Author Note

Many thanks, as always, for the reviews.

Sorry for the delay in updating but I've had some IT issues and lost files, meaning I'm having to re-write stuff already written. Moral of the story with laptops, 'reformat' is not the same as 'recover', and back up hard disks can also break. That was a face-palm moment if ever I've experienced one.

Mood music – Hurricane - Fleurie, Moon Shines Red – Jamie McDell, Dynasty – MIIA


Chapter Four


Hate leaves ugly scars; love leaves beautiful ones. - Mignon McLaughlin


Curled into a ball and half rolled up under the duvet, Molly might have looked like the picture of restful sleep but for the way her eyes were darting backwards and forwards restlessly under her squeezed shut eyelids, and the death grip she had on the cotton of the duvet cover as her knuckles showed white through the skin on the back of her hands. Held tightly within the depths of a dream; her mind was replaying the consequences of her decision to hide in Afghanistan after she left him behind in Headley.

Her original deployment had been a variant on her previous mentoring and training roles but took an unexpected direction when a case of right place, peculiar timing saw it turn into a secondment to a SF mission. At the time, she'd agreed to the mission without letting herself examine her motivations. With time and reflection, her reasons had been laughably obvious

Too much time apart, his illness, and her insecurities were all reasons for the problems in their marriage. Like wearing a heavy, soaked through coat, she'd been weighed down with her anxieties and regrets regarding her faults and failings in their marriage. The SF mission had been a new challenge and an escape from her current reality all rolled into one and she'd ran towards it willingly.

She had Captain McClyde labelled within minutes of the meeting with her CO starting. Intelligent, good looking and cocksure with it, he was hardcore in a way that only SF guys seemed to be. A mad bastard like he was Elvis 2.0 but with upgraded manwhoreitus tendencies proudly on display. He had needed a top shelf medic. Molly was decorated, experienced, female and available.

A Taliban War Lord had approached the ANA through covert channels offering to switch sides in return for treatment for his cancer-stricken wife and protection and re-settlement for his family. A female medic was needed, as potentially intimate treatment from a male medic would have been culturally unacceptable.

Captain McClyde's team had been a mix of people Molly had met via Elvis and two new faces. The re-connection to her Elvis memories via Spanner and Dyno was bitter sweet, particularly as Dyno was on that last fatal mission where he had been wounded himself.

The extraction was text book, and the celebrations after satisfyingly booze soaked. The drive back to where she was based in Kabul with Dyno involved a monster hangover but was fun and filled with easy banter.

In her sleep, Molly's memories of her world before morphed into terrifying techno-colour of after and she whimpered pitifully in her sleep knowing what was coming.

A loud bang as a tyre gave out on a middle of nowhere gravel road.

The sensation of tumbling like clothes in a washing machine. Being thrown with bruising force against the seat belt as the Land Rover rolled in nauseating turns and spins filled with the noise of screaming metal and the sounds of an over revving engine.

Dust in her mouth a she screamed.

The horrifying thuds of Dyno's unrestrained body being flung against the steering wheel and wind screen. Then a sickening silence so thick she'd wished to go back to the earlier noise of the car tearing itself apart.

They came to rest fifty feet below the path of the road. The contorted remains of their Army Land Rover was crushed, on its side and wedged between the walls of a drainage ditch and some scrubby trees.

Molly shifted restlessly on the bed; curling tighter into herself protectively as her body reacted to her distress. Her mouth moved in the shape of words, without making actually sounds.

One part of her mind tried to deny permission to replay the images of what she knew came next, but the images were too bright and loud to be ignored. Molly's whimpering protests and rapid breathing became harsher.

Her training meant Molly knew the truth in a situation where ignorance might have given more comfort. He was dying.

There was nothing she could do either in the claustrophobic crush and heat of the ruin vehicle, or within the smothering tangle of the duvet that was wrapped around her twisting body in the ruins of the bed.

Blood from his head injury stained Molly's clothes and hands as she cradled his head in her lap; the bright red darkening to claret colour as it dried as time passed.

Dyno talked to his wife as his life slowly drained away. Murmuring her name, mixed with words of apology and love.

In his final moments, Molly had been the one talking, as she did out loud within the dream. Begging him to fight, to wait out, to try. For him. For her. For his absent wife, Ellie.

When the life final left his eyes, she sobbed for them both because twisted up inside her own head with the trauma of watching a man die over the space of many hours trapped in the heat of the wrecked Land Rover, she decided on some truths. She was the problem…not enough of a Medic to save Dyno where Georgie had succeeded a year before. Not enough of a wife… because Georgie was who he turned to at Headley. Just not enough.

