time, Lindsay had thought she had a real friend, but in the back of her head, she knew that it was too good to be true, but she'd ignored her instinct, just wanting to have someone to talk to.

And maybe it was because, somewhere in her head, she wanted to be caught. It's not that she wanted to go to prison – no, not in a million years – it was just she couldn't live with guilt - it ate away at her every day, and if they hadn't caught her, slowly, she would have gone mad.

And finally there is Kate. Oh, Kate, who is much more like Lindsay than she ever could imagine. There are a few similarities, in character, in determination but the most glaring parallel is the fact that they both had unhappy affairs with married men. When she's sat across from Kate all those months ago and she'd confessed to her affair with Mike, for a second, she could see a kindred spirit on the other side of the glass.

But it was a kindred spirit who always got the job done, and getting the job done meant that Lindsay was spending fifteen years in prison.

She's not perfect – who is? – she has flaws. But she's not bad, not inside. Lindsay just wishes someone would believe her. She's not a bad person, not really - she is just a victim of circumstance. If Kate had been in her position, with a dying mother, a draining bank account, a car crash of an affair with a man who would have never loved her back however much she'd tried and an abortion that had nearly killed her to carry out behind her, Kate might have accepted Akers' offer, because the two of them, they're not that different.

Isn't reflection such a wonderful thing? Lindsay knows she shouldn't have taken up Akers' on her offer but she was doing it for a good reason. She needed the money and she needed to find Carly. It wasn't supposed to end up like it had. No one was supposed to die. And yet, everybody but her did.

And she only survived to get the blame pinned squarely on her. She knows what she did was wrong, can see so clearly, but she was in a bad place – she knows that it doesn't excuse what she did, but she hopes it explains it.

She puts her head in her hands again, wanting to curl up in a ball and scream at the world to go away but she knows it won't work. She will not fall to pieces, she is Lindsay Denton and she doesn't fall apart.

Here she is, shivering in the early morning chill in a prison cell, with a heart full to bursting with regrets and a mind full of things she'll never say. And why? Because she was stupid, so utterly stupid, and turned her comparatively simple life into a complicated disarray of problems and trouble, all mounting up on her until she could no longer cope.

She remembers the first thought that hit her after the judge read out her sentence – well, there goes my happy ending - and thinks how true it is, how apt. She will never get married now, she concedes, she will never have children. She's unwanted by everyone, shunned by society and ostracized to the furthest degree because she made a few mistakes. Doesn't everyone make mistakes?

She just wishes that someone who knows how it feels to have their heart broken would tell her that it gets easier, that it won't always hurt this much, that one day, all this heartache will be gone. But no one will, no one ever will, because maybe it won't go away, maybe she'll always feel empty inside. Maybe she'll always wake up in the middle of the night, Mike's face burned into the back of her mind and his name dying on her lips. Maybe this is what she gets for sleeping with another woman's husband. Maybe she's always destined to live like this, with her heart aching in her chest for the only love she's ever known, begging for Mike and begging for her mother, but knowing they won't come, can't ever come.

She doesn't know. Only time will tell. And oh yes, she has a lot of that. In here, there's plenty of time.

Damn, she should stop being so melancholy. What's the point in dwelling on the past? What's the point? She's tough, she doesn't break down.

Except she does. But she always does it when no one's looking, when she can cry all alone for her mistakes.

A loud knock sounds and then comes the barked command to move away for the door. Lindsay wants to yell at them that nobody's home, that there's no one here, to go away and stop bothering her.

But she doesn't, and the door swings open.

...

Any bets who the next visitor will be?

Thanks for reading.