A/N: This is my first fanfic on FF. I have this story on my A03 it_really_is_a_mystery too if you prefer A03. This fits into my rewrite as a prequel, but also works into canon as well. I love Davina as a character, and feel like she wasn't done justice as an independent character, usually being defined as someone's girlfriend, so I decided to give her relationship with Tom a little substance. My rewrite is a while off now (Feb `22). This is because of school commitments, but feel free to R&R as any feedback is welcome. (As long as it's constructive and/ or nice. I don't wanna get trolled :))


Tom had wanted to go on holiday to celebrate Mika leaving for uni. He'd booked a cabin for six near Windermere, and had begun to gather gear and food for the three week holiday before the end of term. What had actually happened was that the school had burned down and he was now confined to care duties for the rest of the summer.

Chlo, Mika, Brett and Donte had gone to Windermere as Tom didn't want to lose the deposit on the cabin, which left himself and Davina with the house to themselves. She'd been out of hospital about a week after the fire, littered with minor burns and cuts and bruises, but by far the worst he'd ever seen her. The first night back she'd boiled a pot noodle and gone straight to bed, leaving Tom essentially home alone. This had continued for three more nights, reaching a climax when Tom believed that a fox had broken into the kitchen, to find Davina making cookies at 3am.

Tom had texted Jasmine, who told him not to worry.

It's a habit she picked up when looking after Jack. The only time she had for herself was at night. Jas :)

He'd then gone to Matt, who had no clue about his friend's night time adventures. Finally (and reluctantly), he asked Steph round to stage an intervention. It was honestly the first time he'd seen Steph have genuine concern for the younger blonde, especially after the whole Jack debacle, but surprisingly enough, she still came and immediately took any form of ready meal or instant mug food out of the cupboards.

"You'll have to lock these up somewhere. Change the code often too. Maxine deals with stuff in a similar way. Besides. I thought you two were sharing a room?"

"She's been in the guest room since she got back from the hospital. Hasn't let anyone near her all week."

Steph sighed and leant back in the deck chair on the patio, taking a large swig of wine before looking Tom dead in the face.

"Tom. She's worse than I thought. Have you tried getting professional help at all?"

"There was a psychologist at the hospital but she doesn't want to talk about any of it. I just feel we're gonna lose her at some point."

Steph put her arm round Tom as she poured them each another glass of wine. As she grabbed her things to go, she wrote a number on the note block in the kitchen.

"There's a phone number for the counsellor I know through pastoral care. It might do Davina good to get in touch."

"Thanks."

Steph left, and Tom went back into the house. Much to his surprise, Davina was awake and sat on the sofa watching a documentary, having borrowed yet another one of Tom's hoodies.

"Another habit you haven't kicked. I'm gonna run out of hoodies at this rate."

Davina smirked and diverted her attention back to the TV, before Tom turned it off and looked at her.

"Look. Whatever's so terrible about that day you're gonna have to let me know. You can't go on like this and neither can I."

The conversation went on a little, but only skirted around the edges, avoiding tricky topics like Rachel and the burning corridor.

After a while, Tom slumped back onto the settee and pulled the address book out of the dresser. He was halfway through dialling the number for the psychologist Steph had recommended when his mobile phone rang. He picked it up to find Mika on the line.

"Hey Tom. We're cutting the holiday a tad short coz the weather here is awful and the roof is leaking in Brett's room. We're coming back first thing tomorrow."

Tom hung up and looked up to find an empty sofa. He slunk back upstairs to his room and found that the light was still on in the guest room. Grasping the door handle, he quietly poked his head around the door to find Davina reading in bed.

"I was literally just about to go to sleep. If you're that concerned you'd just leave me alone to sort it out by myself."

Tom walked into the room and sat himself on the end of the bed, careful of the discarded clothes and books scattered on the bed. He'd never seen such an organised and conscientious person fall to shreds like what he'd seen in the last fortnight, but he persevered to start a conversation, eventually reaching to put an arm around his girlfriend to find himself being pushed off.

"If you want a hug that's fine. Just not where the stitches are."

Tom moved his hand appropriately, and on losing his balance a bit felt for the duvet to hang onto to find a ton of food wrappers and loose paperwork under the covers.

"I thought I'd put my irregular sleep pattern to good use and catch up on that coursework you wanted me to catch up on."

Tom had just assumed that she'd been milling around and watching TV at nights, but now found himself in awe at the sheer amount of work that Davina had worked through. He stacked the coursework together and put it on top of the dresser next to the bed before leaning back into the numerous pillows he had piled on the bed, careful not to knock anything else off.

"Hospital called earlier. Rachel's awake."

The one topic he had sworn not to bring up was instantly on the surface again.

"Good. I hope she recovers well and realises how much she's only gone and put me through the last couple of weeks."

She leant into Tom and the two lay on the bed for a while whilst they dumped their emotions out into the open, only pausing when Tom got up to get a new box of tissues. That was the first night after the fire when Tom felt as if things might just be okay. Just.

Mika, Brett, Donte and Chlo were back at around seven the following morning, but had the courtesy to let themselves in quietly. Tom woke up to find himself on top of the covers on the opposite side of the guest bed, Davina soundly asleep on the other side of him and her arm around his shoulder. He gently moved her arm around a pillow and crept down to the kitchen to cook breakfast for the four hungry teenagers who were now around the kitchen table, discussing their eventful week away.

"So was it worth going in the end or not?"

"If getting your blood sucked out by midges and twisting your ankle whilst hiking counts, then yes we did." Chlo gave an unflattering account of what had occurred in the two weeks they had been away, mainly pointing out that it hadn't stopped raining since the first day of the holiday.

Mika steered the conversation away from what they'd been up to in the Lake District and back to Tom's goings on and Davina's recovery.

