Smoke Signals

Part III: Fathers and Daughters

By Hazelmist

Trigger: mentions of past child abuse, grave condition of a minor character, cigarettes and smoking

Spring passed in a whirlwind of paperwork and rain. Somehow, it had slipped Hardy's mind that D.C. Harford had quit shortly before Barrett's stroke, although Miller had pestered him about finding a replacement. Fortunately, Miller had only taken a fortnight to transfer and settle her father in a nursing home. The day she'd returned to work Hardy had been so relieved that he would have snogged her in front of everyone, but she'd flinched when he'd tried to hug her. She'd begged him not to treat her any differently, although their colleagues fussed and showered her with sweets and sympathy.

At the time Hardy had been too burnt out to argue with her, but after three weeks of her coming in late because of wee Fred and skipping meals so she could leave early to be with her father, he wished he'd dealt with it better. Maybe if he had done something other than putting her to work, they wouldn't be spending another car ride in stilted silence.

Hardy briefly took his eyes off the dirt road and stole a glance at his passenger. June had bled into a sunnier and humid July. Miller's curls kept frizzing around her hair line and escaping her hair ties. He liked to see the rebellious tendrils slipping free; her untamed curls were a reminder that the feisty woman who would've fought with him over the car keys and insisted on stopping for food was still in there. Somewhere.

"You okay?"

Miller ignored him, watching the fields of yellow blossoms streak past her window. Hardy sighed and hunted for the turnoff that would take them back into Broadchurch.

Physically, Miller had reported to work; but mentally she was locked away in a nursing home with her ailing father, or worrying over her boys and the latest unreliable childminder she'd hired for her youngest. Hardy couldn't even talk to her about it, because with the exception of tardiness, her professional performance hadn't faltered.

"You missed it."

Her voice startled him and he almost drove them into the stone wall.

"What did I miss?"

"You were supposed to take a left back there," she snapped as the car bounced again and they jolted in their seats. The road was getting worse when it should've been getting better. "You should've let me drive."

"I know where I'm going," he insisted, and slammed on the brakes as a man suddenly stepped out into the road.

Instinctively, Hardy threw his arm in front of Miller, but he was too late. Her head cracked against the window before his elbow and the seatbelt flung her back into her seat. Swearing, she cradled her temple.

"Are you alright?" he asked anxiously and shifted the car into park. "Miller?" Frantic, he reached over the console and pulled her arm away so he could assess the damage.

"Stop it, Hardy."

There wasn't any blood or bruising, but he felt a slight bump in the curling hair by her temple. Gingerly, he poked and prodded at it.

"Hardy, I'm fine."

Glaring, she shoved him off of her. His heart was still racing in his chest, threatening to outpace the pacemaker.

"I'm fine," Miller repeated, and then her eyes widened. "Oh, shit."

Someone banged on Hardy's window and he tore his eyes away from her. The man he'd nearly hit was now glowering at him, and stabbing a finger at something ahead of them. Hardy lowered his window, and the bloke pointed at the gate they'd completely missed while they were arguing. A rusty 'No Trespassing' sign was nailed to the post behind it.

"This is private property." The man ducked his head into the vehicle and Hardy caught an intoxicating whiff of his old brand of cigarettes on his muddy clothes. It threw him off kilter, that, and the hand Miller placed on Hardy's shoulder.

"Sorry, we're lost," she apologized, leaning over Hardy to speak with the bloke.

"That's what they all say," the man sneered, revealing a few missing teeth. "Group of lager louts lit a fire up here, but the coppers are bloody useless. I lost a quarter of my crop because those fuckwits-"

Hardy was about to interrupt this tirade, when Miller dropped her hand to his thigh. She squeezed his leg and he felt the searing warmth of her palm through his trousers. After over a month of being deprived of her touch, it was almost too much for him. Hardy's brain short-circuited, and he missed a bit of the conversation that followed.

"You sound like Dad," Miller was saying as she palmed his leg again and turned her bright smile on Hardy. "We were headed there for a visit when we missed the turnoff."

Hardy tried to appear as if this wasn't a complete surprise to him.

"Dad had a stroke," she went on, and the man was a lot more sympathetic.

