A/N: Hey y'all,

So, while I officially looking for my next job, I've been working on this... I fear it might feel like a bit of a non-chapter to those of us (me) who love angst and drama, but, I don't know, it felt like something that's needed, since I've been ignoring trying to write CJ for long enough. (His character intimidates me and I don't think I'll ever feel confident with writing his character since he's, you know, the best...)

Also, massive shoutout to The Man, Tony Grounds, for making these characters I love so much... and for making my week with an incredibly generous email. What a cool dude he is.

Anyways, please review and give your insights because I feel like I really need them, pretty please!

LOVE & HUGS,

Stars Walk Backward

"If you're anything like me,
There's a justice system in your head
For names you'll never speak again,
And you make your ruthless rulings.

Each new enemy turns to steel
They become the bars that confine you,
In your own little golden prison cell...

But Darling, there is where you meet yourself."

––"If you're anything like me," - Taylor Swift

XXI

Charles watched Molly closely as they made their way back into Central London. As they hurried through the cold toward Upton Park tube, mercifully only six minute walk, Charles was conscious of his wife's incredibly hurried walking pace. He was long used to consciously checking his stride as she often complained his 'daddy long legs' meant he left her being dragged behind him, but suddenly she was charging ahead, her eyes set forward in a determined fashion. He held her as tightly as he could, aware of her nerves by her unnaturally stiff posture as he held her tightly around her shoulders. She held onto him with both her hands, one around his middle, latched into his belt loop, while the other loosely held onto his jacket. Reeling from his discussion with Belinda, he was on edge just by seeing how on edge she was. Luckily their time in the dark was short lived and they soon met the strangely comforting bright lights of the station. It was only then that he let her go, and even then, he did so mostly out of necessity in order to get through the ticket gates.

They rushed into the incoming District Line train which was uncomfortably stuffy in comparison to the chill of the outdoors. Taking a seat beside Molly, Charles was pleased to see the train was quiet and relatively deserted, bar the odd few people scattered throughout. Still though, Molly made a conscious choice to sit at the very end of the train, despite the fact there were many lining the carriage that were closer. It confused him momentarily, until he noticed the way she sat sideways in the seat with her back to the wall and it occurred to him that she might just be doing so to avoid the chance of a stranger sitting beside her, or sneaking up on her from behind. The thought stirred her stomach with unease and a deep-seated fury that she should have cause to be so paranoid about her own personal safety in the first place.

Immediately, he moved to hold her against him, an ingrained instinct he did almost without consideration. She leant her forehead against his collarbone, leaning over the armrest that separated them with the quiet affection of a loyal house cat.

"Okay?" he murmured, watching her tired features smile at him with half-closed eyes.

"Hearts and rainbows, me," she murmured, ever cheery and sarcastic. "What about you?" She reached over and stroked her hand down his cheek, her colourful deep green eyes watching him intently. He kissed her head with a renewed vigour, grateful and touched by her automatic urge to care for him.

"It was not the greatest of days, reliving all of that," he admitted softly, smoothing his hand over hers where her other held his against his knee. "But I just missed you, most of all," he added against her ear, feeling his cheeks warm a fraction at the confession. She sighed out a noise of humour and tilted her head back up to look at him, her eyes round with an air of surprise and modesty, even after all this time.

"Soft fool," she scoffed gently, though she leant into him all the same.

"And proud of it," he whispered unashamedly, lowering his face to meet hers, flicking his eyes over her features, unable to keep from glancing at her lips. He tried his best not to be distracted by the soft curve of her breast against his arm as she leaned upward to meet him, but the more he tried not to think about it, the more he inevitably did. Her lips were still chilled from the cold as they touched his; the first time intended to be light while the second lingered. He pushed his hands, now gloveless, into her hair, loose and silky against his partially calloused fingers and she sighed against his face as he pulled back enough to look over her again. He felt foolish with just how worked up he could get just by the most chaste of kisses, his chest feeling tight with a pressure that was becoming more and more prevalent since the day he came back from the dead for the second time, as he saw it. He just wanted to be with her all the time, but more than that, he almost wanted to consume her with the amount of love he felt in his chest. The urge to hold her so close that she felt like a part of him, or too tightly and never let go, were vastly becoming so strong that it frightened him. Was this normal, to be so all-consumed by a marriage and to be completely content with said fact? He wasn't sure, but he was hardly one to complain, considering the state of his first.

