A/N: I realise I've vanished from here for about a month, but there were a lot of things I needed to deal with, and it's been tiring. But I'm back. This chapter is for Katie to compensate for the fact I forgot to inform her of a British show about Rosanne Cash. Sorry, Katie!

Thanks, as always, to all who read and review.

Sarah x

Serena sat watching Ric, wondering why he was here. Why he had thought of her. What he thought he was playing at. Why she was the first person he had felt he could run to. He had plenty of people who would have given him their sofa or spare room for the night. Part of her, despite her denial of the emotion, was furious with him. When Adrienne was safely in bed, she fully intended to remind Ric he needed to use that brilliant brain of his once in a while. But then she could also see in his face that he knew he had gone about everything in entirely the wrong way.

"Are you getting on any better with Guy?" asked Ric interestedly.

"No," came Serena's flat reply. She had little pleasant to say about Guy Self, apart from that he was a decent neurosurgeon. As a human being, however, she held little respect for him. He was hardly kind or understanding towards her, and she could not respect a person who treated her the way he did. "He's doing my skull in."

"Some things never change," he commented. She glared at him, willing him just to shut up before she ended up telling him about that day Guy had just about broke her, pressurising her while a man and his son ended up without a future and her mother started to betray signs of deterioration. To tell him would have been to admit a day of weakness, a day when she had thought there was no light at the end of any tunnel she would find herself crawling through, and she didn't want him knowing that she had felt so low.

Serena was silent, letting Ric and Adrienne talk as much as they wanted. If they talked about her, she was beyond the point of actually caring. If they didn't say it in front of her then they were sure to say it behind her back, and she would rather be able to hear what they were saying. "Rena, sweetheart, go upstairs and see if your father needs something to eat," Adrienne ordered her. Serena could only stare at her. Her father was long dead now, and Adrienne seemed to think he was just up a flight of stairs.

But she collected herself, biting her tongue only because she did not know what to say. She felt the overwhelming urge to kick something in frustration; how could Adrienne forget such a thing? Rather than lose her cool, she stood up and left the room without a word. She slowly and silently made her way upstairs, reaching her bedroom quicker than she anticipated. She soon found herself sitting on her bed, staring at the floor, wondering what on Earth she was doing. How could she have thought that she knew how to handle her mother's deterioration alone? She was a daughter here, not a doctor. Had she not given Ric the same advice when he had wanted to take part in Jess' surgery? That he was a father to her, not a surgeon?

She now was in a similar position, and she wished she was able to take her own advice. But advice was not something she easily accepted or even acknowledged. It was something she ignored because she knew better. But did she know better this time?

Her heart told her that she knew her mother better than any other person could possibly hope to, but her head reminded her that Adrienne was changing into someone who had forgotten that her husband was dead. Serena could not handle that. It hurt too much.

Unsure of how long she had sat there, she looked at the alarm clock on her bedside table. She'd been there six minutes, just trying to work out how to proceed. Was she meant to pretend she had spoken to her father or be blunt and explain he was dead and had been for years? Lie or be honest? Be the one to frantically glue the pieces back together with a lie or be the one to shatter apart the cracks with the truth?

There was a gentle knock at the door, and Serena looked up to see Ric standing in the doorway. "I take it your dad isn't here?" he softly asked of her. She glared at him, unwilling to say anything on the subject. "Are you OK?"

"Just go and finish your dinner," she replied, her voice flat. "I'll be down in a minute."

"Serena," he began. She tried to silently warn him off but knew better than to think it was actually going to work. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"You weren't here!" she snapped, annoyed that he would even question her when he was nowhere to be seen when she had needed his support. It was very seldom that she actually did need him, and when she did, when she needed a friend, she was left on her own. "How can you speak to someone who just isn't there?"

Ric sighed. "I meant about your father, Serena. Why didn't you just tell her he's not here?"

"I don't know." It was the truth. She just didn't know what to do. She was in no doubt that her mother was ill now, or that she was going to become a bit of a handful, however much Serena loved her, but she didn't know how best to deal with that. She doubted her own strength, because she doubted how much more of this she could take. "I guess I didn't want to upset her," admitted Serena. "She'll have forgotten by the time I get back downstairs anyway." She didn't look at Ric. She didn't want to see how he felt about what he had taken refuge in, because she knew him well enough to know the look on his face she was sure to be met with.

She heard his gentle sigh and felt their friendship return with no effort. It was exactly what she didn't want; it meant she was vulnerable to his perceptions, to his knowledge of who she was and all the things she did and said that gave away the game without her even realising. She didn't want to give him that gateway. She was run ragged, too tired to keep up the secondary defences behind the wall. They were on the verge of collapsing at her feet, and she didn't want Ric seeing how exhausted she really was.

