A/N: This is, um, weird. That's all I can say. Thanks as always to everyone who has read and reviewed so far :)

Sarah x

Hanssen sat in the living room long after Jac, Jonny and Serena had gone to bed. His head was pounding still, and had been since he walked into the house. He just wanted normality. Was that too much to ask? For him to have one healthy, normal, calm relationship seemed an impossibility. Was it that there was something wrong with Serena, or was it that there was something wrong with him?

He wanted to run away but he didn't want to hurt Serena. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Serena. He was coming to realise as he distanced himself from her that he felt more for her than he had ever intended to. It hurt him to know that his behaviour hurt Serena, even if it wasn't meant.

Even after months of being with her, he didn't know what was driving him to love her. She didn't make life easy. She had a daughter. She bore the emotional scars of a marriage based on alcohol fuelled mental, emotional and occasionally physical abuse. She had a concrete wall around her. But so did he. One day, he knew, something would surely happen to collapse his defences, but he tried to build them stronger every day.

He stood up and found the bottle of whisky in the kitchen that Jonny had bought. He wasn't a drinker but he hoped it would kill the pain in his head; he would have taken painkillers but every time he went to take them the pain evaporated, only to return when there was no relief at hand. He couldn't understand that at all.

A glass in his hand, he silently paced down the hall and opened the bedroom door. Through the dim moonlight he could watch Serena as she slept, her hand unconsciously on her abdomen as if the action was going to protect her child. In the vulnerability of sleep, her face absent of make up but not of worry, he could see the woman that still existed within her. The young woman, sweet and loving, that Edward Campbell hadn't managed to destroy was still there, hidden by the walls she built in the knowledge that anyone who could see her for who she was could destroy what she held most dear: her humanity.

Hanssen had done the same.

He took a drink and closed the door, walking carefully back to the living room. He sat down and drained the glass, instantly pouring another. It was working; the pain in his head was diminishing somewhat, still there but not nearly as intense. He wondered briefly what Serena would say if she was sitting her with him when he remembered his promise not to get drunk. He would never raise his hand to her, of course, but he could understand her caution.

He switched the table lamp on, not very keen on tripping over the coffee when he eventually decided he was going to go to bed, and saw, lying on the table, a DVD. He picked it up; it was a plain rewritable disc, marked in black pen: When The Master Calls The Roll – Memphis, Tennessee, USA – July 17th 2029.

Curious, he put it in the player and switched the television on. It started playing where it had last been stopped, and he saw a young man of about fifteen or sixteen, a young woman of about the same age, and who he recognised to be Jac, Jonny and Serena all on a stage. The redheaded girl standing between the boy and Jac was singing.

"...oh, my darling William Lee, take me to the alter," sang the girl who stood between Jac and the boy, her voice dark and enthralling. "I don't have strength to watch you as you leave; but my love will never falter."

"Oh, my darling Mary Ann," sang the boy, strumming a guitar at the same time. His voice was deep and rough but held the same darkness as the redhead's. "The march to war is calling; somewhere far across the Southern lands; are bands of brothers falling; my tender bride, the tides demand; that I leave you with your mother; with my father's rifle in one hand; and your locket in the other."

As Hanssen drained the glass and poured yet another, the guitar picked up and all five – the girl, the boy, Serena, Jac and Jonny – started singing. "Lo, the season may come; lo, the season may go; beware the storm clouds gather; take heed dear mortal soul."

"When the master calls the roll," the girl and boy sang alone, minus the voices of Jac, Jonny and Serena.

Without warning the television was blank. He looked around and was startled to see two children standing in the corner. A boy and a girl, the boy looking at least a year or two older than the girl, who was blonde and pale. They boy was also extremely pale but his hair was a sandy brown, darker than the girl's. "How did you get in here?" he demanded of them.

They didn't say a word, their stares fixed in the opposite corner. He looked around and found two adults, a man and a woman, standing there. The woman spoke, and Hanssen was surprised that it was directly to him. "You are a man of many contradictions," she said. Her voice was soft and gentle and yet somehow terrifying at the same time, thick blonde curls falling around her face. "Too strong to admit defeat but too weak to accept his fate."

"Compassionate enough to be a doctor but too cold to accept his own sons," added the man, stepping forward. Was this an effect of the alcohol or had he finally lost the plot?

The little girl advanced on him. "Too much an adult to rely on others but too much a child for others to rely on him."

The boy also took a stride forward. "Intelligent enough to know right from wrong but too foolish to act on it." Hanssen stood up and backed away towards the door, frightened by the appearance of four people out of nowhere.

"How do you know about that?" he asked of them, realising that he had never spoken of Fredrik in this house, and he had never told Jac, Jonny or Serena about his actions and their consequences all those years ago.