"Are you sure you're alright? You've been crying," he whispered, a thumb stroking the delicate skin under her eye that was swollen with the tell-tale signs of past tears. One eye always got slightly more puffy than the other, he noticed.

"Yeah, well, it's becoming far too bloody normal these days," Molly sighed, sounding impatient as she pulled back enough to self-consciously touch her face and wipe beneath her eyes, just in case. Her felt the loss of her close contact acutely, his body almost reaching straight back to her instinctually. "Anyway, don' you try and change the subject, mate. How did it go? Did they find him?"

He sighed, instantly thinking of the very man he had been trying to bury in his mind. He didn't want to think of Abu and the danger he could pose, or the fact that, no, they hadn't found him yet and as a result he had made it into the country under a false passport. The MoD had no idea what he was even travelling for or what he could be targeting, but Charles was willing to bet that he was not all too keen to have two British soldiers walking around who could identify him.

"Can we discuss it later?" He felt himself shutting down almost automatically, emotionally detaching after years of practice and ingrained habitual behaviour. He raised his eyes to look around him at the sparsely populated train, focusing momentarily on the young men just a few seats away. "I'm shattered and I'm not even supposed to talk about it. You know that."

Molly swallowed and seemed to accept this answer, though her body language indicated she was not comfortable with it; she was unaccustomed to being on the outside, after all. In an attempt to pacify her, he made an effort to be attentive, to reach for her hand and get her to smile by catching her eye. Usually, she could never keep a straight face when he gave her the eye, but today she managed only a weak smile. It made him uneasy. "How do you feel after telling Belinda?" Immediately, she dropped her face into her hands against the armrest, though only momentarily, heaving a heavy sigh that leant itself to emotional exhaustion.

"Relieved… I think?" Pulling herself upright again, she let his hands reach out to comfort her, pushing into her hair to cradle her at the nape of her neck. He wanted to be able to see her expressions change, or so he told himself; in reality he simply craved to be as close to her as he could be and he hadn't the faintest idea how to express it. When their eyes met, Molly, being as inherently joyful as she was, smiled at him as though she was trying to make him smile – as though she was trying to cheer him up despite her own mammoth emotional downturn. "And?" He nudged her toward opening up, partially because he was curious, but mostly because he was unnerved by her sudden quiet.

"And… I don't know what else," she struggled, rubbing her forehead before kissing his hand when he moved to touch the skin between her brows she had just made pink. "Fuck, I du'know. I'm… all over the shop." Her tone is small, confused, and it threw him right back to their first date when she had said those exact words to him.

"Ditto," he whispered after a moment, because what else could he say?

She leaned into the gap between them and came to rest her head against his shoulder again. He brought his hand to the back of her neck, drawing aimless patterns where the soft, downy baby hairs met her slightly chilled, tanned skin. He could feel her breathe a sigh of relief against him and it was such a soft, delicate sound, he had to close his eyes against the barrage of yearning it dragged, guttural and desperate, from deep in his belly. As though reading his mind, she leaned back only just enough to graze his jawline with her nose.

"I bloody missed you too, by the way," she whispered and he would have taken her as being lighthearted and nonchalant if it wasn't for the way her hand still gripped one of his in a hold that felt like a vice.

"Sorry about that," he murmured back, keeping his voice so low that only she could hear as he made himself keep still, though his eyes were fixed on her. "How did we ever cope, before?" he asked, thinking back to the days when she went away for nearing six months before they got engaged. He had found it incredibly difficult, but mostly do because he wasn't the one going with her, but the one left behind. Now, it wasn't a matter of pride, just a guttural need to see she was safe with his own eyes, every minute of the day.

Molly seemed to return his sentiment, because she looked to be remembering those days too, a thoughtful tug dipping her brow. "I ain't got a Scooby, mate."

He smiled lazily at her slang and felt a wave of affection so sudden and so intense that it drove him drove his movements for him. Turning his head, he kissed her, the feeling of their skin ghosting against each other raising the hair on his arms. "We're both soft fools," he whispered against her cheek.

"Yeah, but I'm a mess at the moment," she whispered, a smile playing on her lips as she deliberately held herself back from his reach by mere centimetres. She always did enjoy teasing him. "What's your excuse… sir?"

