Title: As The World Falls Down
Author: mindy35
Rating: This part T, next part M
Disclaimer: Characters & universe are the property of Matthew Graham, Ashley Pharaoh, Kudos Productions, BBC et al.
Spoilers: Everything.
Pairing: Gene/Alex.
Summary: GALEX. A post-series fix-it. No one can avoid the inevitable forever. Not even Gene Hunt.
A/N: The title and lyrics in this section are taken from the 1986 film "Labyrinth" starring David Bowie. For those who don't know/remember, it's about a girl who ventures into a fantastical underworld and finds herself torn between her commitment to a child and her attraction to the menacing but seductive ruler of The Underground. I mention this because, you know, parallels. Okay, read forth and let me know your thoughts...
-x-
There's such a sad look deep in your eyes
A kind of pale jewel, open and closed
Within your eyes, I'll place the sky within your eyes
There's such a fooled heart beating so fast
In search of new dreams, a love that will last,
Within your heart, I'll place the moon within your heart.
As the pain sweeps through, makes no sense for you
Every thrill has gone, wasn't too much fun at all
But I'll be there for you, as the world falls down
Falling, as the world falls down, falling in love…
It takes three years for her to work her way up the ladder.
She's done it before. In the real world. So this time, it's easier. She does the overtime, collects the commendations, hits each milestone with fearless precision. She wears the right suits, shakes the right hands, espouses the right politics. Her approach is slightly more unorthodox now, inspired by her time in limbo. But she plays the game – or makes sure she is seen to be playing the game. Because that's what's going to get her where she wants to go.
Her single-mindedness is made easier by the fact that, as a confirmed dead person, she doesn't get tired. It's one of the few virtues of the new world she's found herself in. She doesn't need to sleep, she doesn't need to change her clothes or fix her hair. There's no room for imperfection in this world, which occasionally makes her want to scream aloud. Clutch her head and cry at the top of her lungs. Alex doesn't scream. She takes her frustration and channels it – into her work, into finding that next rung on the ladder leading out.
Within a year, she is granted field work and she uses this added agency to visit Molly. It's taken a while and will take a while longer, but her daughter is slowly starting to pick herself up and move on with her life. Her little girl is not so little anymore. Molly has stopped visiting her grave every day after school. She's settled into a new routine with Evan, Bryan, Marjorie and even Pete and Judy surrounding and supporting her. She's got a boyfriend who Alex is only mildly suspicious of. He reminds her of all the boys she used to date – all the swishy-haired, pretty, safe boys whose initials she'd doodle on her tartan pencil case.
In her fantasies, they were so dashing, so dangerous and charming. In reality, she was disappointed to find them as dull as day-old dishwater. She wishes she could whisper in Molly's ear, tell her not to repeat her mother's mistakes. She wishes she could nudge her into giving a chance to the slouchy, portly, sandy-haired teen who always kept his distance at the tube station, grimacing every time she glanced his way. She's pretty sure that kid would give his right arm for a kind word from her daughter. He'd probably hurl himself in front of the train if it meant Molly would smile at him.
She can't tell Molly any of this though. She can't impart life lessons she never learned in her own short lifetime. She can only do small things for her. Like momentarily interrupt the electricity flow when she touches a socket with her wet hand. Like generate a noise to distract her when she's about to step out in front of a car. One day, when trailing Molly on a school trip, she saves a whole busload of kids when the breaks on the vehicle fail. No one in the real world ever knows that it was she who averted potential disaster but her heroic act garners considerable attention in her world. She's promptly promoted and given a team to watch over and command.
She requests Shaz be seconded to her team and immediately places Molly under her jurisdiction. Children of the deceased receive automatic protection until they reach full adulthood. As her mother, Alex can't be her official guardian but she can assign and oversee her protection. Her field work gives her ample opportunities to visit Molly herself, and anything she can't be there for, Shaz keeps her apprised of. Each night, they chat as they stroll down the street to The Railway Arms. Their strong shared work ethic ensures that they are always the last to arrive. Ray and Chris will already have claimed a corner table and got the drinks in. They'll be halfway through an argument over football or a packet of crisps or both. Viv often joins them. And Sam and Annie, though they must leave early to look after the children in their charge. Children can't be born in their world but they exist in heartbreaking numbers. Looking after these children is Annie's work. Watching over their still living parents is Sam's. Both are happy working for Children's Services in their different capacities. Just as Ray is happy to have landed a position with the Defence Department and Chris is ecstatic to be assigned to the low-stress arena of guarding top-ranking sports stars.
