A/N: You guys are top banana. The last lot of reviews gave me much to think about - especially your varied reactions to Laura. As a consequence, I drafted this chapter three times, three different ways (!). In the end, this is the one I've plumped for. For me, it's the most 'her'. She's complicated. She's not going to make it easy for us, but...

The next morning, Robbie's side of the bed was empty when Laura awoke. His car had gone from the drive. He'd left for work early, without even a cursory peck on the cheek.

En route to the lab, Laura entered Ellen's number into the hands free set of her car and made her confession in full.

"You didn't?!"

"I did."

"Poor Robbie."

"You always take his side, Ellie."

"Well, in this case I'm entirely justified in doing so. You're such a commitment-phobe!"

"How can you say that? I've liked him for years." Clearly flippancy was Laura's current weapon of choice.

"Yes, but for most of which he was unavailable. That's probably why you liked him so much. You knew he was out of reach."

"That's just psychobabble."

"Is it?" Ellen laughed, but the question was genuine.

Laura frowned.

"I love him, Ellie. I really do."

"So why not get married?"

"Well, for a start, he hasn't actually asked me."

"Technicalities."

"He hasn't! At not one point last night did he get down on one knee. And, secondly, you know full well why. Marriage just isn't me."

"Oh Laura…"

"… Ellie you know this. We've been through it a million times before…."

"Yes, but never about someone I actually thought might be the one."

"The one?"

"Yes, Laura. The one. Don't even try to tell me that Robbie isn't different to all the others."

Laura frowned. "Even so…"

Ellen smiled at the reluctant admission.

"Why does it necessarily follow that we should get married?" Laura huffed.

"Because that's what normal people do. When they love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives with each other."

"But I'm…

"… not normal. I know." Ellen smirked.

'Thanks a bunch, Jacobi."

"You know what I mean. So what are you going to do?"

"Erm… nothing!"

"But what if Robbie isn't happy with that? In the long run, I mean."

"I don't know." Ellen heard the feisty spark fade from her friend's voice.

"I know I've said this to you countless times before – but marriage is about the people in it, Laura. Just because you get married, you and Robbie aren't going to turn into your parents. You're different people. By your own account, Robbie was a doting husband to his first wife."

Laura's lips tightened. "He was."

"So doting that he wouldn't let you near him until over a decade after her death."

"That's not the point."

"Oh sweetheart, it's precisely the point. He's a good man and he's evidently besotted with you. And you've been in love with him for longer than you'll ever admit."

"That may be so, but it still doesn't mean we need to get married."

"From your point of view, maybe not. But it sounds like Robbie sees it differently. It's obviously very important to him."

Laura was silent.

"From what you've told me about last night," Ellen continued, "it sounds like you're going to need a far better excuse than 'I don't want to'."

Laura sighed audibly and, gently, Ellen pushed on:

"You're not going to like me for saying this, but this is exactly the kind of things relationships end over."

Laura's stomach churned. "I know."

"So, it seems to me like you've got some thinking to do."

Laura ended the call to Ellen feeling resentful. And like a scolded school girl. Why did Ellen have to take Robbie's side? Why didn't how she felt seem to matter in all this? Why was she the one who was expected to make the compromise?

Things between her and Robbie were fine as they were. Better than fine. They were happy. She was happier than she had been in a long, long time. And, despite the odd spat and especially now that he was back at work, she knew he was too. Why did anything need to change?

For Laura, marriage wasn't the be all and end all. It wasn't something she'd imagined and daydreamed about all her life. Far from it. In her experience, marriage was the unnecessary glue that had held her parents' catastrophe of a relationship together for years. It was a senseless sense of obligation that had tied her parents to each other long after the love had died. Laura's experience of marriage involved no happy ever after: from an early age Laura believed that all married people must shout and scream at each other whilst their children cowered in their bedrooms. Around age 8, her conception of marriage blossomed into one of resentful, festering silences at the dinner table. At age 10, she presumed all married men must disappear from home for days on end. At age 12, she had an arsenal of swearwords more colourful than any of her contemporaries and a mother who was often still in bed when she returned home from school. By age 14, she had vowed never to be married herself – a promise only strengthened by the bitterness of her parents' divorce, conveniently timed for the start of her O-Levels. By age 15, it was all over and Laura breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

