Chapter Text
A thin wail rose above the myriad of sounds surrounding her, gradually getting stronger, but Ellie could not place it. It was almost as if she was seeing herself from above, wearing one of those strange papery hospital gowns, her hair sweaty and face pale amongst the white cotton sheets. Nurses were moving quickly around her, but Ellie could not make sense of much until someone held a tiny bundle in a light blue blanket out to her.
“Take him, he’s yours.” The elderly nurse spoke but Ellie could not hear the words. She only saw her lips moving, still she understood and frantically shook her head as dread rose within her.
“Your baby.” The nurse said again and this time her voice sounded distorted and screeching as she held the bundle out to hand it over, but Ellie scrambled back in fright. No. No.
“NO!” Ellie shot up in bed, grasping at thin air as she tried to escape from the ghosts her mind had conjured up. Her stomach gave a sudden lurch and Ellie leant over the side of the bed, retching and dry-heaving. There was nothing in her stomach she could bring up, except bile. She had hardly eaten all day. Her heart was racing madly, cold sweat trickling down her spine and causing her clothes to stick to her clammy skin. She needed to get away. She needed air.
Ellie threw the covers back and stumbled blindly from the room and into the adjacent bathroom. Leaning heavily on the sink she splashed cold water on her face before rinsing her mouth and collapsing on the edge of the tub. Her legs felt wobbly and she did not think they would support her for much longer. One of her hands found its way down to her flat stomach as she crunched the fabric of her nightgown between her fingers. The cotton was damp with cold sweat and a lot looser around her than it had been before. She had lost a lot of weight over the last few weeks and her waist was slimmer than it had been even before Fred, but she could not be sure it would stay that way.
With a curse and a sob, Ellie hit her fist against the edge of the sink until the sharp pain brought her back to reality. It had just been a dream, Ellie reminded herself. There was no reason to worry, yet . But what if there was? Ellie sobbed again, keeping one hand pressed against her abdomen.
The cold of the bathroom tiles crawled up her bare legs as more details of the dream returned. The room she had been in had been tiled as well, cold and sterile. A fresh wave of sickness hit Ellie but her stomach had long been empty. She had not eaten much these last few days. Food had lost its appeal and stress often made her forget, which might explain the constant feeling of nausea she was experiencing. Unless there was another reason . Ellie shivered once more. Her mind was bombarded with images of a night a few weeks back, the smell of alcohol and sour breath on her face and a nameless bloke in the dark. Her heart rate sped up and Ellie’s breath came in short gasps that made her head swim before long as she tried to get a grip on herself. No. She could not lose her head now. She did not know anything yet.
With great effort Ellie pushed herself up on unsteady legs, but the thought of going back to bed filled her with dread. She would not be able to close her eyes with the fear of another nightmare lurking in the darkness. There was nothing to take her mind off things. It was too silent in the house. Fred and Tom were staying with Lucy over night. Her sister had kindly offered, so Ellie might get a night of rest now that the trial was over and Sandbrook dealt with, but the absence of her children only brought out all kinds of demons. They crawled out of the shadows, feasting on her anxiety, making time stand still while Ellie was left to fend for herself. She was truly alone now. No one would want to talk to her, to look at her, if what she feared came true.
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Alec’s face twitched and he grumbled something into his pillow as an insistent knocking disturbed his sleep and startled him awake. It was still dark. He could only make out his flat by various shades of black and a few silvery rays of moonlight falling through the blinds. A groan spilled from his lips. The one night where he mercifully had not been plagued by nightmares, something else woke him. Alec pulled a pillow over his head but the knocking sound did not go away. It was no boat or buoy hitting the riverbank, there was someone at the door.
A sharp pain shot up his left arm as Alec momentarily forgot about his recent surgery and put weight on it when he sat up. He winced as the sting woke him up much more effectively than the dreadful knocking could. Dragging himself out of bed, Alec made his way over to the door to find the cause of the disturbance.
