Holding On

Pairing: Grace/Boyd

Rating: T PG13+

Summary: An episode add on, set immediately after the end of 'Cold Fusion'

Author's notes: Special thanks to CatS81 for the beta

Disclaimer: Waking the Dead belongs to the BBC. I'm taking them for a walk around the block and back.

Chapter 1:

Boyd knelt behind Spence looking for the bullet wounds. Although there was a lot of blood on his shirt, it wasn't difficult to find where McQueen had shot him.

"Oh Spence, you've ruined your favourite shirt." Boyd smiled weakly.

Boyd grabbed his jacket and pressed it firmly against the oozing exit wound with one hand while his other hand covered the smaller entry wound, trying to stem the flow of blood. It seeped through his fingers but there wasn't much else he could do.

Boyd looked down at his DI. Spence looked like hell because he'd ignored Boyd's call for him to wait for back up and done what any half decent DI would do, he'd pursued a line of enquiry. But there was that little but ever-growing nagging doubt in Boyd's mind that if he'd only tried a little harder, to convince Spence not go alone to Clifford Day's place then he wouldn't have been shot and there wouldn't be two dead bodies lying in front of him.

Normally, Boyd didn't second guess himself. Normally, he was comfortable with his decisions. But that went out the window as soon as things went pear shaped. And then things really started to spiral out of control in his mind.

Boyd was his boss. And he'd failed Spence. And now Spencer Jordan lay bleeding beside him.

Just like he'd failed his son. Joe had run away and turned to drugs because he hadn't been there for him.

Just like he'd failed Mel. Mel had died because he'd hadn't seen the danger of her going to Carney's flat, alone.

It was his job to protect his son and his team.

All of them.

And he'd failed them.

Now Mel was gone forever. Joe was gone. Frankie had quit. Felix had been hurt. And Spencer was lying here shot and possibly dying before his eyes.

Just like Mel had done.

In his mind, the awful sound of Mel crashing on to the windscreen of his Lexus mixed with the sounds of gunshots that happened in Jerwood Estate were jumbled together with dreadful images of Mel lying on the road, brains and blood leaking out of her that were also interspersed with images of Spence's blood leaking over his hands.

A weak groan from Spence brought Boyd out of his self-wallowing, guilt and his growing nausea under control. He had to stay in control. To help Spence.

It didn't last long.

"Shit! Where the fuck is the ambulance?" Boyd yelled to himself.

No one was going to answer him. He looked at Drake – he was dead, lying on the damp tarmac. And the man he'd shot in the chest, Tom McQueen, lay spread-eagled in front of him, also dead.

"Hold on, Spence." Pressing a bit harder on Spence's wounds, Boyd looked left and right down the access road, willing the ambulance to hurry up and pleading for him to survive. "Don't you dare die on me, Spence."

TBC