Disclaimer: I own nothing.

The mattress was soft beneath me, the ceiling above white, unremarkable. A welcome presence after the madness my life had brought. The span of 31 days had been more chaotic than I had ever thought possible.

I closed my eyes, relaxing into the feathers of my pillow that I had so longed for, relaxing like I'd been entirely unable to in the weeks since Julia's death. The weeks since they took her away.

I wasn't okay with it, I wasn't sure I ever would be, either for my own failure or the loss that I and the country had suffered. But, I could be okay with justice, if nothing else. My guilt could scab over just enough for me to know that in the end, I had done all I could.

It was a weight that lifted from me, doing away from my shoulders and dissipating into the air around me. It was a sudden weightlessness that allowed me to finally ease into the black of sleep, the worries that had plagued me before now gone.

Sleep had evaded me since her death, swanning over me for only seconds before I lay awake once more in a room that was too silent, too absent of her, and echoed only with the flame that was no longer there. That had killed her.

This time, my dreams weren't carried by explosions, by smoke and fire. They were absent of red and black wires and soulless eyes. They were free of the guilt that I had carried inside me, the edges of it prickling against my lungs until I could no longer breathe.

There were no dreams at all, only endless black that stretched in every direction around me, swallowing me until the moment I blinked my eyes open, unsure of my own surroundings.

A split second passed before those surroundings settled, as the interior of my home fell into familiarity once more. I didn't know if the sun beyond the window was rising or setting and I couldn't have said, even, what day it was. It was a welcome, if temporary, escape.

I wasn't sure what woke me, only that I had been jolted suddenly from sleep. I propped myself up, my elbows pressed into the pillow top beneath me when a sound rang through the empty space of my flat. It was a knock against the front door, loud, insistent, and I stepped groggily from the bedroom, some of the weight of before beginning to return and I wondered if it would ever fully be gone.

My feet stumbled along the floor, my consciousness having fallen on me suddenly, heavily, and I fought to see from beneath it. I found myself confused, unsure who could be waiting at my door. Who could require my presence.

I was no longer a suspect and had turned in my resignation. I had no reason to believe it was an officer who stood outside my home, but I knew it wasn't Vicky either.

She had my number, she had a key, she had no need to knock with such urgency that wouldn't have first warranted a call or welcoming herself inside.

Nevermind the distance that had only divided us further.

The suspicion I had been placed under had brought her closer to my side, if only for a moment. It had held her inside the shadow I had cast for far too long, darkness she could no longer bear.

In that time, in the park with a bomb strapped to my chest and in the hours after, we had said the things we needed to without ever really saying a word. The people we had been when the separation had begun and the people we were now were no longer two halves of the same whole. We'd grown apart. Our edges had frayed, and we no longer fit together. We were tethered, now, only by our children, by visitation visits, and the documents that began the official proceedings of our divorce.

There was no reason, then, that she should be knocking with the same intensity as my current visitor and I didn't know who else to expect.

My hand met the knob and I blinked away the last dredges of sleep that clung to me and pressed my eye to the peephole.

A man stood on the other side, unrecognizable. He was taller, broader, older than me, and dressed all in black, his eyes obscured by sunglasses. Unrecognizable. The man raised his fist to knock again, not content with the idea that no one was home. Not willing to accept it as an answer

With squealing hinges, I opened the door only the length that the chain would allow. I peered through the crack at the man that had so annoyingly requested my presence and waited for him to speak.

"Sergeant Budd?" His voice asked, husked by years of cigarettes. His fist dropped to hang by his side.

I said nothing, unsure if this was a man I should be giving my identity to. It seemed my service in the war and as an officer had given me more than PTSD, but paranoia as well. I waited, instead, for the man to go on. With a glance to both sides, he did.

"I have a matter of importance to… discuss with you. It is imperative what I am here to say remains between us." His hand dug into the breast pocket of his suit, pulling out a black wallet and the badge that was affixed to the front. "I'm here regarding a recent investigation."

I felt some part of me sink, felt my shoulders cave inward beneath the heft of the weight I thought I had been mostly free of. I had been lulled into a foolish sense of weightless brought by my dropped charges.

I lifted my fumbling fingers, pulling the chain from where it rested and welcoming him inside.

"Actually, Sir, I need you to come with me."

I leaned sideways, looking past him and at the unmarked car that had brought him here. I swallowed, my spit leaden as it clawed its way down my throat. A badge didn't automatically earn itself trust. Not after Craddock.

I looked first towards my feet, at my socks that were too thin and the floor on which I stood. I had spent the last month living in the space between risks, in the breath between this world and the next, never knowing which moment would be my last. To be honest, I'd lived most of my life this way. What was one more day?

"Right, then." I nodded, slipping on a pair of shoes that lay discarded beside the door and following the mysterious man down the step and away from my home.

There was no small talk as we drove. I was accompanied by my thoughts, by the memories brought on by the familiar roads we turned down, the side streets we took through and beyond the heart of London.

