Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine. They belong to Kudos, the Beeb, and the actors respectively.
This is my first Ashes fiction, and the first thing I've written at all in about a year. So comments and constructive criticism greatly appreciated! (also I'm having issues with paragraph spacing on here.. so it might look horrendous, sorry about that, and I hope it works.)
London, Millennium Bridge, 2008.
Evan White.
"Shakira's rubbish."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yup. Lily Allen, ooh, or Amy Winehouse. They're way better." Evan turns to look at his goddaughter, eyeing her suspiciously and reciting a paranoid prayer to himself that the twelve year old isn't about to descend into a life of drugs, eyeliner and rock & roll.
"Not Britney, then?" A condescending snort is the only reply. Molly Drake was in serious danger of turning into her mother. Just as he's considering how to voice this particular musing, Evan catches sight of the three figures standing at the end of the bridge, waiting, for him? He thinks so, when his eyes lock with the central figure the other man's expression certainly changes, but to what, confused, shocked, speechless? He finds himself slowing as he approaches them, taking Molly's hand. This causes the young girl to look up at him with a quizzical expression.
"Evan."
"Gene Hunt? It's, certainly been a while." The man is far from how Evan remembers him, the last time they'd seen one another had been in the early nineties, a glance shared briefly across a church on a suffocating summer morning, a solemn nod of shared condolences, and that was that. For his sins, Evan's mind had been elsewhere. Alex, at Glastonbury, off growing up; Hunt and the rest of his 'team' were a force to be reckoned with and, as guilty as it made him feel, even in this situation their presence made him feel hideously overbearing towards Alex. Now, a different man stands in his path. The years, years spent alone, have taken their toll. His silvery hair is sparse, and his right hand is wrapped firmly around a cane that he appears to be leaning far too heavily on. In fact, the only blatant similarities are the sweeping black coat and leather gloves. Evan feels Molly grip his hand tighter, and lean in towards his grey suit.
"Right, so it 'as. Who's this little lady?"
"Hunt, what do you w –"
"Hello, I'm Molly. It's my birthday." She steps forward with a hand held out, bathing in the limelight and articulating herself perfectly. If he didn't know better, Evan would expect a curtsey. It wouldn't make a difference however, as Gene's attention is already back on him.
"There's somethin' I gotta do today, and I need yer help." His two companions share a pained glance, even with his health in such a state it's clear this is the first time the word 'help' has crossed the great man's lips. Curiouser and curiouser.
"How did you know I'd be here?" The huff of boredom from his side reminds him of Molly's presence, and it unnerves him to find his past and his present pushed together like this.
"I didn't. She said you would just before she, yunno. Before she died." Hunt fumbles over his words, is the Manc Lion crumbling before his eyes?
"What do you mean?"
"Drake," Molly perks up, "load a' bollocks, prob'ly, always was. She 'ad this thing she wanted me to do, 'cause she knew she wouldn't make it. If you turn up 'ere, today, then you gotta take me up the river to an old boat, Prince Charlie, and stop 'er getting shot. Load a' bollocks, as usual, fruitcake."
"But, you're still doing what she asked?" Evan isn't sure how he's still maintaining conversation. So many memories are rushing around his head in this split second that he can't even decipher what he's thinking. Everything fits together somehow, but none of it makes sense, he feels as if he's trying to crack the code to a forth dimension, it's there but it just isn't possible.
"I said I would. I will. And you're 'ere, so you will an' all."
"Molly, is it?" The woman behind Hunt speaks now in an East London drawl, and she smiles down at the child. "Do you want to come with me, 'till your Granddad? Er, Evan? 'Till he's finished?" Molly looks towards her godfather expectantly, receiving a nod to confirm the instruction.
London, Flat above Luigi's, 1981.
Alex Drake.
I suppose that my imagination, the deepest darkest depths of my 'depraved psyche,' should inevitably have engineered this conclusion, due to the workings of a woman's mind from around the age of fifteen. Mine being no exception, certainly.
