A/N: After the last chapter, I realised that slightly more plot is needed. Have injected plot with thanks to SephyRose and Trashcat. Kind of a sad chapter, sorry and all. Please review my feeble efforts.

Shaz was bleeding. This was unusual bleeding. She had begun to bleed heavily…she usually came on around the start of the month but she had started on the eighteenth...There was something unnatural about it. She was in twice as much pain as usual, and yesterday had been forced to screw up her eyes in an effort not to cry out. It was not right…

She didn't like going to the doctors at the best of times, and when it came to something like this, she could hardly bear the idea. But desperate times…

They needed milk. She had told him to get milk, she had expressly told him to get the milk, but oh no, Gene Hunt won't pop to the shops for some milk! No, he won't stoop that low! She had snatched up the keys to the Quattro, ignoring his indignant cries, and was now driving like a woman possessed around London.

She rounded a corner, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel impatiently…she'd have to boil the kettle again now, no way would it still be hot enough for a decent cup of tea by the time she got back. She did not notice the flurry of activity to her right.

It happened so fast. A movement. A squeal of brakes. Impact.

She stared from behind the wheel. The man lay motionless, a trickle of blood from his hairline seeping into his open, unseeing eyes. Even as she leapt from the car and attempted to resuscitate him, she knew it was too late. The leaden feeling settling in her gut told her what her heart simply refused to accept.

Alex Drake had killed a man.

Ray leant against the brick wall and smoked moodily. He and Jasmine had had a row. All he'd done was to offer to take her coat and she'd gone off on one. He scraped his foot on the concrete, watching stones scatter before it. He looked up at the sound of his name.

"DI Carling?"

"Millie." he nodded to her in acknowledgement, briefly meeting her gaze.

"You're not looking too happy." She observed it simply, but her face and eyes told of something else. As Ray reinstated eye contact, he could not help but feel that she was scrutinising him, analysing and scanning him for the source of his mood. It struck Ray for a moment how odd it was that this did not bother him in the slightest. If it were anyone else, he would feel uncomfortable, but with Millie…she had a strange power when it came to putting people at ease. One felt as if it was possible to confide anything to this woman. She simply seemed to radiate trustworthiness. The spell was broken by a hacking cough.

Millie doubled over slightly, both hands to her mouth. Her whole body convulsed with the force of it.

"Er-you alright?" Ray said, awkwardly, stepping forward. Millie held up a hand as she recovered herself as if to wave his concern away.

"Fine love, fine," she straightened up again, smiling, "So I take it all's not well on planet Ray?"

" 's been better." he admitted.

"Jas, is it?" Millie pressed.

"Hmm." he confirmed.

"Ray," he looked up again, "now I'm not saying I know everything, and I'm not always right, but I've seen my fair share of the world, and I was wondering if you'd take advice from an old bird like me." Ray smiled at this.

"Well, I'm listening, love. I'm fresh out of ideas." Millie inclined her head slightly in acknowledgement as she began.

"I take it that Jasmine's argument goes along the lines of you being too intense?"

"Summin like that." muttered Ray, colouring slightly at the frank way in which she expressed his faults.

"Now, if I'm not mistaken, you don't normally go for serious relationships?"

"I don't." he had to admit this much, at least.

"So when you first met our Jasmine, you behaved very differently towards her then than you do now."

"Yeah…well, I thought it was just-"

"a bit of in out, in out, shake it all about?"

"Could put it that way…"

"You were yourself when you first met her, weren't you?"

"Yeah."

"So now you're with her, you're panicking. You don't want to lose her, do you Ray?"

"Well no, course I don't, I-"

"So you've started putting on an act. Being the perfect gentlemen?" He was silent. The truth of her words stung him slightly, though when he looked up, her expression was soft. "Ray. Has it ever occurred to you that she might not want a bloke who throws his coat over puddles for her…she was attracted to you Ray, you. Let her have you. Don't give her the gentleman. Respect her, yes, be kind, yes, but don't change who you are for her. No woman deserves that. You can only be happy with a woman who loves you for you."

He stared at her blankly, mouth desperately trying to form words, of gratitude or of rebuke he could not tell.

"If course, love doesn't come into the equation just yet, but you feel something, right?" he nodded numbly. "Well that's a start, it's a start. I'll see you soon Ray." and with that, she departed, leaving his mind racing.

Miscarriage. The word seemed to echo around her head. A dead, harrowing sound. She had had a miscarriage, that had been the blood. The blood had been…

A baby had been inside her. For a few, precious days, a tiny life had been growing within her. Shaz had been a Mother without ever knowing. Now, what remained of that life was slipping through her fingers. Her body had failed at its primary function.

As she lay on the bed, tears seeping into the mattress, she sung a muffled, half remembered lullaby; the first and last her child would ever been sung. When the song petered out, she allowed herself to wail into the sheets.

Gene had his arm around his fiancée.

"It was an accident love. It was an accident. Come on Bolls…s'okay darling." she had buried her face into his shoulder as the body was zipped into a bag. "Be strong now love. You didn't mean to."

At these words, she pulled away from him slightly.

"Didn't mean to! I know I didn't mean to! But-but, try telling his Mum I d-didn't mean to-o!" she dissolved once more into tears.

Lifting her bodily, Gene carried her to the car he had arrived at the scene in. He placed her into the front passenger seat as carefully as if she had been made of glass. As an afterthought, he removed his coat and covered her with it. Alex appreciated the familiar scent, though this did not prevent her from continuing to cry, though now silently.