A/N: Hello again. Because nobody else will listen, let me just say something: SIX MORE SLEEPS. I'm like a kid counting down to Christmas (I'm actually going to Florida but that's how excited I am). Packing today and the suitcase wouldn't fit on the scales. We know, however, that our oldest dog weighs 24kg, so my brother tested her weight against the suitcases - if it was lighter than her it was fine. Poor Boo Boo was not impressed at being lifted up repeatedly by my brother. Her name is actually Maggie but Dad started calling her Boo Boo when I was about eight and it kinda stuck.

Anyway, enough of my ridiculous ramblings; thank you, yet again, to everyone who has read and reviewed so far!

Sarah x


Hanssen got out and started filling the fuel tank up in a quiet countryside station, resisting the temptation to hit his head off the roof of the car in frustration. His efforts to console a quiet, dead Serena were like talking to a brick wall most of the time; he got very little reaction from her, and he knew it was down to her self-discipline that she wasn't in floods of tears.

He knew she was upset – he had heard her crying in the shower and seen her tears as they left the hotel – but she wasn't letting the pain show. She was just calm. Frighteningly so.

He couldn't comprehend how she was doing it. It came naturally to him, but he had seen her angry and upset and, though she tried, she never quite disguised it. Which left another option: numbness. And numbness was never a good thing. It was the only thing more destructive than pain. It was the only thing that could be more agonising than pain. It was its own form of pain, and it was not easily expressed. It explained the dead stillness exuding from the woman.

He started slightly when the passenger door opened. "Just going to the bathroom," Serena told him. He must have given her a distrustful look because she added, "Promise. It's not like I'm in any condition to leg it while your back's turned, if that's what you're thinking."

She left him to finish putting fuel into the car and stop himself from going after her. He hated this. Granted, they were hardly the best of friends, but he couldn't bear to see her crawl back into her shell like this. This wasn't Serena Campbell. Not the one he knew. He actually trusted this version of the woman even less than the original model.

He sighed and went to pay for the fuel and get Serena a sandwich. As he handed over the cash, Serena walked out of the bathrooms, looking far worse than when she had left him. Something told him she had just been sick again. She was deathly pale yet again.

The girl behind the counter gave him his change and he silently stepped towards Serena, handing her the food. "You should eat."

"Pot and kettle?" she raised an eyebrow at him. He stared her down, for once with more intent than her, and she said, "Please don't do this." He was a little surprised that her voice came out weak and cracked, but he didn't need to ask what she meant by 'this.' He knew she was telling him to leave her to stew but he didn't want to. It wouldn't do her any good; he knew her well enough to know at least that.

"Your serenity, right now, matches your name," he informed her. "In light of what has happened, that isn't natural."

She looked at the floor before she walked away from him, leaving him standing there like a moron. He followed her, running after her before she could get in the car, ignoring the pain in caused him to make his legs move faster than normal. "Ms. Campbell," he said. She ignored him. "Serena!" he used her first name to get her attention.

He could tell that it was with a great deal of reluctance that she turned on her heel to face him. "Stop this."

"Stop what?" she demanded. "Am I pissing you off, Mr. Hanssen?" she sneered.

He took a few steps towards her and replied, "No. But it's unnerving. Stop acting like nothing has happened."

"So I'm not pissing you off," she accepted. "But I am scaring you?"

"Yes."

"Who would have thought remaining calm would scare the calmest person I've ever met?" It was sarcastic. Unfeeling. Cold. He just stared at her again, trying to see past her façade of eerie calm. She looked away to the car, and he saw her finding anything to look at that didn't care about her. "I'm sorry," she apologised. "I shouldn't be so horrible to you."

"No, you shouldn't," he agreed. "You should talk to me. You need to talk to me."

She looked up at him, her face in pieces, façade on the floor, all pretense between them, for a moment, destroyed. "Would you be offended if I...asked for a hug?" she said, her soft voice barely audible. "It won't help matters but it might make me feel a little bit better."

He forced back a cynical smile and gestured for her to come towards him. She stepped into his arms and he gently hugged her, unsure if he was doing it right. It wasn't something he was used to doing. His bruises protested as her arms slipped around his waist but he did not complain. He never complained about anything, so why start now?

"Thank you," she whispered. "I'm being a bitch, aren't I?"

"Just a little bit," he admitted. He rubbed her back softly and added, "I don't mind. I'm used to you by now."

He felt her smile into his chest before she pulled away and retorted, "Likewise."

"How about we go for a walk? It can't be doing your muscles any favours to sit in that seat," he suggested. She nodded and got in the car. Finally, after so long of getting nothing out of her, he was getting somewhere.