For the first time since I landed "here," I make absolutely no move to second-guess the scene before me. I fact, I make no move at all. I'm rooted to the spot, puppeteered by the gaze that encapsulates every fleeting thought I've had over the last few months. Those blue eyes, I've never noticed their startling colour before, punctuated by growing flecks of grey, the age of stress.
The silence in the room is deafening, I've forgotten who delivered the parting shot, it ceases to matter as we're suddenly conscious of the eternity we've been lost in this reverie. Some distant urge suggests that one of us owes the other a slap, but it's irrelevant. All that matters is this blinding sexual epiphany that lies before us.
The alcohol induced, furious fuck we're expecting is lost to the realms of chance. He places one hand on the back of my head, clumsy fingers interlacing soft curls, and the other rests supportively across my spine, cradling my refined frame. I fall slowly back onto the sofa within his grasp and control, and his kiss, so delicate and so profound, entangles my confused mind into a state that might just reach deeper than lust.
London, Living Hell, 1992.
Gene Hunt.
Twelve years ago, watching Tyler sink a Cortina, himself, and Annie Cartwright in the Irwell, he'd felt pretty sodding useless. His mind floats back to that day, briefly, as the only other experience he can relate to this. But hell, this is a million times worse, this is his fault. If he'd just let her have her way instead of baiting her, she wouldn't have stormed off in a rage determined to prove her point. If he'd just got over his stupid bloody male pride he'd have been out there following her, saving her bloody bacon, instead of sending Ray. If he wasn't such a twat then he wouldn't be sitting here, on a recorded phone call, transfixed by a dodgy video link to a scene that makes him want to throw up.
"What do you want?"
"Naa, no bargain. That's not my style, Hunt, you know that. You ruined my empire, it's my turn to ruin yours. Thought you could watch." Gene has become oblivious to the members of Special Branch working frantically around him, trying to clock a location for the scene. He's already swallowed his pride, now as far as he's concerned he's the only one in the room, staring at the screen, clutching the phone, unblinking.
"Neary, listen to me, you bas –" Dead line. Now only the screen links them, the sound's fuzzy and the voices are hard to decipher.
Two figures are pictured side by side, identically tied to a set of banisters. On the left, Ray, he struggles endlessly, fuming at the situation and refusing to accept defeat. On the right, her body stretched a little further as the stairs are higher, Alex, with her head drooped so he can't see her eyes and her tousled, loose perm covering the rest of her face. She looks so limp and lifeless, if it wasn't for the shaking sobs he'd be sure she wasn't conscious.
"Alright sweetheart, remember me? An' that bright idea you 'ad that got me shot?" Gene starts to feel dizzy as he watches, helplessly, and as Simon Neary raises the barrel of his gun to Bolly's head. Her tears change, they start to become more desperate and he hates the damn inevitability of it all.
"Bastard!" – Ray, and with a kick and a rip he launches himself at Neary, half freeing himself from his restraints and pushing the crime lord backwards, causing a stray shot to be fired into the ceiling. Alex leaps at the shock and snaps her tearstained, gagged face upwards so Gene finally gets a glimpse. Her wide-eyed foreboding look towards Ray tells him she knows what's coming, and a second shot blows the Detective Sergeant's face off, reducing her to frantic tears once again.
"Please, please," – Alex, and it tears Gene's heart to pieces.
"Got him." His head snaps up and the scene around him in CID pounces into action, they've got a location, and they sure as hell aren't catching this bastard without him there.
She's in his arms when she dies, on the floor of a grotty inner city house in East London, in a pool of her own blood. A knife had been plunged into her gut leaving her to bleed slowly to death, alongside her commerade. Gene strokes her hair, kisses her forehead, and lets salty tears fight their way indignantly down his cheeks.
She says she loves him, in a bloodless whisper.
He says it too, chokes it up.
She asks him a favour, something he could for her in sixteen years time.
He says yeah, whatever you want Bolls, and he pulls her body to his own and grips it tightly until her warmth starts to fade and a hand upon his shoulder pulls him firmly away.
