A/N: This is another quite sad chapter. Thank you to everyone, as always, who reads and reviews - love you all!

Sarah x

How long she sat there, just staring at her dying child, Serena was unsure. Her first instinct to cuddle Anya tight was beaten down by a vision of her child breaking at her touch. It was what she did. Everything she came into contact with, she broke it.

She loved Anya and look what had happened to her. She loved Henrik and look at the state he was in. She loved Eleanor and look at what she had gone through at the hands of her mother. Everyone she loved broke, and she was the only common factor. Her presence was the one thing that truly linked them as they broke. It was her destructive nature. The trail of destruction she constantly left behind her was killing her daughter. It was all her fault.

"I sailed in on the Good Intent with all intentions clear; a man without a mystery; a vision brought me here," Henrik sang quietly, his slightly shaky tone snapping Serena out of her inward torturing of herself. She looked to find him holding his wife and his daughter's hands.

"The ocean gave me room to roam, but the shore is calling out," Serena continued, frightened by the crack in her voice. "So I will marry, build a home, and see what that's about." Henrik looked around at her, his eyes soft and pain, and kissed her forehead, silently telling her to keep singing. "Children came by dozens then; drifting South like rain; I work the soil; I use the gun; the waves have turned to grain."

"I tried to love this Arkansas with black and bleeding hands," Henrik took over, leaning down to plant a kiss into his daughter's unkempt hair; the sight broke Serena's heart in two. "But I will not survive this life, but I'll become a man." It was Anya's favourite song from her favourite CD. Unnervingly to Serena, the whole album was written about death and anger and pain, but it was the one Anya had grown most attached to. "My brother sold my mother's house; I never shed a tear; I could watch the world in smoke; there's nothing for me here."

"I've seen behind the darkened veil, and it's all I want to know," Serena sang silently, hearing the hidden pain and tears in her own fractured voice. "So I'll sail off on the Good Intent to my true happy home."

"Yes, I'll sail off on the Good Intent, never more to roam," they sang the last line together.

It shattered her.

Unable to stay and unable to make Henrik endure her pain as well as his, she managed to choke out, "I'll be back soon." He didn't question her – that was one of the things she loved best about him – as she turned and tried to walk steadily out of the room, her knees shaking under her. She needed someone who wasn't already torn to help her out of the hole she was digging herself into. The dark, lightless pit where nightmares became reality.

She briefly thought about calling Jac or Jonny but knew she had no right to lean on them any more than she already had done. Sacha was busy and did not need the reminder that he had almost lost a daughter; she wasn't willing to put him through that deja vu.

She sighed and let the pent up anguish pour out, too pained to care if anyone saw or heard her as she stumbled down to the lift. She thumped the button with all her might until the doors opened to reveal Chantelle Lane, whom she had almost forgotten existed in her confusion.

"Mrs. Hanssen?" she whispered. Serena opened her mouth but nothing came out as Chantelle stepped away from the metal box towards her, banishing Serena's plan of getting in a lift with nowhere to go. "Serena, what's happened?" A look of devastated realisation fell on her face – still as bright and youthful as it had been seven years ago – and she gasped. "Oh, no. Is Anya..." she trailed away, nodding her head down the corridor.

Serena forced her head up and down once and immediately she was in Chantelle's embrace. "What am I meant to do?" Serena muttered.

"Be strong. Be kind. Be the Serena Hanssen we all love," Chantelle said into her ear. "OK?"

"OK," she replied, but she knew deep down she could not do this any longer. She couldn't find the strength. It was gone. Feisty Serena McKinnie was gone. Resilient Serena Campbell was gone. Persistent Serena Hanssen was gone.

Serena's phone rang and she wiped away her tears. Surprised by the caller ID, she said, "Sorry, Chantelle, but I'm going to have to take this." Chantelle nodded and bounced away down the corridor. "Hello, Satan," she answered the phone. As much as her ex-husband frustrated and angered her, she was almost glad to hear from him – it was someone to talk to that she hadn't already broken. "What are you after?"

"A chat," Edward replied simply.

"A chat."

"Yes." There was a tense silence before he admitted, "I've just spoken to Eleanor for the first time in three months and she tells me Anya has leukaemia. Why didn't you tell me?!" he demanded.

"Because it's none of your business."

"I could have helped," he pointed out.

"I don't need your help!" she snapped, pressing the button again. "I didn't need your help when-" she cut herself off abruptly, remembering that Edward had no idea exactly how and why Anya was conceived. "Never mind."

"Serena," he sighed. "You can't hide from me. You can send me away halfway across the country if you want, but you'll never be able to make me believe you're fine when you're not. I know you too well."

She got in the lift with a groan. They'd been divorced over twenty years now but he could still hear every layer of her voice, even those she herself was unaware of. "ITU. She's in ITU on a ventilator," she confessed unwillingly.

"Oh, Christ," he moaned. "Do you want me to come down for a few days?"

The offer shook her slightly and she had to make a conscious effort to collect herself. "Nah. Stay at home with Milly Molly Mandy."

