Summary: Alex finally returns to 2008 and is ready to live the rest of her life. Slight Gene/Alex and character death
Disclaimer: Unfortunately Ashes to Ashes does not belong to me, but if anyone would like to loan me Gene for the weekend…
Warnings: Character death, some suggestive themes
AN: This is the first fic I've posted in, um, almost 3 years, so I'm a little rusty. It's also unbetad and any con crit would be greatly appreciated, because I'm pretty sure parts of this make very little sense. This damn plot bunny has been running round my head for 3 weeks though so I'm quite glad to get this written up. (P.S. I apologise for both the crappy summary and crappy title. Also, there's a gratuitous use of the horizontal ruler, for which I also apologise!)
She wakes up with a tube down her throat, a bandage around her head and Molly's hand in her own and immediately she knows she's safe and home and alive and it feels wonderful. A tear escapes and slides down her face as the nurse removes the tube and she struggles to take what feels like her first breath in an eternity and she hugs Molly like the world is ending. Over her daughters shoulder she sees Evan breathe a heavy sigh of relief, a tell tale shimmer running down his cheek.
The coma lasted for four months the doctors tell her. Layton's bullet lodged in her brain, but somehow she survived and apparently there's an 80 chance of a full recovery. It'll take time but Alex doesn't care, she's back and she'll take as long as she needs to return to her normal life; no 1981, no bloody clowns, no imaginary constructs, just Molly, home and the rest of her life.
The dreams haunt her throughout her recovery, and Alex soon realises that she'll never fully escape the hold that 1981 has on her. Just seeing Evan is enough to transport her back, and sometimes sometimes she admits to herself that she misses the life she led there. She misses the freedom, the chance to live life to the fullest and damn the consequences and she misses the people she lived with for 9 months, imaginary though they were.
The first opportunity she gets, Alex pores over old newspaper clippings and case files in an attempt to find some trace of Gene and the others, knowing deep down that Sam had most likely done the same thing and would probably have mentioned finding them in one of their sessions. She looks anyway and, after a week of hunting, she finds a record of an ex-Met officer called Ray Carling. When he turns out to be a frail and extremely polite elderly gentleman in a nursing home, she gives up searching for anyone else, damning her own irrationality.
Alex hates the cold clinical feel of the Metropolitan Psychology Department. She had worked here for years but now the shoe's on the other foot and it just seems daunting and unpleasant. As she sits on the chair opposite her designated therapist she wonders idly if this is how Sam felt all those months ago, sitting here reeling off elaborate stories of living in the 70's while she had sat there nodding and smiling while making notes doubting his sanity. What she would give to have him to talk to again, to relay to him that she knew exactly how he felt. Instead she pauses in her telling of the Neary case and decides that she should really try and forget the bloody 1980's once and for all.
Alex soon passes the psychological tests and on the very first morning she returns to work she starts hunting down Layton. He'd escaped after her shooting, but her sheer determination leads to his arrest and charge in under 2 months. The trial comes and goes and he's soon locked up, the key thrown away and Alex is glad that she's got some closure on the whole issue. Even though she's fully recovered, the dreams still haunt on the odd occasion, but she shrugs them off in the mornings, refusing to be drawn back into that world.
Molly is growing up quickly, and it's only when her daughter reaches 17 and gets her first real boyfriend that she realises that years have passed and her life has stalled. With renewed vigour she works hard and she's eventually promoted to DCI. As the Superintendent places the pins on her shoulders she can't help but imagine that Gene would be proud. She rolls her eyes at the thought and concentrates on clearing the scum off the London streets.
When Molly eventually leaves for university the next year (I'm gonna be a barrister Mum, just like Nan and Granddad were), Alex decides its time for a move. There's no need for her to stay in such a big place anymore, especially in London, so she sells the house and buys a smaller flat on the other side of the capital (she ignores the fact that her new place is exactly where she used to live in 1981 and puts it down to coincidence). As she begins the process of putting her life into boxes she finds a collection of old files, some of which she hasn't seen since the day she was shot oh so long ago. Her curiosity piqued she thumbs through them, smiling as she reads her original psychological assessment on Sam Tyler, and looks puzzled as she reads a draft of the first chapter of the book she never wrote.
She ends up finishing the book; 572 pages on the effect of traumatic injury on the brain, as told by DCI Alex Drake. It's not a best seller by any means, but it is occasionally used by the Met Psychological Department as a way of better understanding how the brain copes with life threatening injuries. She dedicates the book to her parents, Molly, Evan and Sam Tyler, because she feels there should be something to remember him by. Her research for the book had taken her 19 long months, and in that time the dreams of Gene and the rest increased ten fold. Sometimes they were solving cases, sometimes they're all at Luigi's eating and drinking the night away and sometimes, and she blames her sewer of a mind for them, the whole dream revolves around her and Gene utilising every available surface to have their way with each other.
