SPOILER ALERT up to and including the end of Series 2. I hadn't seen Series 3 when I got the idea for (and wrote most of) this.
WARNINGS for character death and the sort of general brain-screwery that happens when one reads about or watches AtA or LoM.
A/N: Fic that episode tags and doesn't tell you bothers me. (Like I remember every detail of Series 3, ep. 2!) So: this fic starts right after Alex Drake has confessed that she is "like Sam." Gene has Alex's tape; Chris has betrayed them all, and the Operation Rose people will soon contact him again; and Summers has shot his younger self. There. You know everything you have to know.
Eleven Days in the Life of Gene Hunt (and one in Sam Tyler's):
"From the future," Gene repeats, after Bolly has gone away, all bright-eyed and heartbroken-looking. "From the bloody… future." He stabs his cig out on one of the three ashtrays that pepper the top of his desk, and looks after her.
He can't believe it: he's gutted. He looks over at the memorial picture of Sammy-boy and his chest tightens just that little, like it always does. One of these days, he's going to have a heart attack, and it's not going to be chasing some villain or manhandling a suspect into the clink, it's going to be from looking up at good old Gladys there on a bad day.
From the future! Where did that come from? Did she think he was accusing her of being a spy, like Sammy before it all went down in the tunnel? Yes, Gene, and I'm from the future just like him as well. Only it hadn't come off that way, had it, tears in her eyes and all? Not a trace of fucking sarcasm in her, not for once.
Thing is, he's always known there was sommat a little off about his Bolly, but he never thought she'd be so stone-cold, to parrot poor Tyler's old story with tears in her eyes.
The question is: where'd she hear it? Who'd remember Sam not so fondly, maybe, and be stupid enough to think his antics were a jolly old joke to tell 'round the campfires?
And the answer is: Raymondo.
Gene corners Ray at Luigi's, wine in one hand, waiting until Chris and Shaz are occupied with wedding plans and the rest are at darts. "So, Raymondo," he says, "always thought we had the same priorities. Thought we had our ducks in a row."
"We do, Guv." Ray looks up from the dart game, puzzled, but then that's his usual expression.
"Thought we didn't go mouthing off about the dead."
Ray looks disturbed, but keeps his voice as low as Gene's kept his. "Don't, Guv. Wouldn't."
"Not even if the subject was Sammy?"
Ray pauses. "All right, so maybe once I told a few stories to Kirtching when 'e said Chris was the dizziest div on the force, but that were years ago. I wouldn't – I wouldn't say nothing against him. He was a good copper, saved my life more n' once." His gaze darkens. "Who's been talking about Tyler?"
Gene claps him on the back. "Never you mind, Ray. Drink up."
Ray lifts his glass and gives his dimmest grin, but there's a flash of calculation in his eyes. All this talking of the past has made Gene forget that Ray is older and cannier than he used to be. He figures Ray'll divine who's been sullying Sammy-boy's name soon enough, and then Drake had best watch herself.
Gene goes to Annie next, though he knows he probably shouldn't.
The house is nice, on a quiet little street on the trendier side of Manchester, the side that is making a bit of a recovery – patched brickwork here, new fence there, lots of windowbox gardens – but Gene cannot help but think that it's too big for just one girl: that she and Sammy had plans, once upon a time.
Annie answers the door with a cup of steaming tea in one hand, and for a moment, her face goes entirely blank in a way that makes Gene unsure of his welcome. Then her features brighten in delighted surprise. "Guv!" she exclaims. "Come in, I was just having a cuppa. Would you like one?"
Gene agrees and ascends the porch to enter the house: modern on the inside despite its ancient brick façade, all cool lines and monochrome palate, with a few homey touches that save it from being austere.
Gene sees Sam's hand in all of it, and decides Annie hasn't changed a thing. He's not sure what to make of that, but he seats himself at the middle of Annie's grey couch.
Pictures of Sam are everyplace, here. There's one over the mantel, he and Annie at an amusement park, Sam wearing that smug little smile that said he knew just how lucky he was to have Annie by his side. A few more are scattered throughout the room, all black-and-white and artsy.
Annie returns with the cuppa and another bright smile, happy to see him.
"So, er… how're you getting on, luv?" he inquires.
Annie's expression doesn't retreat to the staid lines of grief he unconsciously anticipates. Her smile goes a bit softer, though. "Quite well, Guv, thank you," she replies. "Finished the doctorate last spring. You ought to tell Ray, he'll go arse over teakettle." She sips the tea, demure-like, and it surprises a laugh out of Gene.
