Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, they own me. Special thanks to Toby Whithouse and BBC3 for the playground. Beta assistance from TJ4ev and Whimsyfox enables (most of) my grammar to pass muster for Hal.
Special Note: Depression, and the severity of it - for yourself or a loved one - is no easy matter. It also is something deeply personal for me. Fiction is one thing, but in real life, those giving support often need support themselves. Your local suicide or crisis hotline is there for you. Call them. Call anyone. Reach out. Something so heavy should never be carried alone.
Tom dropped his hands into the pockets of his jumper and gazed out through the woods. He had scanned in every direction, trying to catch Hal's scent. Alex's hunch must have been spot on. Hal hadn't left the Archive on foot.
Allison hooked her arm through his, coming to stand next to him. "He's not here," she concluded, echoing his thoughts.
Tom swallowed, and the anger of it finally hit him. After everything they'd done. After Alex had miraculously saved him, and Tom had gone through the agony of repressing his wolf to save him all over again, Hal had fallen. Hal, his friend, had given up. Disappointment warred with disgust. Alex had said that Hal tricked her. That he'd attacked the guard in his escape. The ghost would try to find him, but she had feared it was already too late. Tom clenched his jaw. God, he hated vampires. And he really wished his best mate wasn't one. Allison must have sensed the emotion in him for she patted his arm.
"C'mon. This is Hal we're looking for. Hal! Do you really think he could be off on some murder spree?"
Tom shook his head, "He's an Old One, Allison. One of the worst there was. We forget."
The brash trilling of his mobile interrupted the protest on her face and whatever new argument she was forming. Tom pulled the cell out of his pocket to answer. "Ello?"
"Mr. McNair," Rook's voice came even more clipped than usual. "The Department needs you, and any of your constituents that you deem trustworthy."
"I done already talked to Gwedore and Irving and -"
"Yes, they'd be excellent," Rook confirmed, sounding distracted. "The situation is as we feared. The video footage and evidence is being reviewed as we speak, so we have set the stage for Plan B. I will text you the coordinates. Please meet me in one hour."
"Yeah, but -"
"Tom, I cannot stress this enough. Your assistance could very well be pivotal. Will you help us?"
Tom held the mobile to his ear, but gazed out to the woods, silent. What if this was it? What if the Department failed their hundreds-year-old mission? The truth of it all finally hit him with a clarity as mighty as a calling. With as strong a sense of good and true as any of the missions he'd had with his Dad. They would come for him. They could come for Allison. The humans would hunt down every single werewolf from that footage. And Hal, his best mate, had abandoned them.
"What do you need us to do?" Tom asked, though it didn't really matter. He would do it. If it was up to him to save them all, so be it.
"Just a simple matter of playing a part," Rook answered. "One hour."
"You weren't to know."
Hal didn't even look up or acknowledge her approach when he spoke. "You were the only reason I stayed. Tom is settled. He doesn't need me and now, neither do you."
Alex came closer, stepping around an uprooted shrub. "Hal, no. Of course I -"
"No," he stopped her rebuttal. "I'm tired Alex. I cannot do this again. The hunger..." He made the word hold such a yearning. "I want so much to revert. To tear the world apart. To drown it all in a thick, red haze there would be no coming back from." Hal trembled as he spoke, holding the stake softly, delicately. "It never changes. It never stops. It never eases up. Every single moment is compromised. Tainted." He brushed the sodden strands of fringe from his eyes and finally looked at her. For a brief second, his expression was as if he didn't believe she were really there. His eyes were wildly reddened. "How in the name of Hell did you find me?"
She knew she needed to keep him talking, but Alex swallowed nervously. "Does it matter? Hal, please don't do this. It will devastate Tom."
"He wasn't to know. No one was to know."
"Oh! You didn't think I would feel it? If you ripped yourself from the world?"
He shook his head. "It is broken. Gone."
"It most certainly isn't! The anchor maybe, yeah. But..." Alex threw her hands into the air in frustration, "Fuck it all. I love you goddammit!"
"Why? You don't even know the half of me."
"No. You know what? You're right. I don't. Is that what you want me to say?" Alex's anger flared at the audacity of his question. "There are things about you I will never know, and there are things I never wanted to know. You are capable of some truly unimaginable horrors. But you know what? I don't give a shite!" she shouted at him.
Hal had been looking at the stake in his hands, but he looked up, questioning her.
"I don't give a shite because I've seen a whole lot of something else that matters. I've seen how terribly hard you fight against your past. Against all of it. You're strong! Stronger than you let yourself believe, and you've been keeping yourself that way longer than any of us have been alive. This is the fecking blood talking and I won't hear it. You can get through this. We can get through this." She took a strident step forward and his fingers curled over the stake, tightening protectively, knuckles white. Alex froze. She stood less than two feet away, but stopped her approach. At any moment, she could lose him.
