When I woke up, the first thing that I knew was that something was wrong.
Something.
And then it all came rushing back, and I had to bury my face in the pillow, biting it, to keep from making a noise.
The girl.
The shot.
Her expression just before everything exploded.
The only thing I could hang onto, the only thing, is that in those last moments she really hadn't looked quite human. The incandescent glow from her injuries lighting her face from below, casting it into sharp relief.
She hadn't been human.
She hadn't been human at all.
After a few minutes of reciting that to myself I felt like I might actually be able to lift my face from the pillow and face the world.
Whereupon I realised that I wasn't in Angie's guestroom, and remembered what had happened last night.
Oh, Christ.
I really hoped that I hadn't fucked things up beyond repair with her.
At least she'd already gotten up by this point.
And, from the sounds of the shower running, at least I wasn't alone in the house either.
I wasn't sure that I could have handled that right now.
After carefully peeking out the door to make sure that Rose wasn't around, I quickly scuttled to the guestroom, to wait until the bathroom was free.
When I came downstairs after having used the shower myself, Rose was finishing her breakfast at the dining table whilst Angie, over by the work surface, greeted my entrance with a face that looked superficially calm.
"Frances," she said. "How are you doing this morning?"
I gave her a smile which didn't even feel particularly convincing. "Great," I said.
Rose gave me a baleful glare which suggested that I wasn't even fooling her. Or that it was a normal school morning. It was a little hard to tell.
I wasn't feeling particularly hungry, but my throat was starting to remind me how thirsty I'd been when I first awoke. "Could I have a glass?" I asked Angie.
"Sure," she said only a little stiltedly, opening the cupboard to retrieve one, then handing it to me, making very sure not to touch me in the process.
So.
Fine.
I could work with this.
I could live with this.
It was my own stupid fault anyway.
Rose looked suspiciously between the two of us. "What's wrong?" she asked around a mouthful of cereal.
I glanced in Angie's direction, who was standing there, frozen for a second, before giving Rose a chill little smile. "Frances had a late night. She's a little tired this morning."
"Oh. Work. Did you get any bad guys?"
Get.
Bad guys.
The woman's face, smiling, serene.
Distorted by light.
The thunder of the gun going off in my hands.
The concussion of her exploding.
Again and again.
Again and again.
The next thing I really knew was Angie rubbing her hand in circles on my back, whispering quiet, comforting nonsense in my ear.
"It's alright," she said. "It's alright."
Rose had disappeared out of the room in the interim, and I could hear her thumping around in the rest of the house.
I was here, in Angie's house. And it was morning.
I took a breath, and gave her a wavering smile.
It wasn't alright.
But it would be.
We didn't speak that much until Angie and I were in the car, after having dropped Rose off at her school.
After a few minutes of being alone with her, I managed to screw up my courage.
"Look, about last night..."
Angie twitched, and I got the feeling that if she hadn't been driving, she would have looked at me sharply. "There's nothing to explain," she said, with an edge in her voice that dared me to disagree. "You were in shock. Heightened, irrational emotional responses are not uncommon."
Oh.
Right.
"Yes, that," I muttered, feeling curiously deflated. "I'm sorry anyway."
"There's nothing to apologise for," Angie said crisply. "And it's not like it's going to happen again."
There didn't seem to be anything I could say to that, so I didn't try.
"I have the number of a good therapist," Angie continued after a minute, in a softer voice. "You're not the first to have problems with trauma. She's helped a number of us."
I looked down at my hands. They'd stopped trembling now, but...
"Thank you," I said quietly. "I might take you up on that."
There was a lot of work waiting for me when I got back to the office. I started by taking apart the servers damaged in the explosion to see how much could be salvaged. My hands shook a little seeing the scorched cases, but once I'd removed those I tried to lose myself in the minutiae of computer repair.
I was only partially successful, wavering between just soldiering on and phoning the number Angie had given me. I'd never needed help before, and I wasn't exactly enamoured of the idea of starting now.
On the other hand...
