Contains spoilers for Life on Mars, and Ashes to Ashes up to episode 7.

Set the evening after episode 7 ends. Will probably end up completely AU, and rated M for the content of later chapters.

You betrayed him. The accusation kept turning in her mind, a taunt. She blinked it away. He wasn't real. He was a creation of her subconscious, a completely fictional construct. How could she possibly have betrayed a figment of her imagination? How could you have betrayed him? The thought came again. No, no, that wasn't what she meant. She fiddled with her door key, distractedly.

"I have to take control." She recalled the eerie, solid calm she had felt when she'd known what she had to do in response tothe clown's hysterical warning. She was having trouble holding on to perspective. She needed to cling to what was real, not imagined.

Evan. Evan was real. Real and safe. She had trusted him implicitly for as long as she could remember. That was precisely why… she bit her lower lip as she thought of those photographs. She could still feel the horror of it, the awful betrayal of what her mother had done. Betrayal. There it was again. It was Evan betraying you in those pictures, too, not just your mum.

"No!" She said aloud. Luigi looked up from behind the bar, where he was restocking. He looked confused for a moment.

"And where is Mister Hunt tonight?" he asked, his tone light, but his eyes clouded with concern.

"Who knows, Luigi, who knows." She said politely, smiling. Who cares either, she added silently. Hunt cares. The inner voice again. You betrayed him. "Agh!" She exclaimed aloud, exasperated by her own conscience. "Another glass of white, please, Luigi."

Not real, remember. She had retained control of her subconscious, brought Shaz back from the clown, and there were just a few days left before her parents and the car. She'd already planned out a way to save them, and DCI Hunt needed to play his part and no more. What was real mattered. It was the only way back to Molly. Oh, the pain of not having seen her for so many weeks now. Not really weeks of course. Mere minutes in reality, since she had watched Molly catch her kiss and walk away with Evan, safe after the incident with Layton. She would get back to her. She was fighting, doing what needed to be done. She would save her parents and wake up and somehow it would all be ok.

Sam didn't. The thought came from nowhere as she sipped at the glass that Luigi had set before her. Sam didn't what? Sam didn't save his dad. Well no, his trigger was later than that, with Frank Morgan. But Sam still thought he could do it. Oh. Alex understood. What if she was wrong about this? What if she couldn't save them? What if she was never meant to?

"But I have to. I can't just…" She said aloud again, but Luigi wasn't around to look at her strangely now. Self-doubt crushed her, her training and experience counting for nothing. What did she really know? She'd not been able to predict Sam Tyler's decision to kill himself.

Ray had told her Sam had returned, lived here for years. She hadn't really pursued why her subconscious had added that detail, but she suddenly pondered why Sam had chosen to return here. Whatever the reality of what had happened to him in his dying seconds, he had deliberately leapt from that roof. To come back to this? What, in a dying, decaying fantasy world, could possibly have over-ridden a good career, surviving such a shocking accident and managing to beat a coma, his mother?

What keeps you here? She thought of her mother. As deeply painful as it was to confront her childhood insecurities, magnified as an adult, she could at least see her mother whenever she needed to. Evan was here too, albeit young and attractive, rather than old and reserved.

"I did this for you. Happy now?" Hunt's eyes bore into her memory, she shivered slightly at the resentment there. She should have known what he'd do after that, a wounded lion, lashing out. She'd gone to Evan because she could see it spinning out of control, see Hunt destroying himself and she'd lose him. Lose who?You set him on a fool's errand, and then you betrayed him

"He's not real. The only reality here is me, Evan and my parents." She muttered, taking a large gulp of wine. No, your parents are dead. If one thing isn't real, then none of it is. If Shaz isn't real, then neither is Caroline Price. Tim Price is no more real than the clown is no more real than Evan is no more real than Gene.

"No, but Evan is safe harbour, just like always. My subconscious has put him here because he is someone I can trust, a link to my reality." She didn't need the inner voice to give her the next cue. "So what is Gene Hunt, and what is he here for?" She completed the thought, her eyes closed, weary of trying to process this all through.

"A magnificent example of forceful masculinity, here to see if it's possible to drink you under the table, Bolly."