It was just a few steps from his bedroom to the door of his little blue shack, but Alec was still half asleep as he stumbled towards it, nearly tripping over a stack of files discarded on the floor. Once he glimpsed a distinctive hue of orange outside though, he quickly crossed the last few feet and nearly ripped the door of its hinges when he pulled it open.
“Miller,” he breathed. One of his hands moved to grasp at her and pull her inside but her frequent rejections of any kind of touch made him reconsider, so his arm hovered awkwardly in mid-air between them as he stared at his former DS. There was no reason for her to be here anymore. Everything was dealt with. Claire, Lee and Ricky were in custody thanks to her and come morning Alec would leave Broadchurch and reclaim Sandbrook as his home.
“Has something happened? Is it wee Fred?” Alec asked as he took in her unexpected appearance on his doorstep. He had become strangely fond of her youngest and could not think of anything else that would explain the state she was in. Miller was shaking, her face pale with something that looked suspiciously like dried tear tracks on her cheeks.
She shook her head, fiddling with her hands and wrapping her arms around her middle both to ward off the cold and to hold herself together. Alec breathed a sigh of relief that none of the boys seemed to be hurt, but he still was none the wiser what had caused Miller to turn up on his doorstep in the middle of the night looking like she did.
“Miller? Are you alright?” he tried to question her again, though she evidently was not. But he did not know what else to ask her. As usual, Alec felt terribly inept in handling a situation such as this.
“I might be pregnant,” she whispered hoarsely into the silence of the night and Alec was glad for the pacemaker he had got fitted just a couple of days ago as his mind tried to digest the information. Pregnant. The word bounced off the walls of his small shack, reverberating inside the crowded space like a gunshot. Without meaning to, his gaze dropped to Miller’s middle but there was not much to see except for the bulky jacket she always wore. If anything, she had lost weight over the last few weeks, certainly not gained any.
“How?” Alec asked stupidly before cringing. He knew how , of course, but the news was baffling and a ton of questions popped up in his head. It could not be Joe’s could it? No, he quickly realised as he counted back to the days of his arrest. Too long ago. Definitely not Joe’s, then. An assault? Alec’s breath came in short gasps as this option popped into his head and again he reached out for Miller, but did not touch her. Was that why she had refused any physical contact? Did someone harm her?
A gust of wind flared up and an icy blast made Alec shiver in his thin t-shirt and cotton pyjama pants. Ellie was still standing on his doorstep, arms wrapped around her middle and shivering like a leaf.
“Come in, come in,” Alec said as he gathered his wits at last and jumped aside to let her in. Ellie hesitantly stepped over the threshold which only manifested Alec’s nagging fear that someone had forced himself on her. Murder he could, to some extent, rationally understand, though he would never and under no circumstances cause severe bodily harm to another human, except maybe in the direst case of self-defense. Any crime of a sexual nature was simply beyond him, he could not understand the thought process behind it or the, in his eyes, sick lust for power and control over another person by using sexual actions. Bile rose in his throat and he closed his eyes as he forced himself to stay calm and not jump to conclusions before Ellie had said something definite.
“I’m gonna make some tea,” Alec mumbled as he moved into his tiny kitchen and flicked on the light. He did not know what else to do, what Ellie needed or wanted from him or why she had chosen the middle of the night to tell him that, but he guessed that a cuppa could surely do no harm. If nothing else, it would at least warm her up a little. The bright neon burnt his eyes as he set about filling up the kettle and getting two mugs out for the both of them, glancing back at Miller every so often. He surely was the wrong person to talk to, she must be uncomfortable telling him, but, he realised while he waited for the water to boil, she must feel like there was no one else. Alec cursed inaudibly as he looked towards her once again. She had moved to his lumpy sofa, but was still curled in on herself, giving off the impression of a frightened child or a crime witness in shock.
