After Everything

Summary: My version of the whole event at Martha and Jack's wedding. This of course contains spoilers and will be in two parts! Martha's P.O.V

Rating: T

Disclaimer: I don't own Home and Away. Seriously you'd all know if I did ;)

Notes: I'm extremely set in my ways about WHO I think is helping Zoë. This is my version of what happens at Martha and Jack's wedding… hopefully it'll sound realistic.

After Everything – The End of the Beginning

"This has got to be the best day of my life!"

How do things change so quickly? How can they go from being amazingly fantastic, to horribly, devastatingly bad in the matter of seconds? It's like it's an un-written law of life. After every good thing that happens something bad has to happen. Nothing in your life is allowed to be too good for long.

No one could say Zoë didn't go out with a bang…

"I do not barn dance," said Jack pointedly. "And I am not barn dancing for anyone."

"Jack, please!" I whined childishly. "It's our wedding, you have to dance!"

"I don't care what day it is," he said firmly. "I do not barn dance."

"You accepted this idea!" I reminded him, smiling. "You agreed to it! You don't have a say in the matter."

"Scared are you mate?" asked Tony.

I couldn't help but smile at Tony's words, I know someone riling Jack up about being 'too scared' or getting embarrassed would quickly change his mind.

"Jack Holden is never 'too scared'," he said quickly. "You want to barn dance Mrs. Holden? I'll show you how to barn dance."

Mrs. Holden, the words swirled around my head and it sounded amazing, Mrs. Holden. I could certainly get used to that. "I'll accept your offer."

As we started to dance, moving with the music I saw that Lucas had shyly asked Matilda to dance, taking her hand. Ric had walked over to Cassie and pulled her up, whispered something in her ear, and carefully the brushed her hair behind her ear. What had happened with Macca had hit me pretty hard (no pun intended), there was no doubt about that, and it was hard to believe that my brother was capable of something like that, but that was over now. It was a new chapter of my life. Leah and Dan were dancing too, laughing amongst themselves. Kim and Rachel had never looked so happy and even Granddad and Colleen were having a go, those dance classes had obviously paid off.

But despite everything that was going on, my full attention quickly went back to Jack and I. We were the only two people in the room. I gazed at him lovingly and couldn't believe that after everything we'd been through were here, in a tin shed, having our wedding reception and barn dancing. If you had have asked me a year ago if I was going to marry Jack Holden, the self-observed ticket-cop I would have looked at you as though you were crazy.

I took another look around the room, and saw that Peter was talking heatedly to someone on the phone, I couldn't make out the words, but I quickly shrugged it off, he was a cop – it wasn't like these calls would be unusual.

Nobody would be prepared for what happened next though.

"EVERYONE NEEDS TO GET OUT!" Peter cried loudly above the music. "EVERYBODY NEEDS TO GET OUT NOW!"

The music got turned off; everyone stopped dancing and turned to look at him. Finally Jack spoke.

"What do you mean?"

"Look, I don't have time to answer questions now, I can do that later. Right now my main priority is getting all of you back to the station safe and sound."

A million thoughts ran through my head, each ten times worse than the last, I looked around to see that everyone was just as panicky.

"What are you waiting for?" he cried. "We need to go, now!"

Everyone quickly made their way to the door, talking amongst themselves, and then Peter stopped dead, and in return so did we. I swallowed, and grabbed Jack's arm, I knew something bad was happening.

"The end has only just begun."

The voice sent shivers up my spine, and a few people screamed when they recognized it. No… no, oh god, how could this be happening?

"You won't get away Zoë," Peter began. "Where's Tracy?"

"Who?" her voice was so cold.

I looked up at Jack, fear in my eyes, and he held my hand tighter, and looked at me. "I won't let anything happen to you."

"Quit playing games Zoë!" he shouted. "WHERE'S TRACY?"

"Oh, you're little detective friend?" she questioned rhetorically, "Don't worry she's fine."

