Four Time Gene Hunt Saw Sam Tyler, and One Time He Didn't
by louise4
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Four Time Gene Hunt Saw Sam Tyler, and One Time He Didn't
One
He couldn't quite believe he was doing this, but he was a detective, and that meant finding things out for yourself.
Even so, Gene knew he was hoping rather desperately that no one was in.
Because how do you explain that you are here to see if there is any chance your new, loony-tunes DI could be this woman's son, somehow arrived from the future?
The door was opening before Gene had resolved that issue, and he had barely finished introducing himself to Ruth Tyler when a small face peered round the woman's legs, staring up at him.
Pulling his eyes away from the child he holds out his warrant card and explains his presence. Ruth Tyler knows of no other Sam Tyler in the family than the one at her feet, and as he is mentioned Sam tugs on Gene's coat, all wide-eyed and eager.
"Can I see your badge?"
He hands it over without quite knowing why, and watches as Sam strokes it, treating it like it is precious.
When Cartwright told him about Tyler's delusion he had been dismissive and scornful – as would anyone – but right now he couldn't help but believe that this small child with such respect for the badge and the irritating lunatic in his station were one and the same. So what did that make him?
Two
"Names," he barks at the increasingly worried looking teenagers in front of him, and he can't help but relish the power he still has in his little corner of the world.
The kids mutter their names sullenly, but he only cares about one. The one at the end who looks heartbroken to be in trouble, and strangely thrilled at having any contact with the police. This kid, he suspects, is bursting with questions about Gene's job.
This is the kid he is hardest on, the one he marches home personally. The one whose mother he speaks to, telling her she needs to keep and eye on her son unless she wants him making the wrong choices.
And he knows it's unfair, but he doesn't care, because this is the kid that grows up to be the man who betrays them all. This is the kid that grows up to be DI Sam Tyler. And because his Sam disappeared, leaving Gene and his men to die, never to be heard of again, he will take his anger out on this Sam instead.
Three
He has received several confused looks, standing at the back of the room, disconnected from all the other families proudly watching their loved ones be inducted into the police force.
He doesn't care.
He doesn't care about much of anything to be honest, but when he saw the name Sam Tyler on the list he knew he would be coming down to see this particular ceremony.
Sam's name is called and he feels a strange pride in watching him start his career and knowing how far he will come. Sam is trying hard to control a grin as he walks up to collect his badge, and when he takes it he treats it with the same reverence that Gene remembers from many years previous, when a very young Sam held a much older badge in his hands.
At the end of the ceremony Sam walks past him, being fussed over by his proud mother. Gene wants to grab hold of him, claim his attention. He wants to mould him, to shape Tyler into something different, into the sort of copper that won't annoy the crap out of him when he turns up in 1973. Maybe he wants to tell him something of what will happen.
But Sam doesn't need any of that. The Tyler that turned up ended up being exactly the Tyler he needed, and now that the hurt of his betrayal has lessened, Gene can hold onto the true emotion he still feels.
But Sam certainly doesn't need an unknown, elderly copper declaring his love for him.
So Gene waits until the hall had emptied and goes quietly back to his job.
Four
Gene is there when DCI Sam Tyler makes his first appearance.
The happiest moment of Sam's life, he remembers from a conversation held long ago, but the man who told him the story is standing in front of him now.
It doesn't get any easier seeing Sam like this, and he watches him walk into the station, the swagger in his step a painful reminder of the past.
Sam stops just outside the station doors and opens his warrant card. He's smiling and Gene knows he is looking at the badge, at the title, and vowing to live up to it.
Somehow that makes it more bearable, and he silently wishes Sam luck.
Five
The room was incredibly white and incredibly quiet. There was no steady hiss of respirator, or rhythmic bleep of heart monitor and the silence screamed at him that he was too late.
In the end he had had to find out if it was all real, if they were all real, or if the whole thing was a complicated dream, as his psychiatrist insisted it was.
So he went into research mode, trawling through the records for any mention of DCI Gene Hunt. He supposed he wasn't really surprised to see him documented there, Gene's entire career laid out in flickering black and white in the newly computerised archives. He'd never left Manchester, and never gotten any further than DCI, but he knew that Gene would have been happy with both those things – he belonged in the field, not behind a desk.
He had lasted longer than Sam had ever imagined he would do, living through to the new century, the new millennium, despite his numerous vices.
And Sam had tracked him down here to this cold quiet hospital room, only to be told that he was too late, that Gene had passed away moments before he had arrived.
He had died alone.
And in that instant Sam knew what he had to do, knew where he belonged, and in the days that followed, as he packed up his life and said his goodbyes to 2008, he felt totally calm.
And as he ran and jumped off the roof he had one thought in his mind: "I'm coming, Guv."