Six Weeks To Midnight

Author's Note: I've never written an AU story before. I like reading some AU stuff, but I've usually kept to the scenarios presented in whatever show/book I might be writing about and expanded on them for my own stories. I've never taken characters out of their natural setting and set them somewhere else. However, I have had a story beating my brain in for a few days now and I need to get rid of it by writing it.

I should probably warn you that this story is partly about cot death and the catastrophic effect this can have on relationships. In a way I suppose it is about grief and how people deal with that, so it won't start off as a particularly happy story, but if you can stick with me, we will get there.

As ever, please read and review. Reviews make me happy and make me write faster.

Guinevere Pendragon was in bed when the letter-box on her front door rattled. It didn't wake her. She'd been awake for at least an hour, mentally cursing the way her body clock insisted on waking her on one of the few days she didn't need to set her alarm to go off at the crack of dawn.

Guinevere worked as a carer for a local care agency. She had a dozen or so regular clients, mostly elderly, all either ill or frail in some way and unable to care for themselves without help. Her job involved caring for people in their own homes, going in and getting them up, giving meals, helping them wash and dress, or, on the days when she worked the late shift, going in and helping them get ready for bed, or whatever else might need to be done. She'd been doing the job for three years now and loved it. She knew there were some who did it for the salary in the bank at the end of each month, such as it was, but Guinevere, Gwen to all her regulars, loved the feeling she got from making someone feel better, even if all she'd done was help them have a proper wash or a shower, or taken one of them out for a while, maybe to do a bit of shopping for themselves, rather than having to ask someone to do it for them. Gwen loved the satisfaction it brought her to think that she was helping people to be independent, to stay in their own homes a bit longer, even if the hours were long and the pay less than it could have been.

Sighing, Gwen sat up in bed and pushed the quilt away from her body. She looked at the time on her bedside clock. The digital display glowed red in the dim light of the room. 6.30am. Gwen smiled ironically. "Oh well, an hour's lie-in is better than none huh?' she announced to the empty room. She shook her head, reminding herself she'd promised to stop talking to herself.

Giving her quilt another shove out of the way, pushing it over towards the other side of the double bed, the side that hadn't been slept on for months, Gwen got up, grabbing her favourite dressing gown from the back of the bedroom door and slipped it on over the night-shirt she was wearing. On her way down the hallway of her flat she remembered the crash letter-box made earlier and stopped to retrieve her mail. She scanned quickly through her post, noticing a couple of plain white envelopes she would need to forward, before she came to a thick brown envelope with a window on the front with her name and address typed neatly on the document within. Doing her best not to think about what this item of post could be, Gwen grabbed all the letters together and went through to the kitchen. She flicked on the kettle absently, the click it made as it came on filling the silent room. She put the post down on the kitchen table and waited for the water to boil in the kettle before putting some coffee in a mug and filling it with the steaming water. She picked up her mug of coffee, the strong odour reaching through her thoughts as they turned back to the brown envelope on the table. She sat down at the table, reached for the envelope and slid her finger along the opening. Gwen took out the documents inside, noting their stark nature, their very plainness mocking the magnitude of their importance. Among the brief description of the documents at the top of the page, Gwen saw two names. Her own describing her as the respondent, the other, Arthur Pendragon, the petitoner.

Gwen stared at the page as she sipped her coffee. She wondered how she was supposed to feel. Was she supposed to be happy that the end was in sight? Was she supposed to cry, phone her best friend in floods of tears? As she sat there, Gwen didn't feel either way. Instead, as she looked at the Decree Nisi once more, all she felt was sadness that something that had started out with such joy had come to this, the beginning of the end of her marriage on a few pages of coldly written legal documents.