"He's up at the old Johnson facility?" he asked, tearing up. "My wife died there six months ago." Miller ignored the dirt packed beneath his fingernails and embedded in the wrinkles, reaching past Hardy to take the elder man's filthy hand.

Five minutes later, Hardy had directions to the nursing home and a nice place to eat from their new best mate. Before they turned the car around, the old man patted Miller's hand and told Hardy he'd found himself a 'good' one.

Miller's smile vanished as soon as they were out of sight, but her hand lingered on Hardy's thigh.

"You couldn't move him anywhere closer?"

"No. Maybe when he's better…" She trailed off because Barrett wasn't going to get any better. Miller probably spent hours driving every night to see her father, and she would keep doing it until he breathed his last. She lifted her hand from his thigh to massage her aching temple and his heart went out to her.

"How's your head?"

"It would be better if you hadn't missed the bloody turnoff again," she sniped at him.

"I thought you might want to visit your father," he said in a rush, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. He kept his eyes locked on the road ahead of them.

"Right now?" Miller stared at him incredulously.

"Why not?"

"It's only half past two," she pointed out, tapping the clock on the dash. "We just wasted four hours chasing a false lead in Yeovil, and we still have shit that's overdue from when I was out."

She was right. Hardy had an overflowing inbox and a million other tasks queued up and waiting for him on his desk and his computer. But no one had died and no one had been raped or been brutally beaten. It was all paperwork and stupid petty crimes that spiked every year with the influx of tourists.

"Do you want to visit him?" he asked hesitantly.

"Of course, I do," she sighed. "But Fred's with Beth and Lizzie, so I'm already planning on spending tonight with him."

"There's no point in you coming all the way back out here," he reasoned with her. "And according to your new best mate, we're ten minutes away."

She chewed on her lower lip.

"I could talk to the doctor before they leave for the day," she mused. "I had some questions." She rubbed again at the stem of a headache that had very little to do with his driving.

Hardy carefully steered them down the road the bloke had indicated, and they breathed easier as the packed dirt changed to smooth asphalt. The yellow fields thinned out, bleeding into a patchwork of greens. Clusters of house and other signs of civilization had reappeared when Miller lightly touched his sleeve.

"Thanks, Hardy."

Hardy felt the imprint of her fingertips through the starched material as if she'd branded him. She drew away, but he chased her hand over the gear shift and slipped his palm into hers. Their hands locked together as perfectly as he'd remembered.

Miller let him hold her hand until he had to park the car.

She pulled down the visor, hastily checking her appearance in the mirror. Hardy tried not to stare, but she tugged too hard on her ponytail and the hair tie snapped.

"Here." Hardy dug the Broadchurch Echo out from the backseat, still rolled up from when it had been left at his door yesterday. He peeled off the rubber band and offered it to her. She accepted it with a distracted smile, taming her frizzy mane into an elaborate messy knot.

"You could read to him for a bit," she suggested, while Hardy was enthralled by a curl dangling by her ear.

He agreed, without actually realizing what he'd agreed to, until Miller dragged him into the building and down a fuggy hallway that reeked of decay and something astringent. Someone moaned behind one of the doors and a woman deliriously called for help.

Miller stopped to question a nurse, and Hardy poked his head into a room that smelled suspiciously like tobacco.

A thin figure was silhouetted against the bright window with hair sticking up in all directions, as if he'd plugged his bony finger into an electrical outlet. Smoke curled from the elder man's nostrils and Hardy received a shock. His blood ran cold. Hardy was suddenly slammed with the memory of another smoky room and a different man with shaggy hair and nicotine-stained fingertips.

"Are you here to visit Rodney?"

Hardy stepped back into reality and blinked at the smiley nurse.

"No, I'm…"

The window squeaked shut and 'Rodney' innocently readjusted an oxygen cannula. The cigarette had vanished along with any resemblance Hardy had thought he'd seen in the skeletal figure. And yet Hardy could feel the whisper of a ghost running rampant through his mind.

"Hardy?"

A warm hand slid into his, melting the ice from his veins. Ellie rubbed her thumb over his and leaned into his side until he could lock the spectre back into the box where it belonged.

"That's not my father," she deadpanned, beaming at the nurse and guiding him toward another set of double doors.