"I'll go where I'm needed," he replied quickly. It was his way of life, she remembered, to follow the work wherever he found it. He found it slightly too easy to uproot himself. "Or would you like me to go and stay with Eleanor?"

"She doesn't know Anya's in ITU and your mouth's bigger than your brain."

"Bloody hell, Serena!" he snapped impatiently. "I'm trying to help and you're still insulting me!"

"Sorry," she said, stepping out of the lift and into the cafeteria, her need for caffeine too string to dismiss. "I'm sorry."

"It's OK. I get it." She heard him close a door behind him and realised he was at work; only double doors made that sound as they closed. "Just...call me if you need anything."

"Will do." She had no intention of asking that man for anything but the fact he had offered was an indication that he wasn't the total tosser she thought he was. "Thanks."

"OK, well, remember and look after yourself. You still have to sleep and eat. Don't go living on coffee," he cautioned her. He was right. He knew her too well. "I'm due in theatre in five so I'll have to go. Keep me posted, will you?" Knowing her well enough to know how much he would get out of her, he sighed, "Bye, Serena."

"Goodbye, Edward," she said, and she felt a strange and morbid significance to the words and her tone.

She hung up on him and fell onto a chair, every bone, muscle, nerve and organ in her body aching with a cold shatteredness that made her wish she was dead just for some relief. She couldn't push the image of her almost-dead daughter out of her mind and yet there was a part of her that couldn't quite believe it was true.

The most selfish part of her wanted to go and get drunk in an attempt to forget what was happening to her family. The only obstacle was her own mind – alcohol would not kill the pain. It would only magnify it. She was falling apart and she couldn't tell anyone. Not even her husband. She knew it was going to hurt him to know what was going through her mind. That she couldn't cope. That she wanted to end the pain, and that the only way to end the pain that she could see was to end her life and trust that Henrik was strong enough to keep going without her.

Everything about her life was agonising. Her daughter was dying. Her eldest daughter was pretending to cope with that fact. Her husband was trying to hold both her and himself together, and every time he successfully slotted a piece of the puzzle in the right place, another piece of her fell away.

She bought a coffee and headed for the stairs, her legs aching as she trampled clumsily up them, flashing an empty smile at colleagues she recognised. She felt them glare through the screen of strength around her to see just what she had become.

If everything she touched fell apart, and everybody she loved broke in front of her, what was she still doing here? "You should have killed yourself when you had the chance," she muttered harshly to herself, remembering all the times the thought had crossed her mind with the means at hand. She found herself at the top of the stairs, with nowhere else to go but the roof. She shrugged and stepped out onto the roof, deep patches of snow dispersed across it as the heat from the building below melted it away.

Her paper cup was hot against her now freezing hands. She wore no gloves or coat. She was practically bare against the elements. To sit here overnight would probably have been enough to kill her.

Tears rolled down her cheeks, onto her chin and neck, as she realised why her legs had taken her here. This was the relief she wanted. This was the awful, selfish relief she craved from a world of terror and agony closing in on her, suffocating her every time she tried to breathe. This was the way out of losing her child.

She walked forward carefully and placed her coffee down on the elevated ledge as she brushed away the snow, the white mess icy against her hands, and stepped up, looking over the bleakly picturesque city. There was no-one below – nobody was stupid enough to willingly go outside in these conditions except her. Nobody to see her. Nobody to stop her.

She closed her eyes, the harsh light of the winter sun shining through her eyelids and silently said goodbye to her family.

"Serena."

The familiar voice opened her eyes but she did not turn to face her husband. Rooted to the spot, unable to step forward into blissful relief or backwards into burning reality, she breathed out the breath she had intended to be her last.

"Serena."

His voice was quietly urgent, and she knew he was panicking. She realised quite suddenly that he was equally lost without her as she was without him; to abandon him would be to destroy him. She felt a hand squeezing hers as he gently pulled her backwards off the ledge, away from the edge of the roof.

He said nothing for a couple of minutes, his arms holding her body tightly to him. She did not care about the temperature or her lack of clothes. All she cared about was that Henrik was here, holding her so she couldn't simply walk off the edge of the roof. She should have known better than to think she would have got off so easily.

She wondered how he had known where to find her and what she planned. The only way she could have known was to ask him. "How did you know?"

"Edward," Henrik answered her. "He phoned me to tell me he thought you were giving up on yourself. It appears he can still read you like a book, even over a phone line." Silently she both cursed and thanked Edward Campbell, knowing that he probably heard it in her voice the second she had answered the phone to him. She felt Henrik's arms still constricting her as the snow started to fall again, soaking through her thin blouse and into her skin. She was almost surprised she still had enough warmth left in her to melt the ice into water as it hit her body.

His hands rubbed her back as they stood in the still winter air, and she realised that he could not give up on her, even if she gave up on herself. She remembered him saying as much on their wedding day. The realisation broke her until she could not stand, only upright still because Henrik was supporting her as he always did.

Not only had she broken everyone she loved, but now she had broken herself.

Hope this is alright!
Please feel free to review and tell me your thoughts on it!
Sarah x