Hal took a deep, exasperated, shaky breath. "Strong?" he huffed. "This is it. This is the verge. I cannot keep the mask up any longer. Don't you see? You were as much my anchor as I was yours. With the thread gone, I'm cut free. And now..."
"And now what?! So what? So tell me then - how bad is it?"
"How bad? I'm contemplating staking myself. I'd say that's fairly bad."
"How many people did you kill today?"
Hal grimaced, then scoffed, "Today? None, but that is hardly -"
"None. Exactly. That is what I thought. Missing your mark on the guard was no mistake. And right now, instead of massacring some roadside pub, you're sitting in the woods in the middle of the pouring rain," she countered rationally, and he turned his face downwards. "Hal, you'd rather kill yourself than kill again. Literally! Look at yourself! That has got to stand for something!"
She knelt in front of him, dropping to the upturned mud. She couldn't feel the cold or the wet, so it didn't matter. She needed to be level with him. She needed to see his face. He still clenched the stake possessively, but he didn't ward her off. She placed a hand gently over his knee. "Hal look at me," she pleaded. "LOOK at me!" He didn't budge, but neither did she. Eventually, he met her eyes. "If you really wanted to off yourself, you wouldn't have even left the Archive. You could have done this right then and there. Why this? Why the theatrics?"
"This isn't -" he huffed, then exhaled. Stopped short. "It was always going to be here. I had to get here."
"No, uh-uh. You stole Rook's car, drove hell-for-leather, which I know because I was trying to catch up. Then, you come all this way and proceed to sort some fecked up landscaping?" Pointedly, Alex dropped her gaze to the uprooted plants. "No, you wanted to be found. You don't want this. You've survived far too long for this to be the end."
A long silence stretched between them. Alex counted every second that he wavered as a blessing. He took a deep breath, his gaze far. "You are so bloody like her sometimes."
Alex let got of the breath she was holding. Only then did the realisation dawn. "This place…" she whispered. She began to piece together, from what little she knew, of where they were. It was always going to be here. "Jaysus, you really did love her, didn't you?"
"And yet I killed her anyway. I told you. Love isn't ever going to be enough."
"But you're still here. Why, Hal? Why haven't you tried this charade until now?" Alex asked, and Hal looked away again. "Oh…" she paused and Hal still didn't meet her eyes. "You've come here with that very intent before, haven't you?"
A long moment passed, the rain pounding the leaves before finally he admitted with a bare nod.
"What stopped you?"
"Aside from irritable ghosts?" he snapped. The barb would have hurt, except for the breadth of pain in his sigh. His gaze returned to the far tree. "I simply couldn't do it. I couldn't break a promise I made over two centuries ago." His eyes, red rimmed and weary, met hers. "I promised her that I would keep trying."
"Because she couldn't bear the thought of you reverting?"
Hal shook his head. "She held on to the notion, even to her death, that one day I would beat it. Even if it was beyond her lifetime, she thought that she could save me." Hal's voice had softened, but the muscles of his arms tensed. "That day came and went Alex. It was a lie. I'm never going to conquer this. It's who I truly am." He returned his gaze to her, and his eyes looked as if they couldn't contain all the sorrows he had seen. All the sorrows he held.
"In part, you are right," he whispered, then looked back down to the stake in his hands. "This is not for me, Alex."
She shook her head, unwilling to accept where he was going with the statement. "No."
"You will always keep saving me. As long as I breathe, you will not allow your Door to come. Even if I start killing again, you will keep the optimism that next time will be different. That the next time, you can help me overcome it, and you can't. No one can." He paused. "You do not know the man I would become. He yearns to kill. He wants to take control for the power, and the destruction. He would destroy you."
"Hal, no." She refused. "You wouldn't -"
"Yes, I would. With the chaos that is coming, I can already see the pathways. I would become the next to lead my kind. I would lead the vampires into war with open arms, welcoming the carnage. Which is precisely why it is beyond time for me to end this."
"But... I gave you hope, you said. Before we had barely begun."
"And then it all was shattered."
"Is your faith in yourself really such a fragile thing? You're a good person, Hal. The very fact of what you're considering only proves it," she countered.
"No, I'm not. I'm sorry I made you think that."
"Not just think it - believe it! And now? All this has just solidified what you so sweetly tried to break in busting out of the Archive. I trust you."
Hal shook his head. "You really shouldn't."
"Then trust in me. If you can't in yourself, trust in me. That was the point, wasn't it? When you got me to fight you? You wanted me to prove that I could stop you if you turned, right? And I did. I've proven that time and time again. You've been a survivor for literally centuries! You can't just give up."
