(Written for the "line" challenge on the_safehouse livejournal community: use the line "When someone hurts you that much ... Does it ever go away?" (Quoyle, The Shipping News))


We live on the edge and try not to fall over it, to avoid the tag "Out of Order (permanently)" hanging on the thumb. For the Queen.

In the middle of this storm I found my eye of stillness, my magnetic north. You.

Wasn't it clear to you that I love you? That I would die for you?

You got shot, and decided to die, because you have no thing and no one to live for. When someone hurts you that much ... Does it ever go away?

Not for the Queen, Ray, but YOU! And you almost left me behind.

---

You have no chance against me, sunshine. I am the best in CI5. Not that it stops you from challenging me, and losing again.

I smile as I counter another of your blows.

"3.7!" Cowley's voice from my R/T cuts through my concentration. I turn to it for a second.

And then I feel it - an explosion of pain and I go to the ground.

Through a haze I hear your apology in my ear as I try not to cry.

"Jesus, sorry, Bodie!"

Sorry. Sorry. When someone hurts you that much ... Does it ever go away?

Good God, Doyle! I knew I told you there are no rules, but below the waistline?

-- THE END --

June 2005