There was an eerie silence around the room, and ironically enough it felt deafening. A loud gunshot quickly broke it and everyone screamed and dropped to the floor, Jack held onto me, and I could feel the tears in my eyes.

"EVERYBODY STAY DOWN!" Zoë screamed as she walked in, the gun was pointed at Peter's head and Tracy was standing next o her.

Why isn't she doing anything? Why isn't she stopping her? Then it suddenly hit me, and the tears fell from my eyes, it was her. It was Tracy.

"How could you do this Tracy?" Peter questioned calmly.

"Don't speak," said Zoë roughly, she looked at Tracy. "You either." She looked around at us all. "I'll be more than happy to share our little story." She paused to make sure nothing was going on and then continued. "You see Tracy found me working at the hospital in the city, she didn't know the full story then, but her mother was sick and I was looking after her, she never stopped thanking me for it. We became really good friends, you see Peter? I do have friends."

I finally looked up from the ground to see that Zoë had pushed Tracy over to us, and she still had the gun pointed at Peter, she began to walk up and down, dragging him with her. "Then I finally decided to tell her the truth, no more lies. She was shocked at first and kept on saying how she needed to do her job, how she needed to arrest me – she didn't want to, but she had to.

"I told her what really happened though. How all of you deserved everything little thing that you got. She still didn't seem convinced, but you know me, I have my ways. Look how many people I managed to get to believe me the first time round. Finally after months I convinced Tracy to work with me, she'd be getting something out of it too of course."

I still couldn't believe what was happening, it didn't seem real. It was like a nightmare, not it was worse than a nightmare, it was all your worst fears coming true at once.

"You never told me what your grand finale was," said Peter.

She laughed. "You really should listen to what I say Peter. Don't you watch enough movies? You see getting caught was all part of the plan… that way everyone would think that it was all over, that everything would go back to normal. But then the big twist happens and the bad person makes sure everything goes out in – one – huge – bang…"

As soon as the word left Zoë's mouth there was a loud explosion, fire engulfed the shed and everyone's screams were hysterical with fear. Tin fell and smashed to the ground, the walls collapsed, and I felt myself being thrown.

Hysterical, and in more pain than I could ever imagine, I managed to push myself up on all fours. The smoke was too thick to even see anyone, and I begun coughing heavily. I looked around and could just make out the red flames. I could hear people crying and yelling, sobbing.

I'm pretty sure I could just make out some yelling for help, and I wished I could, but I didn't even know where I was. Then suddenly it hit me…

Jack.

Oh god. How could it have just hit me? How could I have not noticed until know? Jack wasn't by my side. I couldn't see Jack. Oh no… please, god now. I began crying hysterically, looking around hoping he'd just miraculously appear.

I don't know how, but I managed to push myself up, and the pain just seemed to disappear, my hands were cut and my legs, I didn't even want to see my face, there were quite a few burns too. The smoke surrounded me, and the only thing I could manage to do was cough. Finally I managed to find my voice.

"JACK! JACK!" I screamed, coughs interrupting the words. "JACK!"

I thought I could just hear something in the distance, it sounded like an extremely faint 'I'm here'. A part of me hoped that I wasn't just pretending to hear it, because I wanted it so badly. I walked in the direction, stumbling and tripping, crashing into people, I didn't know who they were, and even though they tried to stop me, and hold me, ask me if I was okay, I pushed past them and kept walking.

Then I stopped dead, tears cascaded down my face, and stung my face. The smoke hadn't cleared that much, but it was gone enough for me to see what or who was on the ground. Falling to my knees, I cried into my hands. And then I realized why everyone was trying to hold me back, stop me.

"Jack…"

Author's Note: Part one! What did you think? Realistic enough :P This was originally supposed to just be a one-shot, but I decided to make it into two parts. The next chapter will be dealing with the 'aftermath'.

Lozzy