Chapter 2: Bullets and body talk

A short while later, after finishing the ice cream sundae that Luigi had insisted was 'sulla casa', the Doctor wandered back towards the quiet street where he had left the TARDIS. Letting himself in and closing the door behind him, he bypassed the console and sat down on the Captain's chair with his feet up.

Now he knew why he was here. He was here for Alex Drake. The Doctor got up again and began pacing around the circular room, thinking. After a couple of circuits he paused to tap a few keys, sliding the screen round to study it.

It seemed now the purpose of their arrival was clearer, the TARDIS was able to shed more light on the situation. A few buttons and dials later and the central column was moving again. But this time, when the Timelord opened the TARDIS door, he knew exactly where he had ended up. What he was about to witness though, was at present, unknown.

The sight that greeted him was, as the TARDIS had informed him, London in 2008. His assumption that this must be the time from whence the mysterious Alex Drake had come was not immediately confirmed. Yet the longer the Doctor looked the more he was sure that he was right.

Knowing that he had business back in 1982, the Doctor didn't stray further than the TARDIS doorway. This position however was sufficient to watch the events that were already unfolding before his eyes.

On closer inspection, the woman standing several feet away was Alex Drake, although she was dressed, not in tight jeans and a leather jacket as she had been in the eighties, but in a plain grey business suit. Her hair was straight and pulled back from her face; the contrast to the woman the Doctor had seen a few hours ago, with her loose curls, was immense.

As he watched, Alex approached a dishevelled-looking man in dark glasses, one hand securing a terrified young woman before him, the other shaking slightly with the gravity of the gun in his hand. Shoving the girl roughly onto the ground away from him, the man pointed the weapon at Alex instead.

The Doctor, hating guns as he did, was in half a mind to shout out to divert attention away from her, or else to run at the man. Both options were foolish, he reminded himself, and having already witnessed the police officer in a similar situation, he was confident she would be fine.

"I help people, Arthur... I help people who are trapped, I help them to find an escape route." Alex told the man, her hands up in surrender, mirroring her actions the Doctor had observed earlier. She was negotiating with him.

"You stop looking at me... I don't like it." The man called Arthur spat at her, his hand shaking terribly now, thrusting the gun towards Alex. The Doctor continued to watch her attempt to negotiate with him, thinking. How had she managed to travel back in time? Did this man have something to do with it? He didn't look like an alien or a time traveller, but then again...

"I knew you when you were a little girl. You've got your mother's eyes Alex. I'm happy, hope you're happy too, yeah? I'm happy, hope you're happy too."

"What?" Alex looked totally confused. What was he talking about?

"Boom!" Arthur breathed, the manic glint in his eyes, his gun still trained on Alex. The Doctor was so focused on the exchange between the police officer and the man that he didn't notice a girl emerge from the crowd of onlookers, duck under the police tape and run towards them until it was too late.

"Mum!" The girl shouted, causing Alex to turn. Arthur seized the child and began dragging her away from the crowd, down some steps and out of sight. Alex was screaming at the Armed Response officers stationed around the area not to shoot for fear of hitting her daughter.

At this point the Doctor was stopped from dashing to help only because of the whirring noises coming from the console. He closed the door reluctantly and grabbed onto the nearest railing as the TARDIS set off once more. A few seconds later the Doctor stuck his head outside only to find himself facing a dark corner. Peering round the side of the Police Box he was shocked – but not entirely surprised – by what he saw.

Several feet away was a body. It was Alex. There was a gunshot wound in her head, just above her right eye. Arthur was standing over her, the weapon still in his hand, looking down at her where she lay; scared, unmoving.

The Doctor turned away, horrified and confused. What had happened to Alex? Had the shot to the head been the trigger (if you'll pardon the pun) that had sent her back in time? He couldn't think how that could have happened, but it appeared to be the only explanation; the woman was unlikely to be going anywhere now, what with a bullet twisting its way into her brain.

Footsteps could be heard shuffling away and the Doctor emerged from the corner only once he was certain the killer had gone. Swallowing the feelings of anger and sadness rising up in him at the sight of her laying there, the Timelord knelt down beside Alex and carefully closed her eyes. It felt disrespectful and cruel to simply leave her there but the Doctor knew he had no choice; he didn't want to get caught up in the subsequent police investigation. Besides, he had answers of his own to find.

Back in the TARDIS the Doctor thought over what he had learnt. Alex had been shot and killed; that act had resulted in her being transported back in time 26 years. But how long she had been living – if that was even the right word – in 1982 the Doctor wasn't sure. She had seemed to belong there as far as he could see, although according to the waiter Luigi, Alex wasn't entirely at home there. Having a daughter back in 2008 would certainly explain that, he reasoned, absent-mindedly flipping a switch or two on the console.