"I will," he promises.
"Psychology was difficult," she says when he doesn't continue, "but I think my work with you and Sam and the others helped me understand the human mind better than I knew."
"Well, hard not to pick some of that psychoanalsey-whatsis with Tyler around," Gene says, forgetting that Annie's supposed to be a grieving widow – could be because she isn't playing the part very well.
She laughs. "I wouldn't put it that way, but it took me the five years instead of six or seven. I've got my first steady spate of clients. Things are going well. Converted the basement into an office last year with some money we had saved away…" She trails off and for the first time looks… uncomfortable. "Sam was right there with me."
Gene doesn't say much about Sam Tyler's supportive nature or way with women, or even about whether a woman should be living alone and taking strangers – quite possibly, mad strangers – into her basement-office. Annie's a grown girl and she can defend herself better than most. Likely has a weapon down in that basement of hers, worst to worst.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst: that's Annie Tyler all over.
"You 'aven't… talked to anyone 'bout Sammy, have you?"
Annie looks up and blinks at him from behind the tea steam. "Like who?"
"Like… gotten a psych bird of your own, maybe? To… talk things out with."
Annie's brows climb, and her eyes widen. "I don't talk very much about Sam," she says, still blinking those big blues at him. "Sam was… unique, and I don't think there are many people who could understand him the way you and I do – did do," she corrects.
Gene stands, and Annie follows, a beat behind.
"What's this about, Guv?" she inquires, following him to the door.
He turns at the doorway. "Nothing for you to worry pretty little head over, Flash-Knickers."
Annie's expression hardens. "It's about Sam. I worry about Sam." She opens a closet and grabs a hat and coat for the crisp spring weather.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"What does it look like?" she inquires, doing up her buttons. "I'm going with you to the station. Been wanting to meet this Shaz anyway, what with Chris one step from marrying her."
"Don't suppose I could stop you," he replies.
Annie doubles over with laughter when she sees the car, then straightens with immediate – and counterfeit, Gene knows counterfeit – penitence.
"Perfectly good automobile," Gene grumbles, opening the door for her before sliding 'round to his own side. "Turns like a dream."
"Goes very, very fast," Annie agrees, buckling herself in. "Guv, have you heard of Sigmund Freud?"
Matter of fact, Gene has, but he knows better than to open his mouth around an educated bird. He drives slow and careful-like, though, to the station.
Annie is received with much fanfare, accepting crushing hugs from Ray and Chris. When she pulls away, Shaz is glaring daggers.
"Hullo," Annie says to the young policewoman, "I'm Chris's older sister, Annie." She sticks out her hand. "Or might as well be. We worked together in Manchester."
Shaz looks relieved, and takes Annie's hand in her own. "You must be WPC Tyler," she says. "I mean –"
"Doctor Tyler," Annie corrects, and the entire station hoots as one entity. Gene looks around and his DI is, as seems to be her habit of late, nowhere to be found.
"Find DI Drake," he tells Ray under his breath, and Ray nods and disappears. Someone procures a bottle of whiskey – and if the whiskey looks familiar, Gene doesn't mention it – and pours Annie a shallow glass. They surround her and begin the usual litany of boasts and brags, exaggerating the danger and the derring-do and in general making policing sound like a bloody two-penny dreadful. By the time Drake is procured, poncy white jacket, heeled boots and injured expression an' all, Annie's grin is knowing and her eyes are dancing. Gene tries to slip away without her, but she calls, "gov!" and follows he and Drake into his office.
Gene reaches forward to tug the blinds down and turns.
Drake seems harder than she did this morning, but beneath that shell, she's just as wounded as before, which is what puzzles Gene the most. Could she be as mad as Tyler was? Or could she be so self-important that she truly believes no matter what drivel she spouts, he'll buy it, hook, line and sinker?
That last sounds more like his Bolly.
"Doctor Annie – " Annie begins, but Bol's eyes flare and she reaches out with both hands to take Annie's in her own.
"Annie!" she exclaims with a queer grin. "Sam's Annie?"
Annie smiles, politely. "You knew my husband?"
A number of expressions pass across Drake's face. He can see the lie form in her eyes; her lips part to convey it. Then she slumps, shakes her head and swallows. She straightens, chin up, and he's startled by a reflexive sense of pride in his DI. "In 2006, yes."