"Were you going to bum a cig off of him or arrest him?" she quipped once they were out of earshot.

"This is a smoke-free building," he reminded her dryly.

"So's the stationhouse, but that's never stopped anyone," she shot back smugly.

"At least I was outside the building."

"Rodney had his hand out the window," she argued as he held the door for her. "Technically, the cigarette was outside too."

"Can't really blame him, I'd risk it too if I were imprisoned in here."

The door clicked shut behind them, echoing through the smaller ward. There were fewer rooms and everything seemed alarmingly still in comparison to the restlessness of the ward they'd just passed through. Only the low hum of someone's telly reminded them that these patients were alive too. Hardy sucked in a breath, feeling like he'd entered a vacuum.

"Are you alright?" Miller wondered. Hardy might've found it ironic, if she hadn't compulsively started to 'fix' him to channel her own anxiety.

"You don't have to read to him. You can stay out here," she rambled as she straightened the knot in his tie.

"Millah," he groaned.

"We can leave right now," she offered, smoothing the blue silk and trying to iron out the wrinkles in his appearance. After fifteen years of marriage to Tess, Hardy could've told her it was an impossible feat, but Miller's fingers were busy with his crooked collar and brushing hotly along his neck. Hardy swallowed hard.

"I know there's a million things you'd rather be doing right now," she began, but Hardy had had enough.

He lifted his hands to her face and she froze.

"It can wait, Ellie," he said softly.

His thumb caressed the spot where she'd hit the window earlier and her eyelashes fluttered closed. Her fingers slipped from his collar and she braced her palms against his chest. Hardy wished she'd tell him what she needed from him, but she stubbornly kept him at arm's length.

"Hardy, we can't keep putting it off," she said shakily and dropped her hands. She opened her eyes and his hands fell away from her face. This wasn't about the workload.

"I can handle it," he assured her. A few curls had sprung up in the wake of his fingers and he couldn't resist tucking one behind her ear. Miller caught his wrist and lowered it before he could re-examine her temple again.

"I don't need you to stay," she said obstinately.

"I know," he agreed, twisting his wrist so that he could hold her hand again. "But this is what people do. I checked with Daisy," he added, "And unless you're implying that Tess did a rubbish job teaching her daughter how to be normal and nothing like her hopeless father…"

"Alright, I get it," she interrupted him, patting his arm as she led him away. "But you're not hopeless."

"No?" Something in his tone arrested her, and she looked at him for the first time since that whiskey-soaked kiss in her foyer. She wet her lips and her voice turned soft.

"No."

His heart skipped a beat.

"Not completely hopeless," he mollified, and she pushed up on her toes to peck him on the cheek. Hardy would've stood there ogling her like an idiot, if she hadn't brought him into Barrett's room.

She shut the door behind them and Hardy was struck by the deafening silence. The telly was off and Barrett didn't have a scornful comment for him. Miller touched his liver-spotted hand and Barrett opened his eyes.

"Hi, Dad," she said slowly, "I brought you a visitor." She dragged Hardy into Barrett's limited line of sight.

Barrett's pupils listed to one side and there was something wrong with the left side of his face. Miller blithely chattered on, explaining who Hardy was all over again and reminding him that Daisy had minded Fred. Barrett made some garbled sounds in response, but he couldn't talk and he couldn't understand most of what his daughter was telling him.

Hardy hadn't been fond of Barrett, but this was something he wouldn't have wished upon his worst enemy. He was essentially a prisoner of his own body, trapped within his own mind. Over the course of their one-sided conversation, Hardy learned that Barrett's left side was still paralyzed, he couldn't drink or eat anything, and the telly in his room had been broken for a week. Apparently, Ollie and Tom hadn't visited Barrett since his hospital stay, and Lucy had only accompanied Ellie to get him settled. Wee Fred had been terrified of the Alzheimer's ward on his sole visit, but Barrett's favourite grandson missed him very much. Miller was confident that one day Fred would get over his fear, but Tom and her useless sister were a different story. Hardy hadn't fully grasped that Miller had been shouldering the burden alone, and his chest constricted so tightly that he had difficulty breathing.

