A/N: This is probably longer than necessary, and I've probably fiddled about with it longer than necessary, but here it is anyway. Thanks to all who read and review, as always.

Sarah x

Serena sat in her car and tried to form a plan, but she felt like her head was spinning. The freedom in front of her was daunting after being so trapped by her own circumstances. It was disconcerting, leaving her debating what to do. She doubted there would be very many flights leaving the airport in this weather. Trains were sure to be disrupted by the weather too. As treacherous as it was, perhaps she had to drive.

She didn't like the idea of driving in this storm but she couldn't go back. Her phone started to ring and she glanced at it, seeing it was Ric – again. She didn't touch it. Instead she let it ring out. Then a message telling her a voicemail had been left appeared not long later. She knew Ric would have left a message, but she didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to hear his voice and be reminded that not only was she running from her burdens, but she was running from everyone she loved. But there was part of her that wanted to hear him, to know there was someone out there who was on her side.

With trembling hands, she lifted her phone, pressing the number for voicemail. "Serena, where are you? It's not safe to be out," he chastised her. "No, not that car, Adrienne! This one," he called out to her mother. "Look, I know it's hard and I know you're probably feeling like you can't do it, but you're Serena Campbell. You can do anything you set your mind to. Please, don't go anywhere, Serena. Just wait for me and we can have a long chat and I'll do whatever I can to help you. But, please, don't go."

The automated message asking what she wanted to do with the voicemail came and she simply hung up. All the time she had spent listening to him, she realised, he had been driving towards her, because Digby would have told him she was here. She put her seatbelt on and started the car, reversing out of the parking space; she drove too fast up to the junction, deciding which way to turn. It was the ultimate decision, that choice to turn the opposite direction from home. Lightning flashed overhead, the rain bouncing off the road and the windscreen. The thunder rolled around her as she tried to hold back her frightened and frustrated tears.

She drove carefully; as much as she wanted to get away from here, she didn't want to end up wrapped around a tree. There was still no firm plan as to where she was going or how she was getting there. She was torn now that she had heard Ric's voice, because she knew he meant every word he had said. He believed in her, and she knew that, but it was no good unless she believed in herself, which she didn't. She was too exhausted to keep going and believe it wasn't going to kill her.

She was running on fumes while waiting for the flame to explode them; she didn't know where or when, but she knew, in the end, it would happen. She felt like she might lose her nerve at any moment. Simple tasks became momentous burdens when she was too worn out to deal with work, family and herself at the same time, and do it efficiently.

A car came at high speed behind her and she groaned when she saw the number plate through the rain. She didn't want him coming after her. She just wanted to go and be free. He signalled for her to pull over but she wouldn't do it. She saw Adrienne in the passenger seat when she looked in the rear view mirror, and from what she could tell, her mother was confused.

She told herself there was nowhere safe to pull over anyway. After all, she didn't want to cause a car crash, did she?

She put her foot down on the throttle and forced more speed out of the car, and she knew she was driving far faster than was safe. Ric was close at her tail; she realised he wasn't letting her leave without some effort to try and make her stay, and that this was his attempt to straighten everything out.

She wondered what she was doing. She had nowhere to go. She had nothing packed. She had only her passport and some money. She just couldn't do it, because there was no sense in it. Even if she did want to go, and she did, it wasn't logical. Not tonight, anyway. But perhaps she could stay in a hotel or something overnight and leave in the morning.

At the next layby, she pulled in and sighed. Her defeat did nothing to diminish her anger at Ric for refusing to let her leave in peace, so Serena got out of the car and stormed over to his car as it braked, furious with him and wanting someone to vent all her pent up wrath at. Ric said something to Adrienne, probably telling her to stay put, and got out of the car himself. In seconds, both were soaked.

"Just go back, Ric!" she shouted at him, struggling to be heard through the weather.

"No!" he replied.

"Yes!" By then they were inches apart and she was shouting in his face, desperate to make him leave her alone. "Just go!"

"What about your mother?"

"I don't care!" she lied. She did care and she knew better than to think that Ric would ever believe that she didn't.

He took her by the shoulders and shook her gently, and she tried not to look at him. "Serena, you do care. You don't have it in you not to." His words took her by the throat, and she wanted to run from him so he couldn't see how much torment she was putting herself through. "Just come home and we can sort it out. We're a team, remember?"

Serena let out a bitter laugh. "Were we a team when I was left alone to deal with Guy? When I held myself responsible for a boy and his father falling off the hospital roof? When I sat in the CEO's office and just looked at the floor because I didn't have the energy to argue with him? When my mother almost killed her warden because she forgot he's allergic to aspirin? When Guy was testing her for dementia? Were we a team when I sat and got myself blind drunk because my heart hurt so much that I didn't know what to do?!" she shouted at him. "We're not a team, Ric! We're two separate people!"

Stunned, she fell silent. She had just said everything she had promised herself that she wouldn't. "We're a team now!" argued Ric. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. My daughter needed me!"

"I needed you, Ric!" she yelled in his face, instantly feeling selfish and guilty, disgusted with herself for even thinking that way. She had no right to need him, especially not when Jess, his own flesh and blood, had needed him. But still, she had needed him. "I was lost and falling apart and I needed you!"

He was taken aback by her reaction. It was obvious. He was horrified. Through the rain, she could see the sadness on his face. "You've got me!" he insisted loudly. "I'm here. I just need you to come back and tell me what I can do to help!"

