One-shot for the fangirls in preparation for the new series *dances* based on the quote from Sally's interview about Gill's life being on the line. I will attempt "heroic and heart-warming" for Lizzie, but I can't promise anything; you know I struggle with happy endings. This is also unusually long for me, so I hope you enjoy it. Reviews would be appreciated x

Life on the Line

Gill had told her team many times before that the Chief Con had a screw loose (generally when he told her she needed to make a speech at a press conference, actually; sometimes she wondered if he deliberately manufactured murders so that she'd have to spend yet another day of her life trying to communicate to the wonderfully obtuse British public that the man was quite short) but she'd never thought there would come a day when it actually came true.

Rutterford's wife – someone high up in the government, he'd always been a bit vague about her role – had run off with her personal assistant, who was at least a decade younger than her. When Gill had first heard what had happened from Rachel ("It's the hot gossip at the water cooler, Boss," she'd said. Kevin had chuckled, "Oh, that's funny, hot and cold, do you get it?"), she had to admit that her thoughts had been quite unsympathetic, something along the lines of 'welcome to my world, mate'.

But he'd taken it badly. Gill had still had Sammy, she'd had to stay strong for him through all the mess with Dave, whereas Rutterford didn't really have anyone any more, did he? He was far more high-profile than Gill; if people had whispered about her, what was it going to be like for him? Or what would it have been like, perhaps. Now people were going to shout about him from the rooftops, and not just about his whorish wife.

"Gill." Someone grappled at her elbow. "Gill?"

She nodded, but nodding was futile here. It was darker than she'd imagined anywhere could be, darker than the insides of her eyelids at midnight in winter. Oh God, pull yourself together woman. "I'm here."

"Bit dark, in't it?"

Gill smiled despite herself. She reached out a hand and found Julie's, wrapped her hand around her friend's. Julie's nails dug into her palm, and she find the pain almost reassuring; she didn't need to be able to see to know that the nails would be flawlessly shaped and painted scarlet.

"Getting a bit soppy, are we?"

"Mm," Gill said. Julie didn't make any attempt to remove her hand from Gill's. She felt as though there were gnomes inside her head, bashing at her skull with tiny axes, trying to break through the skin. "I must be desperate."

"Just think, my beautiful face will be plastered all over the Manchester papers tomorrow, maybe even the nationals if I'm lucky. Your face too, of course, but everyone will be looking at me. I'd better make sure they put my number on the bottom, in case anyone wants to make an offer I can't refuse."

They both laughed. The sound was a bit feeble. Despite Julie's light-hearted chatter, Gill could hear the pain in her voice.

"Are you alright, Slap?" Funny that she was still calling her 'Slap' in the middle of all of this. You would have thought she'd have higher priorities. Old habits die hard.

"I fell, when they pushed us in. These fuckin' heels. I think I've sprained my ankle."

Anyone who knew Julie at work would say she was quite possibly the queen of exaggeration, but in terms of her life outside of the office she was really rather prone to understatement. Deep down, she kept things private; it often took an entire evening and several glasses of wine to force Julie's problems out of her when she was upset. A sprained ankle probably meant a broken one, or she'd have just said 'hurt'. God knew how she wasn't rolling around on the floor crying.

She was a brave woman, and although Gill had possibly never told her friend, she deeply admired her. Perhaps she should tell her that. Perhaps that was something good to come out of this (aside from Julie finding a soul mate in the form of some paedo who rang the number given at the bottom of an article about the incident, that was); they'd be able to be more frank with one another. They were always so focused on work that these things were overlooked.

"Where the hell are we, anyway?"

Gill shuffled around the van on her knees, moving her hands blindly around the walls. It seemed to be quite a big space, but there were no cracks of light, no weaknesses that she could see in the structure. She couldn't even find the doors; she was disorientated from being flung around as he'd driven, stumbling over whatever there was on the floor. She ran her hands around on the floor and let out a squeal of alarm as something sliced through her hand.

"What?" Julie sounded, for the first time, frightened.

"Nothing, just–" She tried to suck the cut. It was deep, she could taste the blood all over her tongue and lips. Shit.

"Gill, what is it?"