He thought again of the skeletal man silhouetted against the window with the halo of snowy white hair, and how he couldn't bring himself to go into the shadowed room, no matter how many years had passed since those nicotine-stained fingers had bit into his wrist, hard enough to sprain it.

"I'm going to talk to Amy and Dr. Thomas for a bit, but Hardy's going to keep you company, alright?"

A tug on his hand and Miller's voice yanked him out of the smoky memory and his old man's clutches. Miller let go of him and stooped to kiss her father's wrinkled cheek. Hardy dragged the plastic chair over to the edge of the bed and straddled it.

"Please, don't upset him," she pleaded with Hardy and handed him the newspaper. Combing her fingers through Hardy's fringe, she tipped his head back so he was forced to look her in the eye. "And don't you dare go after poor Rodney or his cigarettes," she warned him, leaning in closer.

Hardy grunted and she kissed him on the mouth.

She pulled away, failing to register his flushed face or how his head swivelled around to watch her leave. Her footsteps faltered outside the room and Hardy whipped back around, pretending to read the Echo. He stared at the incomprehensible headline for what felt like ages before he realized that it was upside down, and that Miller's footfalls had faded while his heartbeat was thudding in his ears.

Sighing, Hardy gave up the pretence of reading and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was forty-five years old; he shouldn't react like a teenager every bleeding time she touched him.

"God, I could really use a cigarette," he moaned, and a snarl from the other side of the room reminded him that he wasn't alone.

Hardy raised his head and leapt from his seat. Despite the facial droop, Miller's father was glaring at him.

Barrett fought to drag himself into an upright position, spewing out syllables that made no sense to Hardy. Hardy desperately tried to calm Barrett down, but the elderly man was frustrated and had been trying to capture his attention for a while. Hardy was about to call for a nurse or Miller, when Barrett latched onto Hardy's sleeve with a remarkably strong grip for an eighty-one-year-old man who'd suffered a stroke. Hardy assured him he wouldn't get the nurse involved and Barrett let go of him.

"What do you want?" he asked and Barrett spat at him.

It was impressive that a man who had lost control of half of his facial muscles could convey so much anger and hatred in a single glance. Barrett tried to speak, but Hardy understood nothing other than the roiling sentiment behind it.

"You don't like me," he said, once Barrett's rant was finished. "Honestly, I never liked you either, but this…" Hardy motioned to the bed. "I feel sorry for you, Barrett, I really do."

Barrett glared up at him, but there was less hatred and more of another potent emotion that Hardy was acutely familiar with as well.

"I have a daughter too," he reminded him, raking his fingers through his hair. "Daisy's only nineteen, but she's already gotten her heart broken too many times."

Barrett gurgled, but appeared to be listening, so Hardy kept talking.

"I threatened a few of the boys who tried to hurt her, stopped the car right in the middle of High Street and told them I'd chop their little cocks off," he reminisced. "I know I can't protect her from heartbreak, but it doesn't mean I can't try."

Hardy looked down at Barrett. He was still tuned into the sound of Hardy's voice, but the hatred was gone now, and all that was left was the all-consuming fear that only a decent parent would understand. Hardy and Barrett had often failed spectacularly at parenting, but even at the end of their worst days they still loved their daughters in a manner that was foreign to the bastard who had 'raised' Hardy and had saddled him with his name.

"I know you're worried about Ellie," Hardy said, struggling to hold the man's drifting gaze, "So am I."

Hardy reached for Barrett's cold, clammy hand. He squirmed, but something in Hardy's demeanour must've settled him.

"She'll be okay," he promised Barrett thickly. "She's more than capable of taking care of herself, but if anyone ever tries to hurt her or her boys…" To his horror, he felt the humiliating pinprick of tears and a painful lump lodging in his throat. "I'll be there to look after her and your grandsons," he vowed. "You have my word," he promised Ellie's father, bowing over the varicose veins in his hand.

Barrett grunted and a spasm went through him. Hardy released the elder man's damp fingers as a hot tear escaped his eye and streaked his cheek. He thought that Barrett's rheumy eyes might've been watering, but Hardy respected his privacy.

Settling himself in the chair at the bedside, Hardy opened the Echo to the sports section. And then he read to Barrett until he fell asleep.

