The Gruinard Project

JUT WANTED TO SAY THAT THIS PART HAS BEEN EDITED 6/2/11 SO I HOPE IT HAS LESS MISTAKES

Title The Gruinard Project Rating PG 13

Fanfiction based on the BBC series Spooks

Characters Lucas North + AU called Kate as well as the whole Spooks team

Set between series 7 and 8

Plot synosis

Section D receive a biological weapons threat and enlist the help of Kate Masters, a microbiologist who is not unknown to Lucas.

NB I DO NOT OWN THESE CHARACTERS I'M MERELY BORROWING THEM.

Chapter One

October 23rd 2000.

Strangers, just two people who have never met; living in the world at the same time, maybe even the same city. People, who shopped at the same supermarket, walked the same streets and read the same paper; stopping every morning at the same Starbucks for a coffee to take into work. Events conspiring to mean they never meet. The tube door closing leaving one passenger on the platform as the train departs. The traffic lights changing, stopping one person from crossing the road with everybody else. Eleven items in a shopping basket meaning the express checkout is a no go area. Everyday events meaning just by a second or two strangers never meet.

Strangers, people who live in the shadows, on the edge of everyday life. People, who live, work and are alone. You know their faces and maybe even their names but not who they are, what they think, what makes them tick. They don't join in, they're not part of the works quiz or football team and at lunch they sit alone.

Some people are strangers not through choice but necessity; needing to keep their distance put up a barrier to get the job done. People who need to protect themselves from heartache, pain, disillusionment and abandonment.

Then there are those who don't even exist not in the states eyes, no computer records and paper trails, nothing they weren't born so they cannot die, living behind fake identities and aliases.

They were strangers that day in October and were destined to remain strangers for the next ten years; each living the life that the fates had mapped for them. Neither questioning the life that the fates chose, just accepting. Over the passing years fate determined their paths should cross briefly. They would meet, talk, share food, become lovers, but both knew the rules, they made them, lived by them, strangers they would remain until fate decreed otherwise.

*****************

The funeral car pulled silently away; its expensive engine a well - tuned hum. She sat in the centre of the soft leather seat, alone. Nobody accompanied her, she permitted nobody to share or ease the burden of her grief. The church had been packed, but they were there for him, not her. They mourned for themselves, for there loss, not the young woman who sat alone in the family pew. It is true they offered their condolences, words offered because polite society and convention dictated that they should be. Meaningless phrases uttered at every funeral people attended all over the world.

"Lovely Service."

"Much missed."

"A great man."

"He would be so proud."

"So proud," she wondered what of? The full church, the money he had made for the florist, the poetry and readings, or her for not breaking down as she followed the coffin into church alone, her back straight and her eyes facing forward just as he taught. She could take no credit for the service, he planned it, he had written down the instructions when he became ill and delivered them to the solicitor with the money to pay. Maybe the solicitor thought it was a "Lovely service" Maybe 'he' was proud of the firm for following his instructions to the letter.