"I've just scraped my finger, it's alright." The understatement thing was obviously rubbing off on her. "I think he's got some rope here."

Neither of them needed to say anything; they knew what that was going to be used for, if Rutterford had his way. Gill felt dizzy, she wasn't even bothered by blood usually, but the taste of iron was clogging up her throat. She reached for Julie again with her uninjured hand, and they sat quietly for a moment. Now that the van had stopped moving, everything seemed like a lake on a midsummer afternoon, beautiful and untouched. You just never knew what was lurking in the depths.

Rutterford had snatched them as they were on their way across to Starbucks to get takeaway coffees for Syndicate 9 before they began the afternoon briefing. Thrown them roughly in the back of a van, taken their mobiles, muttered something that Gill hadn't understood. He looked as though he was in desperate need of a shave. In desperate need of someone to tell him he was loved too, she supposed, although that wasn't going to be her.

See, this was what happened when the big fry went to get the coffees rather than sending a minion. Gill hated that term – 'big fry' – but she thought that was why Rutterford had chosen them, because they were in the middle of a massively-publicised case and he needed to make a massive impact, so he was in control. That was the problem with someone powerful like him; one day they lost control and then they craved it like an addict.

It was ridiculous that they'd been so close to the station when he'd taken them too. There was no way on earth that nobody had noticed. Gill was sure that Janet was now kicking up a fuss about their whereabouts whilst Kevin stuffed his face with donuts, but then again was that just wishful thinking? Maybe her team thought she and Julie had walked into someone from the old days and decided to have a full meal out instead (although surely Janet knew there Gill wouldn't do that with a case like this going on?). Maybe they wouldn't realise until it was too late.

She imagined someone going round to her house, knocking on the door, finding Sammy sitting on the sofa watching something mindless like Midsomer Murders and waiting for Gill to get back so that she could make him fish finger sandwiches. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but–" He knew the drill as well as his mum did; he'd know what it meant. She could taste sick as well as blood in her throat now.

"They'll find us," Julie said. Mind reader. "Kevin will have his coloured pencils out by now, he'll be circling all the places we might be in different shades of blue, you know he will. Come on, don't let's do this."

"Sorry. It's just– Sammy."

"I know. I know."

They sat quietly again. Gill thought of the lake, but images of people she loved drowning came to mind. Sammy in the sea, too far out for her to reach, and then Julie and Janet and Rachel and Chris, pleading with her to help them. Even Kevin, Jesus, she really was getting desperate if she was classing Kevin as someone she loved. But she did, she really did. She loved them all, like they were her flesh and blood. Sometimes it was good to slow down and think about these things before it was too late.

"Right, enough moping," Julie said. Back in cheerful mode, then. Annoying bitch. "We need a plan. You're the inventive one, supposedly. When he comes back, he's going to open the door; given that I can't really get up, you're going to have to do it. I don't know, kick him in the face, punch him. Get his phone."

"Do you want me to tie him up while I'm at it?"

"Well, Gill, I thought we were focusing on getting out of here rather than your fantasies involving Mr Rutterford, but if you'd like to throw in a bit of–"

She trailed off when Gill kicked her. They both laughed, and once they started they couldn't stop. It wasn't even funny, it was perverse, but every time one of them regained a little bit of composure, the other giggled and they were back to square one. Gill wondered idly if it was the blood loss getting to her.

When the van suddenly trembled, they were both caught off guard. Both fell silent; Gill dropped Julie's hand to feel around for the sharp object she'd hurt herself on earlier. She found the handle and held it up, it felt like a large knife, enough to do a lot of damage. She didn't want to hurt him, she really didn't, but she would if it came to that. She spent her entire life dealing with the fallout from these kinds of things, and yet nothing prepared you for the pure adrenalin, the way it overrode everything else, all pain and fear and anger. Just me and him, one on one. He was so much taller than her, so much stronger.

She heard something shattering very close to them, and then the door burst open and daylight flew at them from all angles, blinding Gill entirely. He'll struggle to see in the dark just as I'm struggling to see in the light. She held the knife out in front of her, her whole arm quaking as though she was freezing cold.

"Gill," someone said, and it wasn't Rutterford. "Thank God."