The ship lurched to a halt, waking the Doctor from his musings about Alex. Trusting his Timelord instincts (and the whisper in his ear courtesy of the TARDIS), he checked the screen first, before he ventured outside. As the display had informed him, the Doctor found himself in a flat. The decor and furniture screamed eighties at him as he looked around. Judging by the white leather jacket on the arm of the striped sofa, the place belonged to Alex. The silence and the gloom told him it was sometime during the night, so she was probably asleep.

Knowing the TARDIS had brought him here for a reason, the Doctor crept quietly out of the living room. A door ahead was ajar; he headed straight for it. He opened it a little wider and slipped into the room. Alex was asleep in the bed against the opposite wall, the red sheets crumpled.

As the Doctor watched, Alex shifted in her sleep; her dark curls a messy halo around her pale face. He moved to the bedside, kneeling down beside her. The Doctor could tell her dreams were troubled. There was a faint crease of worry between her eyebrows, but no trace of the bullet he knew had penetrated the smooth skin of her forehead. Or perhaps that was because it hadn't happened yet; time travel could be very confusing.

'I need to help her,' The Doctor thought. 'So she can get back to her daughter.' Having successfully reassured himself, he placed his fingers lightly on either side of her temple, looking into her mind as he had done to different people numerous times before.

Alex didn't wake, but continued to toss and turn; her body at the mercy of her fears.

Images flashed before the Doctor's eyes; the woman before him struggling through a crowd of people, dressed in a fur coat and extremely short red dress, the men talking to her but looking her up and down while Ultravox blared in the background...

...A man holding her back against him while three familiar men point their guns at him, she's trying to talk him down, she succeeds... the police officer in the long dark coat carries her down a grey corridor into a room with a black and white checked ceiling...

...Alex stumbles towards a wardrobe and opens it, a white Bowie clown emerges and she gasps... She is sat at a the bar in a restaurant (the same restaurant the Doctor himself had eaten in earlier) with a glass of red wine in her hand, a man is sat beside her, Gene Hunt, DCI Gene Hunt...

Soon the pictures begin to blur together, Gene and Alex moving closer and closer to each other. The Doctor is inside her head, he can hear how quickly her heart is beating when he leans towards her.

"What would you do Gene? Last few seconds on earth. Anything you want, right now." Alex's words echo inside the Doctor's head.

"Anythin'?"

"Anything."

"Right now?"

"Right now."

Now she is breathing in Gene's ear and the Doctor knows her heart is pounding.

"Don't you ever get lonely Gene?"

"Sometimes..." The Doctor is beginning to understand; she is conflicted, her daughter needs her in 2008, but so does Gene, here in 1982.

"Feel better?"

"No." Thwack. Alex's fist collides neatly with Gene Hunt's chin. "Better now." Obviously their relationship was a complicated one, although what an uncomplicated relationship looked like, the Doctor doubted anyone knew.

"I can't die, can I? Can I?" Her voice is quiet and she sounds scared.

"Come 'ere." Gene's words are equally breathy. The Doctor can feel the heat and the claustrophobia of the vault as much as the couple can. He watches as Alex moves to Gene's side and he puts his arm around her, a gesture of comfort and reassurance.

...The Alex the Doctor can see beneath his closed lids is once more tossing and turning in bed, again plagued by nightmares. There is a figure under the covers with her... it is Gene. But it is only a dream.

...The door to her flat opens a jar and the Doctor knows immediately that Alex is ill. Her face is paler than usual and her eyes ringed with dark circles.

"I know what ya need, come on..." Gene drapes his coat chivalrously around her shoulders to stop her shivering. He is clearly concerned about her.

The sounds of 'Vienna' filled the Doctor's head once again as he watched Gene carrying Alex in his arms from the freezer out into the restaurant. Glass shards glitter on the floor from the broken window. Alex appears worse than before; Gene is saying her name, begging her to wake up. Only when his lips are inches from hers does she open her eyes.

"You saved me..."

On the bed, Alex shifts again in her sleep. More images flash across the Doctor's vision. A little girl with a red balloon. A young Alex perhaps?

"Mum!"

"What did you say?" A woman questions. The grown-up Alex is wide-eyed.

"Thank god the only thing my daughter shares with you is her name, I'd be ashamed if she grew up to be like you."

...Now she has tears in her eyes.

As more pieces appear, the Doctor struggles to make sense of everything.

"I have a daughter who you would really, really like... because she and you..." The sadness threatens to overwhelm her as Alex tries to explain it to the woman, her mother.

...The same little girl, sat up in bed. A man sits beside her reading a bedtime story.

"Narnia will be saved!"

"I think you're right!" The man is clearly her father. "Nothing will tear this family apart." He says, and his words echo on even as the scene has changed. Black and white photographs stutter into view... Alex's mother with a man, a man who is not her husband.

"Evan!" The man hugs the young Alex, but her older voice can be heard.

