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English
Series:
Part 17 of Fictobers
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Published:
2025-10-01
Updated:
2025-10-18
Words:
1,800
Chapters:
18/31
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153
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174
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Fictober 2025

Summary:

Lula's entry for Fictober 2025. List of prompts can be found here. Credit for the prompts goes to barbex at the fictober-event blog, with many thanks.

I am going to attempt a 31-chapter Hallmarked Man fix-it, set immediately after the events in the book. Here be spoilers.

Chapter 1: "Just take my hand."

Chapter Text

“Just take my hand.”

Murphy’s voice is low, pleading. Robin slides her hand across the table, and applause ripples across the restaurant. Beaming, the waiter flourishes a champagne bottle, and the open ring box sits between them like a grenade with the pin pulled.

Robin acknowledges the congratulations of the other diners, and she and Murphy take a flute of champagne each. They clink glasses, but of course Murphy has to put his down again. Robin takes the tiniest sip, the taste acid in her mouth, and they fake genial smiles and both pretend she hasn’t just broken his heart.

 

Chapter 2: "This is new."

Chapter Text

“This is new.”

“What is?” Pat looks up at Midge sharply. The ex-policewoman waves an arm that encompasses the closed door to the inner office where Robin is sequestered, and up to the ceiling above their heads, indicating Strike’s flat from which he will be working for today.

“Everything was fine on Friday,” Midge says. “Now they can’t even be on the same floor?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pat says dismissively. “Robin has phone calls to make, and he only needs the laptop for those searches.”

Midge eyes her sideways. Pat stares back at her, defiant.

“Hmm.”

 

Chapter 3: “I don’t need a reason.”

Chapter Text

“I don’t need a reason,” Robin says, but her cheeks are heating up under her mother’s scrutiny.

“And no Ryan?” Linda asks, taking Robin's suitcase. 

Robin sighs. “Could we at least wait till we get home before you start twenty questions?”

“So something has happened. I presume it’s why Ryan isn’t here?”

They haven’t even got to the car yet. Robin eyes a cafe across the road. They might as well get this over with. For a wild moment she wonders if she could just get on the next train back to London, after.

“OK, Mum, let’s grab a coffee.”

 

Chapter 4: "Can you hold me?"

Chapter Text

“Can you hold me?”

“Of course, darling.” Robin bends to hug her little niece, grateful to hide her tears. She knows she’s done the right thing, but her mother’s endless litany of Ryan Murphy’s virtues isn’t helping her to believe it. If she knew…

“What’s occurring?” Stephen asks, looking from his sister to his mother and back again.

“Robin’s split up with Ryan,” Linda says, sounding tearful, and how dare she be the one to be upset?

“Well, good riddance to him,” Stephen says briskly, hanging up his coat. “He was a d— an idiot at Christmas.”

Thank you, Button.

 

Chapter 5: “But you promised!”

Chapter Text

“But you promised!”

“I didn’t,” Ilsa says primly, but Nick knows that look.

“You can’t lawyer your way out of this one. We agreed we’d let them sort it out themselves, that—”

“No, you agreed,” Ilsa interrupts. “Something’s happened. Robin’s split up with Ryan and she won’t say why, she just goes red and changes the subject.”

“So?”

“It’s because of Oggy, I know it.”

“That’s a pretty big conclusion you’ve jumped to there.”

“I bet I’m right. Take him for a pint.”

“I am not prying. He’ll tell me if he wants to.”

Ilsa sighs. “I’ll do it, then.”

 

Chapter 6: "This is annoying."

Chapter Text

“This is annoying.” Midge sighs and sets her notes down. Strike has retreated into the inner office after a lightning-quick meeting; Robin has yet to arrive.

“Aye,” Barclay agrees, taking another biscuit from the tin. Ever tactful, Dev says nothing, but sips his coffee. Pat types away, seemingly unperturbed.

“Pat knows something,” Barclay says suddenly.

Midge snorts. “Course she does,” she retorts. “But she won’t tell. Believe me, I’ve tried to get it out of her.”

Pat looks up finally, glaring at them all. “Haven’t you got work to do?”

“Nope,” says Midge. “Not until— Ah.”

Robin opens the door.

 

Chapter 7: “You’ll have to try harder than this.”

Chapter Text

“You’ll have to try harder than this.”

“Harder?” Strike glares. “How could I try any fucking harder? I told her I was in love with her. I bloody asked her to marry me—“

If he wasn’t so incensed, the sight of Ilsa choking on cappuccino foam would be amusing.

“You did what?” his old friend splutters.

Strike hesitates. “Well, it wasn’t exactly a proposal.”

Ilsa sets her mug down and wipes her chin. “How is asking her to marry you not a proposal?”

“I blurted it. Heat of the moment.”

“And she didn’t say yes?” IIsa asks drily. Strike sighs.

 

Chapter 8: “I know it sounds impossible.”

Chapter Text

“I know it sounds impossible.”

“Ilsa, he said ‘marry me’. Cormoran Strike said that. To me.”

“Has it occurred to you he meant it?”

Robin sighs. “You know what? Until that point, I kind of believed him. He looked sincere. But that…” She trails off.

“Why is it so hard to believe?”

“Because he has never, in all the years I’ve known him, shown any inclination toward a permanent relationship with anyone, let alone marriage.”

“Robin…” Ilsa leans forward. “He made you a partner in his business. He became your friend, stuck by you. Believe him.”

Robin wipes her eyes.

 

Chapter 9: “They didn’t even touch it!”

Chapter Text

“They didn’t even touch it!”

Pat’s indignation makes Barclay grin.

“Cheer up, Pat,” he exhorts. “Mebbe fruit cake cannae solve everything.”