Ric got to his feet and said to her, "I'll just be in the living room with Adrienne when you feel like coming back downstairs." She looked up and nodded slightly, trying to gather her thoughts and calm her screaming mind. She was starting to see beyond the immediately approaching, to the long road ahead, cluttered with obstacles and holes she could quite easily fall into with Adrienne, who was bound to stumble down them herself.

When Ric left, she found herself reduced to examining the fibres of the carpet, noticing for the first time the many tones of red. To hear Adrienne mention her late husband, Serena's father, like he was still alive had unnerved her, but she did not want to let them see that. She was strong – she always had been and she was determined that she always would be – but it hurt to see her mother's mind failing. It hurt to know that the woman she had always relied upon was now growing weaker. It hurt to watch her changing, hence why she had managed to ignore it until it was impossible to be blind.

Blindness, she had found, was simple. It was convenient. It was peaceful. But it hadn't been blindness at all. It had been ignorance. She had ignored it. Had she not then perhaps a man's life would not have been put at risk. Had she not ignored the obvious, Adrienne may not have been left to live alone, and struggle with it. Ignorance was not simple, or convenient, or peaceful; she had known, somewhere in the depths of her conscience, that something was amiss, but she hadn't confronted it when she should have. She was still kicking herself for that.

But what good did it do to kick herself now?

She felt trapped, obligated to her mother. It was never going to end, only worsen, and, as guilty as she felt for it, she could not like how she lived right now. It was the closest she had been to her mother in so long, and yet the most distant they had ever been. That pain and frustration was never-ending.

She could hear the wind howling outside, the rain smashing the glass window. The sound changed her mind; it reminded her that, even though it didn't seem like it now, all would be calm outside by morning. It reminded her that every storm would inevitably pass, even if it did leave destruction in its wake. Nothing lasted forever.

And now Ric was back. It simplified matters and complicated them simultaneously. Having a friend, someone she trusted, was a comfort, but finding it in herself to let him in was more difficult. She found it easier now to keep everything to herself, because she didn't want people to see her when she was low, and Guy had taught her, if nothing else, that revealing her burdens made her a nuisance to others.

But even if this didn't last forever, it was going to last long enough. Too long, progressively becoming more difficult with time, and she didn't know if she could stick it out. Maybe she did need some real help with Adrienne. Proper help. Was it not in both their best interests? Had she not proven many times before that she was not infallible? She was not a superhero. She was not Superwoman. So why did she insist on trying to be?

She sighed and stood up, glancing out the rain spattered window as she turned. Dark only because storm clouds blocked out the light, the rain bouncing off the road with so much force, the streets were deserted. Not many people were foolish enough to venture out in this weather, except Ric, it seemed. He probably should have stayed where he was, but if he had the good sense to do that, he wouldn't be here. As much as she protested to it, his presence was somewhat comforting. It probably always would be, because she had let him get to her. Not very much, but enough to make her value him.

With caution she trudged down the stairs, hearing the fifth step down creak under her bare feet. She could hear Ric and Adrienne talking like old friends, getting along like a house on fire. Serena's mother, after all, was nothing if not affable, and there was no denying that Ric, despite making more than his fair share of stupid mistakes, was truly decent.

It made her wonder how her life had come to this point, stuck in a house with her mother and her friend, in the middle of a storm that sounded like it was trying to clobber the house down. She sat down next to Adrienne and picked up her plate, sharing a meaningful look with Ric as she bit into her pizza; she could see him silently tell her she was not alone, even if she felt like she was. She just had to stop pushing people away.

She fixed her eyes on the television, and the weather forecast, seeing that the area was in for one hell of a battering throughout the rest of the night. "Areas within the city of Holby and outlying rural areas can expect to see localised flooding," said the weatherman, "and quite probably fallen trees. Please do not travel unless it's completely-"

That was as far as he got. "Oh, just fantastic!" Serena groaned. The television cut out, and the lights failed, plunging them into a silent, eerie darkness. She instantly felt her stomach twist in the knowledge that this was probably them for the night. "I'll go and find some candles," sighed Serena. "I think there's a torch in the garden shed."

She heard Ric get to his feet and say, "I'll go and look for it."

"The key's under the stone beside the shed," she answered, feeling around on the coffee table for her phone so she could get just a little light from the screen. "You OK, Mum?" she asked as she unlocked her phone and provided them with a faint light.

"Of course, darling," Adrienne answered. "Just a little power cut, after all."

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