A/N: I'm pretty new to Silent Witness, but that being said, I've been inspired to write about Harry and Nikki. This was partly inspired by a friend who has made a pact to marry one of his best friends if either of them are unmarried when they hit 30.

Disclaimer: I do not own the show, or the characters etc.

Chapter One

It had started off with a few too many drinks.

The team had solved a trio of gruesome murders: one involving a couple who hadn't wanted to be parents, and had been pushed to the edge when the infant wouldn't stop crying; another involving middle aged children who had been eager to receive their inheritance; and a final case where a woman had been killed by her husband after discovering she had been pregnant.

The week had affected each member of the trio personally, emotionally, and had stirred up unpleasant memories, thoughts.

The natural conclusion had been to go out for drinks.

To forget.

To celebrate being alive.

To remember how to live.

Leo had left after two drinks, the void in his life left by Theresa and Cassie now filled by Janet. Not that she had been a replacement, but rather, a new character in another act of this play called Life. He had a hope that his colleagues hadn't yet found. While the case had brought up memories and wonderings of what-ifs, he could say honestly to himself that he was content with where he was and whom he was with in his life at this moment.

Nikki was a cheap drunk. Usually she was very conscious of what she was drinking, but tonight, after the week she had, all she wanted to was forget. Forget that parents could leave. Forget that she had a father. Forget that she was all alone in the world. Forget about what she had dreamed her life would be like when she was a child.

Harry was pensive. This whole week had involved children, and there was part of him that couldn't understand why parents did what they did. How was a parent supposed to love their child without hurting them? How was a child supposed to love their parent without being resentful or bitter? These questions were always in the back of his mind, locked away, but this week had caused them to flood his conscious and unconscious mind.

The pair sat next to each other, neither of them talking, both acknowledging somehow that this week had been difficult for both of them. Words didn't need to be spoken for them to understand that they were thinking of their parents. Fathers who had abandoned them when they were children. Mothers who hadn't coped well.

Both of their pasts were broken, but somehow they had muddled through life, and had come to know each other and depend on each other in a way that differed from every other relationship they ever had.

A glass of wine later, Nikki was in the mood to talk.

"I just don't understand how parents can have such little regard for their own children. We suppose that it would be natural to love your own flesh and blood, but then we see… what we see."

She couldn't quite say it, though. How parents could kill their child. Could abandon them. Could not love them.

"My worst nightmare is to end up a parent and not be able to love them," Harry said aloud. "I've never said that aloud, not even to myself. But I'm afraid that I'd be like him. That I'd be able to just leave."

"What a sorry pair we make," commented Nikki. "I've always wanted to be a mother though… be married, have my own family. But I suppose it'd be something that'll never happen. I'll be on the shelf, and I'll die wrinkly and alone, and no one will miss me. Much like you, I suspect, unless your mother outlives you"

"Well, that's a glowing reference if ever I heard one." The conversation was getting a bit too dark for Harry's liking, but he couldn't help adding to the morose topic of hopes drifting away and regrets of dreams unfulfilled.

"I'd always thought that I would have children one day. Hopefully before I was forty. You know my dad was almost 60 when he had me. And I remember resenting him for being so much older than all my friend's dads who were able to play rough with them and carry them on their shoulders. I wished that he hadn't spent so much of his time bettering the lives of other people, while I was somehow deprived from…from… I don't know, time, love, devotion, from my own father."

"I'm so sorry, Harry." Nikki said, not really knowing what to say, but there was genuine sincerity, concern, which Harry appreciated. Not even his mother could provide him the comfort, the consolation, which Nikki gave him.

They sat in silence for a while; talking about pleasanter times they had spent with their respective fathers. Although there were good times had with their dads, it was always the misery, the bitter taste of disappointment, that marred the memories.

"Sometimes I wonder why we let our past hold us back. It's just depressing thinking about what we want, but being afraid to do anything about it." Nikki ruminated.

"I'm just afraid of being like my father. I could not live with myself if I hurt my children, the mother of my flesh and blood, like my father did to us."

"But there's no guarantee that you will end up like your father. You're not like him in essentials. From what I know of you, Harry Cunningham, you are not violent, you would never forget what is really important to you even when you think you've lost yourself to your temper, you're passionate about what you love and what concerns you. You're still the first person I call when I need help having a movie plot explained."

"You always seem to know what to say when I get into one of these moods, Nikki. I couldn't ask for a better friend had I looked all through the universe for someone that understood me better than myself."

"You're very welcome, Harry. And the sentiment is mutual."

"I'll go get us another drink. I felt inadequately prepared for all this sharing of touchy-feely emotional stuff."

Please let me know what you think- I am anxious for feedback. Will get to the mechanics of 'the pact' in the next chapter.