a/n Hello again! This one focuses on Sandra. I hope you enjoy.

Title: Beginnings and Ends

Pairing/Characters: Sandra

Rating/Warnings: T/Swearing

Summary: The evolution of Sandra's friendship with the 'three old timers', from start to end. Oneshot.

-/-/-/-

-five-

The office is empty and after all these years it just looks plain wrong to her. She's holding all her things in a cardboard box, things piled on top of other things in no particular order. Sitting right on the top is a photograph she found in the bottom draw of her desk. It's a photo she's going to get framed and she knows it will sit proudly on her next desk, and the one after and the one after that, and so on, until she's old and retired and she doesn't have a desk anymore. Then it will sit on her mantelpiece at home – wherever that is – and it will remind her of the best ten years of her life.

Staring up at her from the picture on the top of the pile, their faces so familiar to her now, are Jack Halford, Brian Lane and Gerry Standing. She's in the picture too. She can't remember who took it or when – just that it was back near the beginning, back before Jack got sick and disappeared and Brian left. Back before she decided to be make a change and leave too.

She's not sure if she's making the right choice. She hopes that one day soon she will be. She's doing the right thing. She's moving on, just like everyone has to do. It doesn't make it any easier or make her heart break any less, but it helps, at least a little bit, to have that photo. It reminds her of the good times. All the fun they had. Reminds her that it's over now and reminds her not to be too sad about it. Jack, Brian and Gerry wouldn't want her to be sad.

So when she walks out of that office for the last time, her cardboard box clutched to her chest, she goes and she doesn't look back just like Gerry told her to.

She'll never forget them, or UCOS, or all the great things they achieved, but she knows it's for the best.

And Sandra knows that they'll be proud of her.

-/-/-/-

-four-

It's a Tuesday and she's sad. They may have just solved the murder of Jason Bowe, but it hasn't brought Jack back. She's unsure that anything will now. He's gone – god knows where – and he's not coming back.

Gerry and Brian are at their desks, doing something or other, and she's in her office and yet she knows that all of them are suffering. They all suffer in their own ways. Brian in silence, bottling it all up. Gerry by trying to move on and put Jack behind them.

And her? She just tries to put her head down, get on with their work and prove to Jack that they can still do this. And she tries to forget that he's gone at all. Sometimes she looks up from her office and stares out the window and expects him to be there, sitting at his desk. She likes it like that. Pretending. But it always hurts, no matter what she does. And despite the relief it gives her for those few seconds when she looks up and expects to see him there, the hurt always comes back. Maybe it's worse this way, the constant raising of hopes and then watching them crash back down to the ground. Back to nothing because he's gone and not coming back just like Gerry told her.

So she grabs the folders sitting on her desk. She opens the first. She just hopes that whoever replaces Jack will be just as damn good as him.

He deserves that at least.

-/-/-/-

-three-

She's angry. She's so angry at him. Letting his daughter – his fifteen year old daughter – take part in an undercover drug deal? Is he an idiot or stupid or both? Bloody hell. If Strickland found out about this, Gerry would be out of UCOS before he could say 'I didn't mean to'. What was he thinking? No – Sandra doesn't think that Gerry was thinking at all. He doesn't usually.

He's sitting at his desk, with his head down, knowing, for once, that he's done the wrong thing. But as she thinks about, she knows that without his misguided help, they wouldn't know that drugs were being manufactured at the Ice Cream factory. So maybe it's a case of a wrong making a right.

It doesn't mean that she's not angry at him.

Because she is.

But Gerry's her friend, so she knows that soon, she won't be so angry at him.

-/-/-/-

-two-

Why do the seats have to be quite so uncomfortable? It's something Sandra's been wondering these last few hours. Why make the seats so uncomfortable when people have to sit on them for hours like she is now. She didn't want to come – only came because the other three were going and Brian had asked her to come. She'd figured that since she was supposed to be getting to know them better, trying to become their friends – and what was happening at work could only go so far. They seem to be hitting things off, but they're still getting to know each other.

So that is why Sandra has spent the last one hundred and twenty minutes sitting on a hard, uncomfortable plastic chair watching a sport she doesn't particularly care about. To her left, Brian is getting over-animated, sitting on the edge of his seat, pumping his fists. The last few minutes are ticking down and AFC Wimbledon are winning one-nil. Gerry is sitting on Sandra's right, sitting back in his seat, looking relaxed but she can tell that he's watching the action carefully, not wanting to look like he cares but she knows he's enjoying the match. Jack is sitting next to Brian and Sandra can tell that he's enjoying watching how worked-up Brian's getting. She can see it in his eyes; can see the mirth dancing in them. She smiles. Thinks are going well. They haven't argued or fallen out and they seem to be getting along okay.

The final whistle goes and Brian leaps out of his seat, full of jubilation, and Jack and Sandra share a look across the empty Brian-less seat. They smile and Sandra feels the most relaxed she's felt all evening – no, scratch that, as relaxed as she's felt with these people.

They leave ten minutes later, when Brian is calm enough to leave the stadium. They go for a pub meal after and Sandra finds herself enjoying this too.

It's when she leaves the pub later that evening, slightly tipsy after one too many glasses of wine, that Sandra first admits that the three men she works with, that Gerry, Jack and Brian, are her friends.

And that there is nothing that she can do to change it.

-/-/-/-

-one-

She stands outside Bevan's office, her resignation clasped in her hand. She's pretty certain that he's not going to accept it, because she's knows she's only a part of UCOS because she shot that bloody dog- she knows it's punishment. But still, it's not going to stop her trying. She wants out as fast as possible. Spending all day with three old timers is too much for her. She can't cope with it anymore. She needs to get back to proper policing, catching the bad guys, solving the crimes – not the cold cases, not the ones years old where all the leads are dead and buried. And especially not with three old timers. She knows nothing about their world, the ways they police, and they know nothing about hers. They don't get along, they can never get along.

She goes to knock on the door, but something stops her. She stares back down at the envelope she's holding tightly. She wonders about her decision. The investigation into the Anna Dubrovski is going fine. She doesn't know where it's going to go, however. Whether they will manage to get Roddy Wringer for the crime. She's starting to feel like it's not going to be him after all. It's her gut feeling.

She looks at her resignation again. Wonders if she can do it. If she can walk away from Anna Dubrovski, leave it all behind her. She might be trying to convince herself that this isn't proper policing but Anna is still a victim just like all the others. It still feels like proper policing, like it's making a difference, even if the crime wasn't committed this year, or even this decade. She doesn't know if she can walk away.

And if she's being completely honest to herself, she knows that she shares a similar ideology to the three old timers she works with. That they all want to get the bad guys. They might not have the same views on policing or the ways to get the bad guys, but they are far more similar than Sandra is letting herself accept.

She knows that if she stays, if she continues working at UCOS, that they can get justice for Anna Dubrovski. And maybe after her, they can find the people responsible for the deaths of so many more. Maybe they can get justice for more Anna Dubrovskis, for women and men like her, who have been given up on, with their families left to wonder who took away the lives of those they held most dear. Maybe that's worth putting up with three old timers for. Getting justice for all those people.

Yes, maybe it's worth it.

She doesn't knock on the door.

-/-/-/-