The sound of his title falling from her lips that way reminded him of all the times it used to, especially back when their relationship was new and exciting. It had been their dirty little secret…

"We both know I wasn't soft until I met you," he whispered dryly, never once moving his hand from where it drew patterns on her skin. He noticed that when he got particularly close to the velvet skin behind her ear, her lashes would flutter and her head automatically leaned into his touch. She looked at him for a moment, possibly contemplating this statement, before reaching up her hand to ruffle his trimmed curls, breaking the tension that had hung between them.

"Y'can believe that if you want, mate, but your mum – and Elvis – has told me otherwise… and are you forgetting that Netflix film incident?"

He rolled his eyes and bit his lip. Of course he had not forgotten; Molly had never let him live it down. "It's a film about a man whose wife is dying!" he defended defiantly, tightening her hold on her just a fraction. "How would you have me react?" Usually romantic films didn't affect him because he never had time to watch anything, besides the classic films his mother always put on over Christmas, but in this instance, Molly had coerced him with promise of stolen kisses and more, once it was over. They had just gotten engaged and she had been just about to away on another medical exercise, this time to assist with the outbreak of Ebola across Central and East Africa, and his mind had made unwelcome comparisons. The wife character died, as per the premise, slowly and quietly in her sleep while the husband was non the wiser.

Charles could still recall, thinking back on it, the way the husband had planned a party, painstakingly down to every detail, as a way of trying to keep her going and yet, she died before it could take place, of course. The film made a point in the husband's narration that it never going to be one of those films, because those kind of 'just-in-time' moments did not happen in real life. 'They were just for cancer movies'.

While cancer and Ebola could not have been more dissimilar… it had gotten to him, because while Molly did not have cancer, she was about to travel to a place where she could catch a disease that could kill her in a hundredth of the speed with ten times the aggression. Suffice to say, by the end of the two hours, he couldn't help but see Molly in the brunette actress onscreen, despite the fact she was an entirely opposite body type and had an American accent to boot. It was just in the way she held herself with fierce dignity, spending the entire plot trying to find the person that her husband could love when she was gone; caring entirely for him almost obsessively, to avoid her own blinding fear. He supposed it was the selfless, forceful behaviour that did the other character's heads in that felt so incredibly familiar.

He had gazed over Molly, who had been chomping on popcorn beside him oblivious, and suddenly he realised just how lucky he was… and just how much he had to lose.

It was then, just as a tear slipped from the corner of his eye of course, that Molly turned to look at him. While she had given him the softest looks of empathy and love at the time, wiping it away as he cleared his throat with embarrassment, enough time soon passed for her to tease him about it. After all, shit-talking was any Cockney's speciality and he certainly loved them for it… most of the time.

Molly sniggered but once again seemed to take pity on him, smoothing hand hand over his face and bringing him back to the present. He managed to smile at her, pushing the morbid thoughts away.

"I never thought I'd be the mushy sod at the end of the tube train who's snogging like a fuckin' pre-teen," she whispered, looking down at where he held her hand and back up at him from beneath her dark lashes.

Charles smirked, before quirking his brow at her. "What pre-teens did you grow up with?"

Molly gave him a deadpan expression as though he had asked her the most obvious of questions. "I think we both know the answer to that, mate."

Pressing his lips together thoughtfully, he looked around them for a moment. Images of Molly as a wayward, promiscuous youth were inevitable as his imagination began to do its best to fill this gap in his knowledge. Of course she had told him of her rather early sexual experimentations – much earlier than his own began, since he went to an all boys boarding school – but it didn't stop him from being intrigued as to the kind of girl she used to be, before the discipline of the army and the life-changing horrors of war. "Snogging, hm?" He instantly regretted the topic diversion, but the banter between them was so easy he very often didn't even know what he was going to say until it came out… and ribbing her for her vernacular was just too easy. "I don't see us…snogging, do you?" His tongue was quite literally in his cheek as he watched her try not to look at him so she wouldn't laugh. He was peering down at her, daring her to prove him wrong, but she didn't give in.

"How are you after this morning?" He tried his best to make the question light and nonchalant.

