This is the shortest chapter everrrr but I'm certain the next one (the end!) will be a mammoth.

Thank you all so so so so sooo much for all your feedback on the last chapter! Some of it made me quite tearful you've been so kind! Please do keep it coming!

The song for this chapter was actually recommended to be my the lovely scullysaliens on tumblr! (go follow she's lovely)

Again apologies for it being so short and enjoy reading!

Missing Track: If You're Looking For A Way Out - Odyssey

Missing Track: I Second That Emotion - Japan

I wasn't even at the bottom of the lift before I was filled with regret. But I couldn't go back. She could be awake now and… what could I say?

I knew what I could say. I could say that I had made a mistake, that I had been scared and that there were things we needed to discuss, but ultimately: I love her.

But I didn't do that.

I went home, I crawled into bed, pulled the covers high over my head, and cried until I fell asleep.

::

There are not many times in my life that I have considered pulling a sickie - not seriously, anyway. But today… God, I hate myself.

I pulled a face in the mirror, surveying the dark circles beneath my bloodshot eyes. I look ill enough to warrant a day off, I reasoned. I wasn't, though. My only affliction was guilt, and that was entirely of my own doing. Taking the day off would be the coward's way out. I deserved to face the consequences of my actions.

My eyes fell on my phone, laying ominously on the bathroom counter. I never received a single text message or phone call from her all day yesterday - hardly surprising, really - so there was no chance she had thought I had simply needed to get back for Jason or anything along those lines. No, she knew what I had done. Did she hate me? What could I say to her? How could I possibly face her?

"Auntie Serena! We're going to be late!"

"I'll just be a moment!"

I took a breath. It'll be fine. I'll explain, apologise. Tell her I freaked out. Grovel like a bad puppy. She'll understand it was just a momentary lapse of judgement, she has to.

"Auntie Serena!"

I quickly applied some lipstick, then rushed off to work.

::

Work was quiet, for a Monday. The whole place seemed... subdued, like the calm after the storm. I suppose it was, really. All that pent up emotion, frustration, tension, all built up to Saturday night, and now... what, exactly?

I forced a light smile onto my features as I approached the office, ready to face her, to apologise, but she wasn't there. Her coat was hanged up, a half-eaten sandwich discarded on her desk and empty cup of coffee knocked onto the floor. A wave of fondness washed over me. She never changed.

My thoughts wandered back to Saturday night, how young she had looked as she slept, as if she hadn't aged a day since 1983. I loved her then, and that was the vision of her that I had remained in love with for the past thirty years. My worry was that I was being naïve about the whole thing. She could never be the same person, not really. She wasn't the same person. They had some similar traits, I knew, but Bernie Wolfe had been through a multitude of experiences since then - good and bad - and those things change people. I knew that I had changed, since we first met. And what if the modern-day Bernie Wolfe was not the woman I loved? How could I be sure?

I knew, really, that I could never be sure. The thing I had to decide was: could I take the risk? And that's what it came down to, at the end of the day. I was a coward. I would rather suffer this misery than ever again feel pain like I had when she had left before. Coward.

I shrugged off my coat, sitting down heavily at my desk and looking up my theatre schedule on the computer. I had an aortic valve reconstruction in the morning, followed by two endovascular aneurysm repairs in the afternoon. A heavy day, to say the least. I wondered if I would in fact see her at all today.

As if in answer to my thoughts, she came rushing into the office, the door opening with a clatter as she nudged it with her shoulder, stack of files balanced in one arm. She froze for a microsecond as she saw me, before quickly recovering herself, continuing to discard the files on her desk with a thud.

"Morning," she murmured, avoiding eye contact. She tapped into her computer, picking up her half-eaten sandwich with her free hand and taking a small bite.

"Morning," I repeated, my voice low with guilt and nerves. My heart was in my throat. I eyed her carefully, watching for any sign that she was angry, that she cared in the slightest what was happening between us. Her face was blank, her lips drawn into a thin line and her forehead creased as she scanned some unknown email. She seemed indifferent, but closer inspection told me otherwise. Her eyes looked heavy, and I could see that she had tried to dab some concealer under her eyes to cover the dark circles still apparent there. And when she took a breath, it trembled slightly as she inhaled, as though she had been recently crying. My stomach jolted.

"Bernie," I began. Her eyes never left the screen. She instead began typing furiously, as if to drown out my presence with the noise of her fingers punching at the keys.

"Bernie." I tried again, louder this time. She continued typing for a couple of seconds, before seemingly thinking better of it and taking a deep breath.

"Yes, Ms Campbell?" Her head nodded vaguely in my direction, but her eyes never left the screen. I winced. This was worse than I thought.

"Bernie, please," I leaned forward, my hand automatically reaching out, hovering in the air aimlessly before falling to the desk in resignation. "We… we need to talk about this."

"What is there to talk about?" She replied, her voice tense, strained. "We made a mistake. It wasn't the first time; it won't be the last. Now, we just need to move on."

"No, Bernie, it wasn't a mistake," I pleaded, my arm reaching out again. "I didn't—"

"What was it then?" She looked at me now, and I could see the pink tinge to the whites of her eyes that confirmed that yes, she had been crying, or at the very least had lost a significant amount of sleep to this. Guilt clawed at my chest.

"I…" I faltered, unsure what to say. "I don't know what it was. I just… I panicked? I didn't know what I was…" I trailed off, lost for words. She stared at me for a while, until her shoulders softened slightly. She looked down at her hands, shaking her head.