This nightmare always ended the same way. His death and Molly screaming out and sobbing for the husband who didn't need or want her anymore. Who wasn't there anymore to snatch her back from the terrifying void between sleep and awake.

She braced herself for it, the absence of comfort, even as his name tumbled from her lips in staccato, broken syllables around her panicky gasps for breath.

Rolling onto her stomach, she buried her head into the bedding and sobbed her anguish into the mattress.

This time was different because he heard and responded to her pleading. Cared again to curl his long, lean body around her tiny, shuddering frame; offering the shelter she craved but always woke to find missing. Strong arms came across her back and tighten, and she was held secure finally.

Molly rolled towards him automatically, half laying across his chest with her face buried against the warmth of his neck like she wanted to be absorbed into his very skin and listened to the rumble of his voice through his chest as he whispered her name and murmured phrases of reassurance.

"You're okay, Molly. I have you. I'm here…you're safe."

Molly's breathing stuttered in and out around her sobs as shudders and ripples of reaction shivered through the muscles of her back under his stroking hands.

He pressed kisses against her face and hair, but it was the aching familiarity of his scent and the solid warmth his chest under her cheek that made her finally let herself relax into the contours of his body.

"I love you. You're safe."

Her breathing started to slow to match his. Sobs quieting then stopping.

"I'm here. I love you. You're safe."

Molly came back to calmness and quiet slowly. Believing in the words in the dream, if not the physical reality of the form underneath her, she let herself relax into the illusion of the safety of him and sleep, because safe isn't something she's felt in a very long time.

ooOOoo

Molly shifted in his arms. Her small fingers curling and uncurling against the skin of his neck where they are tucked under the collar of his uniform shirt before she settles again as his arms tighten around her more securely.

Worry and guilt crease Charles' forehead. The first in case she slipped back into her nightmares despite the silent, watchful sentry duty he'd held over her sleep for the last few hours. The second because he knows he shouldn't be holding her like this, even though it's giving them both needful comfort.

The languid, welcome weight of her warmth laid out across his chest shifts again as she nuzzles her face against the nook between the slope of his shoulder and his neck. The long sleepy huff of her breath she makes as she half sighs half yawns while straighten and stretching makes him smile because it reminds him of happier times before…

The way she curls herself back into him, trustingly moulding her body around his with a faster huff of breath as wakefulness comes closer, makes the smile on his face straighten back out into his early frown. His conflicted emotions are written clearly on his face once again.

He holds his breath, careful not to move in case he startles her and ends the achingly familiar, simple pleasure of witnessing her waking up. It's a bitter sweet sort of feeling because he knows now that he didn't appreciate, enough, the privilege of simple moments like this when they were together.

That's the thing about loss, it brings with it the sting of regrets but he's grateful to be able to feel the pain. In the numbing muddle his head had become after witnessing Elvis' loss he'd lost the ability to feel much of anything at all. So, even if the moment with her hurts, he's glad to be able to feel that honest emotion again.

There's comfort in this moment too, because at least he can see that in all their time being separated, this part of her hasn't changed. For this brief period of time he holds her secure and plaint against him, while he's allowed, and feels a contentment that has been missing for a very, very long time.

Of course, it doesn't last. He counts twenty slow thrums of Molly's pulse under his hand against her neck and feels the moment when her heart rate starts to fly as she stiffens and her breathing shortens and quickens. Her hand moves away from the contact with his skin like it burns.

Before she can sit up or try to separate them, he catches her hand in his, presses a kiss to her palm then holds her palm flight against his chest. She can feel his heart thumping under her splayed fingers. The rhythm is faster than before, much like her own.

Molly's not sure why, but she lets hr fingers trace across his gently, like a caress. When he splays his fingers apart to engulf hers, she lets him and stares at the way they knit together. As though the sight of her smaller fingers dwarf by his has her mesmerised.

The contrast of soft sheen of his wedding band next to her naked ring finger is as jarring as it is confusing.

"You still wear it."

"I'm a married man."

His voice is sleep roughened. A reminder of countless morning when they would wake up wrapper around each other, the very definition of together. The memory stirs up feelings in Molly that she's automatically scared to explore.

Fear makes her sharp and brittle, and she strikes out instinctively, trying to wound.

"Did you wear it when you fucked her?"

"No but you weren't wearing your rings at the time either."

Then she's on fire and he's going to burn too.


Some insight into my version of what Molly was going through around those last phone calls and emails and an explanation for why she's quite so broken and on the run emotionally speaking.