So I started this almost a year ago, I can't quite remember what the plot was going to be, but I wrote this. I hope you enjoy.

.i.

The first time he sees her standing there, he thinks he's hallucinating.

"Samantha."

It's a bittersweet word on his tongue, the sweet caress of the most painful yet most pleasing word pausing delicately on his lips. A word he never expected to say again with the same meaning as before, as Samantha Nicholls. As the woman who had never quite managed to leave his heart, despite the many statements to the contrary for all those years.

A woman whose death has been unable to remove her entirely from Dylan Keogh's world.

He counts to one then to two, then three. Once, twice, thrice until he's calm and able to face looking in the direction of his ghost of an ex-wife, fully expecting the hallucination to have disappeared.

The problem is that she hasn't.

"Dylan," she says, her voice soft, her expression guarded. "Dylan, I need to…"

"No, no, no, no, no," Dylan growls, turning rapidly slamming a fist into the breakroom wall. The door reverberates in its frame, momentarily capturing his gaze until his brain refocuses him on the problem. "You're dead. Dead. I…I sat with your body. I went to your funeral. Leave me alone."

"I know that this is a lot to take in," she continues. His periphery notes that she's moving towards him. "If we can just sit down, I can explain what's going on…"

Dylan snorts. "Oh yes, listening to a figment of my imagination is certainly the best idea for me right now." His reply is acerbic, barely restraining a visceral torrent of words aimed at Samantha Nicholls but meant more for himself.

"How can I prove to you that I'm real?" Her tone is pleading now – something that confirms to him that it's all his brain. Never in all the time that he knew her was Samantha Nicholls pleading – towards him, anyway.

He turns to look at her once more, unable to keep the tears from spilling into his eyes and down his cheeks. Wiping them away roughly, Dylan takes a deep breath, sighs, and looks towards the ceiling.

"You can't," he responds, more gently than he thought he was capable of. "Because you're not here, Samantha. You can't be.

"Because if you are, I lost myself for nothing."

.ii.

She understands that he doesn't – can't – believe that she's back. That she's alive.

Hell, she can scarcely believe it herself.

Not that she's alive. She's known that since she left Holby eighteen months ago, on an MoD mission so secretive not even the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces (aka Queen Elizabeth) was aware of it. She doubts that even the Prime Minister knew what the MoD was doing – not until it was all over, anyway.

And it finally is. Eighteen months later, two months out of the deep undercover that had required her death to accomplish, she's able to return to Holby. Maybe. Or maybe not. After all, Dylan was unable to cope with her return: would anyone else be able to?

It becomes more unlikely as she hears stories of how people reacted to her death. Of Robyn's desolation, of Jan's sadness, even of Connie's tears.

She hears little mention of Iain though, which perplexes and scares her in equal measure – particularly with nobody being forthcoming in telling her of his whereabouts.

"He doesn't believe I'm back," she says glumly, leaning back on the plush sofa in the front room of her current abode. The most unlikely of all allies, Connie Beauchamp is her current roommate: never in her wildest dreams did she think the Emergency Department Clinical Lead would be the first person she told of her deception, let alone be the person she lived with.

But it's hard to rent a flat when you're legally deceased – and it's even harder to tell someone you love that you've hurt unnecessarily them than it is to tell someone about whom you're indifferent. At least in Sam's experience, anyway.

Plus, there's deep scars – and skeletons in the closet – within Connie's own character: family betrayal and loss is something that she knows well, too. Perhaps there's a chance that they'll come out of this more understanding of one another – and perhaps even with some solidarity.

"I mean, can you really blame him?" Connie's tone is gentle, unreproachable almost. "I'm not saying this to hurt you, Sam, but…he thought you were dead. He grieved – in his own way – he saw what happened to…" She cuts herself off quickly, and Sam realises that Iain was about to be mentioned.

Tonight, Sam doesn't push the abandoned issue of Iain. There are nights and nights ahead of her to ponder Iain Dean: this evening is dedicated to Dylan Keogh.

"It's wrecked him," she says, almost waiting for Connie to interrupt and tell her she's wrong. Obviously, she won't be. "He blamed himself for not checking me over; he blamed himself that he didn't check in on me; he blamed himself that I didn't call him when I needed him. I get that. I just don't know how to get across that I'm really here?"

"I…er…his OCD has been a little temperamental after you left," Connie admits, "and there were some issues…he relapsed – don't worry, he got help and he's back on the wagon now," she continues, picking up the pace as she recognises the frantic expression in Sam's eyes. "I wouldn't be surprised if he'd hallucinated you previously."

