Miles Apart

Disclaimer: The song is Snow Patrol and Martha Wainwright "Set Fire to the Third Bar" and there are references to the season 13 finale.

This chapter and the one after it does not have Ray's POV in chronological order from the rest of the story, but Neela's POV is and I'm not too fond of the Rap part of this chapter. I'm not sure when my next update will be because exams are looming, but it won't be for a while. Enjoy, and good luck to anyone who also has exams!

I'm miles from where you are,
I lay down on the cold ground
and I, I pray that something picks me up
and sets me down in your warm arms

He dreams about a long ago memory.

He's helping her carry her things up the stairs. As he glances back, he sees she's watching him reproachfully, eyes full of mistrust and suspicion and he just knows she's wondering whether she made the right decision. He finds himself grinning in spite of himself.

He gets to his apartment door, opens it and holds it open with his shoulder whilst watching her come in.

He watches her face fall as she takes in the numerous pizza boxes and dirty laundry scattered around the place and thinks that maybe he should have tidied before she moved in. Then again, maybe not. He doesn't want to give her false impressions or anything.

"Welcome Roomie, to my palace."

And as he thinks of new eras and all good times that lay ahead, not even her murderous glances could knock out the amusement from his eyes.

The image fades and turns into another.

She's trapped in a burning building.

He doesn't quite know how he knows it, but he does.

From within the confines of the hospital, he feels his heart racing and a deep, unsettling feeling in his stomach that something is wrong, very wrong. He drops everything and starts running even though he knows it is miles away to where she is, and he could never get there in time.

But it doesn't matter. He runs, faster than he's ever run, but no matter how fast he goes, he doesn't seem to be getting anywhere.

Then all of a sudden everything around him sets ablaze; the smoke sending him to his knees and into despair.

Suddenly he can make out a figure from several feet away from him, and it's a figure he knows so well. He uses all his strength to propel himself up, towards this figure. When he gets there, the figure stumbles into his arms.

She says one word. "Ray," and it comes out in a long wheeze. She's covered in soot and is having trouble breathing. She's trying to focus on his gaze, but he knows she's finding it difficult.

"Neela?" he shakes her gently.

She starts wheezing and suddenly grips his spare hand.

Suddenly her eyes close and the grip loosens and her body becomes still.

And from the dullness radiating from his heart, he knows she's gone.

His hands ball into fists and he holds her tighter, sobbing into her hair, wondering how on earth anything can ever be the same again. Without her he is nothing.

He wakes up suddenly, with his heart pounding and his hands clenched into fists, scenes of Neela dead fresh in his mind. With relief he realises it was only a dream, but it takes a while for the feeling of despair to disperse.

He glances quickly at the alarm clock beside his bed and drags himself out, ready to start his early shift. Automatically his gaze shifts across the hall to Neela's room, as if expecting to see her emerge, but it's not too long before he remembers she doesn't live here anymore. It's going to take a while to get used to that and the bare, empty feeling of their- his apartment.

The notice he's pinned on the fridge reminds him that Neela wants him to fix her television and he decides to do it before he starts his shift. Best to get it over and done with, he muses.

The trip to Abby's house is a solitary one, and it's strange taking this route without Neela with him, joking like they usually did on their way to reunite the Terrible Trio. It'll be the first time he's seen her properly since she moved out, and he's not quite sure if he's ready to.

He knocks on her apartment door repeatedly, and when she finally answers with a "What are you doing here?" he can't help but note her refusal to look him in the eye and the slight flush of her cheeks.

There's something different about her, he thinks, and he's not entirely sure that's a good thing.

As he surveys the place he notes with some despair that the apartment is completely tidy with not a take out box in sight. Maybe Abby's place is perfect for her and maybe his meant nothing.

He fixes the tv in minutes; it's a problem he finds ridiculously trivial and he tells Neela so when she returns from the bathroom. She rolls her eyes at him.

"When do you start work?" he asks.

"In an hour."

He nods, hands in pockets. "I'll wait for you."


I find the map and draw a straight line
Over rivers, farms, and state lines
The distance from 'A' to where you'd be
It's only finger-lengths that I see
I touch the place where I'd find your face
My finger in creases of distant dark places

"Welcome to my palace," he says almost bitterly as they both enter the house together.

She casts a gaze around the spacious house, noting its extreme tidiness and thinking with slight despair that it's just not Ray's house- doesn't carry the same ambience of their- his apartment. The décor is slightly more tasteful than what she's used to, thinking that Ray's mother must be the expert in that area. Her eyes follow to the large L-shaped sofa and observes two prosthetic legs resting against them. They seem so out of place against the rest of the room that she would have found it almost amusing had it not been for the situation.

