Right, so, ever the FLANer, I have already folded like a napkin and started my new multi-chapter fic. Excuse the first chapter having very little of any Spooks characters, and just trust that it is all necessary and relevant. Also, excuse over-zealous use of the F-word by a certain character...I figured it would be his word of choice, and apologise if it offends anyone.

Thank you Kate, for letting me ramble endlessly to you about this one!

As much as I wish I did, I don't own any of the characters.

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The team were gathered around the large, wooden table, listening to the end of the briefing. It was routine enough; there were no new or high level threats - just the usual barrage of medium priority, long term operations. A focus of late had been a terror cell of Eastern European origins, seeking to protest against inclusion into the E.U. The threat - and the cell - had been neutralised during the culmination of an operation last week and, now, the fall-out and remaining ‘mess’ needed cleaning up.

It had fast become apparent, during the gathering of intel, both before and after last week's raids, that a significant proportion of the funding for the group was raised through drugs money and, having raided umpteen addresses of major players, they were now sifting through yet more information and preparing for the smaller scale arrests of those now known to have had regular dealings with the drugs ring.

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Across London, in a grimy one bed, a young man greeted the woman who answered the door to him with a sharp slap across the face. Her hand flew to the stinging skin, and she felt the trickle of blood where he'd caught her mouth and cut her gum on the edge of her teeth.

"Fuckin' whore!" he yelled. "You bitch. Thought you'd set the cops on me now we ain't together!? Fuckin' hell!" He barged past her and let himself inside. "What the hell are you playing at? Eh, Leanne?"

He strode back across the room to where she'd turned on the spot, and grasped her face roughly in one hand, forcing her to face him. She did so, meeting his stare as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

“What Daryl? You’ve got yourself in trouble again and you’re trying to blame me?” she swatted his hand from its grip on her cheeks and pushed past him, closing the door and moving further into the flat.

He stalked after her into the kitchen, his voice raised to a shout. “Don’t pretend you don’t know. I know you didn’t like all that shit I did, and now Ash, Minty and Red have been arrested. I ain’t thick Leanne. I know you fuckin’ grassed us in. What about Katie, eh? Always thinkin’ of yourself. You know she ain’t gonna have a daddy if you send me to jail.”

“I told you when I kicked you out, you ain’t no good for her anyway; you’re her father but you ain’t her daddy.” Leanne’s voice was raised to match his level. “Get out Daryl. Go home.”

“No. I wanna see her.”

“She’s just woken up. Fuck off.”

“I wanna see my daughter!” He grabbed her wrist and twisted it behind her. His voice dropped to a low whisper, right in her ear. “I’m pretty fuckin’ pissed off Leanne. I suggest you let me see her.”

Her resolve finally seemed to crack a bit. She was used to him shouting at her, but the menace his voice had held as he breathed those words had sent a chill through her.

“You know where she is then,” she conceded.

In an instant, he let go of her wrist and strode towards the bedroom. A young child sat in the corner, bashing away on a child’s xylophone.

“Pack the noise in,” he spat, pulling the young girl up roughly by her right hand. She started to cry and he picked her up.

“What the hell was that for?” the woman’s voice in the door asked.

“I’m takin’ her with me. I fuckin’ tired of you tellin’ me I can’t see her.”

She moved forward and tried to take the girl from his arms. He moved quicker than her, turned and placed the child on the bed and snapped back around to face his ex.

She pushed at him to try and get past, and he hit her hard in retaliation, the force of his arm across her chest sending her ploughing backwards towards the wall. “Daryl,” she screamed, “just go and I won’t call the police, I swear. I don’t know what the hell kind of mess you’re in, but its nothing to do with me.”

“Liar!” he screamed, reaching in his pocket.

She flinched and choked down a sob at the metal which glinted in the sunlight.

He took a measured step so that he was directly in front of her, standing in her personal space, so that she could almost feel him against her.

Slowly, she felt him draw whatever he had from his pocket and she wondered if it was a blade or a gun. As the cold butt of the metal pressed into the underside of her jaw, she realised it was the latter, and swallowed hard, feeling it press further into her as she did.

“I swear to God Leanne, let me walk out of here with her and nobody gets hurt,” he yelled above the baby’s crying.

Her voice, when she spoke, was soft, almost as if she didn’t trust it. “She’s my daughter.”

“She’s my God damn daughter too. You’re nothing more than a whore with a conscience. When did you get so high and mighty that you thought you could grass me in? You’ve dabbled in shit too, remember?”

There was a silence that enveloped the room as she refused to break and he refused to move the gun from her jaw, despite his trembling hands. He cocked the trigger in the hope of showing her he meant business. As he did so, a loud knock and a shout through the door cut through the quiet, and the sound of a shot rang out.

“Shit! Shit!” he dropped to the floor over her lifeless body and continued to swear under his breath as he realised what, in his panic, he had done.

He looked around anxiously and there was more banging, now accompanied by hysterical screams, from outside. He glanced at Katie, who cowered on the bed, bawling deafeningly loudly and, leaving her as she was, ran for the kitchen, smashing the window, and jumping from the first floor window onto the flat roof of the garages below.

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So, there you go...reviews??

I should have at least the next chapter up before I start back at uni, but things will slow down from me fic wise after Sunday for a few weeks.