He was torn between his desire to get back to her and the more rational notion of preparing tea to keep his hands busy while he thought about how to proceed best. Even this simple task took nearly twice as long with his left arm mostly useless after the surgery and his fingers shaking, but eventually Alec emerged from the kitchen with two steaming mugs balanced precariously on a tray. He handed one to Miller as he tentatively sat down on the other end of the sofa, careful to keep his distance and not spook her.
Ellie drew a shuddering breath as Alec sat opposite her, but stayed on the far end, well away from her. It was already starting. He was distancing himself. She was not only the paedophile’s wife now, she would also be a slut in everyone’s eyes. Even Alec’s. A sob wrenched itself from her throat and suddenly Alec was angling his body towards her with his hand on the back rest barely an inch from her shoulders but not touching her. It was her own fault, she guessed as she bit her lip until she tasted the metallic tang of blood on her tongue. She had rejected all of his offers to comfort her but right now she wished he would place his arms around her for once.
“Ellie, did someone hurt you? Did they…” his voice trailed off and Ellie quickly raised her head as she offered a watery smile. Oh this sweet soul . He had thought something had happened to her when in truth she had brought it upon herself. She wondered if he would still look at her with so much concern and tenderness once he knew the truth.
“No, god no,” she whispered and closed her eyes for a second to stem the flow of tears. “It’s all on me,” she admitted and withdrew further from him. Alec Hardy and his impeccable moral code – what would he think of her now?
“I… I was so stupid,” Ellie began as she looked to the ground and fiddled with her fingers, tearing at the skin around her nails, as was her habit. Tears were forming in the corners of her eyes and it was not long until the first one fell onto the back of her hand.
“I went out with Claire that one night. To a bar in Weymouth. It was just me trying to befriend her and get her to talk, maybe, but…” Ellie hesitated for a moment. It had been Alec’s idea to get friendly with Claire, but she did not want to make it sound like she blamed him. For once in her life the fight had gone completely out of Ellie and she did not need Hardy’s famous temper to be directed at her. She was so tired of fighting all the time. No one had a kind word for her these days, no one offered her a smile. She was constantly on edge, cast out and all alone from a community she had grown up in. Hardy was the only one who did not look at her like she should be on trial, too.
“I drank more than I should have, with the trial and Tom not talking to me and all this shit I just… lost it. It was nice, forgetting about it all,” she mumbled and swallowed hard.
“There were two men there who were obviously interested and Claire, she was, I don’t know… she was flattered I guess and we flirted… No one knew me there, or they didn’t at least. No one there looked at me and all they saw was the wife of a murderer. It was nice to feel normal again. It went to my head, like the drinks. There is no use beating around the bush. I had sex with one of them back at the cottage,” Ellie finished, her voice barely above a whisper as more tears fell onto the sleeves of her jacket.
Alec stilled. “Oh no, oh no, no,” he said softly as his hand moved from the backrest of the sofa to Ellie’s shoulder. It was a stupid reaction - what was he contradicting? Her one night stand? That had obviously happened - with possible dire consequences, too.
As if his tentative touch had started some kind of chain reaction in Ellie, because as soon as Alec’s fingers touched her, she forgot all her previous inhibitions and threw herself into his arms with such force that he gasped in pain when she hit his sore side. Even so, Alec’s arm came to wrap itself around her in a weird one-armed embrace as he tried his best to comfort her.
Tears kept streaming from Ellie’s eyes as if the floodgates of heaven had been opened and she felt them soaking through the t-shirt Hardy wore. He smelt of tea and some cheap, non-descriptive shower gel but she found a strange comfort in the familiar scent. It made her feel safe, as did his arm that kept rubbing small circles on her back like she often did when Fred was crying.
“It wasn’t even any good,” Ellie admitted after a while, sniffling and sounding pitiful even to her own ears. As if she could bear the thought of a possible pregnancy any better if the sex had been good at least.