But she wasn't sure he could help at all. Actually, knowing her luck, he may only have made it all so much more complicated and so much harder to deal with. She felt so tired of it all that she didn't even know if she could handle him on top her family. "I can't."

"Why not?!"

"Because I can't take it anymore!" She grabbed his coat in despair, trying to make him understand what she was feeling. "I don't know my own mother anymore! I can't even look her in the eyes half the time. What kind of a daughter does that make me?" She felt the rain streaming down her face, soaking through her clothes and dripping from her hair. Now, though, she had no choice but to let it all out, because he was the one she would ultimately trust with it. "What daughter can't look at their own mother because they're scared of what they'll see?"

"One who's watching her mother lose more of who she is every day!" Ric said. "Nobody expects you to feel good about it, Serena."

"Never mind feeling good, I don't even feel OK!" He reached out, his hand on the side of her neck, willing her to tell him everything she was thinking. So as not to tell him too much, she insisted, "I need to go."

"You don't. You need help. You can't do it all on your own, and there's proper help out there."

"She has a carer already, and I can't even deal with her when I get home at night after getting away from her all day," she admitted. She was close to breaking point, or maybe she was already beyond breaking point...she didn't even know anymore.

She felt his grip on her arm tighten ever so slightly and saw the look in his eyes that told her he had seen just how scared she was. How much she wanted to drive away and never have to look back. She wanted freedom. She needed an escape from her life, and to start a new one where she could know who she was again. This woman who found loving her mother so difficult, that wasn't her. That had never been her before now.

Serena looked over Ric's shoulder to see Adrienne, who was looking worried and utterly confused. It hurt Serena to see her mother looking like that, to see her not knowing what was going on or why, and it was like being physically stabbed in the heart every time she was met with that expression of pained confusion, because it just wasn't the woman she knew and loved with everything she had.

"I..." she began, but she was scared. Scared to let him in on the worst of who she had been, and scared that the way she felt was going alienate him. "I need to leave, Ric. Just make sure you get someone to look after Mum."

The rain battered down any optimism she had once been able to possess. She watched as lightning cracked across the sky, thunder crashing through them as they found themselves at a point from which they could not return as the people they once were. "No, Serena," he argued with her. "Stick it out. Stay."

"Why?" she desperately asked him. "Why?! So I can watch it all fall apart every day? I'll pass, thanks."

Serena needed to go and she tried to turn away, but Ric had a grip on her in every way, tugging at her heart as it broke. "Stay," he repeated. "Stay and we'll deal with this the right way. But if you walk away now, you'll regret it for as long as you live. Even if Adrienne forgets, you will know and it will tear you to pieces. I don't want that for you. I want you to know you did everything in your power, because Serena Campbell never gives in."

She reached out and took his face into her hands. "I'm giving in now."

"Then give in differently!" he pleaded. "Give in by accepting help. Just don't give in by running away, because that isn't what you do!"

The passenger door of Ric's car opened and Adrienne got out, and Serena's immediate reaction was to let go of Ric and go to her mother. "Mum, get back in the car!" she shouted through the rain slamming down into the Earth. "Come on, you're going to get soaked." She ushered her mother gently into the car.

"What's going on, Rena?" Adrienne asked, obviously having forgotten anything Ric may have told her between Serena leaving and Ric and Adrienne catching up with her.

"Nothing," lied Serena, sparing Adrienne the hurt of knowing that she was a part of why her daughter was running. "Back in the car." Her mother obeyed with a smile. "Ric will be with you in a minute." Adrienne nodded, and Serena forced a smile at her before she closed the door then returned to Ric. "See why I have to go?!" she demanded of him. "I don't have it in me to look after her anymore!"

Ric cupped her face in his hands and stared straight at her, so she looked down at the waterlogged road. She didn't want to look at him because she knew he had a belief and a trust in her that she had lost in the midst of the chaos and inside the rush of the storm. "Look at me," he ordered her. Grudgingly she lifted her gaze to meet his dark eyes, seeing that he cared so much for her, and she had never really realised how much. "Come back, Serena. I'm here for you now. I was gone for a while, yes, but I'm here now, and if you need help then I will do my best for you. But this running away from it all isn't the right thing to do, especially for someone who loves her mother as much as you do. You know that."

She stared at him. He was right. Of course he was. How could he not be when he was speaking compassion and sense? But the thought of going back to the way things were, of going back to having no energy, no time and no real happiness, was torturous. It hurt even to entertain the idea. But he was right when he said that she would regret abandoning her mother. She would hate herself for it. It wasn't a question of what would make her happier. It was a question of what would cause her less pain in the long run.

"I know," she confessed. "I know that. I know I would hate living with the knowledge that I walked out on her because I couldn't hack it. But it's all running me into the ground! I need some..." she trailed away, trying to work out how to word it. "...some relief!"

"And you'll get it," he vowed. "I promise we will find a way to make this easier for you."

She searched his eyes for any sign of a lie, but she found none. He meant what he said just as he always did. She had to trust him. She had to take it on trust that he cared about her and wanted to help her out. "Alright," she said, relinquishing that childish, selfish wish to start again somewhere away from everything that hurt her. What else could she really do when it was an impossible choice between leaving and hating herself for it and staying and enduring it until its end? "I'll come back."

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