"Shit," Sam mutters, dropping her head into her hands. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. This is all my fault."

Connie doesn't say anything.

.iii.

"Right, can you find the camera outside the ED breakroom?" Dylan's pacing up, down, up, down, as he waits for the incompetent IT worker to load the CCTV.

They're in Connie's office, a fact he recognises only briefly as being something slightly against the rules, and they're accessing her computer system. Something possible only because she decided to trust him with her password, should any other incidents arise.

"What time?" IT Worker – Dylan forgot his name before he even said it, so IT Worker he has become – asks.

"Twelve forty pm," Dylan responds. He first saw the apparition of Samantha at a quarter to one, so it makes sense that she'd be on the camera before that. If she was even there.

"It's up," IT Worker says, dragging Dylan's attention to the computer screen.

His breath is taken away as he looks at the figure of Samantha Nicholls as a civilian, loitering outside the breakroom for minutes before she finally opens the door. She's beautiful, she's captivating, she's…not real.

"Can you tell me what that is?" Dylan directs the question vaguely in the assistant's direction, pointing at Samantha's image.

"Um…a woman? Blonde hair? Looks a bit stressed?" He replies. "Unsure of what else I could be seeing?"

Dylan's frozen.

Someone else can see her, too.

He isn't imagining it.

Samantha Nicholls is…she's alive.

.iv.

"Connie, I have a bit of a problem." Dylan storms into the Clinical Lead office the following morning, interrupting whatever phone call Connie's in the process of making.

She shoots him an irate glance before saying, "Let's continue this call later," into the receiver before hanging up. This is followed by a direction for Dylan to sit and an acerbic, "Let me guess, that problem is something to do with you breaking into my office last night and summoning an IT Assistant to operate the CCTV footage, is it?"

"I, well, yes, actually it is," Dylan responds. "I had a visitor yesterday, one that I genuinely believed was conjured by my brain." He may as well be candid at this moment; they know enough secrets about each other that probably should result in the formation of a mutual destruction pact. "However, upon reviewing the CCTV, I have corroboration that, well, Samantha Nicholls is alive and well. Or at least well enough to walk into the Holby City Emergency Department and have a conversation eighteen months after her supposed death."

Connie blinks once, then twice, her expression swiftly changing into one that he only recognises from seeing her with Grace.

"I see," she says, stalling for time. "Yes…She did mention that to me last night."

"Last night!" Dylan repeats. "You…you saw her last night. And you didn't think to tell me?"

"In all honesty, Dylan, I didn't know how to tell you," she replies, leaning back in her chair. "You know, it's really hard to find the words to relay the message that an ex-wife – who happened to have died in your department – is not only back from the dead but living in my house."

He chokes as he processes the words. "In your house, Connie? Are you absolutely barking mad?"

She smiles wryly. "I didn't know how to tell you, Dylan. I couldn't do anything until Sam wanted to – and, well, it took a couple of weeks for her to process…I can't. I can't tell you what she did – she'll want to do that herself."

"That's all well and good, Connie, but there's a bit of a problem," Dylan barks. "I have Samantha Nicholls' death warrant in my locker. So how the hell she's alive is completely beyond me."

"Come on, why don't we head to my house? Sam can tell you everything there – I promise, it'll make far more sense coming from her." Connie's tone is placating and, for once, Dylan's willing to be placated. No, not placated. He just wants answers.

"Fine," he says, half-spitting the word out. "I'm driving."

.v.

The amount of mental energy it takes to even approach Connie Beauchamp's threshold is unnerving even to a man like Dylan Keogh; to cross it seems like it would take an unprecedented amount of energy.

Energy that Dylan does not have.

So he's grateful that he doesn't have to.

As his feet falter, the door opens and reveals her. Samantha Nicholls. The dead one who turns out to be not quite so dead as he had originally thought.

The woman who he loved so, so much. The woman who died, not quite in his arms but because of his decisions, not even two years ago.

Back from the dead – or whatever it may have been.

"Dylan." She breathes his name, keeping her distance.

He's surprised. He'd pegged her for reaching out to touch his arm.

"I…You're really here," he says, fumbling in his brain for anything to say. "You're alive, I mean. You're not part of my brain."

She smiles a half-smile and nods. "I'm here – alive, I mean. Connie can see me."

Dylan turns to look at the Clinical Lead, muttering, "What a relief, Connie Beauchamp can see her."

Sam snorts, jolting Dylan's attention back to her. "Would you like to come in? We could talk – I can tell you…tell you what happened. How sorry I am."