Gene doesn't know he's about to do it until it's done, and Bolly is pressed up against his filing cabinet with his arm across her throat. He isn't pressing hard, but the threat is more than enough.
Weirdly, she laughs. "Now this is familiar," she rasps, blinking up at him.
"How dare you say…" Gene begins. "How dare you talk about…" He's not even sure where he's going with this, but Annie is nodding in a surprisingly calming way, and one slim hand is slipping between he and Alex, and before he knows it, he's backing off. Gene slumps down in his chair behind the desk while the birds do some sort of communion that involves mostly widened eyes and vague shoulder-scrunches.
"Sorry, Guv," Alex says, pushing her hands into her trouser pockets. "I didn't know you'd react this way. I'd never have said."
"But you're not taking it back," Gene said, peering over his hand.
She shakes her head, lips pursed in that noncy way of hers. "No."
Annie leads her to a chair and perches on the side of Gene's desk like she owns it. "I'm guessing you were Sam's therapist," she says, gently.
Bolly's head snaps up in surprise. "I – well, in a way. I was doing research on trauma in the police. I got all of his statements on tape and I – that's how I knew what to expect. Who Chris and Ray and – and Gene were."
"An' you listened to those tapes," Annie said sweetly.
"Well – yes."
"Over and over again," Annie said.
"Dozens of times, probably. Some parts I could quote word-for-word. I didn't know if I was mad, in a coma, or back in time."
Annie smiled faintly, the lines in her face drawn. "It's not all that uncommon," she said, "for a psychiatrist to be drawn into the delusions of her patient, especially a patient as brilliant as Sam. Sam might've convinced a lot more people, if he'd tried."
"Sam was too worried about contaminating the timeline, of changing things. He was a good man, a good officer," Bolly-Knickers says, earnest, "and if this were all real, he didn't want to spoil things. But there's no chance of that, you see. I just watched a man shoot himself."
Annie startles, and Gene rockets up from behind his desk. "You what?! You had best explain, DI Drake!"
Alex shakes her head. "No, no, you don't understand. He's like me, out of the frame of time, and he – he shot his younger self. Summers, Gov." Tears are hanging in her lashes now, and Gene knows it's gone beyond a stunt, beyond a cruel trick, and fallen firmly into the confines of raving mad.
"Sam didn't try to convince others because he knew in his heart that he was wrong," Annie says, intent. "You must've met Sam when he was younger, recovering from that blow to the head. But he woke up to us, he came home to me, and he…" She pauses, gathers herself. "He was ours."
"I'm sorry," Drake says, and something seems to go out of her, like a light flickering to black. Her shoulders slump and she rises, curtains snapping down behind her eyes. "I won't talk about 2006 again. I suppose I didn't realize how upsetting it might be for..." She thumbs the incipient tears from under her eyes and strides to the door. "If that's all?"
Gene isn't sure what to say for what feels like the first time in a long time. He feels like he'd just had a conversation with Sammy, in more ways than one: "You always do this to me - I run in certain and walk out confused!" He'd been so sure that Alex was playing some sort of dodgy pool, saying she was like Sam, and now…
"It happens all the time," Annie was saying, sadly. "More than the psychological community would like to admit, I think. Talking to someone with persistent delusions like Sam had… and playing his tapes over and over… if DI Drake was vulnerable, then –"
"That's enough, Cartwright," he snaps, waving one hand, then freezes. "Sorry. Tyler."
She shrugs and smiles. "If nothing else, it's reminded me why I quit policing, sir," she replies.
Gene rises and follows after Bolly before he can change his mind.
Bolly has somehow taken the five minutes he stayed talking to Annie and parlayed it into a presentation to the entire station, complete with flip-charts, and black-and-white photocopies of London maps. "Chris?"
Chris sidles forward, still in disgrace, and begins talking haltingly about the three routes that the bouillion truck may take. Suddenly, Bolly's eyes light. "King Douglas Lane!" she exclaims. "That's it, that's the one, I studied it in…"
Gene's expression must be thunderous, because it draws her to a stammering halt.
"That is… I studied something very like this at school. I believe, very strongly, that it will be King Douglas Lane."
Gene eyes her and she rolls hers, and for a moment it's just like it was before he popped that tape in – Pandora's Box, that was. The moment he heard her voice, he should've stopped it, he'd bloody well known it then. "We'll take the most likely route, thank you, DI Drake."
