Title:
Spectres
Author:
coolbyrne
Rating: PG
Disclaimer:
Don’t own ‘em.
Property of Val McDermid and Coastal
Productions
Summary: Tony Hill, alone but never really alone. Alex Fielding POV
A/N: For
the bloodywire ficathon. I’ve used -
Prompt #5. From The
Wasteland: What The Thunder Said:
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?
-------------------------------
Everyone I
know/
Goes away/
In the end.
--------------------------------
The sun has
yet to grace us with its appearance, and once again I curse the criminals who
force upstanding citizens to get up at such an ungodly hour to apprehend
them. With eyes half open, I sign in at
the front desk of the police station and barely hear Mike –Mark? Matt? –tell me
you’re here. I grunt my acknowledgement
and head towards the large evidence room, steeling myself for whatever bizarre
theory you’ve conjured up at seven in the morning. When I arrive in the room, I find its desks
bereft of occupants, and phones blessedly quiet. Even the state-of-the-art computer panels
that form a large screen in the middle of the room –meant to help us keep up
with the criminals (have we given up trying to stay ahead of them?) –are
silent. It’s then that I realize MikeMarkMatt said something else to me in our half-hearted
exchange. He must have told me where you
were. It doesn’t matter, I can guess.
A short
detour to the visitors’ lounge confirms my detecting skills. This isn’t the first time you’ve stayed
behind long after everyone else had gone, and I swear I’ve seen this exact
tableau before, same room, same couch, just with you in a different suit. You’re on your back, a jacket so out of
fashion you must be waiting for it to come back in style again draped on top of
you, though seemingly with no real intent of covering you. Feet are crossed at the ankles, one hand
clutches the collar of the aforementioned retro garment, and the left arm is
stretched out to the side, dangling well past the support of the couch and not
doing your elbow any favours. I can only
imagine what your neck feels like with your head propped up unnaturally on the
hard arm rest. Wait, something’s
missing. Ah, never mind, there it is,
your trusty blue plastic bag, stuffed with god knows what, tucked in between
the side of the couch and the wall. I’m
tempted to take a photo, but it wouldn’t mean anything to those who don’t know
you –the slightly hyper-kinetic Dr. Tony Hill, a man with so many trains of
thought, his brain should be housed in Victoria Station. I quietly sit down in a nearby chair and
allow myself a moment of relaxation.
It’s been
over a year now since we’ve began our… what would I call it? Working relationship? Partnership? Friendship? What is it that you’ve brought into my
life? Something there I can’t pin down,
but something I was missing. I’m not
obvious to the fact that these days I seem to be either Alex Fielding, single
mum, or Alex Fielding, DI, with little time in between to simply be Alex
Fielding, me. I let out a short but
genuine laugh at the fact that on the rare occasion I’m neither mother nor cop,
it’s with you. Is that what you give
me? The freedom to be
Alex Fielding, woman? ‘Ah, lass,’
I admonish myself, ‘what you doing?’ My
brief bout of self-recrimination is cut short by the sudden twitch of your
arm. My attention sharpens as I wait for
more, but whatever moment of conflict you encountered in the depth of your
slumber has passed and you are still once again. I wonder where you go, deep in that brain of
yours, to hide from the demons I see in your eyes when you’re awake. I see you twitch again. Not deep enough, it seems. The sad part is, while I’m no psychologist, I
suspect you are haunted not so much by the demons we chase, but by the people
who are close to you. The knife in the
heart hurts more when it’s slipped in through your back, doesn’t it?
I asked you
once why you don’t just sleep in my office if you must sleep at the station at
all. You told me in stuttered response
that you didn’t want to impose on my space.
I let it go, but made certain you knew I didn’t believe it for a
second. The fact that you still –after
over a year –have a habit of poking your head in my office and beginning your
conversation with an automatic, “Carol…” says it all, doesn’t it. A single word that signifies
volumes. DCI
Carol Jordan. My
predecessor. DCI
Carol Jordan. Your…
friend. Of course I’ve heard the
stories. No officer I’ve ever met was
immune from the lure of gossip, particularly when it involves someone up the
ladder of command. DCI
Carol Jordan, tall, willowy, ambitious, driven, not one to be trifled with. Dr. Tony Hill, brilliant,
baffling, abrasive, compelling, not one to be seen in good company with. Not a pairing most pundits would wager
on. Yet if half the stories are to be
believed, you two seemed to defy those odds.
A year ago I might have wondered what in the world she saw in you; now I
wonder what happened to make her leave you.
Oh, I know the official party line –she was offered a promotion. In
I look at
your sleeping form, with its short stretches of stillness broken by sporadic
twitches of fingers and feet. Are you chasing
or being chased? Is she with you in
sleep just as sure as she is in your waking hours? The spectre of Carol
Jordan. I only had to deal with
it on a professional level –the onus was naturally on me to prove myself a
worthy successor. I met that challenge
with the same ambition that got me the position in the first place. But you’ve had a much harder challenge,
haven’t you, in your attempts to shed all that she has left behind? It’s not only in the way you mistakenly call
me “Carol”. It’s in the way you stand
close, as if needing a visceral source of support, and the way you abruptly
step away, burned, when you realize it’s me.
Or maybe the distinction is, “not her”.
It’s in the way I’ve never seen your eyes shine as they do in the single
photo of the two of you that rests on one of the many bookshelves in your
flat. It’s a black and white moment that
captures something privately shared in smiles and body language. A well of history and possibility caught in a
single 5x7. I wonder if you mourn the
remembrance of the history or the loss of the possibility?
A final
twitch jolts you awake and I watch with no small measure of amusement as you
attempt to gather surrounding information to make some sense of where you
are. Your eyes at last fall on me and
you blink, as if moving your thought process to the next frame. As you sit up, the rumpled coat falls to the
floor, but you take no notice of it, or of the several strands of hair that are
sprouting from the back of your head at all angles.
“Alex,” you
say clearly, as if picking up a conversation left in mid-sentence. “I’ve got a theory.”
You stand
up and promptly ext the room, leaving me to pick up your bag and coat. Introspection has been pushed aside to make
way for Alex Fielding, DI, and I follow behind you.
-end.