A/N: Yes, the chapters are getting longer. Yes, I do finally know here I'm going with this. Yes, I actually am starting to enjoy myself. Thanks for bearing with.
DISCLAIMER: You've reached chapter four and nothing has changed in this department. I still haven't bought the rights. They're still not mine.

4

At Randall's insistence, they returned to the stark light of the hospital corridors. The brisk wind had chilled the bone to a point beyond which it could be idly ignored and Randall, empowered by a sudden realisation of duty, felt an urge to "be there" for those around him—any effort to spurn the cowardice and self-centeredness of which he believed responsible for Lix's sorrow. It was a pitiful and much belated attempt to right a much larger wrong—this he acknowledged to himself sadly—yet anything was better than years of idly rearranging paperclips. So, with his lips cemented in a thin, bitter line, Randall staunchly led the way through the maze of flickering, bustling, beeping corridors to Freddie's bedside.

Lix was aware that Randall's hand was still in hers. This probably looks bad, doesn't it? She knew she should let go. Like so much of her life at the moment, rather than making things clearer this only further blurred the lines. There had always been something else with Randall; unfortunately right now she had no idea what that thing was. So she squeezed his hand tighter and followed.

They were at a General Franco supporters' rally in Andalucía when Lix had first allowed him to grasp her hand and guide her from the crowd. They hadn't expected violence—the rebels were few in the area at the time and Franco's supporters were fuelled by an aggressive certainty for their cause—but when a bottle was thrown into the throng from an anonymous rooftop the tenuous peace was broken. Perhaps they shouldn't have positioned their vantage point from within the crowd for suddenly a ruckus broke out around them and Lix, in both admirable and foolish dedication to the perfect photograph, made no attempt to flee to safer ground. She recalled glimpsing from behind her lens Randall's eyes widen in horror before she collapsed haphazard in his arms, blood and glass smattered across her cheek. She tried to brush it away but recoiled at the sight of her hot blood glistening across her palm. A sudden flash of pain struck her temple and she began to sway. He led her then, squeezing through the crush of bodies and angry shouts to a building at the edge of the square—a block of flats, ancient and narrow with colourful trellises supporting an invasion of overgrown tomato plants. They crouched in the shelter of the doorway and only then did Lix swat his hand away.

"I'm fine."

He eyed her reproachfully. "You need to clean that before it gets infected."

"Yes, seriously Randall, I'm fine. I can do it myself."

"You've got bits of glass in you." His eyebrows were raised, his mouth askew in half amusement, half exasperation.

She glared at him. "Just go and get the bloody photo."

He sighed, momentarily giving away his worry. "Take the keys, then. Clean yourself up." He gazed intently into her eyes, wanting her to know his concern. "Please, Lix. No more work today. I can't have you in any more pieces."

They reached the acute admissions and subconsciously dropped hands when met by the ward sister.

"Frederick Lyon? He's been relocated to Orthopaedics."

"Orthopaedics?"

"Follow the signs."

Lix shared an exasperated glance with Randall. He noticed her eyes were dry; slightly red-rimmed but dry. She had already recomposed herself into the tough, impenetrable Lix he knew only too well. She's remarkable.

"Come on, Randall." Her eyes widened at him impatiently.

He smiled slightly to himself. "I think I saw a sign that way."

Randall could recall another time, deep in the past, when Lix's impatience had made him smile.

They had crept into the bar on a whim, eager to quit the eerily silent streets of nighttime Madrid. The civil war had driven most families to the countryside and the city they left behind was populated mostly by socialist rebels and a gradually increasing number of rehoused nationalist revelers. A sinister sense of quiet abandonment infiltrated the usually vibrant nightlife of the downtown soho area where bars, clubs and cinemas used to spill into the streets with a joie de vivre akin to liberation. In some ways it was a form of liberation to enter the bars and allow oneself to feel the thrill of cool jazz, alcohol and flirting light the oft-dead fire of the belly. Although war had condemned the Madrid nightlife to a form of conditioned restraint, the bars and clubs remained still a source of relief from the harsh realities of daytime, where those who wished to forget for a moment such horrors could drink, be merry and do just that.