They don't often talk of Gene. But they don't avoid the topic either. Alex is glad of both, and appreciative, if a little squeamish, when uncertain looks are darted her way at the mention of their old Guv's name. She never tells the ever-popular Gene Hunt tales herself but she does love listening to them – both the ones she was there for and the ones she wasn't. She loves the reminders as much as she loves the extra puzzle pieces. And she laughs as hard as anyone when Ray or Chris stands up, imitating his resolute stance and gravelly voice. No one ever glances at the door during these reminiscences, no one ever expects him to walk in, join them, chastise them for cracking jokes at his expense. They know him too well for that. A toast is always launched in his name, nearly empty glasses clunk as drunken eyes drop in a moment of silence.
Afterwards, Shaz always asks if she's okay, offers to walk her home. Alex declines. She doesn't mind the memories or being alone with them. They're what sustain her, and those nights in the pub only help dust them off, make them shine a little brighter in her mind. Time and distance can do their worst. Because whenever she thinks she might have forgotten the smokey-whiskey smell of him or the pattern on his favourite tie or the exact intonation of his voice when he'd grit Bolly, her friends remind her. Or her dreams do. She doesn't need to sleep but she lets herself slip into unconsciousness every so often. Because her dreams take her back there, back to his world, back to him. As soon as she shuts her eyes, she's walking down those well-known corridors, corridors that feel more like home than any place in her current world does. She pushes through the swinging doors just like she never left, stalks past her old desk. She sees him through the glass, slumped in his chair, snakeskin boots propped on the desktop. He flicks through a file, sips at his drink and looks up when she steps into his office.
She's coming back, she tells him – she's working on it, as hard as she knows how. She tells him to wait for her, not to forget her. She tells him they have unfinished business to attend to. She tells him with a crack in her voice that she's sorry, so sorry. Gene Hunt always looks at her, inscrutable blue eyes glinting in the lamplight. He looks at her but never opens his mouth, never speaks back. In her dreams, Alex takes a breath, steps closer to his desk and begs him to blame her all he wants but – please, please – never forget her. Because she's coming back to him. She promises. Just as soon as she possibly can.
-x-
No one can blame you for walking away.
Too much rejection, no love injection.
Life can't be easy, it's not always swell.
Don't tell me truth hurts, little girl, 'cause it hurts like hell.
But down in the underground, you'll find someone true.
Down in the underground, a land serene, a crystal moon.
It's only forever, not long at all.
Lost and lonely, that's underground,
Underground…
He sits at his desk and sulks.
That's what she'd say he was doing anyway. She'd waggle her way into his inner sanctum, loll against his bookshelf or prop her scrawny derriere on one corner of his desk. She'd look down at him with an arched brow before pulling in a breath and telling him in her fine china accent exactly what was wrong with him. You're sulking, she'd tell him, you're acting like a big ole baby when you've got work to do, a purpose to fulfil here.
In his mind, he tells her to shut up. She can't talk about work and purpose when she left him here alone. He likes to forget about all the reasons she had to go, all the reasons he told her to go. He likes to forget about her begging him to let her to stay. Easier to be angry. Much easier to blame her for her desertion after she bloody joined him in toasting the two of them on countless bloody occasions. You and me, Bolly, you and me. By clinking her glass with his, he thought she understood – they were in this thing together. He was the Daddy Bear and she was the Mummy Bear, looking after all the little kiddie bears running amok in their charge. He's never had someone to share that burden with. Never wanted someone to. But he misses it now, isn't sure how to do the job he thought was second nature.
So yes, maybe he did need a sneaky drink, a little thinking time after everyone else had turned out their lamps and clocked off – what of it? Maybe he needed a bit of peace and blinking quiet just to get his head screwed on proper after she turned him all around, turned him into a different man, a man he hardly recognises anymore. He goes through his paces. He gets the job done. He doesn't much like his new recruit but that's nothing new. He didn't like Sam at first and he hated the very sight of the psychologically inclined D.I. Drake. Except for how he didn't. And anyway, these things change. He doesn't know why they change but they bloody-well do. He isn't handing this change well though. He knows that.
He doesn't let anyone sit at her desk or answer her phone. He keeps her name plaque in his desk drawer, taking it out and staring at it as he downs tumbler after tumbler of whiskey. He mutters to her under his breath, turns to meet her eyes, hear her voice in interviews. At least twice a day, he thinks he sees her walking down a street. But it's always just some woman wearing a big grey coat and red heels. Some bird with a perm and a white leather jacket slung over her bare shoulder. It's never the dead woman he wants it to be. It's never Alex Drake.
He figures he'll forget about her. Eventually. That's how this gig works. If the booze doesn't make it happen then time will eventually take care of the empty pit of a chest he wakes up with every damn day. He both wants it to happen and dreads it. Remembering her eyes, how they'd sometimes look at him, remembering how close the two of them came, it makes him want to throw things, crush stuff with his bare hands. It makes him want to destroy this place that he used to think was the whole universe. Until she came. Until she came, dismantled it then buggered off again. Left him behind knowing that there was more out there, more that he'd never have.