Gwen went into the living room and switched on the TV. The babble from the frothy breakfast TV presenters couldn't distract her from the documents still sitting on the kitchen table. She looked around the room, taking in the comfortable but modern décor, the TV in the corner of the room, the leather sofa she sat on, the smart storage space for knick-knacks and photographs on the walls. She caught sight of one of the pictures, her and Arthur wrapped in each other's arms, him in his best suit and her in a beautiful ivory dress, cut low enough to show a little of her cleavage - enough to make Arthur smile like the cat that got the cream she mused – but not enough to be indecent, after all, they did have a church wedding. They'd been photographed without realising, both of them oblivious to anything but each other as they came out of the church in their first moments as man and wife. Gwen remembered coming out of the church, Arthur instinctively wrapping his arm around her to shield her from the chilly breeze of late September. Then, before they moved any further, Arthur took her in his arms and kissed her. He pulled out of the kiss slowly, almost reluctantly, after several long moments. Gwen remembered following him as he eased away, as a flower reaches for the morning sun, her eyes opening slowly as she sensed the loss of him. Then, seeing her disappointed expression, Arthur took her face into his hands tenderly and gazed at her. He looked at her with such adoration, such devotion, it took her breath away. She reached up to her cheek and covered one of his hands with one of her own, trying to tell him without words that she knew how he felt because she felt it too. It was in this moment of silent communion that they'd been photographed, and there the image was, a reminder of how they had once been so happy.

Gwen's eye was drawn to another photograph. This time she is lying in a hospital bed, tired and dishevelled, while Arthur sits in a chair beside her, leaning towards her, an expression of weary joy in his eyes. Arthur's hand is stretched out over her, not to hold her this time, but to touch the bundle cradled in her arms. Gwen gazes down on the baby in her arms, her face a picture of awe and wonder. Anyone looking at the photograph can see exactly what she is thinking, how could anyone believe they had made something so perfect as the newborn boy she held in her arms?

As Guinevere looked at the photograph of her family, she felt a familiar stab of pain around her heart. The happiness of the day her son, Gwydre, was born, was shattered, broken into a thousand tiny shards of agony, all within the blink of an eye.

Three months almost to the day after Gwydre was born she'd woken up to perfectly normal day. Arthur wasn't due in to work until late; he was a director for the chain of estate agents his father owned, which gave him certain perks. A company car, a nice flat in a smart part of town, a couple of holidays a year, at least before the baby was born, all of it came courtesy of Pendragon Homes, a company Arthur's father, Uther, had started from scratch and worked all the hours God sent to keep going. The good side of that was that they could afford to do things they wanted, which was a contrast to her own family, where the only thing available in abundance was love. The down side was that Uther had never really had time for his son. Gwen remembered Arthur telling her stories about his childhood. His mother was killed in a car accident when he was three, so all his memories of her were fuzzy to say the least. All he really remembered of her was that she smelled nice and she was blonde. So, he was brought up by his father, or rather, a succession of nannies, seeing as Uther was always working. Arthur vowed the day Gwydre was born that he would always make time for him, would always get home from work to help with bath time and tuck him in to bed. He'd been as true as his word.

The distance between Arthur and his father continued as Arthur grew up. On the surface they got on, Arthur went into the family firm almost as soon as he finished college, so he had to see his father every day, but underneath it all their relationship was aloof and remote. They spoke to each other politely, like employer and employee rather than father and son. Where Arthur spent all his free time talking to little Gwydre, telling him things, teaching him things, whether the boy understood what his father was going on about or not, Gwen had never once witnessed Uther talking to Arthur without it sounding like he was giving him orders. Where Arthur was always holding Gwydre, cradling him on his lap, or carrying him around, Gwen had never once witnessed any sort of display of affection between Uther and Arthur.

So, on the most normal day anyone could imagine, Arthur and Gwen, who was still on maternity leave from work, stayed in bed just a bit later than they normally would. Truth be told, they'd woken at dawn. They made love as the first orange rays of the sun began to creep through the light bedroom curtains. Then, sated and relaxed, they dozed in each other's arms. At some point they must have both drifted back to sleep properly, because they were woken by the sound of a car starting as one of the neighbours went to work.