Annie's come out of his office to listen. She touches his elbow with the tips of her fingers. "She's different to Sam," Annie says, looking up at him sadly.
"I know she is."
"She looks sane from the outside," Annie says, nodding over at Bols, who is organizing the men into teams: Well, let's leave at least one at King Douglas Lane… Occasionally she shoots Gene a sort of betrayed look, but that's all there is, no shouting to the loo or demanding of Ray what part of her subconscious he hails from. All neat and sewn-up is his Bolly.
Sam could never hold it all in.
It's all gone wrong, suddenly and terrifically wrong. Gene presses down on Bolly's stomach, but the blood seeps up from between his fingers. "No, no, no, no! C'mon, Bolly-Knickers, you're more stubborn than that!"
She blinks up at him. "Sorry, Guv. Going home," she says, and her lids are flickering, and no.
This will not stand.
"Going on holiday, Bols?"
She smiles up at him, transparent, fond, and Gene thinks how could I have thought she didn't –
"Can't take you," she says, patting his hand sloppily. "Sorry."
"Why not?" he demands, and he's no longer sure what they're arguing over, just that he's got to keep her talking. "Aren't I good company?"
"Oh!" Alex says, and the tears finally spill over. "The best! If I had to be stuck here, Gene, I'm glad it was with you, you and Chris and Shaz and even Ray! But I've got to go home to Molly now."
Molly's dead, he realizes with a wash of cold up and down his spine. And he said you say you have a daughter but I never see her… he can see how the ability to turn back time might appeal to someone who's lost a child. Sometimes he thinks about his brother, and how things might've turned out different. He can see how Sam's story might appeal… All the mistakes he'd fix!
He'd step right out in front of that bullet, for starters, or else turn his gun on himself rather than hurt her.
"Would you?" Alex is staring up at him, and her eyes seem suddenly clear. "Would you have done that, Gene?"
"Sure, in the arm, like," he replies, keeping the pressure on. "Where's the bleedin' ambulance is what I want to know."
"That's nice," she says, and closes her eyes.
"What d'you mean, there's not a body?" Gene says, and he's surprised he can even hear it the way the blood is pounding through his ears.
Annie is standing beside him, cold and white-faced, professional suit and heels lending her presence some much-needed authority, her fingers hovering near his elbow again as though she means to hold him back.
The nurse shakes her head helplessly. "We removed the bullet, but it was too late; the young lady had lost too much blood. I supposed someone from the morgue had taken her downstairs, but they say they haven't got the body."
Annie steps forward, full of would-be calm. "Do you think that perhaps she could have been moved, mistakenly, to another room?"
The nurse wrings her hands. "I'm so sorry, this has never, ever happened before. Funeral services sometimes removes bodies from hospital, but they're double-and triple-checked."
"Well, obviously there's been an error somewhere!" Gene thunders, smashing his fist down on top of some piece of sterile blah-blah that goes flying across the room: Annie flinches but does not stop him. "You bloody planks've lost the body of a police officer!"
"We're – I'm so dreadfully sorry, sir!" the nurse squeaks, and flees, likely in search of a supervisor.
"Or security," Gene mutters, raking a hand through his hair.
"Guv," Annie says, quiet.
Just like that, he calms. At least on the outside. "Yeah, Flash-Knickers. All right." He cracks his knuckles. "Let's talk to morgue one more time."
But Alex isn't in morgue. Alex, on further searching, isn't in any of the hospital rooms. Alex hasn't been taken by the funeral homes in the area, no matter how far-flung Chris's and Ray's search becomes: short hair, curly-like. Big eyes. Green, er, blue? Wears a white jacket, though perhaps they took that off o' the scene. Heeled boots, yeah. Pretty. Pause for a smack of gum. No? Well, thanks. Next 'un, Ray.
It's like she never existed at all.
Gene curls up at home with a large bottle of scotch. He cannot face Luigi's tonight, and the idea of staying at a precinct devoid of Bolly sends him racing for the Quattro and home. It's why he moved from Manchester, after all: he couldn't face those empty corridors without Sammy.
How can he have lost his two DIs two years apart? "Is that the going rate these days?" he asks himself, pouring the first cup of scotch and downing it in an instant. When he falls to sleep, he's thinking of time travel.
What he wouldn't give to try this whole day over again. He'd turn his gun on himself instead of shoot Bolly-Knickers.
Alex. Alex Drake.
Sam Tyler.
Both from the sodding future.