A/N: This is where it starts to get weird. Even by my standards ;) Thanks again to everyone who is reading and reviewing - it's always much appreciated!

Sarah x

Jac's reply came as Serena stepped out of the lift behind Hanssen: What do you mean? What's happened? :/ xx

She stopped dead and met Jac's gaze, regretting telling the redhead of her fears almost immediately. She didn't notice Hanssen backtracking until his hand was in her hair. "Serena," he said quietly. "Come on," he ordered her quietly.

Serena had to shake some sense into her head and look up at him. Now was not the time and here was not the place to start going over last night's events. Her heart and mind had refused to work in rhythm with each other. What she could not feel she had thought and what she could not think she had felt. It had made kissing Hanssen one of the most frightening experiences of her life. For only a moment he had not been Henrik Hanssen.

It had shocked her but she had continued, still sane enough to know whose arms she lay in. But when he had fallen asleep by her side, her own private hell had opened up before her eyes. It had reduced her to tears to see what she had lost, what she had endured and what she may never have unfold in front of her. Even this morning the memory, and something else yanking at her heart, bothered her.

It bothered her until she had felt the urge to throw up this morning, unable to stomach the idea of the day ahead when she was so tired from a lack of peace. A disturbed night's sleep was not what she had had in mind when she went to bed twelve hours ago, and she definitely hadn't realised that not only would her sleep be disturbed, but her faith in her own mindset would be too.

She had to be losing her mind. Nobody in their right mind saw what she saw or did what she did. It was the only answer.

"Serena," Hanssen brought her back to the present. Jac and Jonny wandered ahead when Hanssen gave them a commanding look. "You've been acting bizarrely since last night and..." he began, but he seemed unable to finish. Whatever it was he wanted to say was getting stuck before he could get it out.

"And what?" she replied. He hesitated. He always did.

"And I'm worried about you," he confessed quietly. It took her by surprise; she knew that to Hanssen, the admission of worry was an admission of care, and he had never actually told her he cared about her. It remained unspoken, just like most things between them. She could feel his hand fall onto her shoulder, his touch making her feel safer.

She wanted him just to give her a cuddle and tell her not to worry, but she knew he would not do it; his stupid macho pride did not allow for sweetness and hugs in public. It allowed for steel and strength and everything she admired about him, but not for her to ask for the hug she needed in that particular moment.

Serena allowed a false smile and wandered away after Jac and Jonny; she was torn. She didn't know if she could keep walking this road with Hanssen. She did care for him. She cared for him greatly. But she could never be sure if he cared about her as much as she did about him. Suddenly his hand was on her back, turning her to face him. He looked into her eyes and she felt like he was reading her mind; he knew what, at the moment, she needed. But he was reluctant to give it. She was asking for more than he could give.

But he amazed her.

There and then, in the middle of the unfamiliar ward in an unfamiliar city in an unfamiliar country, he pulled her into the tightest embrace she had ever experienced. His arms were wrapped around her and his face was in her hair. His arms would not let her go even as a group of nurses, presumably just coming off a shift, passed them, talking fast in words she could barely understand. He had only ever held her in public once and it was to undo all the damage he had done in this city.

She leaned into him slightly, pushing out the thought that they had to face the day on the ward. "Listen to me," Hanssen ordered her. "Whatever it is, whatever is eating at you, you can tell me."

Serena snorted slightly. "That's a bit rich coming from you," she retorted. Before she had been able to stop herself, she had said it and she couldn't take it back. Another thing that remained unspoken – what Hanssen didn't want to discuss did not get discussed. She had learnt that lesson fairly early on.

He relinquished her and walked away without a word, leaving her to watch his back disappear through the door after he put alcohol gel on his hands. She shouldn't have said that; it was insensitive, inconsiderate and almost rude. And she didn't care. It was about time he remembered he was not the only one with a past and a box of horrors that had to remain closed at all times.

She stepped forward and sanitised her hands, opening the door to find Jac, Jonny and Hanssen talking to a consultant and a senior nurse. Hanssen blanked her completely and Jac sent her a searching stare as Jonny was in deep conversation with Nurse Stewart. Hanssen talked to Mr. MacEachainn, ignoring her presence.

"Ah, Mrs..." Mr. MacEachainn trailed away as he struggled to recall her name.

"Ms. Campbell. McKinnie, even, if you would like. Having decided I'm staying away from men, I'm considering going back to my maiden name," she said, shooting a glare at Hanssen. Her own irrational immaturity surprised her, but everything today surprised her. "Serena," she forced a friendly smile, holding out her hand. He shook it warmly; he was obviously in his early fifties, and was what could only be described as an islander – his accent was completely out of place next to Nurse Stewart's rough and fast tongue – and he was rather attractive. About five foot eleven, he was of medium build with brown hair and crystal blue eyes.

He took them around the ward and they watched a registrar and her F1 perform a liver resection on a young man. Hanssen said nothing to her, still silent at three o'clock when Mr. MacEachainn suggested they head back to the cottage before the Arbroath road got too bad again. The immediately agreed to cut their time here slightly short; they still had a supermarket to traipse around.

