There always has been, always will be, always is a Gene Hunt. He is the constant.
Humans stubbornly suffer from a preoccupation with the 'what-if'. They pick past wounds over in their heads and instead of letting them heal they constantly leave it to fester wide open with thoughts of 'maybe if I had…' and 'if only…' A great significance is placed on childhood, and the idea that the wrongs committed there become malevolent spectres that haunt the future. We are not in control of our destinies.
But then there are men like DCI Gene Hunt who know that every once in a while someone is given the chance to go back to the moment when it all went wrong. It happens to men like Sam Tyler and women like Alex Drake who are dogged by the past. Now and again, in our dangerous world that we inhabit, men and women stand and stare death in the face. They suffer head wounds that tear open the thin gauze between Now and Then, and waiting for them on the other side is Gene Hunt.
Alex Drake found being alone difficult these days. When there was silence, she was on tenterhooks, waiting for the next noise she heard to drive her to the brink of insanity, but she didn't dare switch on the TV or radio to chase away the soundless void lest he be waiting for her across the gap of decades.
Night times were the worst, when she would lie awake in bed staring at the ceiling and thinking of a different ceiling in a different time when the television was always on because it was her link to the real world. Finally it would all become too much for her and then she would rise from her bed – her own bed, the one that belonged here with her in 2008 – and go into her daughter's room. There she would sit on the armchair in the corner and listen gratefully to the girl's regular breathing. Molly never said anything about waking up to find her mother asleep in the chair. She never said anything much anymore.
If the night was difficult there was something even more harrowing about the morning. Alex would get up, unsteady and disorientated from lack of sleep, and for a while she would stand staring at the lunchbox she was supposed to be making. Molly got her own breakfast. At roughly ten minutes past the time they were supposed to leave, Alex would grab her little girl's hand and walk to the school with her. There was once a time when Evan would have taken care of the school run, driving the child there in his car. But Alex was still on leave in order to recover from her head injury, so she had the time to do it herself. She wouldn't have it any other way.
This morning, the air felt good on her bleary eyes and the promising bite of rain was more refreshing than the tea she hadn't wanted to make in case the boiling kettle began to speak with a voice she never wanted to hear again. But she knew that when it came to crossing the roads she clutched Molly's hand hard enough to hurt those frail bones and the sound of her own voice to her ears was harshly nagging. When they walked past an electronics shop with televisions on in the window, she realised too late how much it scared the girl beside her to hear her mother take a sharp, frightened intake of breath. She felt like a terrible parent.
Upon arrival at the school she felt a profound ache of fear and loneliness. Thinking of all the time she had spent trapped in her past, not knowing if she would ever get to see her daughter again, she was loathe to let Molly out of her sight. Patiently, the girl pried her hand free of the deadlock of her mother's fist.
"Bye Mum. See you tonight." The girl's voice was bright, but the smile on her upturned face held traces of anxiety. After a pause, she turned and ran through the school gates, waving and laughing as she caught sight of a small group of her friends standing in wait for her.
The distance between mother and daughter seemed to stretch out like treacle, as if Molly was running down a vast funhouse tunnel that was capable of warping reality. The sense of loss was overwhelming. Tears pricked the corners of Alex's eyes.
"I love you Molls," she said quietly, too late for the child to hear.
She couldn't go on like this, living only a half-life because she was scared that one day she would wake up and find out that it had all been a dream. She had to embrace life again, draw it to her and enjoy it. She had to forget all about Gene Hunt – block him from her mind entirely. She was the only person who could get her life back together again.
"Good thing I'm going back to work today then, isn't it?" Alex muttered to herself, trying out a confident smile, but it turned into something twisted and wry.
Alex Drake was the only person that Gene had ever come close to telling the truth to. Over the time that he spent with her, he would occasionally find himself dropping hints and clues to a greater revelation that not even he himself was fully aware of. So much a product of his time, a chronological tool, the constant, he carried no conscious awareness of his role through the years. He just did what he had been put on the Earth to do. No questions asked, but plenty of complaints voiced and heads bashed against sinks in the gents'.
Once, he had said to her "I know why you're here, Alex, for the same reason as me." For a split-second, there seemed to be a secret war raging in his head between the words that were to come out next. Ultimately, he had given her a heartfelt line about upholding the law, but later on he thought about that feeling of a revelation trembling on the tip of his tongue to be released. He couldn't think what this revelation but have been, so he gave the thought no mind. There were too many important things to occupy him.
But then he had shot Alex and things had all gone terribly wrong…
"You look a little pale, Alex. Are you sure you're ready to come back?"
The voice of Superintendant Coombs filtered down through the layers of her consciousness and a faint blush tinted Alex's cheeks as she realised that she hadn't been listening to him. Slipping her hands absently into the back pockets of her jeans, she looked up at the man with a brightly manufactured smile and answered as chirpily as was possible on only a couple hours sleep "Yeah. Yes, I'm absolutely fine, sir. Just glad to be back."
