DISCLAIMER: The following story was written entirely for entertainment purposes. I do not own the rights to Ashes to Ashes, the characters, the settings- any of it. All rights and ownership are to Kudos, Monastic and the BBC. I am using them purely on a fan basis; not for money. The story may be taken down instantaneously if it should be desired, and I hope that I have not breached any regulations. I am simply a fangirl who believes this world needs more Ashes to Ashes in it! Thank you :)
A/N: Hey! I'm hoping you're currently here because you enjoyed chapter one, and I'd like to send many 'thank yous' for doing so :D As my first Ashes to Ashes story (that's longer than a 'one-shot'), I'm surprised by the lack of Gene- but I plan to make up for that in the chapters to come! Thank you for the reviews so far :)
Enjoy! :D
~Project Ashes~
Chapter Two
Alex picked her daughter up from school the following day. Walking out the gates with Karrie, Molly was surprised to see her mother's car parked across the road, and the driver holding two coffees tightly in their grasp.
"I reckon your talk must have helped her a bit, Pud, she hasn't picked you up in weeks."
Molly nodded, a smile sneaking cross her face. She had been discussing her mother's conversation from the previous night with Karrie throughout PE; they'd been best friends since aged 4, and even her mother was beginning to think of her as Molly's long-lost sister. She hadn't told her everything, deciding that was for her mother to disclose, but had offered her the main concept of the discussion and promising to tell her more if Alex said she could.
"It's definitely a start." Molly agreed as the pair began to cross the road.
"Project Ashes" Karrie smirked back. She spoke through air-quotes, presumably referencing part of their earlier discussion. "You gonna tell her what you found today?"
"She's probably got this far already." Molly sighed as they stopped at the other side of the zebra crossing and she drew her friend into a hug, which Karrie reciprocated warmly. Molly's mum's distancing had been affecting her friend more than she liked; she had become so uncharacteristically reserved lately. But a glimpse of her old spark had definitely returned today, and she'd be lying if she said it hadn't made her happy, too.
"Ciao, Pud." Karrie called, and sprinted off as the school bus pulled in some yards away from them, waving as she ran.
Molly walked towards her mother's car, parked on a strip of double-yellows, her schoolbag swinging loosely in her grasp. Despite being outside school, and despite it being seen as 'uncool', Molly threw herself into the hug her mother offered her, letting her bag fall to the floor beside them.
"Mum!"
"Hello Sweetheart." Alex greeted, and then turned her attention to the coffees perched on the roof of the car.
Molly took the cup she was offered, sniffing it carefully and being pleasantly pleased by the consequent aroma. "Chai latte?" she chanced.
"With vanilla syrup." Alex concluded.
Swooping up her own mug – finished as she had waited for her daughter- Alex tossed it into the bin beside them and jogged around the vehicle, lowering herself in with an elegant swoop. "Come on, get in."
"What's the rush?" Molly queried once she had sat down and belted up. She took a sip from her coffee as the engine turned over, but noted that her mother had shown no intentions of actually pulling away. A hand left the steering wheel and prized one of her own from the coffee cup, a thumb softly gliding across her clammy palm.
"I've been a shit mother to you lately, Mols. I've been ratty, distracted, possessed." Alex sniffed, closing her eyes in a moment of sincere regret. But as quick as the emotion had consumed her, it left again, and she tugged affectionately on her daughter's hand, effectively dismissing the sombre mood. "So tonight its just me, and you. Cinema, dinner, crazy golf, whatever you fancy." She grinned and let go of her daughter's hand. Instead, she let her own move to her child's face and rubbed the slightly-pink spot she had hit the night before. Guilt racked her once again, and she lent gently forward to kiss the sore spot. "I love you, Molly. I love you so much."
"I love you, too, mum." Molly assured her, pulling her into an awkward, brief hug.
"So where are we off to?" Alex asked, suddenly sitting back and hitting the steering wheel assertively. She watched as Molly deliberated with herself, scrunching up her face as she thought.
"Home." Came the final response.
"Home?"
Molly grinned, leaning forward to fiddle with the car radio and smirking at the confused expression encompassing her mother's face in her peripheral vision.
"For a date with an Ice cream tub, chocolate, duvet, laptop, pen and folder." She smiled. "Project Ashes".
Alex looked at her daughter, lost.
"It's what Karrie's calling it."
Her mother's expression hadn't changed.
"Said I wanted to 'revive' you, you know? Bring you back from the ashes. So we'll investigate 'subject Hunt', together."
Understanding fleeted across Alex's face, followed by a deep adoration for the girl before her. How had she managed to become so obsessed with her private investigation? How on earth had she cut out the beautiful girl from her life? After fighting for so long to return, she'd let her daughter down, and quite severely at that.
But not anymore. Today was the beginning of their new life together; today was the day when Mummy bear was returning to the cabin to make the porridge and care for baby bear once again.
Mummy bear.
Holding back the sudden wash of tears, and swapping them for a smile, Alex hit the indicator and swerved back out onto the road, only remembering after fifty yards that Gene's style of driving still wasn't acceptable, and hastily reducing her speed.
"Let's make it two tubs." She grinned, "And a disgusting amount of rocky road."
