A/N: Superthanks to Helainewarrior, Kerkerian-Horizon, LittleBiscuit and el spirito for your amazing reviews! I was not expecting such lovely words. And thank you too to everybody who faved. Hopefully you'll enjoy.

Love.

Jenny can not sleep.

She watches the man sleeping next to her, who only gave into his weariness 20 minutes ago, two hours before they're both meant to be getting up and leaving - and her heart crumples in her chest. She moves to touch his face, aching to feel his skin under her fingers, to trace his jaw line, to make sure he's really there and not a figment of her frantic imagination. But she stops herself, not wanting to wake him after it took him so long to get this tiny interval of rest. He is still pale, despite the innumerable extra blankets she'd piled on top of the bed to a soundtrack of variations on "Honey, really, I'm fine!", although she was told after he had been treated that it was probably now more due to shock than temperature.

But still. His pallor against the sheets frightens her. For the first time in their relationship she is glad she can't see the rest of him. Normally Jenny would take any chance she could to steal a glance at his body; to take in the shape of his chest through his shirt or the curve of his wrist as he holds the latest Nikki Heat novel; to map out the faint laughter lines on his face as she tells an anecdote about work that she knows isn't funny; to gobble up the sight of him. Tonight however, all she can think about is the bruises on his knees, almost black against his freezing skin and over his ribs where they'd held him over a-

Stop it. She somehow stops the onslaught of images terrorising her brain and takes a breath. He's here, he's alive. And fine, he says. So so is she. And so is Javier, which she is overwhelmingly grateful for because her fiancé wouldn't have got through tonight without him. "All I thought about was that I had to get him back to you," the Hispanic Detective had said after he had managed to stop her fretting about the marks around his neck. "I haven't had wedding cake in a while. I'm kind of counting on you guys for that."

Now Jenny fights to block out the noises of New York at dawn and closes her eyes, so that Kevin's soft breathing is the only sound in the world. She listens, marking out the rhythm in her head as if she's never heard it before, memorising it. She thinks to herself, in her weary, frightened madness, and although it has never occurred to her to hurt anything before, that if anyone else dares to take away this sound, if anyone tries to make her live without it, she will take back-up gun lying in the drawer, go out, and happily shoot them herself.