Gwen remembered thinking that she needed to go and check on Gwydre. She'd got used to him sleeping all night now and didn't feel the need to worry when he didn't wake in the night for a bottle or a nappy change. As she looked at the time though, she realised it was a good hour after he would normally wake, so he was bound to be hungry. She went to get up, but Arthur beat her to it, going in to the baby in just his boxer shorts, which he'd grabbed off the floor where he'd thrown them, along with her nightshirt, earlier. Putting the boxer shorts on and throwing the nightshirt to her as he grinned wickedly, he went towards the baby's room.

Gwen was just slipping in to the nightshirt when she heard what could only be described as a cry. The sound startled her. She'd never heard anything like that before. Her heart jumped into her throat and pounded furiously when she realised it was Arthur who had made the horrific sound. He sounded frightened, really terrified. Fear gripped Gwen's insides as she jumped out of bed and ran to Gwydre's room. She didn't have time to wonder what was wrong. All she could think was that something had happened to Gwydre. Something was very, very wrong.

When Gwen got to Gwydre's room she saw Arthur standing by the cot. He had picked up the baby and was cradling him, just as he'd done hundreds of times before. She noticed how Arthur's body was rocking slightly, as if he was trying to get the baby off to sleep, but the baby made no sound. Arthur was moaning as if he was in pain, tears cascading down his face, but all the time he rocked the baby. Gwen felt the terror rising inside her as she took in the scene in front of her. She wanted to ask Arthur what was wrong, why he was crying, but somewhere inside she knew. Something deep down told her she needed to do something. Without asking she grabbed the baby from Arthur, dragging him out of the stupor he'd been in. He stared at her in horror for a moment until Gwen shouted at him to call an ambulance. He continued to stand there, looking at her as she went down on her knees, laying the baby on the floor and started to try to give him mouth-to-mouth. When she realised Arthur wasn't moving, Gwen shouted at him again. This time she got through to him, because he flew from the room to the phone. Somewhere in the back of her mind she could hear him as he made the call, she could hear the panic in his voice as he tried to gather his thoughts enough to tell the operator what was wrong.

Gwen continued to try to resuscitate the baby until the ambulance arrived. She remembered the paramedics rushing in, taking over, almost pushing her out of the way. She watched them as they worked on the baby, doing everything they could to get him back. Then she saw as the two men exchanged a look. One of them shook his head and then slowly, both of them took their hands away from the baby.

The rest of the day was a blur to Guinevere. She and Arthur went with the baby to the hospital, his tiny body wrapped completely in a blanket the paramedics had covered him with. At the hospital the baby had been taken away and a doctor came out eventually and sat down with them. Gwen knew without being told what he was going to say. It was written all over his face. Gwydre was dead. The doctor, a young man who looked hardly more than a teenager himself, expressed his sympathy for their loss and told them what needed to happen next. Guinevere's mind switched off as he talked of the need for a post-mortem, as it was a sudden death, and he advised them that the police might call round and speak to them at home. When Arthur, tears still rolling down his face, demanded to know why, the younger man looked confused, as if no one had ever questioned him before. Gathering himself quickly and pushing his hands into the pockets of his white coat, the doctor explained it was routine 'in these sorts of cases'.

Much later, when they'd finished all the arrangements that could be made at the hospital and been given a tiny bag which held Gwydre's clothes, Arthur and Guinevere knew they had to go home. The tears and fear from earlier in the day had made way for a sort of numb disbelief. Thanks to the kindness of the A and E receptionist, a cab was called for Arthur and Gwen. They were driven home and the driver dismissed Arthur when he tried to pay him for their journey. The receptionist who made the call had obviously told the taxi company what had happened.

As soon as they got inside the flat Arthur and Gwen went to their room. Fully clothed, they flopped down on the bed. Neither of them slept that night. They lay there in the dark, consumed by the realisation that their baby had gone. It didn't occur to either of them that they hadn't spoken a word to each other in hours.

Dragging herself out of her memories, Guinevere went back to her bedroom for some clothes. She was getting dressed she told herself, and then she was going out. Sitting around moping had never done anyone any good, so she was going out.