She turns her gaze back ahead to Ray, who seems unwilling to look at her, and takes a moment to truly observe him. She doesn't look down at his legs- they bring back a lot of awful memories and instead focuses on his face. His eyes are full of deep, dark, unsettling emotion, and she wonders if there is any way to rid him of it. His cheeks are slightly flushed as if he is angered, but then why wouldn't he be? She expected him to be hostile and it saddens her somehow that for the first time ever, he hasn't broken her expectations of him. The deep bruises on his face have been replaced by scars, marking both a physical and emotional change in him. She hates this change in him, even more so because she knows she is to blame, and she questions whether the Old Ray is there somewhere.

It strikes her suddenly that she has no idea what to say to him. All the practised conversations in her head were all flowing and wonderful apologies, yet she can't seem to muster the right words to say to him.

She hesitantly sits down on the sofa, whilst he remains on the other side of the room.

She swallows. "We've missed you."

The words hang in the air and she notes his slight reaction to her words; a participle jerk of his face towards her.

She looks down at her hands. "The ER's been a mess without you actually. All these new crazy people who have no idea what they're doing and only a small army of us left to fight back. Things aren't as fun anymore."

She watches as his eyes grow vaguely nostalgic, and hope begins to well up within her.

It takes her a while before she is able to ask the question she's been dying to ask to start with.

"How have you been, Ray?"

And suddenly the wistful look in his eyes shatters.

He emits a bitter laugh. "Oh just great Neela. The last few months of sheer pain have been wonderful. I do so enjoy my humiliating trips to physiotherapy, but most of all I enjoy having to choose whether to wear prosthetics or sit in a wheel chair all day."

The pain cuts at her where he's aimed.

"Ray I-,"

"Forget it," he says sharply. "You have no idea what the last few months have been like for me. The pain, the humiliation, the anger. I despise not being able to ever have my old life back, to never know the simplicity of walking on my own legs again. Yet you have the audacity to walk back in my life as if it's okay to pick up where we left off?"

She closes her eyes briefly. "I don't think that, Ray. And I don't think the way you are should compromise the person you are."

"Then why did you come back here, Neela?"

"Because I promised," she replies, as if it's the strongest reason out there in the universe.

"Since when do promises mean a thing to you?"

And the words sting, making her remember every time she hurt or betrayed him.

"I never meant to hurt you, Ray, and I'm sorry for all the times that I did."

She watches as his fists clench beside him, his eyes closing briefly.

"You toy with people's hearts as if they're just objects. You held me at the end of a string with little regard to where you threw me, and I foolishly kept holding on."

As he says the words, she can almost hear him saying "You gave me hope and I like a fool believe you. I waited for you, I trusted you, I fought for you and I even fell in love with you."

"You're not some kind of object to me, Ray! Is that what you think you mean to me? This, what's between us was never meant to be a game. We weren't supposed to get hurt and I was never meant to lose you. For a long time you were the most important thing in my life, the centre of my universe when my husband should have been. I had to hide that from him, I had to hide that from you Ray. I had to push you away because if I had stayed any longer I wouldn't have been able to fight what I felt for you any longer. If I pushed you away it was only because I was scared, so scared of holding you closer than I was meant to."

He moves nearer to her. "Then why did you choose Gates?"

"Because he never made me feel like I was betraying Michael. Tony was never the one who made me feel vulnerable, scared of what I felt. He never knew the right words to make me feel better, nor did he ever have such an impact on my heart." And then she adds softly, "Neither did Michael."

He doesn't have anything to say to that, and for a while the two of them sit in silence. Even though she's so close to him, she's never felt so far apart.

"I can't forgive you." His words hang in the air, and she hangs her head, accepting the words she knew she was always going to hear and like a prisoner starting his jail sentence, she admits defeat.

Slowly, she turns her gaze back to him, and he looks at her properly, his eyes not full of anger or betrayal, but remorse and regret.

"It still hurts," he continues softly. "Every day I hope to get pass the anger I feel, but every morning I still wake up the same. You're not the one to blame for my accident, God knows that it was a hell of a lot of alcohol and bad judgement that got me here, but Neela, I'm sorry but a big part of me still can't help but blame you."

Tears are streaming down her face. "I still blame me too," she says, her voice starting to break. She stands up, frantically trying to wipe away the tears. "I should go- I've wasted enough of your day."

"Neela-,"

She rummages through her bag and when she finds what she's looking for she interrupts him, handing him the small cardboard box in her hands.

"Here," she says, thrusting it at him.

He looks at it in confusion.

"After my accident, I couldn't move, could barely breathe and without you with me I had no reason to. Without you I was nothing, but then I found your CD." She smiles slightly. "I listened to it all the time. I know every single word to every song, every note to your guitar and without it I wouldn't have pulled through. Every time I listened to your CD I wrote you a letter. They're in the box."

He starts to say something and then confusion clouds his face. "I thought that you broke your leg during your accident?"

She looks at him intently for a long moment and then she shakes her head sadly. "It doesn't really matter."

She starts to walk towards the door and stops and turns around to him. "If the day ever comes and you wake up and realise you don't hate me anymore, I'll still be waiting for you."