"You really hurt me, Serena." She looked up slowly, her eyes wide. I sighed, emotion tightening the back of my throat.

"I guess we can call it even then," I joked.

Wrong answer.

Her shoulders tensed back up, her jaw set. She looked as though I had just slapped her.

"So that's what this was about." It wasn't a question.

I gaped, my throat dry, trying to think of something I could say to resolve this. No words came.

Her face went blank, expressionless, emotionless. She stood calmly, without a word picking up the files she had brought in to type up.

"Bernie, wait—"

The door slammed shut behind her.

::

I was in theatre for more or less the remainder of the day. My aortic valve reconstruction ended up having a complication that took me well over my next surgery's scheduled start time, so as soon as I was finished I was straight in with that, and then my next surgery later that afternoon. I saw her once or twice, and when I did she was… amiable, as she would be with any doctor in the hospital whom she was required to interact with. She acted as though we were strangers, as though there were nothing between us at all. I think that hurt more than if she had hated me.

By the end of the day, I was on the verge of tears. What have I done? My stomach felt cold, my heart aching as I recalled how wonderful I had felt on Saturday night, as if the world had been set to rights, only for my stupid insecurities to go and ruin everything the following morning. I closed my eyes, visions of her laid out beneath me flashing through my brain. Beautiful. I remembered mapping every inch of her, exploring her body with my mouth and my fingertips, remember the words leaving my mouth, you're beautiful. I remembered the vulnerability in her eyes. She had let down her guard completely for me, and I had thrown that back in her face. I hate it. How many people had she admitted that to? How many people could she have admitted that to? She had let herself go, given herself entirely to me as though not a day had passed since she had left in 1983, as though we were as we always were. How could I have been so cruel?

I jumped slightly as the office door clicked open. She hesitated slightly in the doorway and for a moment I expected her to leave again, but eventually she stepped inside, closing the door softly behind her and, to my surprise, sitting down in the guest chair next to me. I tensed, watching as her fists clenched and unclenched. Was she going to hit me? I wouldn't blame her.

"Look, I…" She began, her eyes on the floor. I held my tongue, sensing she had something she needed to say. She cleared her throat. "It's a mess, all of this." She gestured around her. I nodded. "And I, er… I don't think…" I frowned and she sighed, collecting herself, before continuing. "I've been to see Hanssen."

"What?" I asked, confused. Surely there weren't any disciplinary issues here?

She waved a hand to calm me. "He agrees that, particularly with the current rumour situation, that it might be a good idea for me to take a step back for a while, allow things to calm down a little." I made to speak, but was quickly silenced. "So we've agreed on an immediate transfer, for me, to ED." I gaped and she shook her head quickly. "It's only temporary. Six weeks helping them break in some new trauma equipment. I think we just need some…" She sighed, looking around for the right phrase. "Some breathing space. We both need some time away from one another to figure out what it is that we really want and are really feeling."

"But I know—"

"No, Serena," she interrupted tiredly. "You don't know. If you knew what you really wanted then you would never have done… whatever it was you intended to do on Saturday night." She blinked hard, coughing slightly. "I know that I'm sorry for what I did, I know that I would give anything in the world to go back and change it, and I know that I'm in love with you. Now. I'm not in love with Serena McKinnie, not anymore. I'm in love with Serena Campbell." She met my eye. "I love you, Serena. And despite everything that you've done… I still want you. But you need to be sure. I don't know how I could cope with losing you again…" She trailed off, looking back down at her feet. "And we are different people now. Saturday night was fun, yes, but I don't want to go back to that. As much as it pains me to say it, it's just not our scene any more, I think you can agree by the music." She chuckled awkwardly. "And… I don't just want a Saturday night with you, Serena. I want to share my life with you. I wanted to share my life with you back then, right enough, but circumstances wouldn't allow. But now, we can. We don't need to hide. But you have to know what you want."

She looked up at me sadly, and in a way that let me know that she had made her mind up. She was going, and that was that. I decided the best way through this was to talk honestly.

"But how do you know," I began, staring at my hands in my lap. "How do you know that you're in love with me, now, and not some past vision of me, of me as I was before you left? How can you know?"

She sighed heavily, running a hand through her hair. "I just… do. I think back to us before and I feel fondness and nostalgia, yes, but…" She stared at me penetratingly, her face deadly serious. "It's thinking of you now, Serena Campbell, Queen of AAU; that's who really gives me butterflies."

My mouth fell open slightly, the air suddenly gone from my lungs at the magnitude of her words. She really loves me. How? It struck me then that perhaps part of my hesitance was due to the fact that I struggled to believe that she - or anyone, really - could possibly have any strong feelings towards me, could regard me as worthy of her affections. But now I saw it clear, pure and unadulterated in her eyes as she spoke. I felt like such a fool. I had wasted so much time, had ruined everything. And now she was leaving me.

"I've got another post-op to finish," she announced after a long pause when I hadn't spoke. "I'd better get on. I'll see you round, maybe. If not, in six weeks." She offered a small smile, turning to the door.

"Bernie," I called out, my tone serious, my eyes watery. She turned. "Please, don't." The feebleness of my voice surprised even me, and I felt almost embarrassed for being so weak. I cleared my throat.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, her fingers toying with the door handle. "But this is how it has to be. I need some space, we both do."

I swallowed thickly, willing myself not to cry. "Just… keep in touch, okay?" I risked a glance up at her, and saw her smiling slightly.

"Of course," she replied softly. "Just give me time."

And with that she was gone.