TEN – Moving On

"It was Marshall," she says quietly as they walk towards her car. She doesn't really care whether Boyd acknowledges her words or not, she just needs to say them. Needs absolute clarity before she can even begin to seriously think about what to do next. "He had my phone traced."

"I know; Grant told me." Predictably succinct. He hasn't said very much since they were reunited in the interview room and Grace suspects that's not about to change. They are both wary, it seems. Wary, tired and maybe just too far apart to want to attempt appeasement. Well, so be it. Everything has its time.

"Good." Grace doesn't intend to say more, but the words form anyway. "I just didn't want… Well, I didn't want us to go our separate ways with you believing I'd betrayed you."

Boyd does not look at her. "Thinking of going somewhere?"

"Thinking of handing in my resignation to the Home Office," she says candidly. She's not going to lie to him. Perhaps it's not going to end the way she always imagined, not the way she occasionally found herself secretly hoping in the empty midnight hours, but she owes him the truth. The afternoon is chilly and maybe that's why she shivers slightly. "Go before I'm pushed, that sort of thing."

"Jumping the gun a bit, aren't you?"

She snorts softly. "By the time Marshall's finished ripping my professional reputation to bits…"

For the first time Boyd turns his head to look at her. She suspects the intense gaze that surveys her keenly sees far more than she wants it to. He shakes his head slightly. "Don't worry about Marshall. He's already firmly out of favour at the Yard and he's not going to win any friends by putting the boot into the best offender profiler the Met has access to. I told you, he's a complete fuckwit. A misogynistic pain in the fu – "

"That may very well be," she interrupts swiftly, not willing to listen to a tirade, "but it's not just him. I think it's probably time to move on, that's all. Anyway, I'm too old bother with putting in all the effort required to break in a new boss."

Perhaps Boyd appreciates her strained attempt at a levity that clearly neither of them is feeling because he raises his eyebrows a fraction in response. "Got an unfortunate accident planned for the old one, have you?"

She eyes him suspiciously, trying to interpret what he's not saying. "What do you know that I don't?"

"Wrongful arrest for a start?" he suggests as they draw closer to her car. "I'm fairly sure I'm going to get a long and extremely conciliatory telephone call from the DAC's office within the next couple of hours; a call which is going to conclude with me being asked just how soon I'd like to take back the reins from Chief Superintendent Billy fucking Marshall."

Grace is immediately sceptical. "You don't think this has been a bridge too far, as it were?"

"They know I've got them over a bloody barrel, Grace. Arresting one of your own senior officers for a murder he didn't commit? The press would love to get hold of that story. Besides, they know they don't have anyone else who's stupid enough to waste their life rummaging through old bones."

She isn't sure why she's faintly surprised by his stoicism, his determination to keep soldiering on. This is exactly the tough, stubborn man she knows, after all. There might still be things that urgently need resolving between them, but she's very pleased to see him again. It doesn't lessen her powerful sense of injustice. "So that's that? You conveniently forget how quick they were to believe the absolute worst of you and just carry on as if none of this ever happened?"

He shrugs and leans himself up against her car, hands in pockets. "I guess so."

"You never learn, do you, Boyd?" she asks rhetorically.

He regards her without any particular expression. "I'm sure you'd love to suggest all sorts of fancy counselling to help me get over the trauma of the last week, Grace, but I think I'll pass on that if it's all the same to you. There's nothing wrong with me that a good meal, a few drinks and a couple of decent night's sleep won't fix."

"As a psychologist – "

"Don't," he says vehemently, evidently not remotely in the mood for what has become something of a long-standing joke between them. Or had, until the previous night.

Grace unlocks the car in silence. Half a conversation is nowhere enough to put things right between them but it might be a starting point. Only when they are sitting next to each other staring purposefully at the parked cars in front of them instead of at each other does she say, "I'm sorry."

Boyd looks round at her, dark eyes faintly quizzical. "What for? I'm fairly sure I owe most of my current status as a free man to you."

She can't forget the raw pain in his voice the night before. The pain and the savagery. There's a lump in her throat as she says, "For obviously not being the friend you needed me to be after Luke died."

He looks immediately uncomfortable. "Ah. That."

"That." It's an effort for Grace to retain her composure but she does her best. Neither of them are currently strong enough to weather yet another intense emotional storm.

It takes Boyd several moments to admit, "Look, I wasn't exactly thinking straight last night, Grace."

She doubts she'll ever be unable to picture the frightening look in his eyes as they stood together less than five minutes' walk from one of the city's most notorious suicide spots. She has no doubt that if she hadn't forced him into agreeing to meet her the preceding night she would now be mourning the loss of a very dear friend. Because he genuinely is exactly that. Whether he realises it or not. Trying to sound calm, Grace merely says, "I did notice."

Evidently more than a little embarrassed, Boyd looks away; goes back to studying the parked cars with unnatural interest. When he finally speaks again his voice is gruff. "You're not really going to resign, are you?"

"I don't know." It's the truth. The only answer she can give him.

"Don't."

"Why?"

He sighs loudly and pointedly. "Because you're a bloody good psychologist and I need a bloody good psychologist."

She can almost feel the familiar equilibrium hesitantly attempting to re-establish itself. They should talk honestly, openly and at length about all the important, awkward things but they won't. They never do. They resolve conflict between them in their own discordant way; always have, probably always will. It may not be entirely satisfactory, but it works. Eventually and after a fashion. She sniffs disdainfully. "Out of the mouths of babes, Boyd."

His reply is peevish. "I meant professionally."

"I know."

"Personally," he says, surprising her, "I just need a bloody good friend, Grace."

