Disclaimer: I don't own anything, it all belongs to people far richer than me.

Author's Note: This is a five-chapter ficlet (three and three-quarters of which I have written already) set - if you can suspend your disbelief for a moment - during an imaginary period of time between the gang escaping from District 1 and dawn when Flynn arrives in his helicopter. Oh, and please note the rating. It is there for a reason.

Indelible

By

Silksteel

Whilst it would have been most sensible to keep moving, the reality of it was that Scarlet was injured, not capable of carrying on through the night and into dawn. Besides that, everyone was drained from the escape, terrified of the morning and the return to the old madness of Infected London. She hadn't been there the first time around, but the haunted look she'd seen in her father's eyes – and later the nightmare in her mother's for those few infinitesimal moments they'd had prior to containment – told her all she needed to know. Now they were both gone, and all she had to focus on was Andy; Andy who was so much of their mother that she could hardly bear to look at him. Andy was all she had left, and the last hope for a cure unless another such anomaly could be found. Even then, they were the only ones who knew about it; if Scarlet had managed to communicate the fact to her superiors there was no chance they'd have let the siblings leave – let alone disappear into the Infected mob.

To all ends, Doyle called a halt, finding them shelter outside the central containment zone. They were far enough from the epicentre to take their ease for a little while yet, but most of them were too keyed up to sleep – except Andy, apparently, who seemed to know he had little to fear from their assailants. Tammy sat next to him, his body curled into the unyielding wall, and stroked his hair tenderly away from his face. They'd never been close...before. She felt eyes on her, and glanced up to meet Doyle's gaze. The sergeant smiled, but Tammy didn't return it. She felt hopeless.

'Tammy,' he said quietly, holding out a hand to her. 'Join me?'

She stared at him a moment, the concern in his eyes, before eventually accepting his gesture and rising. Scarlet was peeling away the bandaging from her leg, and Doyle blanched, turning away quickly. She followed him out into an adjoining room in the abandoned house, with a view over a park, startlingly beautiful in the moonlight for all that it was overgrown and deadly. They kept low and away from the windows, concealing themselves in an alcove. They had enough light to see by and so didn't need to chance such paltry things that might give them away.

'You and Scarlet –' she began, when he'd neglected to speak for several minutes.

'Yes?' Doyle prompted, adjusting the rifle across his thighs, probably for something to do with his hands, she thought.

'You keep giving each other these looks. When you think we aren't watching. Like –' she hesitated. 'Are we going to get through this, Sergeant Doyle?'

The older man looked uncomfortable. 'Jim,' he corrected, fiddling with his shoulder strap. Their knees brushed awkwardly in the small space. 'And I don't know.'

Tammy sat back against the wall, breathed in the musty air and looked up at the moonlight filtering through the dirty glass window. 'I'm glad you didn't lie to me,' she said finally, picking at a hole in the knee of her jeans. The thought of death, in whatever form it came – she knew her preference – wasn't the spectre she thought it should be. With people dying all around her, Tammy found it easier to come to terms with her own mortality. But – 'I don't want this for Andy.' She looked up into Doyle's unreadable expression. 'He's the key to ending...all of this.' Tammy swallowed a lump in her throat, managed a quiet, choked laugh. 'If there can be an end to it.'