Title: So Do I

Author: Qewaye

Characters: Alex/The Clown (one-off/drabble, whatever you call it)

Synopsis: Alex gets a late-night visit from the Clown after the events of Episode 8.

Disclaimer: Sue me and I will set my Attack Cat on you.

The night was still but full of noise beyond her window as Alex tried to sleep, she had shifted and turned over constantly - her mind still numbed by the effects of the two bottles of cheap red wine she had downed to try and kill the pain of remembering the events of the day.

A concerned - if horribly-drunk - Gene had helped her up the stairs and left her on the sofa with her jacket slung over her. She'd walked around the flat after waking a few times, haunted by the image of her father's elegant features, transforming into that unearthly white face - she'd started, wide awake and her head throbbing.

Finally settled, exhaustion set in and her eyelids started to droop, her mind was too tired to torture her anymore. But after a moment of strange, whispering sound like a breath of air and voices murmering, she heard the tinkle of childish bells and a flash of white light crept from the corner of her gaze.

Alex's eyes widened in a split second of horror. Unreality was back.

The Clown stood just across from the coffee table, staring silently at her. His white shape backlit by a strange icy glow - the beautiful costume he wore glittering with a thousand tiny stars like sunlight on snow.His head tilted sharply, those painted red lips curved into a two-second smile.

Somewhere, she heard her father's voice whisper her name...her heart constricted with grief. No matter what he'd done, the length he'd been driven to, she still loved him. Alex gripped the edge of the sofa, her own lips creased in the pain of her emotions - a whisper of acceptance creeping from them. "Dad"

"Don't be long...Alex." The Clown's deep, distorted voice seemed to come from all around her. She watched him, thoughts racing through her head.

The moment when Tim died...he was a suicide and a murderer in taking her mother with him, the lapsed worshipper in her hinted...had he been cursed? Transformed into the creature she now watched? His deep love for her mother, and for her, had tipped to the worst possible extreme and become destructive in his obsession to keep their world perfect, safe from Evan forever. What would have happened to him if Caroline had taken her away? If she'd left him, as Alex suspected, he would have been emotionally destroyed. Perhaps he would have taken his own life anyway.

He was doomed - a good man, a fighter for truth and justice, the gentle teller of stories and her beloved daddy...corrupted, vengeful and destroyed by loving too much.

The Clown continued to look at her in silent, almost compassionate curiosity. Sinister in his beauty like a being from another world...a dead being, studying the near-dead in fascination. She understood his expression now. He was not there to destroy her, he was there waiting for her to slip from life and to usher her away under his protection...an Angel of Death.

She thought of his warning, that he would take someone...the maniacal laughter she had screamed over.This was her father but her father appearing through the lense of the sin he had committed. But he had warned her, after all, his scream of her name had woken her from the bullet, he warned her about Shaz - even if he had laughed at her over the cacophony of bells - and he'd given her flashes of insight. Was he giving her chances and why?

Her voice almost broke with heartache as she spoke again, hardly daring to breathe too deep in case he vanished. "Why?"

"No matter how bad things seem now, all will be well in the land of Narnia...forever!" The Clown said in a sing-song tone in Tim's voice and winked, his form shimmered...he moved like a patch of light crossing the room - fading from sight.

Her breathing returned to normal. He doesn't understand, like a man trying to hear a voice in a storm. He wants me to die...I can't yet...I have to live, to go home to Molly, I have to be with my little girl. Alex lay back almost weeping with desperation. "I have to be with my little girl..."

Tim's sombre, longing whisper...full of misunderstanding, came to her on the stuffy air of the dim flat.

"So...do I."