Alec cringed at her words. He did not want to hear about Miller’s sexual encounters, much less imagine them. Knowing she had had a, seemingly bad, one night stand was already evoking all kinds of feelings in him and one of them felt suspiciously like jealousy. He shut that thought down immediately. Instead, he turned his mind to more practical matters.
“Didn’t you, eh…” he fished for the right words as he spoke to a point somewhere over her head on the far wall, unable to face her not because of her own shame but rather his embarrassment over the matter. Miller was not some kind of teenager to be given a lecture on safe sex, or at least that was what he had thought.
“I don’t know,” Ellie whispered hoarsely as she hid her face in the crook of his neck. “I can’t even remember if he used a condom. I was… too drunk to make sure,” Ellie admitted shamefully. The whole night was a bit of a blurr, if she was honest. She could recall some bits and pieces like film scenes, the sour smell of too much beer on the man’s breath and his quick pants as he pounded into her. Even with the little bit she remembered, she was sure it had been the worst sex she had ever had.
“Not like the guy bothered with foreplay, or anything. Thirty seconds of him going on like a racehorse, a groan and he was done. Even you with your dodgy heart could have done better.” It was a stupid thing to say, Ellie realised as soon as the words tumbled from her lips and bounced against the silence in the room.
Alec’s hand against her back stilled and Ellie clenched her eyes shut as heat spread across her face and neck. In her mind’s eye the faceless stranger was replaced by Hardy - thin and grouchy, but gentle and tender, too. She held her breath, waiting for Hardy to erupt in an infamous bout of temper and kick her out of his house. She would deserve it.
“No more dodgy heart,” Alec relayed somewhat thickly as he swallowed against the unexpected dryness in his throat.
“Good.” Ellie relaxed against him again and, surprised, Alec raised his head to look at her. Refusing to meet his gaze, Ellie kept her head well tucked under his chin and Alec thought about how to steer their conversation back to safer ground. Or something less confusing, at least. Her simple answer had caused a warm flutter somewhere in his belly and he would prefer not to think about what it meant.
“What about… next morning? What about… other things?” Alec carefully asked. It was still a bit of a leap from a drunk, possibly unprotected one night stand, to a pregnancy and there was more to consider, like STDs.
Ellie snorted and this time she did look up, wiping her cheeks inelegantly on the sleeve of her jacket. She was still wearing her orange North Face, Alec realised with a start, while he was in his pyjamas. They must be a strange sight. Gesturing to Ellie’s jacket, Alec pulled a fluffy throw from next to him and draped it carefully over Ellie’s shoulders before claiming a small part for himself to put over his thighs.
“I forgot,” Ellie whispered in a small voice as another sob shook her body. “Tom had decided to give evidence and with everything that went down with Claire, it slipped my mind.”
"Mhh," Alec hummed against her, all understanding and considerate. For some reason it irked Ellie and made her hackles rise with sudden unexpected fury.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she spat, sitting up straighter and distancing herself from Hardy and his attempt to comfort her with his bloody soft hugs and his stupid blanket. “Why don’t you tell me how stupid I was! Miller, wife of a murderer who takes a stranger home with her and cannot even make sure the guy uses a damn condom! It would serve me right if I am up the duff, like the fucking idiot I am. So why do you keep your bloody opinion to yourself this time?” She wanted to feel angry, to rage and vent and scream just to feel something else than the nagging fear and despair the dream had left her with, but once the words spilled from her lips, fresh tears started to spill from her eyes and now she felt even more pathetic.
“Because you think that already,” Hardy replied calmly, reaching out to tuck the blanket around her once more as if she was a child. “You already think the worst of yourself. Do you really believe I would kick you, when you’re down?” Ellie bit her lip at his statement, but it was not enough to hide the trembling or the snivels.
“Everyone thinks the worst of me anyway.”
