A/N: I'm not sure I like this chapter very much, but then again it is after one in the morning and I've had a really exhaustive week so far - and it's only the early hours of Wednesday! As always, thank you to everyone who is reading and reviewing!

Sarah x

It was one in the afternoon when Hanssen started driving down to the city centre for lunch, the other three in the car with him; Jonny was looking up somewhere to sit and eat on his phone while Jac and Serena talked about nothing in particular and Hanssen tried to work out what he was going to do. He couldn't be a father. He'd tried to go down that road once before and hadn't even met the boy.

"If you park in Gellatly Street car park, it'll be easy to get anywhere," Jonny said. "I'll show you."

Hanssen found himself calmer than he had been in the house last night, or leaving for Dundee this morning, and he started going over his words and actions with a fine tooth comb. He knew now he had been pretty vile towards Serena this morning. To refer to her child as 'spawn' was something he should have known she would take offence to, and in his heart, he couldn't really blame her for it.

"Turn here," Jonny ordered him at the corner of South Marketgait and Gellatly Street, and soon they were parked and getting out of the car. He wanted to be able to apologise for his words and his actions because, as much as they still felt true to his heart, they had hurt Serena and he didn't want that. They had left bruises and cuts on Jonny's face, and he didn't want that either.

If he had been able to remain calm in the face of what terrified him then he would not have said and done those things, and the damage would have been minimal. As it was, though, he had allowed his control to slip during the moments he should have only thought rather than speaking, and this tense atmosphere was the consequence.

It was still cold as he watched Serena pull her coat tightly around herself, though marginally warmer in the town than it was in the rural areas. As the walked down Peter Street to Murraygate, he could hear laughter and music, a female vocal and acoustic guitar ringing out through the frozen air. Jonny was smiling and Hanssen knew how much he loved music. As Jonny and Serena stopped to listen to the young woman with the guitar, Hanssen said, "I'm going to go over there and get a bottle of water," pointing to the miniature sized Tesco across the road.

Jac soon followed him, saying something about chocolate, and it wasn't long before they were at the self-service checkout with bottles of water and a massive slab of chocolate, despite the fact that they were about to have lunch. He opened his wallet and took out some coins and, while he dropped them into the slot, something in his wallet caught his eye.

He took the small rectangle from the clear plastic that covered it and just stared, wondering how on Earth it even got there. "Get your change," he vaguely heard Jac tell him, and he could hear the rustling of her picking up the carrier bag. "Come on! You're holding up the queue!" But he was frozen and confused, unable to understand how a picture he had never taken of a scene he had never witnessed ended up in the wallet that was always near him.

He heard Jac grumble at him and drag him away outside to the music and happiness, and the cold air hit him with a vengeance. Jac snatched the photograph away from him and he saw an almost childlike curiosity in her face. "Who's the kid?" she asked him as she opened her bar of chocolate, referring to the boy of about eight or nine, sitting on Serena's knee on an old dry stone wall, a landscape of fields and hills behind them. She looked up and added, "You don't know, do you?"

He didn't say anything but he knew she knew that he knew there was something strange going on here. "Does it say anything on the back?" he asked, though he was not entirely sure he actually wanted to know. He had an uncomfortable notion that this was the same kind of thing left for Serena – a photograph dated long into the future.

She turned it over and replied, "Just 'Serena and Callum, March 2023.' That's it. How is that even possible?"

"I don't know," he admitted, taking it back from her. He stared at the land behind the woman and child; if it was covered in snow, it would be the double of the area they were staying in at the moment. He put it back in his wallet, resisting the temptation to throw it in the bin and pretend he had never seen it. He wanted control over himself, because last night and this morning had frightened him. He had forgotten how cruel he was capable of being. It was always in him, but he always held back. Only recently had he started poking sharp sticks exactly where he knew would hurt those around him the most.

Part of him wanted to get Serena, hug her and tell her that he was sorry for his behaviour. But his pride didn't allow it and neither did his shield. He feared that as soon as he set foot in that cottage he would succumb to whatever force made him that way; he wasn't so awful most of the time. It felt like all his good was being buried and all his bad was being raised. It wasn't a fair image of him, and Serena had to know that.

They found Serena and Jonny, and Jonny took them down a side street – Reform Street – to some place he said did good TexMex food. When they were seated and eating, Hanssen felt the atmosphere lighten on full stomachs. Jac, Jonny and Serena laughed together while he kept quiet, trying to work out the meaning of the picture. Serena's presence was obvious. There was no mistaking her. But the boy was someone he had never met before. Identical to the child Serena had shown him in the photograph left by her bed, his eyes and hair were dark, his skin the same glowing pale as Serena's.

