"Heart of Hearts"

"There are people who take the heart out of you, and there are those who put it back."

-Elizabeth David

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Alec Hardy didn't like heights. The vertigo of looking down and realizing just how far down the ground really was made him dizzy and slightly sick to his stomach. As a child he had always kept his feet planted firmly on the ground after a bad experience climbing tree in Glasgow (one of the few things from his childhood he could clearly remember), and forever afterwards he made sure to never be so out control of his surroundings again. The heights had never helped his heart, either, causing it to jump more often than not.

He didn't need to worry so much about his heart now, though, thanks to the pacemaker surgery. The other day not included, he hadn't had an episode since the surgery itself. For that he was thankful, even if the feel of the small piece of metal he could feel beneath his skin still freaked him out a little.

The cliffs didn't faze him tonight, either.

He wasn't quite where Danny had been all those months ago, the night when Joe had killed a defenseless innocent boy. The hut was barely in the distance, a grey block standing just within sight.

He could hear the ocean far below, crashing along the shoreline. Miller had remarked once that the sound was peaceful to her, a symphony of sound that told her at least one thing would never change. He himself was not one to normally care one way or the other or even notice such things, but ever since he had heard her remark he had listened to the sound himself and to him it sounded mournful. Almost frightening. Water was unknowable. Mysterious. It dragged you under and drowned you, and the ocean here had claimed so much already.

He stepped closer to the edge. So far down.

He wondered vaguely if all those years ago when his mother had been here she had visited these cliff tops herself. The beach he had claimed for his own, that he could recall, but his father in a particularly vindictive moment had labelled Elaine Hardy as 'suicidal'. Sick in the head.

A trait, Lucas had ranted, she had passed on to her son.

That, again, Alec could recall clearly, and in light of what had just recently happened he felt a twist deep in his gut. 'Her' son, his father had stated. Not 'their'. Alec was rarely 'their' son.

He would never be 'their' son again. Labelled to the last as a mistake, he would remain Elaine's son only for the rest of his life.

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The call came roughly four months after he had settled into a small but comfortable flat in the town of Bywater. It was near enough to Sandbrook that Daisy could easily come and see him but it was far enough away at the same time that he wasn't uncomfortable being so close to the town of so much heartbreak. Tess, anyway, had expressly stated that she and Dave would not welcome him in their home other than the odd visit for Daisy, and Alec was all-too-willing to oblige his ex-wife.

He had fallen asleep on the couch after glancing through some paperwork one rainy afternoon and was abruptly woken by the buzzing of his phone, startling him enough that for a moment he was afraid he'd woken up too quickly and he'd have an episode. The pacemaker kept his fear at bay, however, and he was able to grab his phone. He didn't bother looking at the call ID before answering.

"What?"

The resulting answer nearly made him drop the blasted piece of technology on the floor.

Lucas Hardy was dying; he had been finishing some carpentry on his porch and had fallen and broken his back. Badly. He had a week at best to live.

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"Hardy!"

The familiar shout should have startled him enough to make him back away from the edge of the cliffs, but he was too numb to respond now. The rain that had fallen earlier had thoroughly chilled him and the rational part of his brain was telling him that he wasn't stable in the slightest now, approaching delirium from cold and exhaustion. He hadn't slept for five days.

Her voice was sharp but he expected nothing less, welcoming the familiar tone instead. "Should've known you'd follow me, Miller."

She sure as hell had followed him. Ellie Miller had not heard from her former boss since he had left Broadchurch following the close of the Sandbrook case, but she'd woken on the couch with the oddest sense deep in her stomach; she remembered Beth's description from the day Danny's body had been found on the beach, of her friend's saying that she had known what she'd find there. It was a deep, unexplainable dread that sat heavy in her chest. Get to the cliffs. Now. So she'd gone without conscious thought, and for just a moment as she had reached the beginning of the footpath up she'd caught a glimpse of a familiar figure mounting the crest.

She felt her heart clench. God, he looked a mess. Just a few months ago he had left her with rumpled clothes and a thick beard and hair that hung into his eyes. Now the beard was similar to the stubble he had had when she first met him, and his clothes hung off him in a way that suggested severe weight loss in a very short period of time.

And he was standing far too close to the edge. He, a man who had stated the cliffs were a death trap, seemed to taunting it now.

Ellie swallowed down her fear and her anger, fighting back the urge to yell at him. Name-calling and fury wouldn't help anything. Not until she understood his frame of mind.

"What's happened, Hardy? Why are you here?"

He was still turned away from her but she still managed to catch the curve of a smile. A shiver of fear rolled down her spine. He looked up at the sky, windswept and bedraggled. "I'm a bastard, Miller."

Of all the things to say, that certainly had not been something she'd expected to hear. She took a step closer. "And you've come all the Broadchurch to tell me that? Really?"

Abruptly he turned to look her in the face, and Ellie felt her breath catch with dismay. If his body was taxed and underweight his face was even more so; stress and exhaustion had smudged his eyes a deep grey, new lines gouged in his face that aged him even more than he had looked before. His eyes were bright with tears and the onset of fever. He looked, she realized, like he was insane. And she realized, too, just how dangerous he was to himself right now.

Why he was standing so close to that edge.

A humorless smile twisted his mouth as he looked at her. "How ironic would it be if I made this a suicide spot, Miller?"

Her stomach disappeared. She straightened where she stood, suddenly formidable DS Miller again. She heard the blood pounding in her ears. "Don't you dare," she hissed, jaw clenched so hard she was afraid she'd break her teeth. "Don't you fucking dare, Hardy."

He had lost interest in her, turning back to the cliffs. The ocean spread out like a blanket before them. "My mum had tried to kill herself before. Couple of times. Dad always said I'd end up like her."

Her anger wasn't going to get through to him. Oh God, she thought frantically, thinking fast, oh God, don't let him move. Don't let him jump. Fear was threatening to choke her voice but she fought to keep it steady. "Hardy, step away from the edge. You've come here to talk to me, right? Just- just step away from the cliff and we can talk."

Her desperation somehow worked its way through to his attention. Almost out of habit he took a single step backwards. He was trembling. "Jack Marshall drowned himself, you know." She flinched at the reminder of that horrible morning, discovering the old man's body washed up on Broadchurch's shore like flotsam from a storm. "How can you drown yourself? How can anyone just let that happen? It hurts, Miller. You can't breathe and it hurts."

He was in pieces. Shattered. She had thought that she had seen him at his worst before, during Danny's case. Remembering Pippa and Lisa. But this—this was total unraveling. Ellie didn't understand what it could have been that would have affected him this way. This was bewilderment and hurt and anger. "I know. I know, but you don't have to worry about that now. Just come here, just take my hand."

He shifted back to her, gaze falling on her uplifted hand. Tears glistened on his face, and she felt her own tears surge up seeing the undisguised anguish on his face. "Help me."

She had never been able to not help him. "Take my hand, Alec. Step away from the edge." He still hesitated. She took another step closer, holding her hand up higher. "Please."

And after a long, anguishing moment, he did.

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A/N: I hope I didn't scare too many readers off with this first chapter. Sorry. Alec really isn't in a stable place right now, but the next few chapters will give more backstory as to why. Paul will be 'round next chapter, so see you all then!