I seem to have this bad habit of writing things that are infuriatingly open ended. Sorry! This is sort of a prelude to some other plot I have in the works. Set in the present, with Alex believing her post-wakeup freak out to be the result of painkillers and stress. (Of course, Gene will eventually pop up to prove that theory wrong.) This is an Alex and Even story, but in the most platonic of ways. I know, he's kind of a jerk, but I like to think that their relationship is too complex for her to just hate him. I was trying to sort out how I think Alex would react to seeing him again after the events of the Eighties.
Sorry, not much mention of Gene in this one. Also, I've been reading Thirties novels lately and I think it's sneaking into my writing. This seems really wordy. And eventually, I promise, I'll produce something with a solid, unambiguous ending.
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She hadn't seen him again after the explosion. Not young Evan White, LL.B. She had taped over the one answerphone message he left without listening past the first notes of his voice, "Hi, this is Ev--", and luckily he hadn't sought her out in person. The whole thing was too fresh and gut-wrenching then, in the Eighties, though he wouldn't have known it had the same effect for her. He knew her to be an acquaintance of Caroline Price, but having existed in the Eighties for a only few months previous, she couldn't have seemed close. She definitely couldn't have seemed like a daughter. To him, Alex Drake really couldn't have had much to do with the Prices.
In any case, he didn't try to stay in touch. Naturally. He would have been too busy taking care of, well... her. The teenage her, the orphan.
But now, in the Twenty-first Century, home, here was the Evan White that Alex knew. She could face him again, framed with white temples and a grey wool suit. His face was well-worn, softly creased linen. He smelled like pipe smoke, legal documents, and her childhood. Here was the Evan she would always inherently trust, despite what he might have caused.
She still trusted that part of her... dream or hallucination or whatever it may have been... was true. As much as she trusted the rest to be a mad construct produced by her injured brain. Evan White had had an affair with her mother, one which had lead to the explosion which killed both of her parents. Maybe she had known it subconsciously all along, and the bullet had pushed it to the surface of her mind. In the Eighties, that fantasy world that she had struggled through in her coma state, she hadn't blamed him so to speak... but he acted as a scab, a vivid and itchy reminder of how close the blood was to the surface. Home, he was altogether too familiar to be seen as anything but himself.
And who could have stopped it from happening? The explosion, her parents' death? There were clearly deeper issues at play. She had told him, after all, "It's not your fault." After coming home, she had repeated it to him. He thought she was talking about the bullet, which in a way was related to him as well. He thought she was talking about the bullet, but she wasn't.
Now they could have drinks and talks without the sexual tension (God, really? She cringed at the memory of how she had panted after him, upon first meeting his younger self.) and Peaches And Herb. Now he had better booze and better taste in music. Now he just saw her as Alex, that funny Price girl, the one he had raised.
He stayed with her and Molly whenever he could in the week after she woke up, and much of her extra time while Molly was at school was spent following him around just to be close to shore. She was lost and aimless, hardly making an effort to get dressed, to be a real person. She wondered if it was apparent, how very out of sorts she felt. It must have been.
Things didn't feel safe without at least one of them around, and she would have told them, if it hadn't seemed such a silly and childish reaction. She would have pulled her daughter from school just to be always around her, if she hadn't known the importance of her lessons. She still had flashes of Molly held at gunpoint. She still woke up trying to think of how to get back to her, without realizing where she was.
She wanted to tell Evan the whole story, but upon opening her mouth something always held her back. She hadn't talked to anyone about where she had been. The Eighties, how absurd! It would scare Molly, wouldn't it? And she didn't want to be sent off for study like Sam Tyler had been. What if someone had thought to make a book from her?
So she concentrated on healing, and every day felt a little closer to herself. Settling into the overstuffed white leather armchair in Evan's study, (very sparse, very modern-neutral, the only colors were the spines of books and the occasional art object she had bought him over the years in a concerted effort to add visual interest.) she eyed him over the whiskey which she had been craving, over wine, for the first time since her late teens. There was no music tonight, only the shuffle of papers from where Evan sat at his desk, and the soft licking sounds of the high-tech gas fireplace. In this safe, mild nest, the urge to share finally overpowered the urge to horde.