Tired of the internal back and forth, at lunchtime I flipped a coin. Heads I'd phone her, tails I wouldn't.
Tails.
I cursed quietly, and phoned the therapist anyway. I left my (fake) details with her, and made an appointment to see her on Thursday afternoon.
I put the phone down quietly, and just looked at the wall blankly for a few minutes as a tightness I hadn't even been aware of began to relax.
Right.
I had started the process of dealing with it.
Rationally.
Good.
I guessed that I could go back to work now.
"Hey."
I looked up from my worktable to see Mike's concerned eyes looking down at me.
My traitorous heart gave a leap at seeing him there. At the same time, though, I really didn't need another well meaning attempt at white-knighting.
"What can I do for you this afternoon, Mr Oldfield?" I asked in a tone of voice which I hoped let him know what I wasn't in the mood for.
He raised his hands as if in defense. "I heard about last night. I just wanted to..."
I raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"
He looked like he was spending a moment to choose his next words carefully. "Check in." He gave me that little boy smile of his, and I couldn't help melting a little. "It's something of a rite of passage around here, you know."
"Thanks." A flash from last night. But no more, no more. "Well, I'm fine, as you can see," I said a little shortly.
He looked at me for a second, worry written over his face. Obviously I hadn't managed to hide my brief lapse as well as I would have liked. "Want to go out for a pint after work tonight?" he asked finally.
I couldn't help relaxing a little.
Apparently, he was capable of learning.
And... and, though I looked for one, I couldn't see any hint of an ulterior motive.
"Sure," I told him, smiling a little. "I'd like that."
The pub wasn't exactly like the ones we'd used to go to. For one thing, Apparently, we'd both lost the taste for dim lighting and shadowy corners, for some reason. Still, it was after dark, and I couldn't help being hyper aware of the surroundings, twitching a little at every movement near our table.
Mike was a little calmer about the whole thing, but even he wasn't relaxing completely. He kept on doing visual sweeps of the bar, and I could see him glancing in the mirrored wall behind the bar, checking people out whenever someone entered the front door.
I clinked my glass of wine against his pint glass. "Not exactly like old times, huh?"
He smiled briefly. "Yeah, well, maybe I'm a little old to be going out and getting plastered."
"You, Mike? Old? Never." I waved the thought away with my unoccupied hand.
"Really?"
"For one thing, if you're getting old, that means I'm older. And that's *never* something you want to insinuate about a lady, Mr Oldfield."
"Yeah? What about you?" he asked, laughing I mimed throwing my glass over him. "You're right. I'd forgotten how much of a cradle-snatcher you were when we first met."
"I'm only two years older than you," I said, with an outrage than wasn't entirely unfeigned.
"It seemed a lot more when I was in sixth form and you were a sophisticated university student."
I snorted. "As I recall, it was *you* who came onto me. If that's what you can call getting pissed enough to fall into my lap."
"I got the lady, didn't I?" he said, smirking a little.
There was an unexpected twinge in my chest which I wanted to blame on the wine, and the trauma and anything apart from Mike sitting across from me, looking at me just like he used to.
Christ, this was dangerous.
Still, I couldn't help swirling my drink in my hand and smirking at him. "Not then you didn't."
He winced. "Yeah, I remember you cutting me down to size in front of my mates." He started to laugh, and then abruptly stopped.
Oh yes.
His mates.
Jack.
I couldn't help remembering Vaughan saying that everyone in the group had lost someone.
Had killed someone.
At least I hadn't killed anyone I knew.
Small mercies.
I smiled at him, reached across the table and laid my hand over his. "I can't fault your persistence, though," I said, trying to distract him. "You kept on trying, managed to get me in the end."
He gave me a thankful look in response. "Yeah, did that, I guess."
It was far too easy, too natural to leave my hand over his, so I forced myself to lean back, away from him.
I couldn't do this again.
I wouldn't let myself.
No matter what my heart wanted, what it ached for, I had too much self respect for this.