"We know everything," the blonde girl advanced and smiled in a frighteningly sweet fashion; her glee was threatening and unnerving as she informed him of the fact they could see what he had never revealed.

The boy stepped forward again, closer to Hanssen, and the man and woman approached at his side. The woman added, "Do you fail to understand the love the woman who will bear your son holds for you?"

He involuntarily looked around in the direction of the bedroom and thought of Serena sleeping peacefully. A cold chill fell over the room. The condensation on the inside of the windows turned to ice in the lamplight, the drops glistening as they froze halfway through their journey down the panes. He took a drink from his glass in some mad hope that it was going to banish this vision but it did not help. If anything, their figures stood out brighter and paler than they had done before. For the first time that he could remember, cornered in this unfamiliar room, he was well and truly petrified.

"You are nothing," the man said. Hanssen took in the visible lifelessness of his bright skin and knew for certain that these people were long dead, from this world no longer. "A man who cannot love is nothing."

"A man who does not want to love is worth even less," the woman snarled. "You abandon those who love you for your own protection. You are a pathetic excuse for a human being."

"I do want to love her," Hanssen argued before he could stop himself. The combination of alcohol and fear hampered his rationality. "I love Serena." It was the first time he had said it aloud and he was surprised to find it was perfectly true. He had felt it before, but had tried to ignore it in the hope it was a trick or a mistake.

The little girl was laughing shrilly. "You do not treat people you love like that. You do not deny them," she informed him, her voice quickly becoming a cold, harsh hiss. For a girl of about nine years old, she spoke with remarkable articulacy. It was with a start that he heard the door lock shut behind him, trapping him in this room. "Why do you deny them?"

He remained silent, trying to avoid his greatest weakness: that he allowed fear to cripple him until he was incapable of speaking the truth. He was scared of everything. He was even afraid of fear itself. He was afraid of what these people were telling him. That he was nothing. That he could not love. That he could not be loved. That he did not understand Serena like he thought he did. That he was not human, but instead the monster they described to him.

"Why?" the boy repeated.

"Why?" said the man.

"Why?" the woman asked fiercely.

"Why?" they demanded together. "Why? Why? Why?" Every time they said it, their voices became more disconnected from each other until it was just a sea of voices, the same word losing its meaning as he failed to hear it. The lamp was suddenly out, leaving him in darkness broken only by white figures advancing towards him.

Through the racket he heard a knocking on the door and an order to open up, but his head was searing with pain and incomprehensible noise, so much that he could fully process that one command. The glass shattered on the floor when it fell out of his hand; he found his knees bent as he gripped his head, trying to dissipate the pain to no avail. The people, the ghosts of what must have been a young family, closed in around him and left him with no way out.

"Henrik!" a voice shouted from the other side of the door. Serena. He would have known her voice anywhere. "Open the door before I kick it down!" In the back of his mind he knew she was in no condition to kick anything without hurting herself. It was only with enormous effort that he could turn around and fumble for the old sliding lock. He took a step back as Serena pushed the door open and turned on the light. Through the haze of pain he saw Jac and Jonny standing together a bit further back, his arm protectively around her waist.

He could begin to understand now that there were more important things in this life than his own fear. It dawned upon him that Serena, the woman he had treated so badly and yet still looked at him with love and concern, had barely had a proper family. Of the years her little family lived as a unit, Edward had spent most of that time barely there, and the rest of the time a drunk lodger who made life miserable – Serena had told him as much herself. Despite her faults and her habits and her mouthiness, did she not deserve to have a real family, one that at least attempted to function?

But even though he knew the fear was not of as much significance as Serena's future, and of their child's, he could not help but let it into his heart. The fear of hurting them was greater than it had ever been.

"Henrik?" Serena asked cautiously, her eyes searching his and burning through him. He couldn't speak and, for some reason, he felt tears building in the back of his throat. He could not stop them pouring down his cheeks, the fear, the pain, the past, the present and the future all releasing itself as one entity as it broke his walls down. He tried to believe he could stay for her and the baby but he could never be sure of himself. He could never be sure of his own strength; it disappeared too quickly and far too easily.

Serena pulled him into a tight hug, her fingers stroking the back of his neck as she attempted to soothe him. Suddenly she was the one comforting him, even though he had done nothing but shut her out and show her false hatred. She was more than he deserved, especially after all his mistakes, but still here she was, holding him tight as agony ripped through his head and his heart. His own cowardice was hurting him, and he knew now that if he did not at least try to be a decent human being, he could never forgive himself.

Into her ear, he whispered, "I am not father material." He waited for her to reply but she didn't, and he almost let it all out to tell her about everything that happened concerning Maja and Fredrik, but it was more than he could bear. Perhaps it was for his own selfish reasons but instead he said, "I can't promise I will be of any use, but I will try. I will try for you."

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