Life and Death

A/N: Sorry to anyone who was following Mistakes... I haven't decided whether there will be another chapter or not, but for now, take it as meaning there won't be. This, however, is just as random and evil (I promise you, I do not hate Alex Drake. She's my favorite character! As me and my friend Bex decided, it's because we know how amazing Keeley would be in scenes such as the following, and that we're doing this out of love!) but I promise it'll make more sense soon. It's set, theoretically, after episode 8. But not the real episode 8, since I haven't seen episode 8 (obviously). It's the episode 8 those of us on the a2ashes community have pretty much built (well, with my adaptations). If that makes any sense. But there probably are spoilers for episode 1-7.

It's kind of working backwards, and hopefully you'll catch on to what I'm trying to do. i.e. the first bit happens AFTER the rest. But I will be continuing from the first bit in later chapters.

Disclaimer: I, unfortunately, am not Kudos, and therefore do not own any of the Ashes to Ashes characters -sob-. However, I do own Fynn Langley (as we know how I love to make up evil, mean people hahaha).

Gene remembered holding onto her as she screamed at the first moment of impact. The blood, it was everywhere. It coated everything. Red red red. He glanced over at his beloved Quattro, and knew he'd never be able to drive it again. Never be able to get that colour out of his head. Never make it mean anything besides this. Besides the glass of red wine which was shattered on the ground. Besides the puddle of sticky red which he was knelt in. He knew this was it. That he was watching her breathe for the last time. And there was nothing he could do, but weep, and dig his nails in as she went limp in his arms. They'd leave marks, but he knew those marks would never bruise. What was a little more blood anyway?

There was a smile on her thin, bluing lips. He didn't understand. Was she putting on a brave face? Maybe this was what she'd wanted all along.

Finally, she stilled, and he knew, right then, that he'd lost her.

(two days previous, evening time)

She'd really thought that she could save them. Thinking about it now, it was ridiculous. This was her subconscious. She'd not borrowed Dr. Who's tardis; nothing she did here meant anything at all in the real world; in 2008 her parents would still have been dead if she'd managed to do anything about it or not. And of course, she'd never have been able to do anything. Their fate was their fate. All she was here to do was relive the memories. It was just supposed to make her understand.

But it hadn't. All it had done was make her more confused. All this time, she'd thought it was Evan. Thought it was his hand that she'd grabbed hold of all those years ago (well, really, yesterday), but it wasn't. It was Gene's. And how, exactly, had she grabbed an imaginary construct by the hand, before he'd even been 'constructed'?! Was that even possible? She hadn't thought so, but apparently it was.

Her father. It had been her father all along. It made her sick to think about it all. And yet, she didn't blame him. She really didn't blame him because it wasn't him that made the bile rise in her throat. How could she have been so wrong about everything? Even after finding out about her mother and Evan, she'd continued to trust them both. And there they were planning to leave her father; the man her mother was supposed to love, for Evan.

The same Evan who Alex had left Molly with back in 2008.

She couldn't help but be a little freaked out about that, even if her heart told her that he'd never do anything to harm Molly. In the same way he'd never done anything to harm her. Apart from, you know, causing my father to kill himself and my mother, she thought bitterly, glaring at the calendar, and that stupid little cross marking the day before's date. It was all she could do not to rip the whole thing apart.

"You've had your fun," she whispered, "you've put me through the misery and pain of my parents dying, again, now let me get home." Her voice grew louder, "let me get back to Molly," until she was finally screaming at the top of her lungs, "LET ME GET BACK TO MOLLY!"

It was no good. The clown – whoever, or whatever, it was – had died along with her parents and any respect she'd ever had for Evan White.

(the next morning)

"We've got a case," Hunt grunted, dumping a folder on Alex's desk, "a real one."

She looked up at him and glared, "I'm sorry, but did Caroline Price not die in an explosion, in the exact same way that I told you she did?"

He shrugged and left, presumably returning to his office, leaving her to go through the file on her own.

"Quattro. 5 minutes. Give yer time to read through that," he muttered on his way out.

She couldn't stay angry at him, no matter how hard she tried. Watching him rescue 1981-Alex (which, in itself was very hard to get her head around), she'd seen something inside him that she'd never seen before. He was kind. And gentle. And he'd certainly provided some comfort for the little girl who had just seen her parents get blown up. In fact, as she'd watched him take her away, she'd remembered that she had honestly never felt more safe in her entire life than it that single moment. The look on his face had triggered so much emotion that she'd gone on to throw up behind a tree.

Flicking through the file, Alex closed it again, tucked it under her arm, and headed out to the car, deciding she'd have a proper read on the drive.