"Not okay," she whispered against his shirt, the words so quiet and fragile that he momentarily thought he had misheard her, but he knew, watching her uncharacteristically defeatist body language and the way she didn't even move to catch his eye. He asked because he knew he had to ask… but he knew. He had to pretend he didn't feel the weight of her hand on his thigh for the entire rest of the journey, because it wasn't right that he be distracted by her now, not when she needed him.

By there time they reached the Victory Services at Marble Arch, having changed at Stratford with a minute to spare, Charles was inwardly worried by how quiet they were both being but he was too exhausted to confront it. As he checked them in, Molly smiled at the doorman but otherwise lulled against the counter, staring into space and squinting in the harsh fluorescent light of the sleek white foyer. He pressed his palm to the small of her back to guide her to the lift; it was a somewhat patriarchal habit of his but she never once protested it.

"Bleedin' Nora, I'm knackered," she groaned as he held open their hotel room door for her. He watched her roll her neck as she stripped off her layers and it momentarily stalled him in his tracks against the door. She was rubbing her lower abdomen as she moved across the room on autopilot to switch on the kettle.

"Tell me about it," he mumbled in agreement, watching her as she pushed her fist up beneath her vest into the soft flesh just inward from her protruding hipbone and massaged there. The grimace on her face was so microscopic that it would have been missed, had he not been watching her so keenly. He had seen the signs before. Seemingly realising this moments after he did, she frowned and moved with purpose to the en-suite bathroom. He busied himself unpacking his bag meticulously, which he had dropped off that morning, and when he was done with that he did the same with Molly's, glancing at the ten o'clock news . He glanced toward the bathroom door more times than he could count and it was only after he had folded both their clothes into the drawers that he gave in to his gut feeling. Grabbing the desk phone, he dialled for reception.

"Good evening. How can I help you?"

Clearing his throat, Charles thumbed Molly's phone where she had left it on the side. "Yes, hello, good evening. This is Captain James, calling from 207," he greeted, keeping his voice soft so Molly would not hear him. "Could we have some toiletries bought up, please? My wife is in need of some sanitary products." The sharp, professional female voice on the phone softened immediately to Charles' well-trained ear. If he didn't know any better, he would have thought she was trying to communicate her approval as she chirped her obedient affirmation. He put down the phone and forced himself to try and relax, stretching his arms upward until he felt something in his back give a satisfying 'pop'. Picking up the non-fiction book he had been carrying around with him for weeks about the psychology of lying, he settled down to at least attempt to actually read for once. Glancing at his watch, he noted the time and then proceeded to allow himself to settle against the headboard and attempt to pick up where he had left off, thumbing the pages delicately as he turned each one with care. (Molly had joked with him on numerous occasions that he cared for his books with more tenderness than he did with her, which he emphatically denied). He was just getting into the swing of a enthralling paragraph explaining why children under four cannot lie when the concierge knocked on the door. Glancing at his watch, he was pleased to see it had only taken them eight minutes. Not too bad.

Thanking the young man who handed over the toiletry packets politely, he gave the boy a tip and sent him on his way. It wasn't exactly customary to do so, especially in a Services establishment, but Charles felt better for doing it. That and the poor boy looked slightly mortified to be handing over a bag of tampons to an officer, by the way he couldn't meet Charles eye. Closing the door, he couldn't help but chuckle to himself, remembering the days long ago when menstrual cycles were one of the many mysteries surrounding women that he thought he would never understand, much less come to find normal or remotely predictable. But, as his mother had told him all those years ago, much to his embarrassment, "all that changes when you're married".

Gently knocking his knuckles against the bathroom door, he strained automatically to listen for any sign of movement. He was not entirely sure, but he momentarily thought he could hear sniffling. "Molly?" His anxiety picked up a little again at the prospect that she might be crying and keeping it from him. "Are you alright? Please open up."

He heard her move across the small bathroom, blowing her nose. "Who was at the door?" She asked, opening the door just wide enough for her to squeeze her face through and nothing else. She was now wearing one of the towel dressing gowns and her hair was loose and damp. Her eyes were lined with red again and her hand was filled with tissue.

"I got you something," he said, keeping his voice soft as he handed over the unbranded tampon packets without explanation. "You okay?"

She looked down at it, seeming a little struck dumb momentarily, until suddenly she took it gladly and bestowed him with what he considered to be the world's most beautiful and heartbreaking smile. "'ow the fuck do you do that? Swear you're psychic…" If she was aiming for bravado, it didn't work. They both pretended they didn't hear the way her voice cracked emotionally.