"You know, I could eat another dozen of these things," Jonny said as he bit into his third steak and chicken fajita.

"What a surprise," giggled Serena, taking a bite out of hers. Hanssen found himself irrationally jealous of how well Jonny and Serena got along; there was nothing in it, of course, but why could he get along with Serena like Jonny did? Those two could laugh from dawn until dusk and still enjoy each other's company. Why couldn't he himself be like that with her?

Jonny was an opposite end of the spectrum to Hanssen; Jonny was loud and passionate and thrived on emotion and expression, while Hanssen was introverted and logical and kept everything he thought and felt to himself unless it was necessary to disclose it. Perhaps that made Jonny the better human being, but he also knew there was no way he could change himself now, even if he tried.

Jac stood up and said, "I'm just going to the bathroom, since my daughter is having great fun squeezing my bladder into oblivion."

"Yeah, I'd better go and all," Jonny added.

When they got up, Hanssen was left in a tense silence with Serena, and it was one neither could break. He couldn't bring himself to apologise, and she met his eyes with a great deal of hurt in her face. He had hurt her. She brushed it off and snapped at him, and she said she didn't need him, but alone with her, without the distractions of others, he could see he had hurt her by reacting the way he had done.

But it was a surprise when Serena finally spoke, only because what she said was not what he expected. "Henrik, I know you're not the type to want the responsibility of a child. But I can tell you, after eighteen years of parenting, that if you try, you will love this child more than anything else in the world. Even if you don't love me, and I know you don't, you can still love your baby. Just think about that."

He had expected the third degree, to be told he was cold, heartless and inhuman, but not to hear her say that.

"I..." he tried to begin, but the words, the apology, all the explanations, never found their way out of his mouth. Nothing ever got further than the filter in his brain because that filter gave him a million reasons to keep his mouth shut. After all, there was so much he could do wrong, and so many things he could tell her that would result in her hating him. And despite his manner and behaviour, he didn't hate Serena and he didn't want her hating him. That was why she had never got to know about the mess he made with Maja and Fredrik. That was why she couldn't know that he wasn't willing to risk hurting her and their child.

She sighed and stood up, going to the bar to pay the bill as Jac and Jonny returned. He was well aware that there was only so far he could expect to push Serena before her temper broke, but his very being just now was pushing her to the limit of her patience.

They were all walking back up Reform Street five minutes later, and Hanssen smirked to himself when Jonny noticed the statues outside the shopping centre. He tried to convince Hanssen that it was a good idea to have a picture of all four of them with Desperate Dan and Mini the Minx, but he didn't see the merit in the idea; instead he agreed to take a picture of Jac, Serena and Jonny on Jonny's phone. The flurry of snow around them and the white ice below made them seem brighter and their smiles happier...happier than he had any hope of achieving, at any rate.

They trampled down the street, hearing the loud guitar and singing once more, the woman's voice thoroughly accented with the local tongue. It was only when the singer was in sight that he really listened to the beat of what she played; there were people around her dancing with each other outside HMV, and he couldn't help but understand why Jonny enjoyed music so much. It could pull people together. That much was clear.

Jonny took Jac's hand and started carefully yet haphazardly dancing her around, making himself and her look a little silly as she tried to resist his efforts. It wasn't long before she succumbed and let him lead her, even if she had her reservations about it. Even Jac could let it go once in a while, so why couldn't he?

Hanssen glanced at Serena to see her grinning and tapping the beat into her hip, looking around at the Christmas lights above. A man approached her, stocky and muscular, in his forties, and said, "C'mon. A bonnie lass like you shouldnae be standin' here on yer own wi' the songs on the go." Serena laughed, and Hanssen was jealous once more as she allowed him to start dancing with her. It was his own fault really, he reminded himself. If he wanted to dance with her then he could, if only he could make himself grow a bit more of a backbone.

The solutions were simple but the means to achieve them were far from it. Through the night he had, just for a moment, wanted to reach around and feel where his child was growing inside her, but that would necessitate in admitting he cared, and caring could only get him hurt. Not to mention that, in that room and in that house, every impulse he had that could be a step forward was pushed back down, leaving him frightened to try.

But that would have sounded crazy, to use that as an excuse for his behaviour. Even if it hadn't completely been off his own volition that he shouted at Serena and punched Jonny, 'It's not me, it's the house' didn't sound like a good excuse.

Hope this is OK!
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me what you think!
Sarah x