Nice, longish chapter today. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything affiliated with Skins.

Four months, two weeks, five days. That was how long it had been since Effy and Cook had seen each other. Effy had intended to go to his sentencing but two days beforehand she had landed herself in hospital. That's where she'd been for the last two months, one week and four days. The day Cook told her about Freddie and left to hand himself over to the fuzz was the day the voices came back. It was almost as if they had never left. They came to her when she was lonely or sad and told her that it was her fault that her boyfriend was dead, that it was her fault that Cook was in gaol, that it was her fault that John Foster chose her to prey on- all because she was weak. She let herself love and it only led to disaster. And so, two months, one week and four days prior, Effy had tried to kill herself again by getting hit by an oncoming van. Cook wasn't there to save her this time. She'd been under twenty-four hour watch in the hospital ever since.

Foster had survived his brutal beating only barely and was now paralysed from the waist down. He was charged with malpractice thanks to the statement Effy had tearfully given and, due to the overwhelming evidence Cook had discovered, charged with stalking, grievous bodily harm, and the first degree murder of Freddie McClair. Effy had heard when Karen came to visit her in hospital one day, that he had been sent to a high security prison and sentenced for twenty-one years and, thankfully, wasn't eligible for parole for seventeen years.

It was very hard for Effy to trust another doctor after the Foster fiasco. This was understandable considering everything she'd put into her relationship with the man was a lie. Those whole few months were a lie. The worst part was that she had forgotten who Cook was. She had gone and broken up with Freddie, but she couldn't even remember who Cook was. She couldn't believe she had forgotten '09 Bonnie and Clyde.

Effy lay in her hospital bed looking out the window when a knock on the door signalled the arrival of her doctor who came to see her at the same time every day since she had been there. Amy, as Effy knew her, walked in and took a seat. The red haired doctor looked at Effy with smiling green eyes. They sat in silence, enjoying the morning sun shining through the window.

'I miss him.' Effy didn't speak much to the doctor, but when she did it was always something significant. They made progress with barely a few dozen sentences exchanged. It was amazing how much this woman could help by listening rather than trying to 'fix' her.

'It's natural to miss someone who has been taken from us so suddenly,' Amy replied. 'It's natural to miss someone no matter how much time we have with them before they leave us.'

'I fucked it all up,' Effy muttered to herself. 'It was all my fault. I made it a game in the first place with that stupid fucking list, and they ended it with the race. He won.'

Amy didn't quite catch the second half of what Effy said. 'It's not your fault that a person took advantage of you, Effy. And it's not your fault that he took Freddie away from you.'

Effy felt guilty that she wasn't talking about Freddie when she should have been. It's not that she didn't think about him. She thought about Freddie every day. She missed him so much. But he wasn't coming back. She had said her goodbyes to him at his memorial months ago. She was beginning to close that wound. 'Cook,' she whispered, 'He took Cook away from me.'

'Well, Effy, you know that you can visit Cook any time you like! Maybe you might feel a little better if you pay him a visit. I bet he'd like that too.'

All this money Anthea was paying for a psych ward room in the best hospital she could afford, and all that the doctor could tell Effy was to visit Cook. Effy knew Amy was right. She had to visit Cook. She had to see him.

Gaol was a lonely place for a person like Cook. He was so used to always being the life of the party and having every one know his name (didn't matter if they liked him or not, as long as they knew he was Cook). The grey sky, grey walls, grey uniform, grey bed- everything was grey. He was so bored and so lonely. He didn't talk much to the other inmates. He was kind of any outsider- not enough of a criminal to be accepted by the men that he lived with. He didn't mind though; he didn't want to talk to anyone anyway. He spent most of his time reading, working out, and sleeping, trying to prevent the inevitable: thinking. Yet his mind always drifted.

Freddie. He missed him so fucking much.

Every night, just before falling asleep, when his mind was at its most relaxed, thoughts of Freddie fell into his mind. Every single night. Freddie was the closest thing to a real family he had ever had apart from Paddy. He always thought back to what he had said to Freddie almost a year and a half ago after his outlaw tour of Britain with her:

'Nothing good ever stays with me; absolutely nothing.'

He thought about her even more than he thought about Freddie. He could avoid thinking about Freddie's murder for most of the day, but thoughts of her invaded his mind constantly. He had no control over it. She had just crept into his head that first day. 'Sweet' was all it took, and ever since then…

Effy. The way Cook missed Effy was the most painful kind because, unlike Freddie, Effy was still around and Cook yearned to see her and feel her and hear her- but he still couldn't. He knew she had gone mental or something again, but he couldn't even help her. He hadn't spoken to her since the day he handed himself in.

Pandora had visited Cook twice before her and Thomas left for the USA (of course Thomas waited outside, refusing to talk to Cook) and Naomi and Emily visited often until they went to Goa. They'd sent a few post cards since then. Aside from this, his only connection to the outside world was Katie and JJ, who visited when they weren't busy with uni or work. A few times they brought tiny snippets of information that Katie had learnt from her regular visits to her unlikely friend, Effy, such as the name of her new doctor and how she was doing. When JJ told Cook the way Effy tried to kill herself again Cook had sort of shut down. When JJ came to visit him the next few times Cook refused to see him.

The sound of the lock sliding on his prison cell startled Cook from his reverie. He sat up, wondering what was going on.

'James Cook, you have a visitor.'

Cook slumped back down. 'If his name is JJ Jones, tell him I don't want to see him.'

The prison guard look surprised. The inmates usually jumped at the chance of visitors. 'I'm sorry, I'm not told the name of the visitors. You'll have to come see who it is for yourself. Do you wish to see your visitor or not?'

'Fuck it,' Cook said. 'Why not?' If it was JJ he could always tell him to fuck off in person.

The prison guard escorted Cook through the halls and when they reached the visitor's room, Cook sat at his designated table. He looked to the visitor's entrance to wait for JJ to walk through. Effy walked in instead.

A/N ARGHHHH! I found this chapter so difficult to write. Took me ages. It was hard to catch up on everything that Cook had been up to/feeling without it being mumbo jumbo coz there was just so much I wanted to explain. I got a kitten yesterday and he keeps walking on the laptop, which has slowed the process haha. Anyway, finally the backstory is set out and we are onto plot plot plot! And their first meeting in months, oooooh.

PLEASE REVIEW to let me know how I'm going, what you think of it, and if you have any suggestions or things you'd like me to add in.