It wasn't a big deal. She wasn't scarred or emotionally damaged by the experience – her parents each loved her very much and she them. Neither of them was a bad person: they were good people who had just fallen out of love along the way. She didn't blame them for that. But she would never understand why they'd stayed together so long. Why they had put them all through such misery. The therapist she had seen following being abducted and almost buried alive had tried to suggest they had done it for Laura's sake. Out of love for her. Laura had shrugged – perhaps that was so, but ultimately the culprit was marriage. And all the expectations, obligations and senses of duty it brought. She'd thought about it at length. She wasn't messed up, she wasn't scarred for life, she didn't need help – she wasn't a commitment-phobe (Ellen!). She just didn't ever want to get married. Simple as that.

Of course, neither was she there to judge other people's marriages. She fully accepted that, just her views were formed from her own experiences, other people who had grown up in happier homes would feel very differently. Ellen would feel differently. Robbie would feel differently.

Robbie.

Robbie, who had put Val on a pedestal. Whose marriage had borne two lovely children and whose love had surpassed even Val's death. For whom marriage was not only an expression of love, but also its necessary complement. Laura understood that. Or rather she understood why he felt like that. It was part of Robbie – his endearing straightforwardness, his capacity to give himself fully to someone else. In some ways it thrilled her that he was ready to do the very same for her. He was putting her on a par with Val, and having watched his devotion to her even in death for all these years, part of Laura was blown away that he was now ready to lay his heart open for her in a similar way. Robbie still believed in marriage, despite all his pain. Perhaps that made him a stronger person than her – after all, he was willing to go through it all again, whereas she wasn't even willing to try…

It mattered to Robbie.

That much was clear. She recalled his face last night. He'd never looked at her like that before. A flare of self-loathing gripped her insides as she remembered the disappointment and hurt in his eyes. It had not been her finest hour. The whole thing had caught her off guard. Bloody Hathaway. Previously, she had hoped that she and Robbie would be able to muddle along somehow avoiding the marriage minefield – perhaps, she'd thought, he wouldn't want to marry again… or, if he did, she'd be able to persuade him otherwise. Like all their other disagreements on principle, she'd hoped they'd simply find a way to agree to disagree. But she hadn't banked on the Lewis resolve.

No, that was unfair. She hadn't banked on how much it meant to him. How much she meant to him.

Ellen's words echoed in her mind: this is exactly the kind of thing relationships end over. Laura had been here once or twice before with other men. At the crossroads between a deeper commitment or walking away. At all other times, the choice had been easy. But with Robbie it was different. She'd known for years he was different. In fact, with one recent relationship, he'd been precisely the reason she'd chosen to walk away. She couldn't imagine life without him.

Perhaps Ellen was right. Perhaps she had some thinking to do.

Later that afternoon, Laura was poring over her computer screen, analyzing some particularly turgid lab results. Her phone vibrated insistently and she delved for it under some paperwork on her desk. Robbie?

With disappointment, she registered the caller ID.

"James, if this is about about those results, I'm afraid I'm going to need a little longer…"

"Laura…" he used her first name. That was odd for a work call. "Where are you?"

She frowned. "I'm in the lab…" she didn't like the tone of his voice. "Why?"

Her heart began to beat faster, even before he answered.

"It's Robbie."

She swallowed. "What?"

"Stay there. I'm coming to get you."

Oh God.

"Why? What's… what's happened?" She breathed, feeling her stomach contract with a wave of nausea.

"He was in a scuffle with a suspect at Mansford College and he fell… or was pushed… we're not really sure… down a staircase."

"Is he…?" Laura blinked away the image that her professional experience conjured only too easily in her mind.

"The paramedics did what they could. They didn't say much." Laura knew exactly what this meant. Her blood cooled as she registered the fear in Hathaway's voice. "They'll be able to tell us more at the hospital - he is on his way to A&E."

Laura breathed. He wasn't dead.

"I'll be with you in five minutes." Hathaway ended the call and, in a daze, Laura managed to tell one of the lab technicians what had happened and where she was going. She retrieved her coat from her office and waited for Hathaway on the station steps. A colleague greeted her as he passed by. Laura didn't even hear. Neither she nor Hathaway spoke a word as they sped towards the hospital.