London, BMW somewhere on the South Bank, 2008.
Evan White.
"Should a' got yer'self an E-type."
"Pardon?"
"The car, if you've got enough dosh for this tin can you could a' got yer'self something decent."
"Is this your attempt at polite small talk, Mr Hunt?"
The DCI grunts in reply, and Evan can't quite work out if his moody glower is due to his embarrassment in having to ask for help, finding himself in the passenger seat for once, or if he's still this pained when he thinks about Alex. Whatever the reason, Evan finds himself feeling a touch guilty for rattling the guy. He turns his attention back to the Sat Nav quickly, and then fixes his eyes firmly on the road.
"The woman I left Molly with –"
"Shaz, DI Skelton. The kid'll be fine with her and her bloke. Anyway, aren't you a bit past it to be –"
"She's not mine." Maybe uttered a little too indignantly, as Hunt raises his eyebrows towards Evan. "She's Alex's daughter."
"The Price kid? Christ on a bike, another one of them on the radar. We're getting old. Christ, little Molly Price."
"Drake."
"What?"
"Well, when Alex married,"
"What?"
Coincidence. It was just a coincidence, the eccentric DI Alex Drake had been killed on the job sixteen years ago, how could that have any bearing on his goddaughter's short marriage to arsehole American, Robert Drake. Why was this bothering him? More to the point, why was he partaking in this wild goose chase fiasco when he should be at home with Molly, on her birthday, comforting the poor kid after she was held at gunpoint this morning? Yet, he doesn't turn the car around or tell Gene Hunt he's losing the plot. Maybe this makes him the most insane man in the vicinity considering he'd been pretty certain he was in control of his marbles until about fifteen minutes ago.
"Can I help you?"
"You were gorgeous."
"No. But if you did know me?"
"I'd say follow your instincts."
"My boss' daughter's called Alex."
"I know!"
At the time his first exchange with the woman had seemed utterly bizarre, and had she not been strikingly beautiful he probably wouldn't have given her the time of day, he's shamed to admit. Yet, in hindsight, it seems so familiar. Why can't he picture her face? The tight jeans, the white jacket, the bouffant of untamed perm, but after all these years he can't see her eyes anymore. Why is that?
"Ha! This is so eighties."
"What?!"
It's as if there's a word or a solution on the tip of his tongue but he just can't pluck it from the air although it feels so close, and the harder he tries the further away it sinks, damn! What is this? His phone trills in his jacket pocket, breaking the silence, and all of a sudden his attention is back on the road.
"Well, answer it you bloody Nancy!" Hunt is still slightly terrifying and Evan obliges with a pointed glare, balancing one hand on the wheel.
–Alex Calling–
"Hello you, okay?"
" It's Layton."
"Arthur Layton?!" Hunt snaps his head around to Evan accusingly, this is getting more insane by the second.
"I've got a piece of your past standing right here in front of me and I'm gonna tell her the truth, why her parents died."
"We're almost there, keep the bastard talking. Well, this is like the old days."
Is it?
London, Prince Charlie, 2008.
Alex Drake.
This is it. I'm going to die in a grotty, infested old boat in the company of a desperate crank who's under the impression that were it not for me he'd be some sort of crime lord.
Negotiation techniques I rely on daily aren't having any impact whatsoever, it's as if he knows what I'll say before I do. Why isn't this working, I'm good at this?
He raises the gun, shades on, and I freeze. I think of Molly, and I think of having all the safety and security a child takes for granted and what happens when that vanishes in a moment. I think of Evan.
Evan, who appears as the scene is deafened by the pull of a trigger, and the figure of 'Layton' crumples before my eyes to reveal my godfather standing with his arms dangling by his sides, his eyes fixed upon mine, and his mouth hanging open in shock.
The other figure I don't recognise in a very similar state of confusion, he's older than Evan, leaning upon a stick but his spare hand is still raised, clutching the smoking pistol and staring at me as if I'm a ghost.
"What?"