He pours himself another drink, spilling some on his desktop. His head is spinning nicely, he's feeling good and tipsy. He tilts back in his chair, props his boots on the corner of his desk and glares out over his kingdom. He tells himself he drinks to help the forgetting but actually he drinks to keep remembering. Which is why he doesn't do it down at the pub with the rest of the lads. He doesn't like their new joint anyway. He doesn't like the prissy little guy behind the bar or the constant noise from the sports station. He doesn't like the prices or the seats or the company. He prefers to stay and stare at that outer door, imagining her walking through it. Imagining her fixing her green-eyed gaze on him, hips swaying as she makes her way toward him with a singular purpose. That purpose no doubt being to mess with his head. To tell him he was wrong about something. To yell at him for being a bastard or a coward or some fucking fancy term he'd never heard of before. He'd about give his left arm for that to happen right now. Not his right arm, obviously. That's his shooting hand, he needs that hand. But the left one he'd kiss goodbye with a wink and a smile if it meant one more clash with old Bolly-Kecks. Especially if heated words devolved into some clothes-free wrestling on his desktop.
Gene sniffs and peers into the bottom of his glass, swirling the amber liquid round before sipping. He reckons he could bear it if he'd been left with some of his team, even one of them. But losing his team, his partner, his car and his boozer all in one fell swoop – not even Gary Cooper could take that. Keats thought it would break him. And he was trying real hard not to be broken. He'd promised himself he wouldn't be broken by it, not twenty-three hours out of the day. For twenty-three hours out of every day he'd play his part. He'd drive his swank new Merc. He'd wield his unlocked weapon. He'd tackle bastards and sidestep corruption and whip his lackeys into line. He'd make sure they worked through whatever they needed to work through so they could enter that door to the other side. A door he'd never walk through, a door that for all he knew led to paradise and the woman he loved. Twenty-three hours a day he'd do his duty, he'd serve his endless time. But the leftover minutes of the day were all his. To brood, to mourn, to remember and forget. To think about the friends he misses and lover he almost had.
For those final fifty-something minutes of each day, he will sit and he will drink. And he will sulk if he damn well wants to. Because there's no one round to stop him. No one here anymore who cares about the empty chasm beneath the formidable façade of the great Gene Hunt. So a flagon of his finest whiskey and passing out at his desk it is. The ghost Alex Drake be damned. She can say whatever she wants about him. She's only a ghost. He mutters it to himself as he shoves away his glass and reaches for the bottle instead. Say what you want, Bols, you're just a bloody ghost…
He's still muttering to her when he wakes. It feels like only a moment has passed but the sun angles through the blinds onto his face and he can smell the freshly brewing coffee that's been started by the new plonk at Granger's desk. Coffee. Fucking uncivilised bastards. A couple of the new brood are standing over him, muttering about whether to wake him and asking each other what the hell a Bolly is. His backbone crackles and his brain swooshes in his skull as he starts to straighten, a threat forming on his bone-dry lips. The newbies anticipate the threat and simply drop something on his desk, saying a messenger delivered it. They scatter before he can verbally eviscerate them or order them to fetch him a strong, sweet tea and some aspirin as quick as if their lives depended on it, which they may well do.
His threat dies though and his eyes crack open a little wider when they land on the delivery that Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dumb-dumb have brought in. Gene blinks at it, turns the label to face him. There's a note stuck to the neck, a simple white card. He stands, opens it, blinks his vision into focusing and reads. He looks up, scans the office and the outside corridors. Then he reads the note again:
Luigi's. 6:20pm.
Don't be late.
xo
He puts the note down, eyes the bottle, then picks up the note again. He reads it, pockets it. It's not her writing. And Luigi's is all boarded up, he knows it for a fact. He's walked past the place on more than one melancholy occasion, wishing he could go back in time. Wishing he could walk down the stairs into the warm, tomato-ey atmosphere and shout his friends a round. He picks up the bottle and examines it from its golden tip to its fancy seal to the bold letters that spell out: BOLLINGER.
Granger's replacement enters and starts telling him about a case, a snatch and grab gone bad on the corner of Brook Drive and Hayles Street. But he's already heading for the door. Screw waiting 'til 6:20. He's going now. He has to find out, he's not spending all day wondering. Hoping. Could be— he doesn't know what it could be. Could be anything. Nothing. A trick. He unhooks his coat from the rack, glances round his office, runs a hand through his unkept hair. He grabs his keys. Doubles back, grabs the bottle of Bolly. Then brushes by the plonk on his way out the door.
TBC...