The victim was a '20-somethink' (Ray's words exactly) woman who had died from repeated stab wounds to the abdomen. No I.D., no weapon, no clues. Forensics had scanned the area, but to no avail. In short, they had nothing.

Alex stood at the scene, hovering over the large puddle of blood where the victim had been taken away, and rubbing her temple. Any other time, and this kind of case might have got the adrenaline running. Maybe even – if she dared say it – excited her to some extent. She liked solving cases which were otherwise unsolvable. But not when she was still frantically trying to find a way to get home, to get back to her daughter. All these cases did nothing but frustrate her. So far, she'd taken every one of them as if it was the one to get her home, and every one of them had ended up being a red herring. She'd reached the point where she didn't care any more. After all, all these victims were just creations of her own mind, why should she care about them?!

"Nasty," Hunt hissed, startling Alex, who hadn't realized he was standing behind her.

"Yes," she whispered; it being the only word she could muster up.

"So, Bolls, what's the verdict? Ain't ya gonna bore us all 'alf to death with your psychiatry bollocks?"

She couldn't even be bothered to correct him. It just wasn't in her. Her heart wasn't in it anymore.

"She was stabbed with a long, sharp object," she said, after a beat, "ruptured her spleen, I think. She had no chance."

"That doesn't really narrow it down for us does it?" he said, obviously as annoyed with the lack of evidence as she was.

Alex sighed, "no, no it doesn't."

"What do you suggest?"

She was slightly taken aback with him asking for her advice. She'd half expected him to announce he was going to search the area and beat information out of every piece of scum he could find. When he was still waiting for her opinion a few minutes later, she knew he meant business.

"I...I don't know," she admitted, rubbing her neck with one hand, still looking down at the puddle.

"Right. Well if you don't, I bloody well ain't got a clue neither," he snapped, stomping off.

Alex closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

A couple of hours later, they still didn't have much evidence to work on. Any leads they might have had had already been explored, and eventually eliminated. They had nothing.

Chris, standing at one side of the room, was bouncing a small ball against his desk. Ray, at the other side of the room, was flirting with one of the WPCs who had joined them. Wherever Hunt was, he wasn't making any noise, and Alex viewed this as a good thing. The last thing she needed was him bellowing at her, after the night's sleep (or rather, lack of) that she'd had. No, she'd just go to sleep right here, with her head on the desk and the steady rhythm of Chris's bouncy ball as a lullaby...

"DRAKE!"

She jumped out of her seat and glared at him with bleary eyes. She could just about make out Ray's sniggers in the background as she sat up fully and looked Hunt squarely in the eyes.

"Yes?"

"No sleeping on the job."

"And what job would that be? We have nothing Gene. What do you expect us to do? Make evidence?" she realized she probably shouldn't have suggested that, even if it was laced with sarcasm, "when I've got something to do, I'll stop sleeping."

Not that I'll be able to get much sleep here anyway, she thought. Though, truth be known, she didn't think she was going to get much sleep anywhere. The clown may have left her alone, but the nightmares that had followed suit were even worse. She just kept going over that bloody explosion, and what would have happened had Gene not been there.

"You've got something to do," he announced, plonking the second folder of the day on her desk.

"What is this?" she asked, opening the folder and peering at the first page.

"List of suspects. Doc found a bar receipt in the victim's mouth. These are all the scumbags who were at Dianna's last night," he narrowed his eyes when she didn't immediately start reading, "what are you waiting for, a sodding drum roll?! Get to it will yer?"

"And what, exactly, am I supposed to do with this?"

Hunt glared at her, "take young Christopher over there, and go make yerself useful. Check out these bastard's alibis."

As he turned his back she resorted to childish mimicking, picking up the folder and heading over to Chris, "come on, we've got work to do."

The fifth house on their list belonged to one Fynn Langley. The small green car pulled up outside it's front door, and Alex got out. This house, no doubt like the other five, was going to be a dead end. They all were. This was pointless and Hunt knew it. He'd just as likely sent them out here to get them out of the way.

She watched while Chris knocked on the front door, her hands finding their way to her jacket pockets. After a short while – half a minute perhaps – the door opened, and a fair-haired young woman appeared on the other side.

"Can I help you?" she asked, looking from Alex, to Chris, and back to Alex.

"Hello, we're here to speak to Fynn Langley. This is the address we've been given," Alex fished around in her pocket and went to pull out her police identification, but just as she went to, a hand came out from nowhere, and something hard and heavy hit her on the head. Next thing she knew, she was falling, and everything was very very dark.

TBC.