"I remembered some things," she said, picking fabric pills off the sleeve of her comfiest, most run down sweater. (And wasn't it nice not to put up with spandex anymore?) "while I was..."
He nodded, oh so slightly, because there was really no need to clarify. Sensing the gravity of her mood, he pushed his papers to the side and sat back.
She continued, sorting through her experiences for one thing, just one, to share. That would be enough. "You know, I always thought it was you, on the hill." She could say vague things like that, "on the hill," and he would understand, because he had been there. That's why she felt he would get it.... everything, the Eighties, if she ever decided to tell him the whole story. He may not have been the one holding her hand, but he had been there. He knew.
She let the sentence trail off, and Evan didn't answer at first, unsure whether it had been a statement or question. He knew what she had believed while growing up, but he had never had a real chance to confirm or deny, as everything about that day had been unspoken but understood between them. After a few minutes, though, he replied.
"It was a police officer." He volunteered. "A DCI, actually. He reached you first." He looked for a moment as if he would have done anything to change that, to really have been the hero she grew up with. "He was a good bloke."
Alex smirked at the description. She wondered how Gene would have reacted to praise from Evan White. "A good bloke." She supposed that was what he was in hindsight, even to Evan. The man who had picked her up and brought her to the station, away from the wreckage and char. The man who made sure she was all right, that she had someplace to go. He had helped Evan get custody, despite a mutual dislike. He had opened up a videotape...
She stopped herself in the middle of her thoughts.
That was all conjecture. Memory based on events that had never happened, based on dreams. It was impossible that Gene Hunt was there in the true Eighties, and in her dream, and in Sam's dream as well. He was a construct. Whoever saved her, whoever the good bloke was, it wasn't her Gene Hunt.
Her Gene just... wasn't.
She still forgot that sometimes.
"So that's where he came from, anyhow." she mused, softly and with a little sadness. One part repressed memories, one part the figment of another imagination. Actual events blown out of proportion and given new life by an organ under stress.
Evan didn't respond. It wouldn't have made much sense to him, if he had even caught the words. Now he was talking again, breaking into her thoughts.
"There was another detective, too."
The information was unexpected. Her brow furrowed.
"A woman... She must have known your parents." he continued. "She was really upset by the whole thing."
"No, but that's impossible." Alex muttered. Images flashed through her mind of herself, on her knees, on the pavement and screaming. For a second the room blurred around her, separating into two and coming back like a stereoscopic image coming into focus. She pushed it aside. She knew for sure that she couldn't have been there, in the Eighties, really, and here at the same time.
"Hmm?" Evan replied. He had once again missed the words that went with the low tones of her voice.
"Nothing." She smiled, brightened. This too must have an explanation. More repressed memories, probably. Of course there had been another detective, maybe one who really did know the Prices. Alex probably remembered that detail from her childhood as well, and buried it along with everything else about the day. To take the nearest female at the time, to put herself in that role, was natural. It was probably the safest way for her mind to relive such a stressful event. Lord knows it was stressful enough to live through secondhand.
"A female officer?" She inquired.
"Mm." Evan agreed. Sensing her need to share had gone for the moment, he went back to the papers.
"Hm."
They fell into a natural silence, Alex feeling proud about her small admission, but worn out from just bringing the images back up. Even within her coma (That was how she thought of it. Mere hours had passed to the outside world, but it had seemed such a long time.) it had been months since she had thought about it. Her only way to handle it, and to act normally for a thirty-some Detective Inspector seemingly unrelated to the unfortunate events that had taken place, was to push it away immediately and completely. It hadn't been much different from the first time around.
The time ticked away from the wooden and metal clock on the wall, a retro piece that looked like something from Ikea, but was really Authentic and Worth Hundreds. The gas licked its way up from a bed of stone behind a sleek glass frame. Evan fumbled in his pocket for a pipe, then for a lighter, then noticed her stern gaze and put both away. The drink began to settle in her veins.
"You know," he said, remembering something suddenly. "I think her name was Alex, too."