“Not me.” Hardy's gaze was open and honest. He was telling the truth like he had always done, sticking by her with his unwavering loyalty that would one day be the death of him. His simple statement drained all energy from Ellie and she deflated, feeling more tired and emotionally exhausted now. Almost shyly she reached out to Hardy again and moved to place her head on his chest once more, noticing how Alec’s left arm remained almost unmoving. His pacemaker.
“I’m sorry. Did I hurt you, earlier?” she queried, remembering how she had barrelled into him with the force of a bulldozer.
“It’s alright. No harm done,” Alec replied simply as he tucked her head against his collarbone and let his chin rest on top of her windswept curls.
For a long while they did not speak and drew comfort from the feeling of holding and being held by someone they trusted. Both of them had gone too long without any form of physical affection and an unfamiliar sensation stirred deep in their limbs as they sat entangled on the small sofa of Alec’s blue shack.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” Ellie began speaking again hesitantly after a while. Hardy’s surgery had only been a few days ago and he had already done a lot more than he should have with Sandbrook and the trial. Hardy needed rest if he was supposed to heal. “I didn’t know where else to go. I dreamt about it. The… birth. I was in hospital and the nurse was handing me a baby, another boy, but I couldn’t take him. I just couldn’t,” Ellie whispered while she shook her head. She sounded frightened and Alec tightened his arm around her. “It was like I was seeing myself from the outside and I knew if I held him, it would be real. As if he would go away when I simply did not take him from the nurse. Then I woke up. I got sick and I was so scared, I…” Ellie shivered again.
“I’ll know for sure in the morning. The clinic I went to before, they took a blood sample this morning, or yesterday by now. I can call after nine,” she said and ignored the panicky fluttering in her heart at the thought.
"What do you want to do?" Hardy asked softly, again sounding entirely neutral as if he was fine with whatever she replied.
"What can I do? I have no choice really. I’m all alone, everyone hates me already. Just imagine it… Miller, the paedophile’s wife with her two boys, pregnant by some stranger she met in a bar. Or they’ll think it’s yours, that the rumours were true," Ellie huffed humourlessly while her heart clenched painfully. She had always thought that an abortion was something she could never go through. Not even as a teenager when she was first lectured by her old spinster teacher about safe sex, but especially not after the difficulties of conceiving Fred.
"I don't. Hate you." Hardy said and Elli’s lips curled into a smile at that simple truth. He might be the only one. “And I’ll do whatever you need me to. You’re not alone, Ellie.”
Ellie . Her name sounded unfamiliar rolling off his tongue in a thick Scottish burr but the effort of calling her by her first name warmed her up inside. It might be a platitude - she knew he wanted to get back to Sandbrook in a few hours and be closer to his daughter, but it comforted her nonetheless.
“Come on,” Alec said after another couple of minutes had passed in silence. It was getting cold, his right arm was partially numb from lack of movement and the digits on the small alarm clock in the kitchen had moved well into the small hours. Their tea had gone cold, untouched on the coffee table but even without it he felt like they had found some comfort.
“What now?”
“Sleep,” he told her simply, pulling Ellie to her feet with him and gently guiding her to the small bedroom across his living room. She did not resist, but stopped hesitantly on the threshold as she saw his narrow bed with the rumpled blue sheets.
“You shouldn’t be alone tonight, Ellie,” Alec said softly while his traitorous heart skipped a beat when she nodded. He did not want to be either. Not anymore.
The situation was strangely reminiscent of their lost booking a few weeks ago and yet entirely different as Ellie got under the covers in her t-shirt and joggers and curled up against Alec’s right side. There was just a small moment of hesitation, like the hitch in one’s breath before sharing a deeply intimate thought, before her right hand came to rest carefully over the spot where the pacemaker now sat. Warmth enveloped her and a pleasant drowsiness came with it, as Ellie relaxed against his body in the darkness of the room. It was not weird. Not a bit. And maybe that was the weirdest thing of all. Hardy’s smell was all around her, chasing the anxiety from her mind. Outside the water was gently lapping against the bank of the river and before long Ellie felt herself drift off.
