Chapter Text
———
“I have to finish this. I can’t let the family down.”
———
“What?” Incredulity prevented her from saying more.
He looked up from the coat, fingers still buried deep in the fur. His hospital gown gaped slightly from how he leaned over, and Ellie could see the wound from the exorcism, a neat ridge of tissue just under his left collarbone where they’d pressed the iron rod at the end.
“We’re not done with Sandbrook.”
“Why can’t you keep it?”
“It’s a liability. We still don’t know who cursed me. They could do it again, but not if they don’t have this.”
“Well, it was Claire, wasn’t it?” Ellie could hear her voice rising.
His remained calm. “Ellie, we don’t know that for sure.”
He was right, she realized. Ellie had assumed, but it was entirely possible someone else could have done it. Trust no one.
Except her, it seemed.
“Okay.”
That was when they heard Tess’s voice followed by a nurse’s coming down the hallway.
Trust no one.
———
(It tore at him almost more than he could bear, when he lifted up the pelt and Miller took it away from his willing hand, the weight sliding from him again when he’d only just gotten it back. Even though her hands were always gentle, folding it back into the overnight bag she’d begun carrying, he had to dig his fingers into his thigh and clench his jaw to keep from begging. She was reticent enough to take it from him as is, and he knew if asked she would give it back to him in a heartbeat. He couldn’t let that happen. Soon, he thought, and forced himself to believe it.
He lowered back onto the bed, and the curtain slid aside.)
———
When Ellie woke up, the sun still hadn’t risen, which meant no one had to see her quietly crying in her kitchen. Her kitchen. Hers. In the middle of her kitchen. In her own house, with her boy asleep up her stairs. Not alone in a horrid studio flat in bloody Devon. The toaster dinged, and she wiped the back of her hand over her eyes.
Before she left, she went up into the loft, and uncovered her old hope chest. Her mother had wanted her to have one, she was traditional that way. Hardly any of the silly things she put inside as a little girl actually made it into her house, but the chest itself was solid cedar, beautiful, and lined with rowan wood. Impervious to moths and magic. She placed Hardy’s pelt inside and turned the key.
———
She went by the cottage first and found it in shambles. More than just a tantrum, Claire had torn through every room, clearly searching for something and not finding it.
Ashes in the sink confirmed what she already suspected, and nothing else remained but to close the door behind her on the last remaining traces of sweet perfume.
———
Tess opened the door for her. “Alec’s still resting.” In her hand, she held up an open file. “Decided to take a look.”
Ellie peered through the open doorway and saw Hardy indeed sound asleep. She wanted to ask if he’d had nightmares, but thought better of it, and contented herself with the peaceful ebb and flow of his magic. The broken curse still wasn’t quite real to her, and to keep from staring she went to make tea.
All the mug handles were facing the same direction.
Tea in hand, she came back out into the living area, sat down at the desk, and flipped through the neat stack of folders in the corner. After a moment, she got up and went to the fluffed cushions of the sofa to look through more orderly stacks on the coffee table. Not a single speck of dust on any surface. A quick glance through another doorway showed washed and folded linens. A line of sun-bleach on the floor revealed where the rug had shifted ever so slightly.
The destruction of the cottage. The profound tidiness here. Not a single spot untouched. Two sides. Same coin.
She knew what Claire had been looking for. What about Tess?
———
(Miller handed him the photo of Pippa wearing the pendant. He’d looked at it more times than he could count. He took it anyway. Conscious of Tess’s hand between his shoulder blades, he waited till she walked past him to set the photo back on the table and slip his hand in his pocket.)
———
They had underestimated Ashworth’s desperation.
Hardy liked it when they panicked, Ellie thought. Well, Lee Ashworth was panicking.
He was waiting for her that night, when she opened her front door, and she had a moment to thank whatever God was listening that she had sent the boys to Lucy’s in anticipation of working on the case at Hardy’s all night. Then, Ashworth was on her.
The door shook as he shoved her against it, and his breath stank of the bile in his magic as he growled in her face, “where is it?”
