Story: Saving Elliot

Type: Canon

Pairing(s): Stella Jensen/Charlie Jensen

Summary: It's morning and she's so tired she can feel it in her bones.

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Darling I feel you, under my body
Only love, only love
Give me shelter, or show me heart

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Manchester, England

03:37 AM.

THE POETS SAID a dreamless sleep was like death. If that was true, thought Stella, then death was the most peaceful thing there could be.

A gentle hand on her shoulder, shook her from her deathlike sleep and dragged her back into the land of living. Stella groaned and batted the hand off her shoulder. When she opened her eyes, she met Safa's smile. Stella glanced around, the past hour flitting back into her mind with each second. She'd come into the staff room to get some tea after a brutally stressful round fixing the mistakes of resident interns in cardiology. Stella didn't know what they were taught at med school these days but it churned out useless people. The tea sat on the low coffee table before her, full and untouched and probably cold to touch. She must have fallen asleep on the sofa as soon as she'd sat down.

"What - what time is it?" Stella asked as she slung an arm over eyes. She couldn't find the energy to move.

"About twenty to four," said Safa as she walked over to the kitchen area at the back.

"Shit." Stella mumbled. She somehow found the strength to swing her legs onto the carpet and push herself up into a sitting position. A yawn prised her mouth open as she stretched her arms and back until that resembled movement flooded back into her limbs. "How long have I been asleep?"

Behind her, Safa switched the kettle on and left the water to boil. She looked through the cupboard for some decent teabags. Safa liked anything her tea with ginger but most of the decent teabags had been taken by the interns. Those nervous little things who could only pretend they knew what they were doing and hope it would be enough. But it wouldn't be, not for long anyway. If you didn't build a shield of steel, then this hospital had way of consuming every part of you.

"I don't know but your shift ended thirty minutes ago," said Safa. She gave a small huff that told Stella she'd given up on finding some decent tea and had to settle on the rather bitter liquorice tea nobody but Dr Abeyemi drank.

Stella's eyes skipped to the clock that hung between two portraits of the hospital's founders. Twenty to four. She needed to get home, change out of this horrible uniform and sleep until this day felt like an old dream. Stella stood up, stretched her arms once more and turned to look at her friend.

"Saf, are you okay?" she asked.

A beat passed before Safa blinked and glanced back at Stella with a cardboard smile. "Yes. I mean - I will be. I won't feel like this forever, right?"

"No." Stella swallowed, "I suppose you won't. How are the kids? Have you told them?"

"That their parents might be divorcing? No. I mean, Tam is only eight and Shay is barely four so I don't think they'd even understand," her gaze remained fixed on the tea, on the swirling patterns as she stirred it, "and - and Seth and I are still talking things out. Last night I suggested we separate for a little while just until we really know what we're doing. He agreed. Just like that. I don't know - I thought he would fight it, for me - us but he just agreed and went to sleep. And that's when you know something's dead."

Stella stared and through the small crack of the open window, birdsongs ushered in the dawn and the melody slipped in and swam in the space between them.

"It's stupid, I know, but I thought we would last," she stopped stirring and merely stared at the cup of tea in her hands, "Twelve years of marriage end in stony silence. I don't know how to feel about that."

Stella opened her mouth to speak and her voice cracked like chipped glass,

"Sorry." Safa shook her head and gave her another cardboard smile, "Sorry. Sorry. You need to go home, get some sleep, you don't need to be listening to me talk about my depressing life."

"Safa-"

"Stella," she said, her deep brown eyes meeting Stella's with steely resolve she rarely she saw. "I'm fine. Go home. Sleep."

Stella pursed her mouth. "Fine. I have a day off tomorrow - today actually, I'll come to yours at around four and we'll talk."

"You don't need to-"

She folded arms over stomach and frowned. "I'm not leaving until you say yes, Safa. I'm coming over and we're gonna talk this whole thing through, okay?"

Safa stared at Stella for a long moment before nodding. "Okay."

A breath she didn't know she'd been holding hissed out between teeth. Stella gave Safa what she hoped was a warm smile and it must've been because something softened in her brown eyes. Stella glanced out the window and into the quiet street, where the night still lived and streetlamps fought and failed to kill it. She made her way her to the locker room to gather her things and finally, finally after an thirteen-hour shift - go home.

04:15 A.M.