He parked at the top of an unpaved, deserted single track road and cut the engine. Together they got out of the car and started walking side by side. "If you can't face Holby just yet, there are plenty of derelict fields to camp in," he joked.

"All we have to do is think of something to tell them," she replied. "I suppose it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say we got into a bar fight, would it?" she added. He smiled to himself; no. it wouldn't actually. Everyone knew Serena had a tendency to rile people, and make relatively small matters explode into massive issues.

"So what's the whole story, in case anyone asks?" he said.

"Well, we could always say that three drunk guys were fighting and we tried to split them up," she explained, "and were repaid with a good few bruises. I've been known to play the hero, and I'm sure it's believable of you as well."

"Because that doesn't make us sound like morons at all," he retorted.

"Less embarrassing than the truth," she pointed out grimly. They walked down the old road together, silently agreeing on the lie they were to tell. "The truth is..." she tried to describe, but she was so obviously lost for words for what had happened.

He sighed gently and felt her fingers brushing his. She cautiously took his hand; he realised now that she needed comforting. She was just too proud to ask for it. "I understand," he assured her. "I understand you don't know what you feel right now."

She gave a harsh, cold, bitter laugh he hated to hear. It didn't suit her.

"I don't even know what I'm meant to feel."

"You're not meant to feel any certain emotion," he answered her, squeezing her hand lightly. "And you shouldn't let anyone tell you what to feel."

"When did you become so insightful?" she demanded.

"I have always been insightful," he informed her. "I think many things to myself. I'm just not stupid enough to say them aloud."

"You are many things," she said, her tone slightly accusatory, "but stupid definitely isn't one of them."

"Coming from you, I'll take that as a compliment."

They walked the track for over an hour, right around in a square until it led them to the quiet main road. He had never felt so close to someone, but he had also never felt so estranged from anyone in his life before. Not even his father. Not even Maja. Because with them he had known the reasons and had simply walked away; here he was walking alongside a woman who was so distant he felt he could shout in her face and she wouldn't feel a thing.

He turned to face her when they reached he car, wanting to know if she was as calm as she let him see. He brushed her hair out of her eyes with the tips of his fingers. She was unerringly comfortable with his touch for a woman who had been attacked less than twenty-four hours ago. Her hand reached up for his, her hands surprisingly cold.

"Henrik," she whispered. "I need to tell you something." It wasn't often she used his first name so he quickly became worried.

"Go on."

"I remembered something about last night," she confessed. "Eleanor phoned. She annoyed me and we went for a walk. We were talking," she explained. "You..." she hesitated.

"What did I do?" he asked her gently, dreading to think what he might have done.

"You were about to kiss me but I pleaded ignorance and offered you a takeaway," she blurted out, and Hanssen soon realised that this made everything more complicated. He could vaguely remember it now; she had grinned up at him, and he had wondered if she had realised that, in that moment, something had drawn him to her. "You tried to kiss me," she repeated. "Can you remember why?"

He shook his head. He didn't say that he remembered that he had wanted to kiss her. He knew that would only confuse her. So for her sake, he kept his mouth shut. "I'm sure everything will come back to us in the end," she reassured him.

That attraction burned again as she stood before him but he knew better than to act on it. It would have been completely out of order for him to kiss her when she needed him the most. She was confused and upset already, and he wasn't going to add to that by confusing their bond when they had only just came upon an unsaid agreement to be civil and stand by each other.

She touched the bruises on his face softly and asked him, "You still don't remember how you got these?"

"Unfortunately not," he said. "I have a suspicion it may have been the price I paid in an effort to protect you."

"If so, that effort was in vain, wasn't it?"

"Do you recall why you slapped me?" he asked when he fingers fell painfully onto the cut she had admitted to causing. She shook her head.

He put his hand lightly against her back and guided her to the car. When he started the engine, he also began thinking and trying with all his might to remember something, anything, about last night and what happened. When did remembering facts become so difficult? Things he didn't need, or want, to remember came so easily to him and yet when he needed to remember what happened for himself and for Serena, he came up with next to nothing. It was ridiculously frustrating.

He briefly looked around at her before returning his attention to the road, and she looked at him. "I'm fine," she assured him before he could even ask her anything. "It may be a blessing in disguise that Eleanor threw a strop and went to a friend's for two weeks. Gives this all time to heal," she gestured to her neck and chest. "She needn't know a thing about it."

"Is that wise?" he asked sceptically.

"Probably not," she admitted. "But I don't think I have it in me to tell her. Ignorance is bliss and all that."

"The biggest lie ever told."


Hope this is OK!
Please feel free to review and tell me what you think!
Sarah x