"And we're glad to have you back." Coombs returned with a smile more genuine than her own, but almost equal in levels of distraction. He turned his attention down to the sheaf of papers in his hands, rifling through them. A frown line creased the centre of his forehead. "Ah yes, there've been some changes made whilst you were away…" he told the neatly typed sheets.
A couple of people Alex knew strolled past as the Superintendant was engaged with his notes. Deeply engaged in trying to get what looked like the latest model of iPhone to do one of its special tricks, only one of them noticed her. He looked up and gave her a friendly wave, just as his companion managed to tune into a radio station reporting the football results from last night.
Only, as the device blared abruptly into life, she didn't hear what team had scored how many goals, but the unmistakable voice of Gene Hunt calling across from the '80s "Wake up, Bolls, wake up!" She gave a start and her reciprocal wave seemed to get lost on the way to her hand. She had to fight against the impulse to put her hands over her ears and block out that terrible phantom voice. With an enormous effort that drew upon all the training in psychology that she had received, she reminded herself that the auditory and visual hallucinations she had been suffering were merely symptoms of the psychological stress she had been through since being shot and waking up to find herself in 1981. She had to fight as hard as she could against the idea that what was happening now – getting her life back and being with Molly again – were mere hallucinations and that her rightful place was back with Gene and the others over two decades ago. More than anything else, she didn't want to end up like poor Sam Tyler.
Her colleague gave a start at her odd reaction to his greeting, but soon he was swept up in the football scores and disappeared off down the corridor with his friend, thankfully taking the noise with him.
"So you'll be…" Coombs paused, looking up from the paper he held. His eyes widened with concern. "Alex, sit down, you look ill." He took her resisting forearm and led her to a string of chairs that lined the corridor wall, helping her down into one. "Maybe you should take another week off. You know, wait until you're sure you're up to this."
"No!" There was that harping quality to her voice again, the one she had used on her daughter this morning, except now it was tinged with desperation. The sound of it frightened Alex. She took a deep breath. Forcing herself to calm down she continued in a softer tone of voice "I'm fine, really. It's just… just a bit of a headache."
Coombs pulled a face that was a mixture of male understanding and anxiety. "Oh. Well, if you're sure… As I was saying, we've made some changes. You've been reassigned to a new division in order to keep you having to get involved in any other potentially dangerous situation."
"What do you mean, sir?"
The man must have noticed the cold edge to her voice, because he quickly replied "It's not that I don't believe in your ability to handle yourself in such situations Alex, in fact I think you performed admirably in that hostage situation, but we all agreed that it would be best if you took things a little easier for a while."
Alex pushed an impatient hand back through her hair, getting ready to argue. "I don't need special treatment, I want to be treated exactly the same as everyone else, not as if I have some kind of… of… disability." She felt ashamed of herself as soon as the word was out of her mouth – shame for the way she had spat it out as if it were something filthy, and for the look of embarrassment that surfaced painfully on the Superintendant's face.
Dropping the air of harassed professionalism that he perpetually surrounded himself with, Coombs sat down beside her. After a pause, he reached across and lightly took hold of her hand. "I know that I may be overstepping a line here, but your daughter was very badly shaken up by what happened to you… Seeing her there at the hospital waiting to know how you were… She's been through enough, for her sake, take things easy for a while."
Alex's breath caught in her throat and she pressed her fingertips to he mouth to keep it from freeing itself in a sob. Coombs was right, he had overstepped the line by presuming to talk about her daughter like that to her, but she had to admit that what he said made a lot of sense. Sometimes it took an outsider's opinion to bring perspective to a matter and however upset it had made her, she was grateful that he had said it. She gave a small nod of agreement.
"Who will I be working with?"
"Your new DCI will be… Oh, never mind, here's the man himself now. Hunt, come over here and meet your new Detective Inspector."
Hindsight is the most coveted and most useless form of sight. Yet with the benefit of it, so many things can be theoretically put right. People going back into the past with the knowledge they have gained throughout their years of experience can learn things about themselves they would never have even been able to imagine in a strictly chronological life. They can right wrongs and avert disaster and sometimes they can make choices that will forever change who they are.
Alex may have thought she'd done everything that she needed to do, that she had escaped the past, but she hadn't entertained the notion that perhaps the past still needed her.
For a moment, Alex was convinced that her mind was playing tricks on her and that she was hallucinating again. Then she thought that 'Hunt' was not an uncommon surname and it was perfectly conceivable that here in 2008 there was another DCI Hunt. And then she saw him and was unable to think at all.
The man walking towards her with the serious face and combed back sandy hair was Gene Hunt. Her constant. It was the very same Gene Hunt that had haunted her past and her present just as he had haunted Sam Tyler's. Only, it couldn't have been him, not the same person, because he hadn't aged a day. He was identical to the man in every single way. Even his voice had the same gruff, no-nonsense quality, she realised as he reached out a hand to her and said "Good to have you on board, DI Drake."