Dr. Thomas was over-worked and tired; it was obvious that although he had her father's file in hand, he had over eighty patients and had probably spent a total of thirty minutes with her father since his arrival weeks earlier. Amy the dayshift nurse was more helpful, but instead of giving Ellie hope, she'd crushed it by outlining the reality of the situation. Her father had reacted negatively to any efforts they'd made toward recovering his speech or movement on his left side, and there was a strong possibility he could suffer another stroke soon.

Ellie stepped outside to update Lucy, but as usual her sister didn't answer her mobile. Ellie sat down against the side of the building, soaking up the late afternoon sunlight. She didn't want to face her father or her boss.

Hardy hadn't had a day off in two weeks and he'd pulled several all-nighters at the office, juggling the case-load of three people. That was the sole reason why he hadn't pushed at the boundaries she'd set for him. Up until today, Hardy had given her the space she desperately needed, but the fact that he'd blown off work to sit with her father was a red flag. And like an idiot, she'd accidentally kissed him. Again.

Hardy had been attempting to read the newspaper upside down when she'd left him.

Ellie couldn't use her ailing father as an excuse to keep Hardy at bay forever. She wasn't completely blind; she could see that Hardy was getting restless as the weeks dragged on and that she was testing his patience with her repeated brushoffs. Sometimes she worried that he'd lose interest, and yet there was a weaker voice in the darkest recesses of her mind that thought it would be better if he did. Ellie was lonely, but she wasn't sure if her fragile heart was ready for the relationship Hardy wanted with her.

And yet, there were moments, like this one, when she returned to the room and she was relieved to find Hardy patiently waiting for her.

Hardy was asleep in the unforgiving plastic chair with his arms folded over his chest and his chin tucked into his collar. The Broadchurch Echo was shoved under his thigh, fluttering in the blast of cool air from the vent overhead. A few rumpled pages were spread out on the floor, and Ellie gathered them up before someone slipped on them.

Hardy grunted as she yanked another sheet out from under his heel, but he slept on, undisturbed by the interruption. The way he was sleeping did him no favours. Generally, sleep erased the tension that wore on people during the day, but Hardy carried it in a clenched jaw. Ellie had always found smiles and laughter attractive, so her attraction to someone who rarely gave into either of these human inclinations was a mystery. He wasn't handsome enough to make up for it, sleep had failed to soften the scowl lines, but nevertheless there was something captivating about him.

Ellie smoothed the creases from his forehead, and he stirred. His lashes fluttered and he sleepily gazed up at her. Her heart lurched upon seeing those stupid cow eyes fixated on her. She smacked him with the rolled-up paper.

"What?" he snapped.

"I thought you were going to read to him," she hissed, prodding him with the end of the newspaper.

"I did," he insisted, dragging the sports section out from underneath him.

He opened it up and showed her what her father's favourite paper had been reduced to in the wake of Maggie's departure from the Echo. The sports section was four pages of pictures and a fluff piece about a retired race horse.

"This article's so riveting that he fell asleep before I got to the police log," he said with his usual dose of sarcasm, "Which is a shame because I would've loved to tell him his daughter wasted an entire morning investigating a UFO last week."

Ellie ripped the paper out of his hands.

"They were paper lanterns," she reminded him. "The O'Reilly's called in yesterday. They've apologized to the Wilsons and poor old Mrs. Grey."

"What about the other six nuts that called in?" Hardy deadpanned, scrubbing his face. "For God's sake, I got an email from bloody BUFORA."

Ellie snorted and Hardy glowered at her.

"I bet it's from Brian," she predicted, smiling. Hardy cocked his head, considering her theory.

"No, it wasn't addressed to Shitface."

Ellie was startled by the sound of her own laughter. Hardy's face softened, more than it had during the ten minutes she'd spent watching him sleep, and Ellie was struck by those lambent brown eyes again. She shifted her attention to her father, sleeping in the bed beside them.

"What'd the doctor say?"

"He was optimistic," she acknowledged, fussing over the blankets and tucking them in around her father's frailer form.

"But you're not," Hardy observed with a frown.

"The dayshift nurse doesn't think he's improving."

