A/N: I've always been a fic-reader but never a fic-writer. Kindly bear with. This is a character study of Lix/Randall immediately following the series two finale of "The Hour," and I am willing to expand further and actually make stuff happen should you wish. [I do have a massive headcannon for these two.]
DISCLAIMER: I don't own them. Wish I did. Just borrowing.

1

The noise and confusion had escalated to a point beyond endurance and she found her world suddenly muted. Light and sound seemed to travel faster than her senses could perceive and her movements—that is, when she finally found strength to move—lagged even behind the direction of her paralysed mind.

Air.

Was it survival instinct that finally struck her into motion? She suddenly became aware of a panicked sweat, and the heady stench of worry and disinfectant began to constrict her throat and sting her eyes. Almost gagging, she lurched clumsily for an exit, found it and stumbled desperately into the cool night.

Lix allowed her knees to sink, collapsing on the steps at the foot of the east-wing exit. The hard, concrete discomfort was a welcome source of pain. A stiff night breeze whipped her from the suffocating fog, curling its icy fingers about her bones and her tremble became a shiver. The night hurt, but this pain had a kind of clarity unlike the muffled chaos that had echoed down the hospital corridors. Grateful, Lix allowed the cold to consume her.

They had arrived, all frantic and screeching tires, in Hector's car. It had been a horrific blur, her body seemingly accelerating whilst her mind flailed behind amidst a conflict of logic and instinct. Wildly, Lix found herself wondering where Hector had parked the car. The absurd thought was all her mind could muster in it's now numbed state, yet triviality was an odd relief from other questions of which she could not begin to fathom an answer. More absurd, she began to ponder how she would get home if she failed to locate the car. Did Isaac's car also pursue the ambulance? Or had he been in the back seat of Hector's Morris Minor? Was Isaac even here at all?

The haze, now the numbness, it was too frustrating. Lix strained to clear her thoughts but these efforts only began to concentrate them on that same, shocking image.

There had been a shadow on the lawn, morphing into a hideously twisted figure as they approached. Blood sparkled grotesquely in the torchlight and Lix was reminded disturbingly of an ancient saintly martyr. Bel, cradling Freddie's battered head in her lap, crowed and rocked and began to wail madly.

Figures moved swiftly, urgently, yet Lix remained frozen. It conjured images from another time too terrifying to dare consider and she was engulfed in horror. There had been blood then, too; violent executions left great spatters of it in the streets and those shattered women also rocked and wailed. There had been screams—the animalistic sound of primal fear—and panicked shouts behind the forceful voice of riots. These images, these sounds, there was no escaping them and in an instant Lix was transported back to war, a broken nation and the equally broken body of a young man dumped unceremoniously off the back of a military truck in a central Madrid square as she breakfasted at a nearby street-side café.
She closed her eyes then.

Somehow she had made it to Hector's car—had someone dragged her, pushed? She couldn't recall. There was only that rising panic of being met with a world she thought she had left well behind. It was sickening, made worse by the glaring white of the hospital corridors and memories of children cradling their wounds in queue for a bed. The returned nightmare tormented her sanity and her consciousness; she wanted nothing more than to be shaken awake. Thus it was, with foul bile rising in her throat and that haunted mist descending, that Lix had stumbled from Freddie's bedside and sought respite in the cool night air.

A/N: In case you're wondering where this is going, I'm attempting to slowly reveal Lix/Randall's past through their [headcannon] interactions and contemplations. Randall next chapter. Please review! Cheers. [Oh, and I have no idea what car Hector drives. Please forgive me.]
UPDATE: I've tried to fix the paragraphing issue. And now I've added more chapters, I can honestly say it gets way better. Please persist through my dodgy handywork.