Nurse Stewart stopped Serena as the men left, and Jac stopped with her, handing her an envelope addressed Serena Caimbeulach/MacCionadha. She looked up at Nurse Stewart questioningly, who just smiled, "Yeh'll huv tae furgive him that. He's fae Uist an' he spells in Gaelic afore he thinks. Eh'm furever makin' the notes oot fur him."

Serena shook her head in confusion and bid goodbye to the nurse. Jonny and Hanssen were gone, presumably downstairs in the main entrance by now.

Serena felt Jac hauling her aside into the empty corridor, theirs footsteps echoing. "What the hell does that mean?!" hissed Jac.

"Exactly what I said," Serena retorted. "I'm going crazy." She recalled with a chill the scene that unfolded in her bedroom last night, so realistic that if she hadn't had the rationality to remember there could not be two of the same person in the room, she would have got up and taken part in the family discord.

She had watched as Edward argued with Eleanor, a bottle in his hand, and as Hanssen had leaned over a wooden cot. She had watched as Edward had started on Hanssen, and Eleanor broke them up. She had watched Edward upset Eleanor, and Eleanor upset Hanssen, and Hanssen upset Edward and so the pattern had continued. She could even smell baby powder and Eleanor's favourite perfume and Edward's choice of whisky.

It had been real. If she hadn't felt Hanssen lying asleep by her side then she would have believed her own delusions. Even he, for a moment, had taken on the image of Edward Campbell; when she had opened her eyes after kissing him she had been met with clear blue rather than Hanssen's dark irises.

She stared at Jac, realising just how insane that would sound aloud. She couldn't say all that to her. And anyway, she didn't know what it all meant yet. She was lost slightly, and her earlier dispute with Hanssen wasn't helping. It was clear he had taken offence to what she had said; what had possessed her to say it in the first place remained a mystery, but she had said it and she had hurt him in blind frustration.

"Serena, what on Earth is going on?" Jac demanded.

Serena looked down and replied, "How about we use the get-out clause we use with the men: it's a woman thing." A lie, of course, but it sufficed. Jac knew it was a lie, though there was something niggling at Serena that suggested this may not be a form of insanity.

"But it isn't."

Serena just shrugged her shoulders and started walking, Jac at her side, until they got to the lift. Jac just smiled to herself, and Serena knew why; her caginess must have reminded the redhead of her own bad habit of shutting everyone out when she didn't know what was happening to her. They met Jonny and Hanssen and, standing by the car in the blizzard, Serena said, "Are you sure you don't want to sit in the front, Jac?" Serena asked the pregnant woman.

"I'm fine," Jac smiled. They all got in the car and Jonny rattled away instructions to Hanssen as to how to get to a supermarket. When they had pulled off Arbroath Road and onto Kingsway East, Jac piped up, "There's a European Christmas market in the town at the weekend."

"How do you know about that?" Jonny challenged.

"Little thing called the internet," replied Jac, and Serena didn't need to look around to know the face that went with that retort. "Who wants to go? Assuming it's still on."

"It will be," Jonny said confidently as Hanssen drove in silence into the car park. "They don't cancel it unless the weather is catastrophic."

It was over two hours later that they safely arrived back at the cottage, herself, Jonny and Hanssen laden with shopping bags. Jac was carrying a fourteen-inch cheese, barbecue sauce, jalapeño, hickory steak, bacon, chicken, red pepper, red onion and ham pizza, the thought of which was making Serena feel slightly sick.

Eventually she slipped off into the bedroom. She was in serious need of peace, quiet and self-assurance, all of which she was beginning to lack. She flopped onto the bed and closed her eyes. All over again she smelled perfume and whisky and baby powder; she smelled it every time she had come in this room today. She had even smelled it waking up.

She sighed and opened her eyes; Serena usually didn't allow this to happen to her, and she had been trying to relax herself on the way home before being confined with three other humans for the rest of the night. It had worked until she had walked in the house and felt the dread one feels when they know something has to give.

Turning on her side, she pulled her hand over her face and tried to calm herself once more. Again, it worked for a short time. Until she looked on the bedside table. There sat a photograph, and she recognised herself sitting in her back garden, the shed behind her as she sat on an unfamiliar swing set with and unfamiliar toddler. The boy smiled brightly, his dark hair and eyes shining in the sunlight and his little hands clinging to the ropes below her own hands – he was sitting on her lap.

Never had she sat on a swing with a child. She hadn't even done that with Eleanor. She had always preferred to play on the swings without the interference of her parents, a trait she retained even as a young adult. She didn't know any child who looked this this little boy, and she definitely couldn't recall her picture being taken with him.

She turned it over; on the back the date was 2nd August, 2018.

Over four and a half years from now. How could there be a picture of her from over four years into the future?

Hope this is OK!
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me your thoughts!
Sarah x