She braced herself on the bedrail and gazed upon the man who had given her the gift of gab, but who had been cruelly robbed of it. It didn't seem very fair to him. Ellie held his cool hand, wondering if he was pretending to sleep, because he didn't want to suffer through another conversation in a language none of them could understand.

"He's still in there," Hardy said from the other side of the bed. He mirrored her, grasping the bedrail and watching her father with a sort of pity he usually reserved for victims.

"Did you two have a nice heart to heart whilst snoring?" she quipped.

"I don't snore." He dodged the question, but his eyes lingered on her father with a softness and level of understanding that hadn't been there earlier.

"Did he say something to you?" she asked. Hardy looked up at her, and then glanced away as if he was hiding something.

"You should talk to him," he advised her and turned to give her some privacy. Ellie rounded the foot of the bed and seized his arm before he could leave.

"What did he say to you?" Her voice came out shrill and grating, but she'd spent weeks with her father and she couldn't understand a bloody word, no matter how hard they'd both tried. Hardy had spent no more than fifteen minutes with him conscious, and they didn't even like each other, but something significant had passed between them.

"What did he say?" she demanded, clutching his arms as tears rushed into her eyes. "Why did he talk to you and not me?" Her voice quivered and her lower lip wobbled as her hands clenched in the fabric of Hardy's shirt.

"I've been here every single fucking night and I've tried - I've tried so hard to be patient." She choked up and momentarily lost her grasp on Hardy's shirtsleeves. Stumbling back from him, she jammed the heels of her hands into her eyelids as if she could dam up the tears behind them.

"Ellie."

"I hate you," she snarled, mopping at her eyes with her sleeve. "You've never liked him, and yet he talks to you, and you won't even tell me-"

"C'mere, Ellie."

Hardy dragged her against him, cupping the back of her head and tucking her face into the crook of his neck. Ellie gasped and muffled her sob in the collar of his shirt that always needed to be straightened. She could smell the dried sweat on him from the morning they'd spent canvassing outside, and another blend of scents she couldn't sift through that she always associated with Hardy. He was warmer than the sun-soaked bricks she'd leaned against earlier, and Ellie inexplicably thought of days spent lazing on a beach in Florida, when she'd been so blind and so happy. She loathed herself for wanting to escape and curl up inside that sunny memory, and another suppressed sob shook through her.

Dad had adored Joe and Lucy's ex; he'd been as charmed by them as they'd been. Only Mum had thought that Joe and Ollie's father were never good enough for her daughters. Ellie wondered what her mother would've thought of Hardy with his permanent scowl, his ridiculous work ethic, and the fact that he still wanted what was left of Ellie after everything they'd been through. And she wondered what her father would've thought of Hardy now, if he knew that her 'hard-arse' boss had given up an entire afternoon to babysit him for her, because she was the only person who seemed to bloody care that David Barrett was dying.

And abruptly, Ellie suspected what might have passed between the two men.

Ellie stepped away from Hardy, but his arms remained open for her. His bleeding heart was in his eyes and it had been since he'd returned to Broadchurch. Ellie almost started to cry again, but she pulled herself together.

"Do you mind waiting outside while I talk to him?"

"Take all the time you need," he urged her, and brushed a kiss over her hair line.

Ellie waited until the door shut behind him, before she scraped her hands over her face and brought the chair closer to the bedside. She swore her father's right eye cracked open, but she gave him the benefit of doubt.

"Hi, Dad. It's me again," she began, clasping his right hand between both of hers. "Lucy and the boys are busy, so it's just us again…" She broke off, feeling a bit silly. She could blather on for hours about nothing, but now she was at a loss. When the words finally came, they were a shock even to her own ears.

"Hardy's father was abusive to him and his Mum," she blurted and fresh tears threatened to well up in her eyes. "Ollie's father abandoned them, and I'll never know if Joe touched Tom or Fred, or if he would have if it hadn't been for Danny."

Her father's hand twitched, but Ellie couldn't look at him. She let the scalding tears drip down her cheeks and pretended she didn't notice her father's silent turmoil.

"We were never close, but you weren't an awful parent," she sniffled, and her father gave up the pretence of sleeping. He flipped his working hand over and weakly squeezed her smaller fingers.