If she's honest with herself, Gene is the only one whose presence truly haunts her in her day-to-day life. Even though it been nearly 8 years since she awoke in 2008, she occasionally feels that she missed out on something with the DCI back in 1981. She struggles sometimes to remember that he was just a construct, not real in any sense of the word, but sometimes she can't help but feel an incredible guilt that he would have had to deal with the death of a second DI in less than three years.
The two of them had never got past their first date, willing though the both of them had been, investigations and everything else seemed to get in their way. After shivering through yet another cold shower (this time she'd been bent over his desk…) Alex decides that it was probably for the best, because she's not sure her sanity would survive if she'd actually slept with Gene in her imaginary world, because her psyche is that damn twisted that she'd probably never get a full nights sleep again from reliving the memories over and over.
She shares a dinner with Evan at least once a week, and she finds herself asking more and more questions about her parents, trying to discover if anything she found out in that imaginary world is based in fact. She never asks about the affair, but on one Tuesday evening when Evan is talking about her mother she senses the truth behind his eyes. She takes a deep breath and accepts it, because it's not as if she can change the past (God knows she tried).
Eventually, Molly graduates from University, a top student as Alex knew she would be, and she's already got a job with one of the more successful law firms in the capital. Alex grins as Evan attempts takes a photo of mother and daughter and laughs as he realises that he's got no idea how to use the digital camera his goddaughter has handed him. It's on that lovely, happy day that Alex first realises something is wrong, blurry vision and a headache that seems to last for days, but she ignores it, instead choosing to concentrate on the next case at work, a DCI's job is never done after all. It only when she collapses in the office for the third time in two weeks that she decides a visit to the hospital is absolutely necessary.
When the consultant gives her the news, Alex isn't sure whether to laugh or cry at the irony. The bullet in her head didn't kill her but the tumour in it will. Inoperable I'm afraid…metastasised…only 3 to 6 months…possible drug regime to extend your life…
She refuses treatment, deciding that she is only delaying the inevitable, and that for all the times she's faced death, now is the time to embrace it. She consoles her daughter and godfather, and starts to get her affairs in order.
It's another 5 months before she's permanently attached to an IV that pumps morphine into her arm like clockwork in a useless bid to stop the pain. The headache now is blinding and Molly's hand feels so far away as it rubs gentle patterns on her palm. When she sleeps Alex deliriously dreams of the life she led (it's been a good one she knows, she worked hard and raised Molly well and she doesn't regret anything, she's had a lifetime of experience in her 47 years), and the life she didn't (she sometimes dreams of weddings and love and kids seats in the Quattro) and is safe in the knowledge that Molly will survive through this. Evan will always be there for her daughter, just like he was there for her all these years, and her daughter has a strong, resourceful head on her shoulders. At least this time she can say goodbye.
The doctor warns them that there is a strong possibility that she'll slip into a coma before she passes away, due to the brains need to try and protect itself from pain and trauma. Alex understands completely; she's been there before, and later that week she feels her eyes getting heavy as the latest round of drugs kick in. She decides that she wants to sleep, so she closes her eyes and relaxes, letting the steady beep of the hospital machines and Molly's calming voice lull her into the land of nod.
She wakes up in the familiar surroundings after what seems like hours, the ever persistent beeping of the hospital machines rousing her from her slumber. There's a hand drawing patterns on her palm again, only this time its larger, more masculine…Evan. Alex smiles groggily, and opens her eyes, suddenly realising that it isn't Evan after all. She smiles as the man beside her jumps as he realises she's awake, but the hand doesn't let go. He smiles and sits down again, holding her hand tighter again, before speaking.
"Bleedin' 'ell Bols. Welcome back to the land of the living, glad you could join us!"
Alex chuckles as she squeezes Gene's hand and smiles as she spots Ray, Chris and Shaz all hovering in the background. They haven't aged a bit and looking down, she realises that she looks exactly the way she did all those years ago. She's back and she's suddenly saddened that she'll probably never see Molly and Evan again, that she's actually dying in the future, and these are her last few seconds of life. She decides then and there, however, as everyone starts to talk at once, that she's been given a second chance to live a lifetime here and she's going to damn well enjoy it for however long it lasts.
The End
AN pt 2: This is kind of how I'd like the series to end, in a weird twisted way, because at least Alex gets back to Molly but gets to spend a life with Gene and the others too.