"under different stars"

So I will hum alone, too far from you
All that I say now is nothing to you
We will lie under different stars
I am where I am and you're where you are
You're where you are

"Different Stars", Trespasser's William

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Alec Hardy leaves Broadchurch and that's the end of that. He passes the outskirts of the small sea-side town and its crashing growling sea and breathes a sigh. It's a long sigh, heavy and laden with what the past few months have wrought, but already he feels a bit lighter. He has never been one to eagerly plan his future (not since leaving his bastard father's house, anyway) and today is no different.

But he's appeased for now. He knows at least one goal in sight, to spend time with his daughter and hopefully salvage what remains of the relationship with her that had become so shattered.

His thoughts lay behind him. On a simple handshake that has left him feeling slightly bereft and abandoned. On a family left without a son he feels he has let down.

He shakes himself from the direction of those thoughts: Miller had shied away from him even at the last and he respects and cares for her enough to leave it at that. Give her some time, perhaps. He still has her number in his phone, after all. The Latimers he has not seen since the last day of the trial when he had gazed across the space of the court and caught sight of Beth running from the room. It's perhaps the memory of that, seeing the mother break all over again, that kicks him hardest in the stomach even now.

There's nothing more he can do for any of them. For any of them.

Life has never dealt even or fair hands. He's not expecting it to start now.

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Ellie moves forward in a strange mix of slow motion and fast forward. Joe's trial is now a couple of months behind the town of Broadchurch, behind her, but there are moments where she'll think that it was only yesterday that they banished her sick monster of a husband from the town.

She holds her sons a little closer on those days.

Overall, she copes as best she can. The house that has long since stood neglected from fixing up is her focus: the walls are repainted (finished in some cases), the floors are scrubbed or vacuumed, and the windows are washed both inside and out. Beth comes and helps her when Lizzie is feeling up to it and together they make decent headway against the dust and dirt and chipped paint that has built up in the corners. At night she sleeps in a smaller bed that she has only recently bought in a store and covers herself in blankets and sheets that she has bleached and washed Joe's scent from.

There is still no sign of Joe's possible (probable) return, but even with Paul's assurances that he is still living in Sheffield she finds it hard to sleep at night.

She stays up late at night and sometimes will catch sight of a familiar name and phone number in her contacts that will give her pause. She should just delete Hardy's information from her phone: he left Broadchurch without hesitation and she hasn't heard anything from him or about him since. There are several moments where her finger will hover on the delete button but she can never quite bring herself to do it: there is still a part of her that hopes that he will call or text her, proving that he cared for their strange friendship in more than just being partners solving a case.

He never does.

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She's approached with the possibility of the DI position in the Broadchurch police force. Her information had been transferred over from Devon back to her hometown to help with the solving of Sandbrook and there have been several times where she has been asked back to stay. Her money is running thin and she misses the nature of her job, so she takes it.

Sandbrook is a topic Ellie does not breach under any circumstances. She can feel the eyes of those curious about it and studiously ignores them, even Beth and Ollie (especially Ollie) when they attempt to ask her about it. The newspapers and television channels and radio stations talk of little else for weeks and Ellie finds her footsteps dogged by reporters down to catch the latest scoop on one of the detectives who solved the years'-old case.

Ollie she scares away with a quite genuine threat of bodily harm between the legs. He takes her seriously and skittishly avoids her for the next month.

Beth is harder. She wishes that she could feel comfortable telling Beth about those weeks of stress and sleeplessness and suspicions as she tried to help Hardy navigate through Claire's and Lee's lies, but every time Beth asks her Ellie can see the hope in her eyes. She doesn't know if Beth is even aware of it but she sees it, faintly shining away; deep down Beth hopes that Ellie and Hardy will pull off another miraculous solving of a case, this time the Broadchurch case, and Joe will be put in jail for good.

So for now she solves petty crime in her town and she is content with that. She catches a robber or a teenager disturbing the peace and she is in familiar territory, but there will be times when she'll find she misses the satisfaction of seeing a suspect crack.

'Rural detective. Keep it in your limits.'

Remembering Hardy saying that will make her angry sometimes. Most of the time, though, she just feels sad.

She misses him. She misses the stubborn miserable bloody wanker and that makes her mad. When had he gone from an almost-hated boss to someone she genuinely cared about? There are moments when she's tempted to call him and start a fight just so she can hear his familiar snarking and rough Scottish brogue again but she realizes how childish that is and always puts her phone away.

Life continues on irregardless and soon she finds six months have passed since Joe's trial. Fred turns three and grows two inches and Tom manages to pass his grades for the term. Winter comes and goes, leaving dark dead earth and brown grass in its wake, and she feels the oncoming spring settling in.

And then she gets the call from Paul as she's out looking for a trespasser on John Peter's farm, and her whole world falls apart at the seams.