Stella slammed the car door shut and walked up the small cobblestoned path to her front door. It was a battered red door that had been in need of a fresh coat of painting for five years now. But when you had six children, five of whom had been deemed as juveniles by almost everyone they'd ever met and one who might just be the family's saving grace, it was hard to find time for things like painting doors.

The keys jingled in her hand, mixing with her footsteps and the singing birds to form a disjointed morning symphony. As she opened the door and stepped inside, Stella decided she would have Carlisle and Harry paint the door. Her mother was coming to visit this weekend and if she saw the state of the door, she would never let Stella hear the end of it.

Darkness reigned in the soft quiet of the house, every now and then it was cut by the sound of Stella kicking off her shoes and throwing her coat onto the hangers. The steps creaked as she made her up the narrow staircase and into the long hallway. Stella and Charlie's bedroom was the first door you saw once you climbed the stairs but she walked past it. Sometimes, after she'd come back from a tiring day like this one, the only thing that calmed her down was the sight - however small - of her children.

The twins shared a room between Stella and Charlie's and the bathroom. When she opened their door, she found them sleeping soundly in their bunks. The room - of course - was a mess, littered with clothes and shoes and what looked like bird cage sitting by the wardrobe. Stella pinched the bridge of her nose. She would deal with that later.

Mac, on the bottom bunk, slept with Nanuk - a blue stuffed elephant he'd had since he was three - tucked under his arm. Mac liked to say he didn't sleep with Nanuk anymore, he was eleven now, a big boy and big boys didn't need silly toys. And yet here was, fast asleep with the only thing that could send him to sleep when he was a baby. A small, too-fond smile pulled at her mouth as she stared down at her son. The spell collapsed when Mac sneezed and turned over onto his stomach, Nanuk never leaving his grasp.

Stella rose onto her tiptoes to have look at Arthur, the younger twin and the youngest of her boys, who slept on the top bunk. He slept haphazardly with the duvet cover thrown to the side, one foot perched on the railing of bunk bed and his arm lay above his head. Stella pushed his foot off the railing, set his arm on his stomach and pulled the duvet cover back over him. She pushed honey blond curls from his forehead and her heart rose and rose in her chest when he smiled.

Stella looked at her boys once more before she left the room. She went to Harry's room next, it was the smallest of all the bedrooms, just enough space to fit a wardrobe and a bed, but every time he complained about it - which was often - Stella liked to remind him he was lucky to have his own room unlike the twins and Nick and Carlisle (who'd had to share a room until they were ten and eight when they'd moved to this house from their cramped flat in Beswick).

Of course, Harry who liked to get the last word would claim his room wasn't even a room.

"It's a bloody closet, Mum. So me and Harry Potter don't only share the same name, we share the same life," he would frown in that way so similar to his dad she couldn't help but smile, "Now, where's Hagrid to tell me I'm a wizard and whisk me away to Hogwarts? He's three years late."

She never bothered to tell him Harry Potter's name wasn't short for Henry like his or that he didn't live with his aunt and uncle, it would only make his frown deepen and then he would look so much like Charlie she would probably die of laughter.

Stella came into Harry's room, which was also a mess, and gave him a soft kiss on his cheek as he slept. His nose wrinkled like Charlie and Nick's when she did the same. Stella almost tripped on his guitar (he just left in the middle of floor like an idiot) when she turned to leave but she managed catch herself. She glanced at Harry. He didn't stir, oblivious that he'd almost killed his mother. Stella sighed and left. She really needed to talk to her boys about their cleanliness.

Nick's old bedroom (old because he'd moved out for university four months ago) was adjacent to Harry's and it was still empty and so oddly vacant of Nick when she peeked in. He'd left some of his posters (of his favourite movies and photographs of cityscapes) still hanging on the wall and a few books on the shelf. She missed him. He was her first. She remembered how terrified she and Charlie had been at the prospect of having a child and when he'd come, on that cold April morning her fears melted like snow in the sun the moment he'd opened his blue, blue (so much like Charlie's) eyes. Nick would be back next month for the Easter holidays, God knows his brothers and little sister missed more than she did. At least once a week one of them (even Charlie) would ask her when Nick was returning.

To her surprise, Stella found Elliot sound asleep with Carlisle in his bed. She used to sneak into Nick's room but since he'd left for university, she went to Carlisle (and sometimes her and Charlie's if Carlisle had annoyed her too much). Carlisle and Elliot were snuggled up under the covers, the sight pulled at the strings in her chest. They were the only ones who could maintain a clean room and the only one Stella was sure wouldn't serve a stint in jail. Peace or perhaps contentment or some cousin of joy surged into the space a shift at the hospital created. She watched them for a second more before slowly shutting the door.