"It just looked like you were having cramps, so I assumed…"

Molly squinted at him, whatever was upsetting her momentarily forgotten as she looked at him in disbelief. "Y'know this is why people don' invite us for dinner. It ain't normal to know your wife that well!"

Charles rolled his eyes and bopped his nose with his before backing up to give her space. "I think you'll find they don't invite us over because you called half of them 'Tory meatheads'."

She spluttered out her usual stubborn noise of defiance and he wrinkled his nose in amusement. "Well, they were!" He moved back towards the bed, until suddenly she called him back. "Charlie?" He stepped back into line leaving against the doorframe, taking in her bare face and the rosey hue of her skin, no doubt flushed from the shower, and he only just managed to hold himself back. She looked at him with green eyes that communicated so much gratitude in that moment, her teeth pulling her lower lip into her mouth as though she was holding back. "Just… thanks millions," was all she said, holding up the tampons as though they were a treasure trove.

He shook it off, mostly because it felt entirely insignificant and routine for him to do such a thing, but also because he was a little flushed under her admiration. So, typically, he threw her a minuscule wink and told her not to mention it, moving back to the bed to read his book again, only now he couldn't focus on the words printed there. Instead, he could only think of Molly; not only of her plight, of the confusion her body must be putting her through… but also her softness after a shower, because, god, he was a man, after all.

When she appeared, she was wearing his shirt, which had long been hers to sleep in. She looked worn out and sleepy as she padded the short distance across the patterned carpet to the bed, clambering over to his side with little grace but substantial ease. Automatically, he lifted his attention from the page he had been staring at and allowed her to burrow into his side, for face pressed into his neck and her damp hair chilling his skin through his shirt. Reaching out his hand to the bedside table, he retrieved painkillers from his wallet and placed them into her hand without a word, followed by a complimentary bottle of water.

"Cheers," she said softly, raising her upper body just enough to swallow the little white pills before lowering herself back down. Just as he heard her heavily exhale and thought she might already be snoozing, she spoke again. "Don' know what I'd do without you, you soft tosser."

Curse words were practically terms of endearment in the Dawes household and therefore it was unsurprising now that to hear such a thing made him smile the way it did. "Well, for one, you'd have to call for your own emergency tampons."

"Oi!" She protested weakly, raising her head just enough to give him a childish glare. "An' I would have if you wasn't so bloody keen and obsessive husbandly and shit and beat me to it!"

Smug, he leaned and stole a peck from her sumptuous bottom lip that was pouting in mock indignation. "'Obsessive husbandly'? Dawes, you flatter me!"

She rolled her eyes at him and rolled over until her outer leg was hooked around both of his, effectively rendering her a koala as she now held onto him with multiple limbs. He was still smirking was she poked him and stubbornly moved to hide her face again. She was suddenly very quiet when he made no move to further their banter and he watched as she picked up his hand from where it lay against his abdomen and placed her palm flat against his. Something about her aura was so different these last few weeks, but in particular today, and he felt helpless to understand it, much less help reverse it. The Molly he had grown to love never sat still long enough to be this introspective, much less quite so downcast and dispirited.

"What is it?" He asked the question without thinking and immediately cursed himself for the clumsy phrasing, because of course they both knew was 'it' was.

"Oh, it's nothin' major," she said with ease, slowly ghosting the fingers on her outstretched hand to now trace the hand he still held suspended, up over each digit like Sam used to do when he traced it for hand-drawings. "I just… The blood had me strung out a minute there." The mention of blood silently shocked him a little, having forgotten momentarily the context of their earlier conversation. It's fine, a voice reassured him; the same voice that kept him sane when there was the tingle of adrenaline creeping up the back of his neck. She just means menstrual blood. The calm that washed over him once he realised this was short lived however, as he digested what exactly she was confessing. "I jus' din' expect it, which is bloody stupid because I should 'ave – I mean, I stopped taking my pill the week it happ––."

He lay, frozen, barely daring to breathe too loudly in case it triggered her to stop talking and close off again. It was so horrifically uncomfortable, to have her talk about it at all – to have anyone talk about it – because it meant he automatically kept seeing it.