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There are whispers at the station in Bywater when Alec arrives in the morning. He's used to the gossip in the copper circles and pays them no heed, although he does have to bark at them to start paying their attention to their work. He sees the looks he gets at his tone and rudeness but he shrugs them off and seats himself at his desk to finish filling out paperwork.

He has been in Bywater, a town situated just outside of Sandbrook, for close to four months now. The name of the town serves to amuse him: the person who had named it must have been a devout Lord of the Rings fan.

Or maybe they had really been that unimaginative.

Daisy is practically a young woman now, working through her schooling with a diligence that surprises him but serves to make him proud at the same time; he quickly discovers, however, that when homework is not in the schedule her friends are. She is rarely in the house anymore except to sleep, or so Tess impatiently tells him when he asks.

It's Tess herself that causes him to leave Sandbrook again. She still lives in the same bloody house she'd built there and what's more she lives openly with Dave, the smug bastard, and it takes all of Alec's (admittedly) short self-restraint to not reach and punch him in the mouth. Tess, finally showing some common sense, realizes the dangers of having the two men sharing the house in any amount of time and it's Alec who finally decides to stay away from the property. He meets with Daisy on some weekends and when he finds a decent flat in Bywater she comes every so often and spends the night.

It's progress with his daughter, however little it is, and he's just happy for the time she's willing to talk to him.

Solving Sandbrook is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand his infamy only grows having now been linked to two major profile cases, and he's followed by several journalists who he avoids at all costs. On the other, however, it's relatively easy for him to transfer to Bywater's force and within three months of living in this new town he is reinstated as Detective Inspector. Until the frenzy of Joe Miller's trial and the solving of Sandbrook dies down he ignores the news and focuses instead on the cases that cross his desk.

There are times, however, when he will think back to Broadchurch, and the smaller police force there. Danny's case was definitely the largest thing that town ever dealt with but sometimes he'll find himself wishing for the relatively peaceful atmosphere of the seaside town.

Specifically he misses Miller but he never admits it. Her information is still in his phone but he never truly takes the time to look at it. He'll catch himself wondering every so often how she's doing but stops himself from entertaining any further speculations. They parted ways in Broadchurch and that is how it will remain.

This morning if the officers' silent gazes are aimed his way he doesn't realize it. The moment of startled interest only comes near the end of his day when he overhears two of his DSs talking.

"But we don't know who's done it—"

"Oh come off it, Annie. That town's fucked up, anyway, ever since the Latimer case. Now the DS's son goes missing? That's not a coincidence—"

DS's son. The words make Alec's blood freeze. The Latimers named can only mean they're talking about Broadchurch, and Miller was the only Detective Sergeant on that case.

One of her sons. Missing.

"Shit," he breathes, and is surprised by the amount of genuine fright he feels not for a potential victim but for someone he finds he can very well care about. He doesn't know if the boy missing is Tom or if it's Fred, or who took them in the first place, but he calls Miller as soon as he leaves the station. Dusk is setting in, wrapping the streets in quiet darkness, his way painted with the yellow light of street lamps as his long strides eat up the distance to his flat. The phone rings three, four, five times, and then goes to voice mail. He disconnects with a low growl of frustration and dials the next number he can think of.

Tess picks up almost immediately, her voice slightly miffed. "You may not realize this, Alec, but some of us have later hours than you, you know—"

"What have you heard about Miller's son who was kidnapped, Tess?"

He hears her low scoff of incredulity. "How should I know that, Alec? You know Ellie better than I do, shouldn't you know what's going on already?"

It's a deliberate jab, one he doesn't quite understand. Nor does he have the patience for it. "Just answer the bloody question."

"Well, clearly this new town hasn't taught you any better manners." She sighs impatiently, her voice cold. "It's Ellie's youngest son. He went missing a day ago, they don't know who took him or where he is—"

Fred. Kidnapped. A day ago. Wee Fred.

He stops in his tracks, running a distracted hand through his hair. "Fuck," he whispers. That icy hand of fear is gripping his throat, starting to squeeze now. Where was Miller that she wasn't picking up her bloody phone? "They don't have any information?"

"Well…" There's the rustling of papers in the background. He wonders what his ex-wife is looking at. "There is speculation of who could have done it. It appears that there's a woman who states she saw a man picking Fred up at the playground…"

He can barely force the next words out as that icy hand chokes him. "Do they have a description of the man, Tess?"

"Alec—"

"Damn it, Tess, tell me!"

"Small. Thin. The woman said he was bald and was wearing a blue windbreaker."

He's frozen where he stands as he realizes that in Miller's case that description could only mean one person specifically. He hears Tess still speaking but her words are garbled and he can't understand them, and he's sufficiently distracted enough he doesn't hear the footsteps approaching lightly behind him until the last minute. The hair on the back of his neck stand up as his instincts kick in hard and the phone forgotten he lowers his hand and turns quickly on his heel—

Too late. He feels a sharp, quick flash of agony on the back of his head and everything goes black.