"I cannot stand by and watch yet more death and suffering caused by me. I should have done this centuries ago," he waved the stake irritably. And then he uttered the one thing Alex recognised as the root of his pain. "I cannot bear to keep inflicting my failures on those I love."
"No, you're right. You can't," she said sternly as she suddenly stood, and he abruptly looked up. "That just means you're not allowed to fail. I won't let you."
"No." He met her earnest expression with a discounting grimace. "It's too much, Alex. That is my point. I could not ask it."
"But I can give it whether you ask or no!" She shouted, then took a jagged breath to cool her temper. She crossed her arms over her chest as she collected herself. So much hinged on what she said, and how she said it. On whether she could reach him. She remembered the strange bit of advice Carl had given her. He trusts those who are the most forward. If she had any chance of getting through to him, she had to be forward. And brutally honest.
Alex dropped her arms to her sides. "I wanted a big, extraordinary life someday. Well, my someday was taken from me. But then, you know what? I found it anyways. But not if you go. You think you'd be doing this for me?" She vehemently shook her head. "Well, that's an utter load of shite! Without you, I'm nobody but a ghost. Trust me - I had no idea how much the whole thing sucks. Spectacularly. You asked me once to help hold you accountable. Well, this is it. Don't give up. Because if you give up now, you won't just be letting down me, and Tom, and Leo and Sylvie and all those who cared for you, but every single soul whose life you ended when you reverted. If you give up, those failures come to nothing but that; failure."
Alex took a breath, and in the pause saw the slight tremble of his wrist. She forged ahead. "You want to know why you keep fecking up? It's because deep down, you truly believe it will always win. You really think that you don't have a choice. You even warned Carl that it would take someone close. Not an if, but a when. You've beaten this for so long Hal, and yet you can't even see it because you're always looking for the other shoe to drop. What if the only reason it does, is because you expect it? What if instead, you change your expectation to keep on beating it because you already have?"
The silence landed, heavy, after she made her point and he just stared at her. His posture, his grip on the stake, remained unchanged. Alex wanted to keep screaming at him to listen. She wanted to beg him to understand. But the rain fell, and he just stared at her, and she stared back. The rain fell, and she couldn't feel it and he wasn't bothered by it and he should be, because he was Hal, wearing borrowed, muddy wellies and a torn shirt soaked through and it was just all shades of off. She wanted to memorize his face in case she had gotten him wrong. If the tensed muscles of his arm holding the stake struck. She doubted she'd be able to save him a second time. They stared each other down, neither budging, until finally, he sighed.
With that one sigh, he caved to her and Alex nearly wept from that sharp flutter of hope. And yet, his question in response wasn't a give at all. "Why? What, ultimately, is the point?"
His words were a blade-thrust of sorrow that momentarily left her stunned. "I can't answer that for you," she said, after a long pause. "But I can answer it for me." Alex swallowed thickly.
"Love," she said boldly, even though she knew it wasn't enough for him. "And beauty. Getting good and lost in great music. The sunrise when you've been up all night. Sunset after a perfect day. Friendship. And making a difference in this damn world. Just how true and right and good our household is. That we've been all blessed with each other. That we matter. We saved the bloody world, and that means we should enjoy it." Did he soften, slightly? Did the whites of his knuckles lessen?
"And… then there's us. I've never felt…" she stammered, then rephrased what she meant. "This thing we have? You're right. I'm not going to give it up. I'll never stop seeing the good man in you because I'm in love with him. But it's more than that. I'm in love with you - all of you. Even the bits that hurt to look at. I've accepted it, even if you can't. What I feel for you defies the laws of time and space. I'm dead! This shouldn'a have happened, but it did. We happened. We've had two mind-blowing months together, but it'll never be enough. I want two lifetimes! I want the whole bloody world with you! And that's worth fighting for. You're worth fighting for. Just as you're trying to save me in your own assed-backwards way, I'm always gonna save you."
Alex concluded with a hopeful smile. Her speech was met with a tightening of his jaw. He wasn't quite accepting, but he wasn't refuting her either. Alex took a deep breath, then bit her lip. Carefully, she reached into the breast pocket of her jacket. "We're not broken. I can still sense you, Hal. It was enough to follow you here. And… I have this."
She removed the vial, internally chanting a desperate mantra of pleasepleaseplease.
Hal's eyes sliced into black as if she had flipped a switch. This close to the edge, even months-old, stoppered blood was a potent pull.
"What do you think you're doing?" He demanded around his dropped fangs. "More blood will merely prolong the inevitable."