"Was I upstairs, was your daughter asleep, was she sleeping upstairs while you were shagging her godfather?!" Alex is confronting her mother, sweeping over the slip of the tongue caused by the tarnishing of her childhood memories.

"I don't think there's any need for Tim to find out, do you?"

"These could have torn my family apart..."

The Doctor almost jumped out of his skin as a sudden explosion rocked his thoughts.

...A bomb in a car. A little girl with a red balloon mere feet away, watching as her parents were blown to kingdom come.

"Just you try and stop them!" The clown was there again, taunting the adult Alex, always on the edge of her vision.

"It's happening now!" Alex is running towards the car. But she's not quick enough. She's thrown backwards by the force of the explosion. A figure runs past her – Gene. He goes to the girl, the young Alex, sheltering her from the horror of it.

"I knew he was intense but his own wife and child?" The blonde man, Alex's godfather. The Doctor feels sick with the realisation; Alex's father tried to kill her, but she was spared the fate of her mother thanks to a stray balloon.

...The face of her father is transformed in a blink into the haunting mask of the clown.

"Big day tomorrow... the biggest day..." Gene nods, confused by her ramblings.

"It's been hell, Mr Hunt, but on the cusp of my leaving I can honestly say... I'm going to rather miss you..." Alex had believed that saving her parents would have triggered her return to her own time, and to her daughter. Unfortunately it hadn't worked. Perhaps, the Doctor considered, the shock of discovering her mother's affair with Alex's godfather and her father's fateful attempt to drag both her mother and herself from this world had prevented her from leaving.

"Bolly! Come an' join the land o' the living..."

The Doctor broke from the trance-like state he was in, surrounded by Alex's feelings and memories, and re-emerged in the present. He removed his fingertips from her temple and slipped back to the TARDIS. Collapsing on the Captain's chair, the Doctor ran his hands across his own face, trying to digest all that he had learned.

"I think I really do need a bigger head." He told himself as his ship dematerialised from Alex's living room and landed on the pavement outside.

She had been through so much; he wanted more than anything to help her.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Alex woke with a start.

She was half convinced there would be a strange but oddly familiar man standing over her, but opening her eyes she saw no-one. A faint whirring sound seemed to be coming from the other room, but it stopped after only a second.

Her sleep had been plagued by all sorts of images, many painful, some more pleasant although not altogether straightforward. Gene Hunt had been a frequent occurrence of course, as had her parents; she had not thought of them for a while. Molly had been there too, and Evan. Alex felt the anticipated twinge in her heart as her daughter's face swam at her through the gloom.

Shaking the difficult thoughts from her mind, Alex got up and went over to the window, opening it to get some air. She sighed in relief, her eyes closed, enjoying the cool night breeze on her warm skin as she leant against the sill. Looking down she started; there on the pavement right across the road from her window, was a bright blue police box. It couldn't be... could it?

Considerably more sober now, Alex peered down at the object.

"That definitely wasn't there this morning."

There was no mistaking it; it looked just like that spaceship, time machine thing in Doctor Who! Oh, how Molly loved that program. She knew lots about it: the aliens and companions, and the Doctor himself. Alex felt another pang of sadness at the thought of her daughter, but she swallowed it, trying to remember. What was the little blue box called? Then it came to her: the TARDIS!

"If only Molly were here now, she'd be so-" Alex gasped as a sudden realisation hit her; it was a time machine! What if her subconscious had constructed her very own Doctor to take her home?! This was better than some crazy stalker leaving her roses and cryptic messages; the Doctor always helped people, he could take her back (or forward) to 2008, to her own time – back to Molly!

The faint whirring sound from down below stirred Alex from her thoughts; the TARDIS was going, disappearing into thin air.

"No!" Alex called out, but it was too late, the little blue box had gone. She rested her head in her hands, deflated that her way home had, well, vanished, right before her eyes. But then another thought occurred to her; this wasn't the first time she had seen the TARDIS that day; it had been down the end of the road they had been to that morning, she was sure of it now.

Alex cast her mind back to the last time she and Molly had watched it, a rainy bank holiday if she remembered correctly, her daughter with the DVDs spread out on the coffee table, selecting her favourite episodes to watch while Alex made the hot chocolate. She smiled sadly. Then the hopeful possibility came to her; the Doctor went travelling round all of time and space, but he had been in South London of all places, in 1982, twice on the same day. Didn't really sound like his kind of thing. Maybe that meant he was here for a reason – maybe it was for her!

She smiled again, happy once more as she ducked back inside and got ready for bed. Thank you subconscious, she thought as she climbed under the covers. The Doctor here especially for her, here to take her now on, she decided, she would keep an eye out everywhere she went, looking for a little blue box and the man inside who just might be her key to getting back to Molly.

And for the first time in a long time, Alex slept soundly until morning, no dreams of clowns or her parents or Super Mac or sodding roses to disturb her, content in the knowledge that she would be able to see her beloved daughter again.