She dropped the knife. The blood on it glistened in the sun, it looked like a murder weapon in itself. There was blood all over her hands too. She glanced around at Julie; she was doubled over in pain, her face paler than the light alone could have made it.

"We thought you might be the BBC," Julie muttered.

Chris laughed, and it was the sweetest sound in the world to Gill at that moment. "Sorry to disappoint."

Gill took his hands and climbed down from the van. Her legs were suddenly wobbly, like when you'd been in bed for a week with flu and had to get used to walking again. It was a long time since she'd laid in bed for a week, she never stopped. "I love you."

"I love you too," he said, "It's over now."

He could have laughed at her for saying that (if she was honest, Chris was another person she never told just how much they meant to her, he could have said "it only takes a kidnapping for you to tell me" or something), but he seemed to understand how scared she'd been.

He said nothing. Instead, he held her close to him and put his chin on top of her head. The blood from her hands was all over his shirt now. She wished she could stay like this with him forever.

Janet came up behind her and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. She hadn't realised how cold she was. "Come on, Gill, we'll get you sat down."

They walked to the police car, and Gill sank down onto the back seat and watched as Chris lifted Julie from the back of the van and carried her across to the ambulance. She really was white, like dried-up pastry, her ankle at a funny angle despite the way Chris cradled it in one hand to try and save her from any more pain.

Gill let a paramedic examine her hand and thought about Chris. He was gentle with her like Dave had never been; he took her to see plays he thought she'd like at the theatre and held her hand when they walked through the woods near her house, rather than trying to buy her off with champagne and cheap jewellery. He was good with Sammy, more of a father to him than Dave had ever been. He loved her like Dave never had, because of course he never had, not truly.

He came back across; she shuffled along the seat so that he could sit down beside her, "Are you okay, darling?"

Darling. Never normally time for these things, these kind words and gentle embraces. 'Not that type of person', she'd always said about herself, 'don't really do romance'. What kind of an excuse was that? Everyone should make time for love.

"I love you," she said again, "I'm sorry."

"What are you sorry for?" he asked softly, taking her hand, "You've done nothing wrong. You're alright now. We can go back to your house when we're done here; you can have a shower, and then I'll pop out to the shops and get some of those strawberry tarts we spotted in the bakery last week, and we'll watch something crappy on the telly, okay?"

"Rutterford?"

He shook his head. "In the river."

"Did he leave anything? A note? Something that would explain it?"

"His clothes, all folded up neatly on a rock." Chris's voice shook a little bit. She realised that he had been scared too. It's over now. "It's horrible, he must have really felt as though he had nothing left."

"If I ever go off with someone else, don't drown yourself, will you? It's far too messy. Just take some tablets or something."

"Have you got your eye on someone? Kevin, perhaps."

She nudged him, and they shared a shaky laugh.

"I think we should get you to the hospital, Ma'am, it's quite a deep cut and the knife was dirty, I think it might need some stitches," the paramedic said, indicating the ambulance Julie had already been helped into.

"Will you come with me?" She suddenly wanted to cry. "Please."

"Mm, I'm not sure, I think I might have something better to do. Of course I bloody will, you daft thing."

"And then we'll have strawberry tarts?"

He leant across and kissed her. His lips were warm and tasted faintly of mint. She supposed she was getting blood all over his face as well as his shirt, but she didn't care, she really didn't. A tear dribbled down her cheek, and Chris wiped it away with his thumb, and she buried her head in his chest and finally sobbed.

Love wasn't lying in bed exhausted, letting your partner have sex with you because he was drunk and it was easier not to resist. Love was there in the small things, in the strawberry tarts and the warmth of the kisses, and in the knot in your heart when you thought they were suffering. Love was there in fish finger sandwiches and in colouring pencils and in nails painted scarlet, and true, none of those were the conventional St. Valentine-type love, but they were love all the same.

She loved them, Sammy and Kevin and Julie, and she loved Chris. It took seeing the Chief Con's life crumbled into a million shards and his naked body in a river, it took blood and tears on her face. It took her life on the line for her to realise it, but maybe all of these things were worth it, because they made her see love.

XxXxX