But he told himself he had to endure it, because no matter how horrific it felt for him, she had been through worse… and her silence unnerved him even more.

"I should have thought, but honestly I ain't had a period in so long I forgot, didn't I," she said softly, recovering from the momentary breathless cut in her speech. "But just now… seeing it there in me' Alans… all the red––."

He had to close his eyes, fighting off his own imagination as its unfortunate knowledge of blood stains of many kinds rushed to give him unwelcome mental manifestations of what Molly was describing. He didn't realise he had clenched his fists until Molly moved her fingers that were now trapped beneath his against his palm.

"––It was like I was there in that fucking shitter again, trying to stop the bleeding so I could go back to my pit and hide," she said, unexpectedly open, sounding void of emotion and exhausted. Thankfully, she was without a single hint of tears. "Trying to tell myself it didn't happen and that it was all one big Lionel Blaire and any minute you were gonna' to wake me up with all your bloody snoring in our bed…"

She had now laced their fingers together, gripping them with a sudden urgency, perhaps to get his attention or perhaps was trying to comfort him. Guilt swarmed around him. Did his face really show so much of his feelings these days? He really was getting lax…

"I don't snore," he replied automatically – an unintentional deviation. That being said, it had had the desired effect, because when he dropped his chin to his collarbone enough to get a look at her face, she was smiling. She had set the trap up for him an infinite number of times and still to this day, he couldn't resist fighting her on whether or not he bloody snored – despite the fact he had no evidence to say that he didn't.

Making a noise of contentment, he cast his book over her body and let it land anywhere before slouching his posture and shuffling until he was almost eye-to-eye with her on his pillow. Letting go of her hand, he reached up to comb back the wet tendrils of her straight hair behind her until she looked like she could have fallen from an angelic, beautifully dozy renaissance painting, all peach-skin cheeks and sleepy almond eyes the colour of Monet's Water lilies.

"Why didn't you call for me? I could have––."

"What – taken my blood-stained undies off for me?" Even before she said anything, he knew he had set himself up for failure on that one, because she did have a point. She was smirking at him, lazily blinking to try and keep her eyes on him as he continued to stroke her scalp in a rhythmic pattern with the very tips of his fingers. Wrinkling her nose at him in a look of satirical admonishment that he knew all too well as she added: "Think that would be a bit far, even for you."

His chest gave a jerk against the curve of her side as he involuntarily let out a breathless chuckle, because bloody hell, was she right. "Right you are, Dawesy," he whispered, feeling foolish. Perhaps there was nothing he could have done and there may never be.

He pressed his lips to her forehead as he moved to get up – he himself was desperately in need of a shower – and she let out a sound of contentment that, as far as he was concerned, would never get old. Her eyes were closed when he pulled back, but her fingers held on to him by his shirt at the sleeve. Looking down at the automatic grip, he considered how wanted it made him feel, how needed and relied upon, something Molly, before, made a point of trying not to show for fear of losing her individuality. It was only in moments like this, that were so rare and tangibly fragile that he dare not say a word for fear of shattering them, he remembered just how mutual their need was.

Perhaps there was never going to be anything he could do, he thought as he leaned in again, except perhaps this.

"Love you," she sighed out drowsily as she turned into the pillow and curled up her limbs like a child, which made him grin to himself like a lovesick idiot.

"Ditto, gorgeous girl," he whispered, tearing himself away but not before draping the cover blanket over her. He hurried to rid himself of his clothes, intent of making his shower a military one of no more than one minute so he could get back to her as soon as he could, because it suddenly occurred to him just how shattered he was.

"Charlie?" She slurred lazily just as he almost made it to the bathroom, a ghost of a smile on her otherwise peaceful, sleeping features. "You're right… You don't snore."

He was still sniggering to himself about her sleepy comment precisely four minutes later, by which time he had successfully completed his sixty second shower routine with his usual military precision and brushed his teeth. Wearily, he trudged across the room, his eyes taking a moment to adjust to the dim as he crawled up onto the bed. He gazed Molly's still form for a moment, enjoying the candid view of her dreaming, the slightest hint of a smile on her face. He felt guilty that he was going to have to disturb her, but he knew she'd wake up cold if he left her to sleep on top of the sheets. "Molly, Sweetheart," he whispered, pressing a kiss to her head, pressing a trail of them across her face. She let out a disgruntled groan and barely managed to open one eye, but she conceded and rolled so he could pull back the sheets from under her. "Sorry, but you'll be cold if you stay on top," he whispered, leaning over her body to turn off the bedside lamp. She made a noise from the back of her throat as he cuddled her into his chest. "Ah, finally!" He sighed gratefully, burrowing his nose into her damp hair, inhaling the familiar scent of her apple anti-dandruff shampoo. "You're so beautiful," he whispered needlessly, feeling the strange pressure in his chest again.

