Here we go.... my first fic here on the website to end all fanfiction websites! This is just a little bit of Gene/Alex angsty stuff, written in between s1 and s2, and not really set in any certain time. Kind of an AU.
I'm not sure about the present tense. I like the urgency it creates, but realise it can get pretty annoying. Hopefully it works well enough here.
Crit is welcomed, but be gentle! I'm new to posting this stuff publicly, and I don't generally consider writing to be my forte.
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The moment she finds the place, she knows what she has to do. She knows what it means. This is the one place that's the same in her world as this one. Absolutely the same, it gave her deja vu the first time... a thick, sick kind of panicked feeling that she'd been there before, because she had. She went back a few times to accept it, push the panic away, and cement the idea.
She thinks that the plan is going to take some trouble, but for once he doesn't put up an argument. For once, she tells him "I have something I have to show you.", no further explanation, and still he follows her. There must have been an edge to her voice, some pheromone signal. He doesn't even offer the usual back-chatter.
Once there, things start to go less smoothly.
They stand out, blue and red, against the background of rust and grey -- light-mottled, clanking, cool and metallic-smelling. The corrugated floor rocks slowly beneath her feet as she tries to remember where it was supposed to go from here.
"What's this then?" When he sees the mattress, he gives an ugly half-grin. "Still, if you wanted, we could have gone back to my place. It may lack the atmosphere, but it's a little more..." he casts about for the right word "Intimate."
This is where her planning stopped. She had never thought that it would be so easy to convince him, she thought that would be the hard part and the rest would be quick, simple. She was so excited, so nervous, that she didn't think it out.
She's got her back half turned to him, standing in the low entranceway, and her gun is out. She's itchily fingering the metal, tapping her foot, licking at the corner of her mouth. He's noticed her mood, that look in her eye that she always gets before she says something crazy.
"Right then. What did you want to show me?" he asks, dropping the joke, already feeling the wrongness of the situation. His instinct says to play along, but she doesn't even reply. She doesn't hear him.
The moments stretch out before he says, softly softly, "Give us the gun, Drake."
He moves towards her to reach for it but she anticipates, pointing it at him, at herself, seemingly unable to decide on a target. She eventually directs its cold precision to the ceiling, but remains tense and ready to move. Suddenly he thinks it better to avoid sudden movement. He thinks he knows what this is. He really doesn't like it.
"Is this what you mean by leaving, then?" circuits are ticking closed in his head. "All this time, your constant rants about 'going home'? You're just gonna shoot yourself in the head?" Silence from her, the soft sound of water and the hard sound of chains in the distance. "You're gonna make me watch?"
"No." She mutters, trying to buy herself some time to think. She definitely should have left the gun for last.
"Jesus, Bolly, you must really have something against me!"
"No!" She says it again, more forcefully, spitting it at him. But suddenly she's calm. "No, no you see... because Sam didn't kill himself to get out."
Sam. It almost takes him a second to recognize the name, it just being the last one he expected to hear here, in this situation. "What, Tyler?" The connection seems so incredibly obvious to her, but he just doesn't understand. "What are you--"
"No, see, he didn't kill himself." She repeats it, reinforcing the facts. "He killed you." She feels calmer now, better, her hands have nearly stopped shaking. She smiles with the relief of her breakthrough. Gene stares at her blankly, and then, in a reaction unexpected for someone upon learning that they're about to be shot, groans and sits down on the dirty mattress in the middle of the barge, dropping his head into his hands.
She would expect fear, she would expect rage, she always expects shouting from him anyway, but instead she gets a lingering silence. When he says something, it's clear, quiet, slow.
"I've been fooling myself." He sighs "Because I like you. You're a good copper... smart for a bird. So I've been ignoring the fact that you" He looks up at her with narrowed eyes, and finally a reaction she can accept. "are a complete. LOON."
She just shakes her head, not exactly with disagreement, but more as if shooing off a small, annoying fly buzzing about her inside brain. Then she points the gun at him.
"You need help, Alex." He begs "And I'm no good at--"
"If this were different..." She interrupts him, and this is what this whole talk is for, why she didn't leave the gun for last, or for first. She wants him to understand. She wants his blessing. She's not really sure how to ask, though. "I like this place. I really, actually do. No matter how... wrong and dirty and... and different it seems. It's so simple!" A giggle escaped from her chest, almost frantic. "A caricature, really. I could stay, if it were different."
The gun has been dropping again slowly, slowly, with each word, aimed more and more at the ground. With a slight movement from Gene, an uncomfortable shift, it snaps back up.
"But this is about Molly!" She explains, furiously. "This is... is about survival. You can understand that, can't you?"
He hangs his head again, not even bothering to catch it, bone tired.
It was taking so long. She should have just done it, not even stopped to say anything... to try to explain, to apologize. It would have been easier for both of them. She shifts her weight from foot to foot in a nervous dance.
"Alex."
"Don't make his harder for me!" She begs, and it comes out almost as one word, and her face is twisted up like a tissue.
"Harder for YOU? Bloody hell, Bolls, I'm the one at gunpoint here!"
She strides forward, gun still out, presses it to his head above his left eye. She tucks her hand between his coat and shirt, pulls out his own gun, lowers it to the floor and slides it along the metal behind her.
He can see her face up close now, too close almost to focus on, with red lines in her eyes and salt crushed in her eyelashes. He marvels at it. He hadn't seen her crying. She gives him a broken sort of look, and presses a kiss to his cheek.
He freezes, gut sinking fast, suddenly losing his deep set subconscious certainty that this is a joke, really, a minor breakdown, nothing she can't be talked out of. Suddenly realising that he missed his chance to stop it. No, and she's throwing her weight back, throwing herself forcefully away from him, nearly falling backwards as she tries to get away from what she had to do. But the gun is up, up, straight up, unwavering now.
He's trying to stand, to gain his feet, to follow her, to grab her and force some sense into her, when the hammer strikes.
One flash of light.