"Enough dwelling on the past," I said with forced lightness. "What are your hot plans for the weekend?" I asked, taking sip of wine.
His look of disbelief gave my question the respect it deserved. After the haul we'd managed to retrieve,. the idea that we'd be doing anything this weekend apart from work was kind of laughable.
"If everything goes well," I added.
If we had normal hours.
If we had a normal job.
If we didn't hunt down and shoot people.
"Well, I was planning on sleeping until noon," he said, laughing and shaking his head a little, playing along. "Then I thought I'd pop down Camden Market in the afternoon."
I raised an eyebrow. "Oh yes?"
"Yeah, I've got a hot date Saturday evening," he said, aiming a grin in my direction.
I felt myself falling back into the old patterns, the old banter, and I couldn't muster the energy to resist. Not tonight. "How *could* I forget?"
"I'd be gutted if you did. Again."
For a moment, I felt the old bitterness rise within me, about how he'd taken me for granted later on, neglected me to go out with his mates. About how in recent years, the only time I'd heard from him was when he wanted something from me.
From the look on his face, and his fading smile, Mike had realised his mistake.
Probably wished he could take it back.
And, with an effort, though, I shoved the knotted feelings down, tried to let them go.
They didn't matter now, not really. And they really weren't what I needed this night of all nights.
I managed a look of mock outrage "A girl misses one date, *one*, and you never let me live it down."
With almost a sigh of relief, the smile returned to Mike's face. "Yeah, well, sitting around in an expensive restaurant like a plonker for two hours leaves an impression."
And, just like that, the air was easy between us again.
There was a part of me that couldn't quite believe I was here, as my back impacted Mike's front door, as we kissed furiously, passionately.
Neither had drunk anywhere near enough to blame it on alcohol, I thought, as Mike fumbled with the lock with one hand, never letting up.
We stumbled, almost fell, as he finally managed to open the door.
It didn't matter.
Nothing did, except this moment.
Nothing did, except each other.
The trek to the bedroom was slow, but inexoriable.
And once we were there, neither of us needed to say anything, just stripping off clothes and collapsing onto the bed.
And then...
And then...
And then, as he climaxed underneath me, I saw him mouth a name.
And it wasn't mine.
Of course it wasn't.
What had I expected, what really?
It started as a dull, almost numb ache, but by the time we had finished, it was so cold, so all-consuming, I couldn't even move.
Couldn't do anything, couldn't give him the slightest sign that he'd hurt me.
All I could do was lay there, and wait for sleep to claim me.
I was where I had dreamed of being in some of my weaker moments, ever since we'd split up.
And it hurt worse than I'd ever imagined.
Angie glanced up as I entered the lab, still in the clothing I'd been in the day before. And then she focussed behind me, obviously following the path of Mike, who'd entered the building at the same time.
I got the distinct feeling that if she had been anyone else, her eyebrows would have been raised.
"Good morning," she said neutrally.
It didn't feel like one. But, in the silent, awkward car journey over here, I'd decided to focus on the silver lining.
I might have felt like crap, like used goods, like a substitute, but morning after regrets were at least something I was familiar with.
I could work with them, work past them.
And it was so much easier to focus on them, rather than...
Rather than...
So the walk of shame was feeling oddly almost comforting at the moment.
"Good morning," I said back, and settled down in front of the computer.
But I could still feel her eyes on me, from time to time, judging, analysing.
The appointment on Thursday came and went. The therapist was a softly spoken woman with brown curly hair named Susan, who did an excellent job of making me feel safe within her office.
There may have been a few tears.
It wasn't over, but I finally felt like I could breathe again.
And I had come to a new realisation.
I wasn't going to let this happen again.
Weak and helpless was never one of my favoured styles.
"I want some more training."
Vaughan looked up from the paper he was reading. "Yeah?" he asked. Not exactly challenging, but not exactly saying 'sure' either. "I thought your job was backend. That you weren't going to need to know this kind of thing?."
I gave him a thin smile. "Apparently the enemy didn't get the memo."
"Funny that. You forget to add them to the mailing list?"