"I appreciate everything you did for my boys, especially this past year. Fred loves you so much." She gazed at her father's hand loosely curled around her own.

"It's selfish, but I don't want you to go," she whispered, laying her head down on the bed by their joined hands. "I got used to having you around. And now that Tom's never home, Beth's got her new job, and Luce doesn't need my money anymore…" She trailed off and the tears came faster, soaking through the blanket. Ellie had been so lonely, but her father had been there in the form of background noise and free childcare, and she hadn't recognized the broken heart buried beneath the crabby and blustery exterior until now.

"We all miss you, Dad, but I can't take you home," she lamented, trembling as she forced herself to continue. "I want you to stay," she whimpered, "But I don't want you to suffer." Her voice snagged on another sob, but she needed him to understand. She kissed his knuckles and a tear splashed over his papery skin.

"I love you, Dad, but you don't have to stay for me," she rasped.

Her father painstakingly wriggled his hand out from under hers and tremulously touched the top of her head.

And Ellie heard her father's 'I love you', not in the slurred incomprehensible syllables, but in the ragged breaths between them and the way he stroked her hair like she was a child again. Ellie closed her eyes and her tears stopped.

For a moment, she was six years old again, and Dad was reassuring her that everything would be okay.

The car ride home was quiet, but Ellie was behind the wheel with Hardy responding on his mobile to some of the more pressing emails in his inbox. They'd picked up takeaway from the place their new best mate had suggested, and Ellie had scarfed down her sandwich while Hardy poked at the salad precariously balanced in his lap.

In the distance the cliffs appeared like dark blue smudges rising out of the blurring line between the ocean and the sky. The road curved toward those looming cliffs, and the last bit of sunlight glanced off of Hardy's spectacles as he stole another furtive look at her.

Dusk fell as they arrived at the stationhouse, but boundaries between Ellie and Hardy were still hazy, like the cliffs had been before they'd come close enough to separate them from the endless horizon and the fathomless depths of the sea. Ellie had assumed she'd be at her desk for at least two more hours and that Hardy was anxious to barricade himself in his office for another all-nighter, but Hardy asked her how Fred was handling the new childminder. She walked as she talked, and they abandoned the neglected paperwork on his desk for a view of the boats bobbing in the harbour.

They sat together on the stone ledge with Ellie's boots toeing the gravel and Hardy's lanky legs dangling over the water. A sailboat came into the harbour, slicing through the shimmering surface, and the question she'd been holding onto since he'd frozen outside Rodney's room, spilled over.

"Is your father alive?"

Hardy hesitated for so long that Ellie feared she'd stepped on a landmine in his shrouded past.

"No."

Ellie listened to the waves lap against the wall and the docks in the wake of the new arrival. The inexperienced helmsman struggled to dock the sailboat under the watchful eye of a parent, and Hardy wrestled with what Ellie suspected was an ocean of bad memories surrounding his father.

"They put my father in one of those facilities," he confessed haltingly. "A good Samaritan found him half dead with his face frozen to the asphalt. They couldn't identify him, so he ended up there."

Ellie felt a painful twinge in her chest as he laboriously opened up to her.

"I didn't know he was homeless, we stopped talking after he sold the house and I left for the Academy," he admitted guiltily, picking at a callous on one of his fingers. "I never thought anyone could burn through that much money so fast." He shook his head and she leaned her shoulder against his.

"Someone finally contacted me after I returned from my honeymoon," he sighed. She scooted close enough to feel the tension vibrating in every clenched muscle.

"I must've gone up there a dozen times before he died, but I couldn't go in." He dug his blunt fingernails so deeply into the callous that she feared he'd bleed. "I'd stand outside the room, watching him try to smoke whilst coughing up a bloody lung, and I'd wonder why the fuck he didn't call me, and why he didn't…"

He caught himself and his jaw clenched; biting down on the words to trap them between his teeth. Lifting a shaking hand to his mouth, he pressed two fingers against his lips as if the phantom cigarette was as real as the spectre of his father.

"You can't blame yourself," she soothed him.

"I don't," he lied unconvincingly.

"Hardy, you don't owe him anything," she told him. "He hurt you and your Mum; he doesn't deserve forgiveness."