The man watched the car leave, merely inches before he'd reached the damn vehicle. His intention had been simple; to stride over, give them hell about parking on double yellows and drag their posh arse back to the station. But only a few metres away he'd changed his mind. He could see the driver in the rear-view mirror, and had only just held back his sharp intake of breath as realisation dawned in. He'd sped up, hoping to reach them before they pulled off, but then the indicator had lit up, and the car had zoomed into the distance.
Surely it wouldn't have been…. Couldn't have been…
Not driving like that….
He shook the nancy feelings of hope from his head and began to stroll back in the direction he'd come.
"So, what have you got so far?" Alex inquired, sipping from her oversized mug of cocoa before balancing it precariously on the sofa's arm rest.
Molly retrieved her notepad from her lap, it having been nestled on the duvet as they'd eaten their way through the first tub of ice cream. They'd opted against the main light, instead lighting the room with a cluster of candles on the coffee table before them. With the soft lighting, snuggly duvet and her mother's arm around her shoulder, Molly could almost pretend that the awful events of the summer had never occurred.
"Nothing you don't have yet, mum," Molly began, flicking through the pages, "Just that Fenchurch East still exists, there's a bistro where you said you used to live- but it's not called Luigi's, and there was once a car registered to that number plate."
Alex's eyes doubled; she hadn't even thought to trace the car!
"You mean, it did exist?"
"I don't know," Molly admitted, absentmindedly chewing the tip of her pen, "it's listed as being SORN. So we don't know for sure what sort of car it is, just that there was one, and that it's still about somewhere".
"Well that's definitely a start," Alex smiled, a new found optimism trickling down her spine as she reached for her laptop. "I don't have much else, if I'm honest."
"A DI having spent weeks searching and you have nothing." Molly tutted. "What sort of copper do you think you are?"
Alex smirked to her daughter, "a time-travelling one, apparently."
"Anyway," Molly prompted, jabbing her ice cream-smothered spoon in the direction of the laptop, "what else have you got?"
Alex appeared to be skim reading, flicking through page after page of saved material and hastily-typed notes.
"DCI Hunt was a DCI for Fenchurch East. I tried to find photos to prove that it wasn't my subconscious constructing beings from case notes from my training days or something, but the bastard never took any. Absolutely all the news clippings just list his name."
"And none mention you?"
"There's this, but that's it."
Alex twisted the laptop slightly for Molly to read, taking the distraction as a prime opportunity to steal a sizeable spoonful of her daughter's ice cream. She had brought up a picture, presumably from a library archive, of a burnt newspaper article. Only the first quarter had been seen, and it took mere moments for Molly to read it.
"…DI Drake was the first to arrive at the scene of the crime…" she read aloud, before thinking softly, "Could be anyone…."
Molly felt her mother deflate beside her; perhaps the size of the issue was beginning to dawn on her. Determined not to let her mother slip back into her attitude of the past few weeks, Molly sat up abruptly, grabbing her pen and pad to hand once more.
"So where should we start tomorrow?" she inquired eagerly, and Alex could but smile at her daughter's enthusiasm.
"I want to look into Luigi's. If I can prove that exists, then I'll know I can't have made it all up." She admitted, and watched with a smirk as Molly jotted it down, matter-of-factly- into the notepad in her grasp.
"Then I'll look into the car. Karrie's dad still goes to that Classic Car club so he must know someone who knows something about tracing our SORN car."
"Sounds like a plan, Mols." Alex replied, proudly hugging her child tighter. She had no idea how she'd managed to live those two years without her beautiful little girl, and wondered briefly whether the elusive Gene Hunt had anything to do with it.
"Well shift up, mum, we've got some browsing to be doing…." She heard Molly announce, and shaking away her reverie, the pair set about realising them instead.
Somewhere across the city, a man was turning in for the night. It wasn't even eleven yet, an early night in the grand scheme of his life's entirety, but the eve's spent awake and merry with a bottle of crap house wine were long gone.
He pulled the red satin sheets over his tired form, begging for sleep to claim him before the dreams began. The sheets were worn, old, but he couldn't bring himself to change them. Not now, not ever. He found a safety unrivalled in their familiarity. The light streaming through the dusty blinds hit a key hanging from a hook on the picture rail, and the man sighed. He thought of the beast they controlled, of the car that once ruled the streets but now stood parked up, listed as SORN, in a lock-up half a mile from his current position.
The man remembered the better days when they'd zoomed through the London streets together, on the inevitable trail of their latest piece of scum. He remembered the stench of cigarette smoke that had oozed into the fabric of the upholstery but was now fading, and how it had once mingled with the sweetest perfume. Her perfume.
Her.
With a sigh, the man sat up and switched on the lamp, a deathly glow filling the space. As he stared into the void, his mouth barely moving, an almost-silent mumble was uttered.
"I'm sorry, Bolly."
A/N: Well there's chapter two! :) Again, apologies for the lack of Gene, but FEAR NOT- we get to see a 'lil bit more of the fab Mancunian in the next chapter, and certainly more in those following. Stay tuned to see if Molly is a DI in the making- and many thanks for taking the time to read!
I wouldn't say no to a review, if you had the time ;)
~ElementsOfSapphire.