Ellie tried to stem the instinctual onslaught of fear. “Where is what, you bastard?”
His hand slammed the door next to her head. She flinched despite herself. “Don’t play games. I warned him to leave us alone. He didn’t listen. Claire told me everything. About Hardy, what he is, about his coat,” he leaned in even closer and she turned her face away. “She told me you have it.”
Even now, they still weren’t free of Claire’s machinations. “I don’t. I don’t have it, and I’d never give it to you if I did.” His hand turned her face back to him, dreadful in his stillness.
He stared at her. “You really gave it back, didn’t you?” he said in quiet astonishment. “How?” She didn’t have an answer.
“Alright then,” he said, pulling her suddenly away from the door in a crushing grip, “If you won’t give him to me willingly,” he squeezed tighter. “I’ll just have to make him do it myself.”
———
After using her own cuffs to bring her hands behind her back and her own tea towel to gag her, he’d dragged her to the beach, where a boat waited to take them far away from shore. Presumably, so no one could hear her scream when Ashworth made her cry seven tears into the sea.
———
She tried desperately not to think of Hardy. But not thinking of Hardy meant thinking of Joe. Joe, who had touched her the way Ashworth was now beginning to. She turned her head, but Ashworth’s hand in her hair forced it back painfully over the edge of the water. Gravity gathered the tear at the corner of her eye, held it there.
Nowhere to run. Had Joe thought about doing this when he had ferried Danny’s still-warm body down the coast in that stolen boat? She felt the cold edge of a knife against the bare skin of her thigh.
Salt to salt. The tear dropped.
———
(He was looking at their wall of evidence when he felt the first tear fall in his chest. Like a clock beginning to strike the hour, he felt it resound in him, and he knew immediately who it belonged to.
He was out the door before the first note finished echoing.)
———
The knife trailed over her skin, leaving shallow cuts that she trembled at the effort of holding still against. Each gentle wave that rocked the boat made her terrified that Ashworth would slip, and the knife would bury itself in her thigh, her stomach, her breast. She tried to shut her eyes against the fear. That knife would do far worse to Hardy if Ashworth succeeded.
She had tried not to think of him. Now she just prayed as her tears fell, don’t come. Don’t come, Alec. Please.
———
(He had just the presence of mind to call Broadchurch CID to get police and paramedics to the cliffs. The second tear fell on his way to Miller’s house. Once he got there, the third and fourth strokes of the bell came in quick succession, growing louder and louder. The front door hung open, and he ran through it up the stairs to where he could feel what he needed waited for him. He pulled the key from his pocket as the fifth of Ellie’s tears reverberated in his head.
Lifting his coat from the chest, he flew back downstairs and out onto the street, the call on his soul urging him toward the sea. The sixth tear fell.)
———
Ellie hadn’t kept track of her tears once they’d started falling, but maybe Ashworth had, because his hands abruptly stopped their horrible exploration, the knife lifted away. He cast her back into the bottom of the boat, and stood over her with torch in hand, shining it into the depths. A long knife red with her blood, he held at the ready.
And waited.
The boat rocked gently. Then, again, less gently. Ashworth swung the torch, and in that precise moment something collided with the boat. The torch flew from his hand into the darkness, and only the sallow aura of his magic showed against the stars.
The boat settled again.
Ashworth’s calm broke. He screamed at the expanse. “C’mon, you bastard!”
And there was water, frigidly cold and utterly dark, as whatever had hit the boat did so again, this time capsizing it. Flashes of magical light filtered through Ellie’s closed eyes, and her lungs burned for air. She kicked her feet, but with her arms pinned behind her back, she couldn’t find the surface.
Something from underneath brushed against her, and suddenly she felt a rushing all about her. Then her feet were stumbling up onto wet sand.
A spray of blue and silver followed barely a half-second after her, Hardy’s long form spilling from the pelt. He lifted the fur, and swung it around to cover her own bare form. Even if her knees hadn’t already been about to give out, they would have under the weight of a massive soaking-wet seal-coat. Hardy caught her. Gently, he lowered them both to their knees in the sand.