She reaches out to start the engine but lets her hand drop limply back into her lap. Doesn't look at him as she says, "You've got one. You always have had. You promised not to exclude me, but that's exactly what you did. The moment Luke's funeral was over you shut me out completely."

Boyd's reply is gruff. "I know."

Grace knows he doesn't want to discuss it – any of it – but she's not ready to fall meekly into silence just to please him. With some force she demands, "How was I supposed to be the friend you needed, Boyd, when you wouldn't let me get anywhere near you?"

"I didn't need a psychologist, Grace," he says remarkably gently. "I still don't."

"That's open to bloody debate."

"There you go again."

She turns slightly in her seat so she can study him. Boyd gazes back with no particular expression. He needs a shower, a shave and a change of clothes, and he still looks impossibly tired and haggard, but the lost, haunted look has vanished from his eyes. It gives her hope, makes her think that perhaps the high stress of the preceding days has, ironically, acted as some kind of catalyst – has, in fact, helped to start the emotional healing process he has been obstinately avoiding. Grudgingly, she says, "All right. Perhaps I do sometimes have a little trouble keeping my thoughts as a professional to myself."

"'Perhaps'?"

Instantly irked by his sardonic tone, she snaps, "Oh, it's none of my damn business anyway, is it? Just do whatever the hell you think works for you, and I won't say another bloody word about it."

His reply is uncharacteristically placid. "You can be incredibly defensive sometimes, Grace; you know that, don't you?"

She snorts. "I wonder why."

Boyd looks away, clearly not in the mood to continue an exchange that could go very badly wrong for both of them. He sounds surprisingly calm as he suddenly asks, "You never thought I'd killed her? Not even for a moment?"

"No," Grace says honestly. "Oh, there were times when it all seemed so completely inexplicable that I found myself asking the question, but no. Not at any point did I actually believe you were guilty."

"And that's exactly why you're not going to resign," Boyd tells her with a slight shrug. "That's why we'll both move on from this. All of it."

He's right, she realises. Sometimes they seriously wound each other – deliberately or accidentally – but eventually they always seem to find their way back to the peculiar equipoise that somehow works between them. She sniffs disdainfully. "Is this where I'm supposed to say something like 'Even though you can be a complete bastard, I know you're a good man at heart'?"

Boyd almost smiles. "Yeah. Traditionally."

She nods. "Thought so."

He waits a pointed few seconds then orders, "Oh, just start the bloody car, Grace. Before we both die of old age."

She does so, but before she makes any move to pull out of the narrow parking space she says, "No more heavy drinking? No more ill-advised one-night stands?"

He raises his chin a stubborn fraction. "No more 'I'm a psychologist and I know best'?"

Neither of them will win. Grace knows it and she's fairly sure Boyd does, too. She shrugs nonchalantly. "It's a long walk back to Greenwich, you know."

"And for that reason alone, I'm declaring a truce. Drive, Grace."

She does so, carefully nosing her car out into the steadily-increasing afternoon traffic. The world around them seems strangely ordinary, totally oblivious to the drama and emotions they've been going through. Nothing has changed. Except it has. Carefully, she asks, "Will you go to her funeral? Erin's?"

Boyd's response is so quick and sharp that it's obvious he's given the matter some thought. "I don't think her poor bloody parents would appreciate it, do you?"

He doesn't like funerals. Never has. It's not just the too-raw memories of watching his son's coffin being solemnly carried into the church. No, Grace suspects that to Boyd funerals represent everything he simply doesn't know how to deal with – pain, guilt, shame, anger… She says, "As long as that's the only reason why you want to stay away."

He gives her a withering look. "You just can't help yourself, can you?"

"We are who we are, Boyd. As – "

"Grace."

" – your friend, I just want what's best for you. That's all. There's no agenda."

The only reply is a sullen-sounding grunt. She doesn't push. It's an exercise in futility and she's far too tired for it anyway. She's already imagining the simple joy of eventually driving home, having a quick bite to eat and going almost immediately to bed for a long, tranquil and hopefully completely uninterrupted sleep. Tomorrow she will think things through slowly and carefully, but she thinks she already knows what she's going to decide. Better the devil you know, as the old saying goes. Given that Boyd seems – amazingly – to have yet again survived to fight another day, there don't seem to be very many decisions to be made about her immediate future.

"It hurts," he announces abruptly, "it hurts every fucking minute of every fucking day."

So incredibly raw, still, those deep wounds. Grace bites back the words of advice that rise automatically to her lips and simply replies, "I know. But it will get better. If you let it."

With a sudden dark mixture of humour and asperity, he says, "I'm a complete bloody mess, aren't I? A psychological train-wreck."

Not exactly a technical term, but a fairly apt description, nevertheless. But she's not going to be drawn into yet another dangerous skirmish with him. Not today. "You're human, that's all. Fallible. Vulnerable. Just like the rest of us. Trying to kid yourself that you're not isn't… helpful."

Boyd is silent for several contemplative moments. When he speaks, there's a trace of diffidence in his voice. "Will you come with me? To her funeral?"

Not what she expected him to say. Grace concentrates doggedly on the road ahead. "I'm your friend, aren't I? Of course I will, if you want me to. Change of heart?"

"Maybe." His tone has changed, become a touch resigned. "Maybe it's time I started to face up to things again instead of running away from them or trying to pretend they're not happening."

Grace does not look at him. She hopes he doesn't hear the telling rasp of emotion in her voice as she says, "Welcome back to the human race, Peter."

Boyd glances at her and says nothing. But when she offers him a cautious smile, he grudgingly smiles back.

- the end -

xXx

A/N: Thank you for reading this fic right to the bitter end!
If you enjoyed it, you might like to know that there may be a companion piece planned for the near future. :)