Randall was an eager drinker then. The bar, hazy with cigarette smoke and muted lights, was like a mirage for those with a thirst for alcohol. Such was Randall; he threw back his first three fingers of scotch with the enthusiasm of a half-starved man met with a horse. The liquor scorched his throat with a paradoxically cold fire, provoking an involuntary growl of both shock and satisfaction to rumble from his lips. It was then, when he unclenched his eyes for another glass, that Lix appeared suddenly before him. Rather she had flounced—her hair bobbing and skin gleaming in the smoky haze—and now stood, eyes widely expectant, hands on hips, looking down at him with an air of firm determination.

"No. Absolutely not."

"Loosen up a bit," she persisted.

He laughed and shook his head, raising his eyebrows above his glass as he took another sip.

She glared at him. "Oh Randall, you are so boring."

"No." He smirked as he downed the rest of the glass. "I'm not boring. I just need a lot more whiskey."

"Hurry up with it, then." When he persisted to tease her with a look of cool disregard, she continued, "If you don't, I'll just have to dance with someone else." Her eyes flashed, daring him.

And then he had smiled, his thoughts turned serious. "You really are bewitching, Lix." The words escaped before he had time to consider them and hung thick in the air.

Lix's eyes widened. She was surprised, but quickly hid it. "Randall—" her voice rang with a tone of warning.

Randall shook his head as if to recollect his thoughts and laughed weakly to himself. Maybe the drink had gone to his head quicker than it used to. Nevertheless, her apparition had caused a bolt of realisation to hit him like a sharp slap. He had to stop pretending he wasn't incredibly attracted to her.

Lix bit her lip and gave an anxious sigh. "Just drink up, Randall, so we can have some fun. I haven't had fun in so long." Her impatience was genuine now. She desperately needed to lose herself.

Randall finally nodded. It wasn't the time. What they needed now was to drink and dance and recklessly waste their petty cash on card games, not—dare he believe it?—fall in love.

The night sister on the orthopaedic ward was not to be persuaded any other way. "For patients in his condition we can only allow family visitors."

"His condition—?"

Through a crack in the curtains Lix could see a woman hovering at the bedside. For a moment she thought it was the nurse. However, the light catching on the woman's brooch gave away her identity in an instant. Lix would recognise that brooch anywhere.

"And what about Bel?" Lix pressed the sister smugly.

"Mr Lyon's wife," said the sister pointedly, "is welcome at his bedside."

Randall exchanged a slow glance with Lix, his eyebrows twitching. Had it not been for a drowning sense of worry, he would have slipped her a wry smile.

Lix whacked his arm half-heartedly with the back of her hand and turned away from the bed. Her eyes when she looked up at him were serious and sad.

"Like that's not a familiar lie."

His half-smile slipped and he nodded, looking away. His hands drifted absently to his tie and began to absurdly loosen and tighten the knot. He could not look at her as his hands, shaking and pitiful, attempted to control this suffocating sense of loss.

Lix squeezed her eyes shut briefly to prevent herself from rolling them. Turning to the sister, she tentatively spoke, "What is his condition? Can we at least have that?"

The sister nodded and referred to a note in her hand. "He has three broken ribs; his collar-bone, neck, jaw and right arm are also broken. He suffered several serious surface abrasions and he is also experiencing some internal bleeding." She shuffled through her notes, sighing. "We are confident the spinal injury will not have lasting paralytic effects but he will need extensive rehabilitation." She looked up from her notes then and spoke to them directly, her mouth thin and grim, "And we are still awaiting the neurology report."

Lix's mouth was slightly agape and desperately dry. Randall found the words for her.

"Will he live?"

The sister began directing them out of the ward as she spoke. Her tone was dry, cruelly expressionless. "That depends what you mean by 'live'. It is likely he will never talk, let alone walk, ever again."

The sister closed the doors behind them and Lix and Randall were alone in the corridor. The space seemed suddenly vast. Lix's hand covered her lips in a pathetic attempt to hide her horror; Randall pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. They both felt suddenly nauseous.

"Please. Let's go. I need to go home." Lix spoke quietly.

They headed down the corridor, side-by-side, not touching and avoiding each other's eyes. It had been a cruel way to come crashing to earth; Lix and Randall had just realised that their own shared problems were pathetically small.

A/N: If you've read this far, oh my goodness I love you and you are fabulous. Thank you! Rewards are coming up! The Lix/Randall situation is hotting up in both the present and the past. Woohoo!