———
(She wasn’t healing. He kept pushing his magic, and it kept just washing over her as he pulled her from the water.
It’s Ellie, he reminded himself. Ellie, bleeding, but alive. Not Pippa, not dead.)
———
“Ellie,” he said desperately. “Ellie, are you, you’re bleeding. Ashworth, did he…?” She shook her head.
“No. J-j-just touched me.” Her voice shook. Her whole body shook. From cold, from anger, fear, relief. Her arms were still trapped behind her, she was still cold, still soaking wet in the middle of February, and the salt stung fiercely where Ashworth had cut her all down her front. So, she said the first ludicrous thing that came to her mind.
“You’re n-n-naked.”
“Is that really what you’re worried about right now?” His eyes widened and voice rose in exasperation. It was too much. His fond annoyance was too normal, too wonderful in the face of everything she had gone through, and not tonight only. She burst into tears.
“Oh, Ellie.” Strong arms pulled her forward, pelt and all, and her head came to rest against his shoulder as sobs wracked her body. His voice came softly, “Ellie, I’m so sorry.”
“You came,” she said into his neck. “You’re here.”
“I’m here.” He held her tight, saying it for his own comfort as much as hers. “I’m here, Ellie.”
“I’m s-sorry. I tried n-not to, but he, I — “ He shushed her gently, clutching her somehow even tighter. He tucked her down against his chest, pressing his lips to the top of her head.
“You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here. It’s gonna alright.”
———
They left Ashworth stranded to be picked up by coast guard. Alec just kept holding her until the flashing lights and sirens arrived. The medics, police, SOCO, everyone was the definition of professional, but they could all see the coat, see the DI’s nakedness, and put two and two together. Small town like Broadchurch? Everyone would know. He wasn’t safe.
But any worries Ellie had were dispersed when Dirty Brian handed crime scene coveralls to Alec and said as he zipped them up, “You may be a shitface, but you’re our Shitface. No one here is gonna say anything. Secret’s safe with us.”
When they took the cuffs off, she pulled the pelt off her shoulders, as someone else wrapped her in a blanket. She held the coat out to Hardy.
“Ellie,” he began.
“Go, take it somewhere safe. I’m useless right now. It’s not safe with me.”
“I can’t leave you like this,” he protested.
Janet, a lady with grey streaks in her hair and crinkles by her eyes, who had been a paramedic for many years, tugged the blanket more firmly about Ellie’s shoulders and looked at Hardy. “Go on, love. We’ve got her from here. You take care of that, now, and someone will call as soon as she’s settled. She’ll be fine till you get back. Lord knows the hospital has your phone number on record.”
Stalwart English pragmatism: tonic for the soul. It strengthened Ellie’s legs to carry her across the sand to where a stretcher waited, and it moved even the surly scotsman to take the pelt from Ellie’s hands, press one last kiss to her forehead, and start trudging back inland to the place where he knew it would be safe.
———
Of all the cuts, only two needed stitches. The rest they simply cleaned, applied an antibiotic ointment, and bandaged. Lord, lots of bandages. The visual effect of it was rather worse than the reality. She supposed Ashworth had done that intentionally, but she couldn’t find any grace for him in her heart and didn’t fancy trying to.
True to Janet’s word, Alec arrived shortly after the nurses pulled the covers up over her and left her to rest. It was his turn to sit next to her hospital bed, hand gripping the railing. This time, she summoned all her courage. She put her hand over his, and he turned his over to cradle hers, careful of her bandaged wrist. A key sat warm and heavy between their clasped palms.
How ridiculous, she thought as she reveled in the intimacy. She had seen him naked in more ways than one, yet his thumb smoothing over the back of her hand threatened to undo her.
Always upside-down. Oh, how she loved him.
———
(“What happened out there?” she asked.
What happened was Ashworth forgot seals were carnivorous predators. True, coming on land meant fasting. He had grown lean from long years of not hunting, but that didn’t mean he had forgotten.