"I hope you're right, Miller."

A fierce protective instinct uncurled from deep within her bruised heart and she wound her arms around his skinny torso. Resting her cheek against the rough wool of Hardy's suit, she closed her eyes. He took a deep breath and let it go. She snuggled into him and the tension seemed to trickle out of him as his muscles unclenched.

Ellie lost track of how many times his chest expanded within the circle of her arms, but she was drowsy when Hardy breached the depths of his depressing memories.

"I hate those stupid fairy lights," he groused, motioning to the sailboat that was now festooned with more lights and lit up like Bonfire Night. "That should be a fire hazard."

"You'd make fun illegal if it was possible," she snorted, plucking a strand of her hair off of his blazer.

"Is that why you're so reluctant to go to the pub with me?" he quipped and she swatted his arm.

"Why don't you try asking me?" she snapped.

"I am," Hardy sighed and tugged hard on an earlobe. His fingers drummed a nervous staccato on the ledge between their thighs and his Adam's apple bobbed. When he looked at her, Ellie was rendered speechless by the amount of vulnerability he let her see in him.

"Listen, Miller," he said slowly, "I know 's not the best timing, 'm not an insensitive prick, but if you do fancy a drink, you should know that I…" The unfinished sentence and the sentiments behind it, unfurled like an exhale of smoke and hung heavy in the air between them. Ellie breathed it all in as if she were an addict, starved of her particular brand of poison.

Hardy brought his trembling hand up to her cheek and her eyelids succumbed to gravity. He leaned in to place a butterfly kiss against her bruised temple and then the corner of her mouth. The tenderness was like a drug she never knew she needed; and that was all it took for all of her carefully constructed boundaries to go up in smoke.

Hardy gently kissed her and it was as if he'd struck a match. Sensitive nerves she thought had been permanently damaged by Joe came to life and rusty primal instincts awakened. She kissed him back and wondered if this this was what it felt like when he took his first breath of that poisonous cigarette, after years of sacrificing desire for his health.

His fingers threaded through her hair as his hand curved at the base of her skull, and her mouth opened under his. His tongue swept over hers, and for a moment Ellie's mind, even the darkest recesses, went blissfully blank. There was chemical potential crackling in the air around them, and Ellie was already buzzing with it, when Hardy swore and ruined everything.

"Shit. Shit."

He jerked away from her and fished his vibrating phone out of his suit.

"Hey, darlin'."

Ellie took pleasure in the fact that Hardy was visibly shaking and his voice was unsteady.

"'m fine," he insisted, looking at Ellie with smouldering eyes before clearing his throat. "No, darlin', I didn't forget." He peeled back his sleeve to reveal his watch and grimaced at the hour.

"'m sorry, darlin', Miller and I got caught up at work," he fibbed. Ellie blushed.

"No, 'm on my way now," he assured Daisy, thrusting his fingers into his hair. "Ten minutes," he promised and rang off.

"Father of the year," she teased him, and Hardy shot her an accusing glare.

Unable to resist, Ellie combed his hair back into place and tightened the loose knot in his tie. Hardy ran his hands down her arms, taking her restless fingers in his. He held onto them as if he could sense the electricity humming in her veins like a drug, but he must've recognized that the high was fading fast.

"I'll see you tomorrow?" he asked.

His eyes bored into hers until there was no way she could misunderstand what he was really asking her. She had a brief vision of Hardy kissing her in the foyer, but they kept going up to her bedroom and the bed built for two…

"Tomorrow," she said and wrenched her hands from him.

Hardy left her there and the electrical fire within her bloodstream fizzled out. She felt numb and empty in his absence.

That kiss had only been a temporary fix for the lonely ache within her fragile heart.

The low was all it took to remind her that the high was never worth the pain that followed.

Two days later, David Barrett had another stroke.

A/N: BUFORA is the British UFO Research Association. There was an actual paper lantern fiasco in Maine that inspired Hardy's rant; it seemed like something that could happen in a small town like Broadchurch too. The fields of yellow flowers that are harvested for rapeseed/canola oil actually blossom in April, but I'm using artistic license. Sorry this chapter took so damn long and it's messier and depressing, feel free to make suggestions.