“Well,” she mutters, rewrapping the block and placing it back in the tin. “It’s not like I was trying to bring about world peace.”

“We’d settle for office peace,” the Scot replies. The door to the inner office remains firmly closed, and Robin will have reached the street by now. Surely the bosses will eventually get past whatever has driven such a wedge between them that they can’t even linger for Pat’s delicious cake. A man can only hope.

 

Chapter 10: “I’m here, am I not?”

Chapter Text

“I’m here, am I not?”

Robin flinches at his tone, and Strike feels a complete heel. He takes a breath. Ilsa told him to try harder.

“Sorry,” he says gruffly. “How can I help?”

“Can we…call a truce?” Robin asks. Her eyes don’t meet his. “You…took me by surprise that night. I was angry, maybe still am. Ryan and I split up,” she finishes in a rush.

There are a million things Strike wants to say and can’t, because he can sense the hurt simmering beneath her words. But suddenly he knows hope.

“Okay,” he agrees. “A truce.”

 

Chapter 11: “Stupider people than us have done this.”

Chapter Text

“Stupider people than us have done this.”

Wardle gives a wry smile and raises his pint.

“And more intelligent people than you have fucked it up.”

“Thanks,” Strike mutters, with a grunt of laughter. “I thought you were trying to cheer me up.”

It’s the closest he can come to articulating what he suspects - that Wardle has dragged him out as some form of repayment for another night, months ago, when Strike had sensed that his friend might need a friendly ear. He’s more touched than he’d admit that the sentiment is returned.

“She’s worth it,” Wardle says. Strike nods.

 

Chapter 12: "Does this help you?"

Chapter Text

“Does this help you?”

Robin stares at the woman who is, she supposes, her therapist now. It’s only their second session, but…

“Yes, I think it does,” she says slowly.

“Good,” the therapist says, smiling, and Robin wonders distractedly when the swearing starts.

“So, last week you said you struggle to tell people what you want, but you didn’t feel unheard as a child. Was it something later, perhaps?”

There is so much. So much. Gorilla masks, knives, cheating husbands, alcoholic boyfriends, endlessly trying to keep the peace. And beneath it all, Strike, Strike, Strike.

Robin takes a deep breath.

 

Chapter 13: "It's a balance."

Chapter Text

“It’s a balance,” Robin says. “She says I can set boundaries and assert what I want, and be peacemaker if I want to. I can still be me, but without losing me. I’m explaining it wrong.”

Ilsa nods and sets her coffee down. “No, I get you,” she says. “So how you put it into practice?”

“I start small,” Robin says, and takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to see that film on Thursday. Horror isn’t my thing.”

Ilsa chuckles. “No worries. I’ll take Fran from work.”

Robin tells herself she feels assertive rather than guilty, and smiles uncertainly.

 

Chapter 14: “Do we have a plan?”

Chapter Text

“Do we have a plan?” Ilsa asks.

Robin sighs. “You make it sound so simple.”

“It is simple, Robin. You go and talk to him - you see him every day, you’ll find a moment - and tell him you feel the same.”

“And then what?”

“You snog his face off?”

Robin manages a laugh, her cheeks burning. Just the thought of it… Distractedly she wonders what Strike’s stubble would feel like.

“It can’t be that simple.”

“It can if you let it,” Ilsa retorts.

Robin runs a hand through her hair. “But then that would be it. No going back.”

“Exactly.”

 

Chapter 15: “It’s rather complicated.”

Chapter Text

“It’s rather complicated.” Robin looks down at her hands twisted in her lap.

“My experience of these things,” the therapist says gently, “is that they’re as complicated as we allow them to be. Sometimes they’re as complicated as we need them to be.”

Robin frowns. “Why would I want it to be complicated?”

The other woman shrugs. “You tell me. Does it make it easier to avoid? You said yourself your mother wouldn’t be happy, your ex-husband and ex-partner would feel vindicated.”

“See? Complicated.”

“And are they things that would stop you, if you knew it was something you wanted?”

 

Chapter 16: "I will never forget this."

Chapter Text

“I will never forget this,” Robin thinks, stealing sideways glances at Strike as he focuses his attention, laser-like, on the interview at hand. He’s a skilled interrogator, an intuitive investigator, a good human being.

He’s also stubborn, private to the point of reclusive and frequently annoying.

The important thing, Robin tells herself, is he was her friend before she started having feelings for him. Feelings that are, against all the odds, apparently retuned. This is what she must hold onto - they get along, enjoy each other’s company. No reason for it not to work, if…

She swallows hard, and concentrates.

 

Chapter 17: “You’re not alone."

Chapter Text

“You’re not alone,” the therapist says. “Many women find it hard to go for what they want.”

“I wanted the job,” Robin replies, but she knows that’s not the subject on the table.

“In your personal life. You said Matthew asked you out, and so did Ryan. And you told yourself you couldn’t have feelings for Strike.”

Robin isn’t sure how she ended up telling her therapist every part of this. It’s as though she’s watching herself from above, detached.

“Why aren’t you allowed to choose?”

“What do I have to offer?” Suddenly Robin is crying, and she can’t stop.

 

Chapter 18: “I think I see it.”

Chapter Text

“I think I see it,” Vanessa says, patting baby Cassandra on the back. An inelegant burp is her reward, and she chuckles.

“See what?” Robin asks, sipping her tea. It’s good to see her old friend again.

“Your problem, with Strike.”

“And what’s that?”

“You’re scared of getting it wrong. You don’t trust yourself.”

Robin sighs. “Yeah,” she says slowly.

“Why?”

“I just…” Robin shrugs. “After everything… I’m in therapy, Van. I’m doing better. What if I’m not…me yet? What if I make the wrong call, and have to live with it?”

“But you felt like this before.”

“Yeah…”

 

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