The silence that follows feels like it lasts hours, eons even, though in reality must only be a few seconds. He can't bring himself to look directly at her, instead choosing a spot a few centimetres above her head to focus his gaze. Is she taller than she was before? Surely not.

"I…I suppose," he finally mutters.

"I'll wait in the car," Connie offers, grabbing the keys from Dylan's limp hand. "Call me if you need me."

With that, Dylan takes the fateful step that has him following his formerly-dead wife into what, in any other circumstance, would be called the devil's lair.

.vi.

She doesn't know how to start. How do you start, really, telling your ex-husband (and essential love of your life) that you've faked your death for the past eighteen months to run a deep undercover governmental mission?

The first thing she does is blurt out a question about whether he wants tea or coffee, or neither – because she's heard that a lot of people are off caffeine now, but she doesn't understand why. She rambles and rambles but can't stop; she can't bring herself to come to the elephant in the room, to explain something that is inexplicable.

"Samantha." There's gravitas to his voice; just hearing it makes her stop talking. "I don't care about a drink. I…I want to know why you're here. How you're here."

She can see him counting one, two, three, four – the words are almost visible on his lips – and that reminds her of the man sat in front of her. Calm and put together, he appears; the truth is the opposite.

And he wants her to explain. So she'll explain.

It takes almost an hour to tell the story from start to finish. That she was approached by a member of the Ministry of Defence, that they knew stuff about her that she hadn't told a soul. That she had to fake her death to get into the organisation that she needed to infiltrate.

That it was a suicide mission she somehow survived.

He sits and listens, doesn't answer questions, but wrings his hands every time she gives a new detail.

"It sounds like a bloody spy movie," she quips at the end, trying to find something tangible in common with the man in front of her. "It doesn't sound like real life. Because it wasn't, I guess. It tore up my real life and spat it out in pieces."

"What's your name?" He blurts out, the first words since he asked her to tell her story.

"My name?" She repeats, confused.

"Yes." He takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "Samantha Nicholls is dead. So what name did they give you? What name did you give yourself?"

"Oh, um…" Can she tell this? Does she want to tell this? "Well, you know that my mother's name was Jennifer so…Jennifer."

"Jennifer…" Dylan presses. "I'm sure even in undercover scenarios – especially undercover operations - they give you a surname. So what was it?"

"Keogh," she blurts out. "Jennifer Keogh. Happy now?"

She can see him processing this, can see the shock that drifts across his face and remains for far longer than he realises. It's a name that's meant more to her than she would admit to anyone: for despite all their ups and downs, regardless of her mistakes and his obtuseness, she'd give anything to go back to those easy days.

"Well then, Jennifer Keogh," Dylan speaks, almost spitting the name out. "It's nice to meet you. I suppose you've heard about what happened to your friend Samantha's colleague, Iain Dean?"

Her heart pounds harder and harder and harder with the mention of Iain. "All I know is that he left and nobody will tell me why."

There's more venom in Dylan's face than she expected – than she thinks she's ever seen before. "Nobody will tell you why? I'll fill that gap in for you then, Jennifer. He blamed himself for his friend Samantha's death. He thought it was his fault that she'd died. So he took a lot of pills to atone for his guilt.

"But that was pointless, wasn't it? Because – as it turns out – she's not even dead. Her body, anyway."

She can't speak, can't breathe, can't feel her fingers. Her heart, once pounding out of her chest, stills. Tears run. Fingers flail. Eyes flutter.

Iain's dead.

Because of her.

She did this.

"See, Jennifer, things aren't all just as you left them, are they?" Dylan spits the words out, but she doesn't know how to respond. If she even could respond, anyway. "I'll see myself out."

.vii.

Even the later discovery that Iain survived and left to work up north doesn't help.

It's all her fault.

She did this.

.viii.

"Did that help?" Connie tentatively asks Dylan as he pulls away from her house without saying a word.

"It was lovely meeting Jennifer," is all he says, forcing as light a tone as possible.

The silence that fills most of the next three streets is telling of Connie's lack of awareness of how to respond to this situation. Nor does he know what to do, what to say. Whether he overreacted (he definitely did), whether he's able to take it back, whether he's able to process how to get Samantha Nicholls back into his life.

"Shall…I know…You take resus when we get back and I take cubicles?"

He knows that she must be able to see the tears in his eyes, and he appreciates her tactful way of ignoring it.

"Fine," is all he says. He hopes she can hear the silent thank you on the end.

If you'd like a second part, leave a review and let me know!

Even if not, tell me your thoughts - it'd be massively appreciated!