Molly made a happy noise, evidently only partially hearing him, but he couldn't even bring himself to care that he was most likely talking to himself. He brushed his lips over her hairline as his thoughts strayed to the last events of the twenty-four hours. It was no wonder she was so tired, he thought, having had two rather fraught emotional episodes in such a short space of time. Secretly, it terrified him to see such an extreme physical response from her that had resulted in her being physically sick with fear. Her personality was usually so laid back and laissez faire that it sometimes drove him mad, but now it felt like everything had taken a three-sixty. If he had been told a few months ago that she would become someone who could never sit with her back to strangers and burst into tears in stifling fear of a man who wasn't even there, he would never have believed it. Momentarily, his memory strayed to the previous evening, to how she had cried, simultaneously so frightened and yet desperate for their previous level of physical intimacy that she had gotten herself high on an aphrodisiac just to force her body to comply.

But if there was one thing a soldier knew, it was that there was no burying that kind of fear; it will only rot you from the inside out.

The warm memories that followed though, of his decision to be the most over indulgent lover possible to truly give her a break from reality and the sounds she subsequently made, they were painful to think about for an entirely different reason. It had been so long since he himself had been able to give into physical intimacy with her, he couldn't allow himself to linger on it.

He must have been fraught with second hand anxiety as well as his own worries, as his mind wouldn't stop reeling. Not only was he continuously trying to work out what Abu could be planning, but he was worried, especially being in London, that an attack on British soil by the terror group was imminent, considering his captor was now hiding somewhere in the country. He wouldn't tell anyone anything that had been discussed at Whitehall that day, much less his wife, whom herself was struggling not to call apart and jump at the shadows of shadows. While this silence was his duty and he had no trouble keeping to it... it was very difficult for him not to open up to Molly. He had been emotionally open with her to the best of his ability since his first omission of the truth in Afghan had almost ended the two of them before they had even began. He had looked at her in that compound as she had refused to look at him and he had felt an urgency to spew out his guts and fuck the consequences. The thunder could have so easily been an IED, he had realised, and then what? Their love would have been sent to their graves, undeclared and useless. What would have been the point in keeping to regulations then? They mean nothing when you're dead.

So, for the first time, Charles James had given in to a moment of weakness... and boy, was it glorious. Perhaps some rules really were written to be broken... Just sometimes. He remembered holding her face in his hands, cradling her in a way he had craved to do since the first time and knowing that, despite every single thing the Army has beaten into him, he would happily do it all again a million times over if it meant she would keep looking at him like that.

These days, he tried his best not to take such looks of tenderness for granted, because she deserved better than that – and if there was one thing he had learned from his failed marriage, it was that complacency was the ultimate demon to any relationship.

The prospect of having to take Molly to see his solicitor filled him with dread because he knew how much she would hate it, but he knew that he couldn't let her put it off any longer. With only a fortnight until serious incident court marshal, he felt his own pulse race as the prospect of being faced with the man that did the most unspeakable thing a man could possibly do to a woman. He knew he wasn't ready to it, so he could only imagine how Molly must be feeling.

Sleep continued to evade him for what felt like a very long time, despite how tired he was. He gazed down at Molly instead, admiring her freckles and the creaming nature of her skin where it remained untouched by the effects of the sun. She gradually began shuffling in her sleep, frowning, and he could guess what may be coming, so when she did begin mewing in her sleep, a sound like the mournful whimper of very young child, he was ready and waiting to whisper hushing sounds and words of reassurance against her hair. "I'm here," he whispered. "You're okay. You're safe." She sounded so helpless that it made his chest ache with worry for her. Thankfully, the dream went no further in upsetting her and she didn't wake once, settling into his side once she was quiet again. Still though he spoke to her, hoping that, even if just subliminally, she might hear him reminding her of her worth and start to believe him again.