"Ha. Ha."
"Look, I'm going to tell you what I told Angie. I can get you to a certain level, but beyond that, it's not just a lesson plan. It's a process, and if you want it to work, you've got to keep on practicing."
"How long for?"
He flashed me something that approached a smile, all teeth. "If you're planning on using it? As long as you keep on breathing."
"What did Angie say?"
Another smile that was all teeth. "Where do you think she spends most of her lunchtimes?" he asked dryly.
Of course. She had Rose to protect.
"You got time for a first lesson now?"
He folded the paper, put it down on the table and stood up. "You serious about this?" he asked, looking down at me.
Making me feel small, helpless.
I didn't want to just be prey again.
I nodded firmly. "Positive."
"Good. I think I can fit you in. And I'll get you an access key to the range, so you can practise in your own time."
The unspoken statement being that I'd have to.
I was surprisingly good with this.
Concentrating on something other the still cool relationship with Angie and the... awkwardness (that I refused to categorise as anything as weak as longing) with Mike was a welcome relief.
And, if I was lucky, maybe the time I spent concentrating on shooting would give my subconscious room to work on the pieces of the puzzle we'd uncovered with the raid.
The information recovered from the raid was... inconclusive.
It was certainly suggestive, and Mike and Vaughan had been kept busy following leads, but...
I had the niggling sense that those leads had been *left* for us, to distract us, tie us up on peripheral matters that didn't really matter to the enemy's cause.
Of course, the time and effort needed to make the underground facility made it unlikely that it was intended as a distraction when it was created. So there probably was some good intel buried there, if I could tease it apart from the lies.
I was busy glaring at the screen after a long day, as if I could accomplish this through willpower alone, when Angie's voice, cool and calm, asked, "Will you be coming over tonight?"
As if it had been any other day.
As if everything had been as it was, before...
As if we hadn't just spent a week with a quiet, cold distance between us.
But the situation was of my own making, and I wasn't about to ignore an olive branch, no matter how obliquely offered.
"Sure," I replied with equal nonchalance.
I could do this.
"So," Angie said, once we'd settled into her place. "You and Mike."
I froze.
I knew the tension between us ever since that night hadn't been exactly subtle, but everyone had so far done the polite thing and ignored it.
Apparently Angie had just been waiting for the right time.
"There is no me and Mike," I said a little sourly.
"But you'd like there to be?" Angie half asked, half stated.
And *that* I really wished I had been able to keep under wraps. Not that I had ever been amazingly successful in that regard, but...
Though Angie had never really struck me as the sort to gossip like this. And I could feel her eyes on me as she waited for my response, like she was just a little too interested in my answer.
Oh.
This was what the peace offering was conditional on. If I was hung up on Mike, then, obviously...
I resisted the urge to tell Angie that it didn't quite work like that. That you could have space in your heart for more than one person.
Because, honestly, at the moment, it *was* like that. Inappropriate feelings aside, Mike really was the only person I was interested in being with.
"Yes," I said quietly, because anything else, any elaboration of how I felt would just *complicate* things.
Angie relaxed, just a little, just around the shoulders, and I knew that I had made the right decision.
The rest of the evening went smoothly. When I tried to apologise for kissing her, again, she waved it off, again citing emotional disturbance. This time she even seemed sincere when she told me nothing had changed between us.
Though I wasn't going to ask, she even asked me to stay the night.
And life finally felt like it was returning to normal.
Or at least what passed for normal with the group.
Time passed.
I slowly got better with guns, through training by Vaughan and practice on my own.
The nightmares became less frequent.
And I resumed spending a night or two a week around Angie's.
There was always something to follow, another crumb in the trail that had started with the electronic data we had seized, and I became ever more convinced that it was a line of bullshit we were being sold by the enemy.
Mike was tentatively on my side, his experience as an investigator telling him that things were never quite *this* easy.
Pearse's response to our misgivings was always the same - get something else to go on, then. And until then, we'd follow the enemy's trail, and hope they slipped up somewhere along the line.