Alec sighed into the darkness as he stared at the grey and blue shadows playing on his bedroom ceiling. Ellie’s hand was curled into the fabric of his t-shirt, her breath moved softly against his neck and Alec turned his head to breathe a kiss into her curls. He had meant what he said. He would do whatever Ellie asked him to, even stay if she needed him. If she wanted him to. For a fleeting moment Alec had a strange vision of himself and Ellie with a baby in her arms, Tom, Fred and Daisy around them, like one of those old faded family photographs, but he quickly shook his head until the image cleared. After that sleep would not come for a long time as Alec contemplated when his feelings for Miller had changed. He fell asleep eventually, but by then dawn was already crawling over the horizon.
The harsh morning light dispersed their intimacy like mist chased away by the first rays of sunlight even as Alec desperately tried to cling to it. Both he and Ellie woke late, still entwined, their bodies heavy and relaxed. It did not last. Ellie swiftly got up and fluttered from one place to the next in his home, like a bird trapped in a too small cage. Alec offered Ellie tea, toast and comfort but she accepted none. She was jittery and anxious, biting her nails and ripping the skin around them until it bled while she waited for the clock to strike nine.
At two minutes to nine she fled his small riverside house to stand outside by the river. The air smelled briny, the tang of the ocean heavy on her tongue and while it was normally a comfort to Ellie it felt nauseating this time. Pressing the phone close to her ear and listening to the dial tone, she shrugged Alec’s hand off her shoulder and turned away from him.
Negative . The word released an avalanche of emotions inside Ellie as it resounded in her head. Not pregnant. The fingers that were holding her phone gripped it so tightly, her knuckles turned white while her other hand fisted in the fabric of her faithful windbreaker, crunching it between her fingers. She could have wept, but turned her head into the salty breeze to let the tears be carried away by the wind. Not all of them were out of relief.
As she cast another look back at Alec standing in the doorframe she knew he knew and he dipped his head back inside. He would be leaving soon. It was his last day in Broadchurch. He would head back to his daughter, his old post and old life.
He might have stayed, if the result had been a different one and for a fraction of a second Ellie wanted him to, but she could not. They were both broken. They both needed to be away from each other. Alec needed to be with his daughter and she needed to move on. He had never felt at home here, in her town with the sand and the cliffs and all the things he hated.
Ellie went back inside once the turmoil in her chest had calmed a little and stared at the blue shack now devoid of any personal things. The bed they had slept in was stripped of the sheets and all of Alec’s belonging had been put into his travelling bag. Ellie held out her hand. “Well, thanks for everything,” she mumbled.
“Handshake?” Alec asked and she nodded, forcing all of her emotions behind a stoic and indifferent mask.
“Yeah, not hugging you,” Ellie replied, casting her eyes over him one last time before focusing on his shoes. He never got himself some sturdy ones to walk the beach. He was still in the same dress shoes he had arrived in, wholly unsuited for a coastal town. What she really meant was that she could not hug him. If she did, she would never be able to let him go.
Alec nodded, hiding the tears that sprung to his eyes at Ellie’s rejection by looking down as well. He gripped her hand and shook it before lifting his bags from the floor. His cab would be here soon. As he locked the door of his riverside gaff one last time, Ellie who had been waiting at the gate, turned.
“Alec? Don’t be a stranger, hm?” He gave her a small smile, even though he knew deep in his heart that he would not call or text her. She did not need him anymore. She would be fine. She was the strongest person he knew and she would fight tooth and nail to reclaim her place in this small coastal town, take back everything her husband had robbed her of.
If he stayed, she would never be able to heal. Everyone would assume the rumours were true then, that they had had an affair. Besides, He had a fight of his own to win. He would get Daisy back and that had to be enough.
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