His teeth hadn’t lost any of their sharpness.)
———
With everything coming to a head, the trial, Sandbrook, Ellie wasn’t surprised when Tess came to visit her in the hospital.
“I’m glad you’re alright,” she said, and she sounded almost genuine. “Alec doesn’t trust easily. I’m glad he has you.” She put a hand on Ellie’s shoulder in what might have been gratitude.
Then, red threads spiraled down her arm and began weaving themselves over Ellie’s chest. Tess leaned in, spoke quietly in her ear. “I understand this will be difficult for you, but I can’t lose my daughter. He will not take her from me. She is mine. He thinks he can just walk away and take her with him? I always knew he wanted to. I had to do it. He said he loved me, but I knew he was going to leave. I had to curse him. He wants to take Daisy away from me, I know he does, I can tell. But I won’t let him. I called him from the ocean. He will listen to me. I will make him listen.”
Ellie had heard quite enough. She sat up, and the web of red magic fell in tatters around her.
Tess pulled back, shocked. “How…?”
“Tess Henchard, I am placing you under arrest for the cursing of Alec Hardy.”
———
“It was Joe.”
———
“It was Tess.”
He must have already suspected, but hearing the confirmation of it….
He buried his head in his hands. Ellie wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held him as he grieved the girl he’d loved, and monster she’d become. The mother of his daughter. The woman who was once his wife.
———
(He sat across from her in the interview room.
“Used to be, you said, ‘I love you.’ Then, when you couldn’t say that, you told me ‘I loved you.’” He looked up into Tess’s eyes. He didn’t recognize them. “Can you even say that now? That once you loved me?”
Tess just looked back with that smirk on her face, eyes empty, and that was answer enough.)
———
Ellie had heard Paul preach once, about sin being its own punishment. ’So God delivered them over to the evil desires of their hearts,’ or something like that. It was poetic in a way, but Ellie was nothing if not practical, and a police officer at that, and she remembered thinking that putting someone in handcuffs was a much more satisfying execution of justice than simply letting the sin itself punish the offender.
But in this case, it made sense. Tess, in cursing her husband, had forgone her love for her family, so the curse had taken it as payment. The curse had slowly brought Alec closer and closer to death. It had likewise taken Tess’s family and her capacity for love further and further out of reach. Now she had no love. No family. Ellie honestly couldn’t imagine a worse punishment.
They were absolutely still sending her to prison.
———
Claire, Ashworth, Ricky, Tess. So much pain. So much injustice.
“All those lives.”
———
She took his hand.
“We’re not alone.”
Epilogue
Turns out, when you weren’t paying alimony, child support, rent for a country cottage and the living expenses for its occupant, as well as your own living expenses, all on one salary, you could afford something a little nicer than a dockside shack that threatened to flood every time it rained.
“You like it?” Ellie asked brightly. The house was halfway up the hill, walking distance from the Miller residence, with large french doors that showed the barest glint of blue at the horizon.
Alec made a vague noise, hands shoved in his pockets as he appraised the living room. “What do you think, Dais?”
Let no one say Daisy was not her father’s daughter. Hands shoved in her hoodie in much the same way, she made the same vague noise, but added, “It’s nice, dad. Could be good.” Ellie, who had begun studies in ‘teenager’ courtesy of Tom, recognized this as hearty endorsement. She gave Hardy a double thumbs up and a big smile. Fred even clapped his hands.
They had decided that it would be good for him to have his own place with Daisy.
She had already accepted the depth of her love for him and the wonderful reality that he loved her just as much, but they had only just begun exploring the ways to express it to each other that fit with two teenagers, a toddler, and jobs that never stopped. Better for them to have their own space, and they could see where the future led them.
There was no rush. They had all the time in the world.
Daisy went out onto the patio and Alec crossed to Ellie. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, and she placed one hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat strong and steady, blue and silver waves washing over her.
Yeah, thought Ellie. This could be good.