In the mean time, when I wasn't helping with the latest investigation, I went back over old data, trying to find something, *something*, that I had missed the first time.
And, so far, my efforts had been to no avail.
The morning hadn't started off well.
Angie had smoothly glided in, and very pointedly started on her own work. Without saying a word to me or, as far as I could discover, anyone.
I thought about trying to broach the icy chill which she almost seemed to exude, but in the end I decide to concentrate on my own investigation, which actually looked like it was going somewhere for once.
I'd given up on the computer data for the moment, and concentrated on the physical structure of the underground facility. I'd put discreet inquiries out there, and managed to get a number of professional opinions on whether there was anything odd about the plans.
The temperature control system was overspecced for what the structure should need, even filled with humans and the normal kinds of machinery.
That this meant there were plans for a faciity where things would get very hot, like an industrial forge, or where things would be very cold, like a serious refrigeration store, at liquid nitrogen temperatures or below.
The consensus seemed to incline towards refrigeration, which then led to the question of what they'd need to store in those kind of conditions.
There were a number of scientific uses, but the one that the enemy had shown an interest in was storage of biological materials. Were they planning on using the facility for further research, maybe another plague?
It was hard to tell. The freezers, and anything they contained, had been long gone by the time we had got there.
And my contemplation of the very cold took me back towards Angie, still sitting across from me in the lab, still saying nothing to anyone.
I asked Vaughan about it at lunchtime, during our regular training session, as one of the people who'd known her longest.
A slightly bitter look passed over his face briefly and he gave a bark of laughter. "Yeah. Seen the date?"
I raised by eyebrows in expectation.
"It's the anniversary of when her husband came to her, turned, and said he wanted her and the girls to be with him, forever."
"Crap," I said wincing.
"Angie tends to take the day as her holiday to be pissy to all and sundry. Not that I blame her." He offered me a grin, all teeth. "It's not like I don't have one of those myself, you know," he said and raised his gun towards the target, aimed, fired, hitting the heart with a succession of bullets and a sound like thunder.
The light was starting to fade from the sky when Angie spoke for the first time that day. "Will you be coming over tonight?" Her voice had a rough edge, far from its usual clear, calm self.
I bit my lip and looked at her. She avoided my gaze, glancing down at her own desk.
I really hadn't been expecting an invitation, not tonight, but...
I couldn't believe that she'd be asking if she didn't want, need, my company.
"Sure," I replied.
Just like it was any other night.
The atmosphere in the house wasn't any easier. Rose had had a hard, tense edge to her usual adolescent attitude, and had retreated to her room to play music. And Angie hadn't shown any more inclination to talk out of the office than in, not even to tell Rose to turn the music down.
I just hoped that I was helping by being there, because I couldn't think of anything else to do.
Angie, still in silence, suddenly got up and headed towards the kitchen purposefully.
"We could order in," I said quietly.
She stopped and turned back towards me. She still hadn't said anything, but her skeptical attitude spoke for her.
"Yes, I know takeaway is unhealthy. But just this once?"
If concentrating on something would have helped her, I'd have gone for it. But she'd been doing that rather determinedly all day to no effect.
Time for a change of tactics.
Maybe relaxing might help her a little. I'd offer to cook myself, but my culinary skills were up to keeping me fed and not much beyond that.
She unbent enough to ask me, "What would you suggest?"
"I was thinking of asking Rose what she wanted."
She thought for a moment, then nodded. "Just this once."
I knocked on Rose's door. The music didn't decrease in volume, but a muffled and resentful "What?" emanated from within.
"Can I open the door?" I asked, mindful of the fact that, despite the fact that I seemed to spending a lot of time around here, I was still an intruder.
There was a scuffle from inside, and the door cracked open a bit, and Rose's head peeked out. "What?" she asked again.
"We were thinking of ordering takeaway tonight. Do you have any preferences?"
"We're having *takeaway*?" Rose asked in obvious disbelief. "And she asked what *I* wanted?"
I shrugged and waited.