"Any improvement? Or is she still unbearable to be around?"

"I think I made a breakthrough last night. But she's getting the stitches out next week so we'll have to see how she deals with going back to the hospital. Rachel woke up and I'm still not sure she's processed that yet."

At that point, the door opened and Davina walked in, mug of fruit tea in hand and wearing something that wasn't a pair of shorts and Tom's hoodie.

"Stop being modest Tom. You've obviously done something right because you're finally going to be able to wash that hoodie of yours." Mika giggled at Donte's comments and motioned for Tom to leave the room with her. Making sure they weren't being overheard, she closed the door to the utility room and gave Tom a knowing look.

"I know neither of us have seen eye to eye with each other, but I thought it might be good if I talked to Davina. I think she's naturally being guarded like anyone in that situation."

"If you can get through a full conversation with her without her biting your head off I promise that you and Brett can have dinner at that nice Italian place on the main road before you're off to uni."

"Challenge accepted Clarkson."

Mika snook upstairs, careful not to alert anyone of her presence. She waved through her bedroom window as Chlo and Donte left the house to go to the park with Brett, who was walking home through town. Tom had agreed to get on with other things outside, and was currently puzzling over how to fix the CD player in Davina's car. From all the cursing and swearing, Mika figured it wasn't going too well and that he'd managed to get yet another CD stuck in the disc compartment. She refocused on her task at hand though, and crept down the corridor to the guest room on the opposite end of the land. She opened the door to find the mess Tom had described, and skirted around the edge of the room, only catching Davina's attention after throwing a screwed up paper ball at the back of her head.

"Which pile was that from? Believe it or not but I'm trying to clean up."

Mika was pleasantly surprised, but endeavoured to start a conversation. After being shut out a few times, she finally had the guts to admit what she had been thinking since she and Brett got back together.

"Look. I'm sorry about being horrible, and I understand that the Brett thing was a misunderstanding, but I'm not about to watch you throw it all away like this because I almost did and I don't want that to happen to anyone else."

"Look, Mika, I know you're trying to be nice but I'm fine. I don't need anyone looking after me."

Mika sighed and turned to leave, but thought better of it and perched on the end of the bed whilst Davina emptied the contents of the desk drawers into a bin bag.

"You're obviously not. And you're also blatantly refusing help so I'm gonna have to give you two options. Psychologist or us. You're going to have to talk to one or the other."

Davina paused the clean up, and slouched into the desk chair with the dodgy gas strut. As it sank to the floor, she sighed and began to rant.

"Look. Jack wasn't the same after your mum died, and with nobody else to take care of him, he was my responsibility. That took so much time that all of a sudden I wasn't a teaching assistant but a full time carer as well. I had to find time in the day to do things for myself, and the only time I had was the small hours of the morning doing stuff like coursework and preparing Jack's stuff for the following day. I didn't know what to do when I broke up with him. I haven't slept properly since last July and I didn't have time to go to the doctor to get help. Jas told me to go but I refused. I was gonna talk to Tom about it because he's noticed it since the fire, but I didn't want anyone near me. I thought that if people left me alone the situation would solve itself."

Mika absorbed the information, and allowed them both to pause before asking the question everyone wanted to know.

"But are you mad at Rachel? Tom got a call to say she's awake and we all thought you'd be happy about that."

"Yeah. I'm happy but she's going to pry and I don't want to be quizzed every day about how I felt when I thought of all of the people who wound up in hospital I was the only one who survived. I thought she was dead like Stuart for ages. I haven't been able to cope with literally anything because she was in a coma and I thought she was dead. You know Rachel, she's going to be all over me in the autumn."

"And that survivor's guilt is what's triggered literally everything in the last few weeks?"

Davina laughed a hollow laugh and continued her explanation.

"I'm like this all summer every summer. It's been like this since my mum left."

"Do you miss her?"

"How can you miss the most awful and controlling person in your life though? She was awful. Met a guy in a club and moved to the states when I was six. She'd been living in Preston but decided that she didn't want us any more. Split up with dad when I was two but dad won the custody battle because her boyfriend hit me and my older sister. We always crashed out in the summer because it was a sign that we didn't have to adhere to such a strict regime anymore."

"She sounds horrid."

"Her boyfriend only started hitting me after I broke her favourite vase. He was bad but the fact she let it happen was just as bad. And the dresses for Sunday service."

Both women felt a shiver at the thought of the frilly dresses and fussy accessories that had been so commonplace in both of their childhoods, but didn't let it detract from the severity of the conversation they'd just had.

"If you don't want Tom knowing your secrets are safe with me."

"Thanks. But tell Tom that I want to talk now I've had a few weeks to process things."

"Sure."

The next few weeks were fine. Various people came and went, and Tom decided in favour of holding a proper going away party for Mika, inviting all of her friends and half the school staff. Rachel emerged from hospital mere days before the start of the new term but had managed a miraculous recovery, insisting on gatecrashing the party to wish Mika and Brett luck in their futures, before joining Steph on the wine, deeming it too awkward to try and speak to Eddie, who was over talking with Tom and Matt. Jasmine and Davina took poorly aimed hits at a badly constructed piƱata, having discussed what they wanted with Rachel, and coming to an agreement over what the future held for all of them.

As the summer drew to a close, Mika left, and with the house considerably quieter, Tom came to ask Davina about what Mika had said to her to change her outlook.

"All she said was that she could relate, and that I shouldn't have to live with my mistakes."

"Good, good."

"And I've decided that it's probably best if I get professional help to deal with the night thing. It's for the best I guess."

"You know I will support you and love you all the way."

"Obviously."

As the night drew to a close, the couple settled on the sofa in the living room, sticking on a documentary, but in general just enjoying each other's company.