04:26 A.M.

Stella pulled off her uniform with a groan and left threw it into the wardrobe, too tired to care about folding them neatly. That was a job for tomorrow. She slid into bed. Charlie was a warm body, the perfect kind of welcome after a long day at the hospital.

He buried his face in her neck, "How was work?"

"Long," she answered with a tired smile, "How were the kids?"

A small grimace pulled at the corners of his mouth. "Loud."

"Charlie," she mumbled his name, like a chant that would dispel all the darkness in the world, "Charlie, love."

"Hm?" he grumbled, his deep voice rumbled it's way into her core and she felt another piece of him slot into her heart. "Hm, wha-?"

She pulled his head from where it lay on her chest to look at him. His blue eyes looked silver in the stips of moonlight falling into the room. The last twenty years had been so kind to him. She settled her hand on his cheek, stroked the light smattering of stubble and pressed her forehead against his. She thought of Safa and Seth and the death of their marriage.

"I...um," she swallowed a lump that had been forming since she woke up, "I love you. So much."

He grumbled again as his arm came up to rest on her hip. His hand slipped under camisole and up her back, she let out a small gasp, his fingers left burning prints wherever he touched. "Hm. Yeah - love...love you too, Stell."

He pulled her close, kissing the top of her forehead and she closed her eyes.

07: 31 A.M.

Whispers she knew all too well pulled her back into the waking world. She frowned, reaching out for Charlie (like she always did ) and frowned at the space meeting her fingers. She opened her eyes, her vision blurred for a second (like it always did) before it focused on the world and she could read the clock sitting on the bedside table. 07:31 AM. He woke up for work an hour ago and she wouldn't see him for another ten or so hours, that's if the hospital didn't call her in. They better not, today was her day off. The first one in weeks and she decided to take full advantage of it by sleeping.

"Be careful you idiot, we don't wanna wake her up!" The voices were hysterical, panicked now and Stella was at the window in an instant.

She pulled it open, the biting February wind sent goosebumps erupting all over her exposed arms and chest. Below, the garden was coated in a layer of snow thick enough to hide any greenery and standing by the shed in the far corner were Elliot and the twins.

"You've woken me up," she said, glaring down at the three of them. "What are you doing?"

Mac straightened his back as Arthur stepped in front of him. He gave her his brightest grin and Stella's eyes narrowed. Elliot had her hands behind her back, she glanced at Arthur, looked back at Stella with the same (if not poorly imitated) grin. And not for the first time in the last year, Stella prayed her only daughter would not inherit her brothers' (and fathers') taste for chaos.

"Nothing!" Arthur said a little too quickly, "We're just...y'know, we're-"

"Enjoying the fresh air before another great day of school!" Mac said, adopting Arthur and Elliot's fake smiles, "Oh - oh man, I can't wait to learn today!"

Elliot nodded, her blonde curls bouncing. Arthur joined in a second later.

Stella sighed. The thirteen hour shift she served with little sleep weighed on her bones and she didn't have the energy to deal with their terrible attempts at deception. If it was serious, whatever they were hiding, they would have made a better lie and notched up their acting skills. This, whatever this was, Stella classed it as Yellow on the Crisis Meter™. Yellow usually involved keeping a close eye on it whilst Orange was a cause for concern. Red meant immediate intervention but Black meant it was too late for intervention and the police had already been called. You had to let it run its course and create a punishment so great they'd need therapy sessions in their adult years.

"I know you're lying," she told them and she was not too tired to relish the way their plastic grins fall, "and I hope you know I will find out and when I do-" she paused to meet their eyes (hazel, hazel, blue), "say goodbye to the sun for the next month."

She shut the window, pulled the curtains together and crawls back into inviting warmth of the bed. Elliot would panic and promise to never be dragged into one of their schemes again (but she would be). Mac and Arthur would blame each other and take her threat as a challenge (like they always did) and they'd fail (like they always did).

a/n: this has been sitting in my drafts for MONTHS and i was going through all my old files and i found this sitting there and i was like mate, cmon. this was actually meant to be a way bigger fic, looking at all the jensen members morning on feb 5th, 2004 but i didnt have time lmao. so i'll just post this bit for now and later i'll post the rest of the family's version of that morning. thank you for your continuing support, you're amazing! xx