I'd taken Julia down many of these when it had been my duty to serve her, but now I sat in the backseat instead. Chauffeured by someone I didn't know to a location I couldn't guess.

We travelled through Edgware. Hatfield. It wasn't long before the streets lost their familiarity. The road signs were recognizable, the buildings that stood alongside them, but the memories had faded with time. The time I'd spent in these places had been minuscule at best and now only left me guessing as we continued into Stevenage.

"What is it I'm being questioned for?" I asked when I could take the silence no longer, the curiosities having mounted inside me until they spilled from my lips as worries.

"Questioned?" The word was hesitant, almost as if he was confused. As though he had forgotten his own words of before.

I thought again of Craddock. Luke. Chanel. The impending trial and my involvement that I had been told now only pertained to my testimony.

"No," the man finished a moment later. "No questions." He looked over his shoulder with a smile that I suppose was meant to be reassuring, but was anything but. "It's more of a...meeting. I've been instructed not to divulge any more information until we arrive. I'm sure you understand."

I nodded with a quick, frustrated clench of my jaw as my gaze returned to the streets beyond my window and the colors that seemed to blur together. The shops, the cars, they bled into one another with my unfocused sight and I leaned my forehead against the cool glass.

I had surmised by now, by the sky that had been drenched in a cobalt blue and the pale yellow that seeped just beneath the edges of it, the final rays of sunset, that it was night. My previous confusion had passed and I was swallowed again by the mundanity of a world I hadn't known how to live in since I had returned from Afghanistan.

"We're nearly there, now."

The man's voice pulled me from my thoughts and I allowed my vision to focus. My eyes darted across the roads, the buildings that stood along them and I found none of it familiar.

I pulled my phone from the pocket of my trackies — the clothes that I had fallen asleep in some time ago — and loaded my GPS. The red arrow loaded, placing me in a town I had never visited despite the fact our drive had been only an hour. Royston.

It looked small, the roads more narrow than the ones we had travelled. I felt I could see the end of the town although we had just entered it.

The car stopped abruptly, the engine sputtering to a stop. I turned, looking out the window once more and towards the building we had parked in front of. Perhaps I had expected a police station, maybe a small business. Instead, a small brick house stood in their place. An overgrown garden stretched along a walkway, the weeds of it spilling onto the path.

The thump of the closing car door directed my attention forward once more, to the driver's seat that now sat empty. I opened my own, stepping out onto the concrete that the tires rested against and following the man who had brought me here. Our adventure now more curious than ever.

My steps crunched on the loose bits of rock as we approached, him ahead, me behind. There was the familiar rapping of his knuckles, the same that he had interrupted my evening with, only this time the door was answered immediately.

The white painted door was pulled open, but whoever held the knob stood just out of view, invisible from even the porch.

My feet felt heavy, immovable, as though I'd already been trapped in the cement shoes I was suddenly sure I'd be receiving in a few moments time. I didn't know what had convinced me to come in the first place and I felt so stupid.

In my exhausted delirium, in my post-Julia carelessness, I had entered the car of a man I did not know and now stood in a place I had never been and would likely never leave.

Maybe my stomach should have plummeted further, but I was simply so tired of fighting. So tired of merely trying to stay alive.

"I know what you're thinking."

I looked away from the still-open door and toward the man who — this time — offered more than a stoic expression. The man I could only assume was one of Luke's henchmen.

"I served only to protect Julia, never to harm her," he continued.

My brow furrowed in confusion. I had been the only one assigned to her side…

"Come inside," he beckoned, his hands held outwards in a show of innocence. "One Sergeant to another, I assure you I'm not like those animals."

With a heavy breath and a swallowing of my fear, I did as he asked. The car that brought me here was not my own and unless I wanted to wait for rideshare, I had no way home. I stepped forward and across the threshold.

The door closed behind me and I turned to who had held it so long, awaiting my indecisiveness. The metaphorical cement that had encased me outside now spread across my body, holding my exterior like scaffolding while the rest of me scattered to ashes beneath this new cast that held me together.

My eyes fell over her.

Over Julia.

Over red hair and green eyes. Blush and freckled skin that had once touched mine only weeks ago.

I reached out to touch her, the woman that was supposed to be ghost and soul. Decayed flesh and bone. Remnants of a bomb and a failed surgery. I felt skin, the back of her hand warm beneath my own. Alive.

She broke the silence first with a whisper of my name, "David." Her voice seemed to crack along the syllables.

The cement that held me seemed to break, my movements suddenly slower than I would have liked as I pulled her into my arms, her body solid against mine.

I remembered, then, that we weren't alone and the moment seemed more intimate than an afterlife reunion. I pulled away, but she seemed to understand.

"Eason," She smiled towards my chauffeur, though I noticed the corners of her lips were tighter than what she had given me.

"Right," he gave a knowing chuckle and with a shared look between him and her that held more than I could have guessed, he stepped away, leaving Julia and me alone.