I Will Be Your Undoing: Path of Cinders
I Will Be Your Undoing
Colleagues. Best friends. The love of each other’s life? What is Tony to Carol, and Carol to Tony? Are they everything to one another, or are they destined to be each other’s undoing? A series of vignettes from Tony and Carol’s points-of-view.
Summary: Events take place during episode 4x01, “Time to Murder and Create,” immediately after Tony finds out Carol has left for South Africa and is not coming back.
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Val McDermid, with gratitude to Robson Green and Hermione Norris for their inspiring portrayals of Tony Hill and Carol Jordan.
Path of Cinders
He does everything to drown the thought: She is gone.
He follows this DI Fielding around trying to get her to listen. Why won’t she listen? Doesn’t she see? Doesn’t she understand? He haunts the Bradfield station and pushes his way through even when it is obvious they are trying to block him out.
His nerves are raw. His temper flares up hot and bright and without warning. Douse me in petrol and set me on fire. The thought circulates through his brain, skidding around the corners of the gray matter that is now gone. He wouldn’t care, wouldn’t care at all except that there are missing girls, dead girls, crying girls wanting to be saved, and he knows he can help find them if only someone would listen.
So he persists. He offers his opinion. They shoot him down.
And then DI Fielding says Carol’s name, and it’s like he’s being stabbed with the reminder that she didn't even bother to say goodbye, that maybe he meant just so little to her to even consider that he would miss her. That he was capable of feeling something. Over and over. Carol. Carol. Stab. Stab. He’s bleeding all over the place and all he can do is laugh. He cannot think about it. If he thinks Johannesburg, he’ll scream. If he thinks, Carol, why did you leave me, he’ll burst into flames. He cannot function this way, so he has to push it inside, bury it so deep and so far away that it will rest there for a thousand years undisturbed. He must switch to autopilot. Examine the case. Profile the killer.
He cannot think about it if he wants to function today and tomorrow, but he has to know it’s there. Because it is a part of who he is. Every molecule of him contains a little bit of her, though she wants nothing more to do with him.
They’ve already cut out a part of his brain, and she, a piece of his heart. He only has his work now. If they take that away, then there’s nothing left.
Next Part: 2: Key
Colleagues. Best friends. The love of each other’s life? What is Tony to Carol, and Carol to Tony? Are they everything to one another, or are they destined to be each other’s undoing? A series of vignettes from Tony and Carol’s points-of-view.
Summary: Events take place during episode 4x01, “Time to Murder and Create,” immediately after Tony finds out Carol has left for South Africa and is not coming back.
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Val McDermid, with gratitude to Robson Green and Hermione Norris for their inspiring portrayals of Tony Hill and Carol Jordan.
Path of Cinders
He does everything to drown the thought: She is gone.
He follows this DI Fielding around trying to get her to listen. Why won’t she listen? Doesn’t she see? Doesn’t she understand? He haunts the Bradfield station and pushes his way through even when it is obvious they are trying to block him out.
His nerves are raw. His temper flares up hot and bright and without warning. Douse me in petrol and set me on fire. The thought circulates through his brain, skidding around the corners of the gray matter that is now gone. He wouldn’t care, wouldn’t care at all except that there are missing girls, dead girls, crying girls wanting to be saved, and he knows he can help find them if only someone would listen.
So he persists. He offers his opinion. They shoot him down.
And then DI Fielding says Carol’s name, and it’s like he’s being stabbed with the reminder that she didn't even bother to say goodbye, that maybe he meant just so little to her to even consider that he would miss her. That he was capable of feeling something. Over and over. Carol. Carol. Stab. Stab. He’s bleeding all over the place and all he can do is laugh. He cannot think about it. If he thinks Johannesburg, he’ll scream. If he thinks, Carol, why did you leave me, he’ll burst into flames. He cannot function this way, so he has to push it inside, bury it so deep and so far away that it will rest there for a thousand years undisturbed. He must switch to autopilot. Examine the case. Profile the killer.
He cannot think about it if he wants to function today and tomorrow, but he has to know it’s there. Because it is a part of who he is. Every molecule of him contains a little bit of her, though she wants nothing more to do with him.
They’ve already cut out a part of his brain, and she, a piece of his heart. He only has his work now. If they take that away, then there’s nothing left.
Next Part: 2: Key