"Huh," she said, eyeing me. "Pizza. I want pizza. With as much meat as possible," she said with a clear note of challenge in her voice.
"Sure," I said.
"Huh," she said again, then closed the door.
I went downstairs to give Angie the (presumably) bad news. She tensed a little, but then just nodded and simply said, "And I'd like a vegetarian pizza."
Dinner was a tense affair.
Rose scuttled down after the door had been answered, focussed on the pizza boxes as if she couldn't quite believe they existed. I passed her the box containing the meaty pizza and she immediately started devouring slices. Angie, on the other hand, lifted pieces of her pizza onto a plate, and ate them neatly with knife and fork.
I thought about following Rose's example, but, after imagining Angie's quiet disapproval, also used a plate and cutlery, lifting slices from both boxes.
No one spoke during the meal. Angie was focussed inwards, and Rose had eyes for little apart from junk food, only occasionally casting resentful glances towards her mother. After she obviously couldn't eat anymore, ROse wiped her mouth and fingers and said "Thanks," to me and me alone, before retreating upstairs again.
Angie sighed and put down her knife and fork. "I think that's enough for me as well."
I wasn't quite full, but, equally, there was no way I was going to continue eating now.
Angie grabbed a bottle of wine and two glasses from the kitchen before sitting down in the living room. She put the TV on, but I was fairly sure it was more to provide an excuse to not talk than because she was a devoted BBC 1 watcher.
I sat with her, and together we began to drink our way through the bottle of wine. At first slowly, but after Rose's bedtime of nine pm, Angie started to drink faster, with a grim determination.
She was a little way into the second bottle when she started to talk, words bursting from behind her lips as though they had been dammed under high pressure.
About her and Robert.
About how they'd met, through work, Robert's brilliance attracting her own, lesser, but still bright, flame.
About how they'd fallen in love.
About how they'd been happy.
About how it hadn't been enough.
About what he'd said after he'd been changed, after he'd changed one of their daughters in turn.
About how, even now, even after everything, she still couldn't stop loving him.
"It isn't fair," she said, still completely dry eyed. "It just isn't fair."
I hadn't been matching her drink for drink but I'd had enough that I didn't spot exactly when her expression changed. It seemed like one moment she was gazing off into the distance, half angry, half bitter, and the next she was focussed on me.
With intent.
"It isn't fair for you, either, is it? You want Mike, and he wants someoone else," she said.
"No," I whispered, the pain and the anger coming back to me. "No, it isn't."
She leaned towards me, reached towards me with one hand. "Can I?" she whispered, almost fragile for a second.
The alcohol making me slow, I wasn't quite sure what she wanted, but I couldn't deny her when she was like this. After all, she'd been there for me.
So I nodded, and she gently caressed my cheek with her hand.
"I can't even move on," she whispered against me, as she moved closer still. "Vaughan wants me, but... but I can't help thinking that I might imagine he's Robert when we... It wouldn't be fair to him if I did this," she said, and closed the last of the distance between our lips.
It wasn't a kiss for the ages, but at least, I thought as I leaned into it, this one was mutual.
This one didn't hurt.
"I want Robert," she said, a little breathless after we parted. "And you want Mike. And neither of us are going to mistake the other for someone they're not."
It wasn't the best sweet talk I'd ever had, but she was right.
Right now I *wanted* and I didn't want to mistake this for anything it wasn't.
And she definitely wasn't Mike.
And afterwards, in the lazy blur of the darkness in her room, we lay a while, recovering.
We weren't snuggling, weren't kissing, weren't wrapped in afterglow *together*.
But we'd helped each other drive back the darkness inside, and, for now, that was enough.
I felt her turn towards me, look at me for a minute. "Thank you," she whispered. "And good night," she continued, clearly in dismissal.
I rolled out of bed and gathered my clothes.
She was right.
I couldn't stay the night there.
It might raise questions.
And doing so might lead to the... wrong idea. In someone.
And, as I staggered off to the guest room, I just hoped that everything would be alright in the morning.