"And not a bad idea if this doesn't work." Alex held the precious liquid tightly, as protectively as he was holding his cursed stake. They only had one shot at this. Literally. "It's a choice. You need to know. We might be able to mend the anchor."
He kept his hands where they were, gripping the stake at the ready, but he didn't move. The unconscious rise and fall of his chest was a stark contrast against the monstrous darkness of his eyes.
Alex gestured softly with the vial in her hand. "This is it. The last of me. The Department keeps limited samples on file for people like me, just in case they ever need to re-stage evidence. Maggie gave it to me." The blackness ebbed from Hal's eyes. He blinked. She had his attention. "What if we could fix this? What if all you have to do is drink my blood again?"
Hal's cleared eyes hadn't left the vial the whole time she pleaded her case. "Even if it doesn't work," she continued, "you'll still have me. I'm not going anywhere. I'll keep doing anything in my power to help you. I haven't a bleeping clue what my business is anyway."
He licked his lips, then tore his gaze from the blood in her hand to meet her eyes. "If the bond is rekindled then I could hurt you all over again. Or something much, much worse."
"If the bond is rekindled then I can totally kick your arse," she retorted, and his lips parted, then closed. Alex dropped back into seriousness. "In Annie's future - the one we stopped? She said you were terrible. Who you became? That's only one path, Hal. One choice."
"And this is another," he said with a small tilt of the stake.
"Do you ever feel the parallels? Like there are all these alternate stories out there that we could have been living?"
Hal furrowed his brow, then sat up a little straighter. "All of the time. Every day."
"Even the ones in which you revert?" she asked with a tilt of her head.
"It plagues me, to know what I'm capable of."
"Exactly. Hal, what you're capable of and what you do are two separate things. I like this parallel."
"As... have I," he drew out the words cautiously.
"So, stay. Stay with me."
"What of a reality where you don't die at all?"
She shrugged, "It doesn't exist. We can't go back. Only forward, far as I know. And going forward? This is the only future I want," Alex declared solidly. "Besides," she added. "You still owe me a date."
Hal's clenched jaw loosened. The eager stake poised, he said without any restraint of disbelief, "A date." He lowered the stake, set it to rest on his lap. "A date," he repeated and dropped his head into his hands.
Alex returned the vial to the safe-keeping of her pocket, then picked up a piece of uprooted plant. With a small nudge, she pushed the stake to roll. Hal made no motion to catch it, and it dropped to the ground with barely a rustle, landing in a clump of grass. She took a seat on the stone adjacent to him. It was a small boulder, really. She brought one knee up for balance, her other foot on the ground, and leaned forward. She twirled the twig between thumb and forefinger as Hal held his head in his hands, deliberating.
"Promise me," she said, after he still made no motion to retrieve the fallen stake.
"Promise you what?" Hal answered her softly, trepidatious.
"Promise… that you'll keep that promise you made all that time ago."
"And now yours. Why?" He raised his head and tilted his chin to look at her.
"I don't want to ever see… you can't give up." She said with a shake of her head. "Not after all this."
"Alex… that promise has cost more lives than if I hadn't."
"You don't know that."
"Yes, I do."
"And you're carrying centuries of grief about it, aren't you?" She asked softly, feeling the deep truth of it as she spoke. "I get it now. Your routines." Hal didn't respond, so she pressed on. "Every day, you push your body to the point of healing. Just so you can sleep at night. Every day is a penance. A long line of counting against the things you've done. All of the control you wield over yourself will never come close to making up for the control you had over others. I get it, I really do. You've been sitting inside a prison of your pain all this time. But... maybe that's all you can do? Maybe that's what you have to do? Kinda like Jim Morrison said," she mused, then paused. "Wait, you do know who he is, right?"
Alex took comfort in the classic eye-roll that Hal gave her. "Yes, I know who Jim Morrison is."
"Well, he said that pain is meant to wake us up. That you can't hide it, but rather you're s'posed to carry it with you and it's how you carry it that matters."
"You do realise that he potentially offed himself with heroin?"
"Oh," Alex said after a stumped pause. "Yeah. Shite."
But at her awkward and mortified reaction, Hal actually almost smiled. It was a glimmer of hope rekindled. That small, passing warmth lifted her heart and lit up her face. She smiled, dropping her boot to the ground to shift her posture to be closer to him. But then he shook his head. "This isn't ever going to change. It will always remain a struggle. Even after fifty-five years clean, it has been a never-ceasing battle. I cannot offer you anything more than -"
Brazenly, forwardly, she leaned in to stop his words with a kiss.
It was off and weird and only slightly tingly. When Hal kissed her back with the force of one who has nearly drowned, Alex could barely feel it. But she could feel that there was resolution in that kiss. There was acceptance. And the tiniest hint of a spark that told her that they had a chance.
