Chapter 1

"…a young man who died a hero, and who has left a gap in the hearts and lives of his friends, his colleagues and his family."

Eddie didn't have any family, but that wasn't really important.

"Simon should have been here," Robin mumbled a little unnecessarily.

"I'll wheel him in on 'is life support, shall I?" Gene huffed and Robin looked down feeling perhaps a little more upset than he should have, or normally would have done.

X

It had been a week since the fateful night and things were barely holding themselves together. The aftermath of the bombings and Keats's actions had left the station and its staff in crisis.

As Kim had walked away from Robin and Alex neither could believe or understand what had just occurred. Exhausted and overwhelmed with anguish, Robin crumbled right in front of Alex. His last reason to hold himself together had walked right out of the door. Ever since she had pulled him from the basement he'd focused on the thought of Kim, waiting for her to come back and be with him at the hospital. He could block out his injuries, the things that Keats had said and the whole horrid experience of the bombing and his abduction as long as he was coming ever closer to the moment she walked through the doors and held him tightly again. It was all he could think about. In fact, it was all he'd thought about for months.

Alex had been in no frame of mind for supporting the crumbling man Robin became before her eyes. She was constantly on the verge of falling apart herself. All she wanted was for someone to bring Gene to her but every time she asked for him the doctors and nurses acted strangely and fobbed her off. Her mental state was deteriorating as time went by and the longer it took for Gene to come to her side the more she'd started to fall apart. Seeing Kim had initially given her a burst of strength to help keep her going until Gene came to her side but the moment she'd seen what Kim's arrest warrant said, that crumbled away in an instant.

The thought of Kim's sacrifice and the knowledge that she was stuck in Fenchurch West devastated them both. The fact that she had been there to take them both to safety was something they would never forget. But knowing there was nothing they could do to save Kim from the risky position she had taken in a place of darkness chilled them to the bone.

X

"Bolly?"

Alex shuddered and ignored Gene as he tried to bring her attention back to the real world in the chilly little church. Her head was still mentally stuck in the early hours of the previous Friday, down in the basement. She wouldn't let anyone in for long enough to show them that, though. She felt trapped within her own head. Anyone trying to interrupt those thoughts was intruding on private property. Keep Off The Grass.

"Bolly," this time she felt something nudging her arm repeatedly. Although the action was fairly gentle her body was still suffering from the myriad bruises across her delicate frame and the action made her feel sore as she looked up with a haunted yet empty expression.

"What?" she hissed flatly as organ music began to play and the gathering got to their feet.

"Hymn book," Gene said, thrusting toward her the item he'd been poking her with a few moments before.

Alex stared down at it; the small book in his hand, then back at his face. She made no attempt to take the book but had something else on her mind.

"Don't call me that," she said quietly to a frown from Gene,

"What?" he asked her.

She turned her eyes away and took the book in silence. Not only did she not want to hear it from Gene but she didn't want to have to say it herself. Keats had stolen the name that only Gene used for her and sullied it. Now she couldn't stand to hear it. It had become a reminder not only of Keats's actions but of a relationship that was falling apart.

Gene stared sadly at Alex as she pulled open the hymn book at the wrong page and stared at the words, moving her lips occasionally to give the impression of singing along to How Great Thou Art when in reality she was chiming in with a few mumbled words from Morning Has Broken. He shook his head slightly and lowered his neck so that he didn't have to see her blank expression for another moment.

In his mind he played over the terrible moment that would be the root of his nightmares forever more. From the moment Kim had made her unexpected arrival he knew there was a possibility that something had happened. When the ambulance driver had been found tied up beside the dumpsters that risk had grown exponentially. But he also knew there had been many ambulances coming in and out of the car park and the chances that Alex had been put into a safe, regular ambulance and taken to hospital far outweighed the possibility of anything so audacious as her being abducted while strapped down and injured. And when Simon was pulled from the building and his condition stated as critical Gene's guilt at leaving him to face the falling bricks had taken him by surprise and he'd had to focus on staying with him for the journey. He didn't know Keats had been implicated in the ambulance theft. If he had then maybe he would have gone after her instead, but –

He shut his eyes and shook his head. He needed to stop thinking about the 'what if's. That was all he'd done since that night. If he was honest he knew that the outcome had probably been for the best because if he'd gone storming into Fenchurch West he wouldn't have been as sly as Kim and would probably have only ended up as another victim in the pile. He knew his technique was more act first, think later. From what he'd heard about Keats's set-up he probably would have ended up doing his thinking while tied to a filing cabinet.

But even so, the moment that Jake walked grimly down the corridor towards him with that look on his face and said the words; "I'm sorry Guv," Gene would have done anything to turn back time, to ask someone else to travel with Simon, to head to hospital with Alex and to keep her safe from harm.

The decision had been taken not to tell Gene about Alex until Simon was out of surgery. On reflection it was the wrong decision but at the time it was hard to know what to do for the best. Within moments Gene had been told that his one real friend and the product of Balls A La Hunt had survived surgery but was unlikely to regain consciousness, then with his next breath he heard the words, "DCI Drake is safe now, but –"

That 'but' had been the most painful word Gene had ever heard.

Demanding to be taken to her, his brain went over all the possibilities as he marched at speed down corridor after corridor to find her sitting on the edge of a bed, feeling as exposed in her hospital smock as she had in the basement. She shivered, her face was pale and she looked a moment away from tears at all times, but she wouldn't let them fall.

"Bolly –"

The first word he said to her was the one she didn't want to hear. He didn't know that – how could he have known that? But it set off a wave of pain that made her scurry back a little on the bed.

He tried to hold her. She became cold and unresponsive, her mind shutting down the instant that he touched her. She didn't mean to. She just couldn't stand the thought of anyone touching her. Her skin felt ultra-sensitive as though it burned every time someone laid their hands on her. He tried to hold her hand and she pulled it away. He started to become annoyed and frustrated and she hid her face from him. Eventually he snapped at her and she threw a kidney dish at him which gave him the shock of his life, but the moment a doctor came in and started talking about sexually transmitted diseases and the morning after pill he realised exactly why was reacting that way and suddenly felt another wave of guilt crash over him.

"Why the hell did none if those bloody drones tell me?!" he'd growled angrily, utterly devastated by everything from what he perceived were a flurry of wrong decisions on his part to not knowing why Alex behaved in such a fashion, to the fact that no one had told him the extent of Alex's devastating experience.

Throughout the next day Gene tried to make up to Alex everything that he felt was his fault but the more he tried to help her the more she withdrew. By the time she was allowed home late on Saturday she was talking to Gene like she'd talk to a stranger and still couldn't bear to be touched. Gene tried every tactic that he could think of to get her to talk to him. He was a whisker away from threatening the filing cabinet. The only time he elicited a tiny smile was when he offered her alcohol which he wasn't even sure was the right thing to do because she'd been given such a lot of painkillers and sedatives.

Before they went to bed that night he turned the pages on the calendar to ring the date that they'd chosen for their wedding less than 2 days earlier. He noticed her eyes glazed over and she withdrew further into herself as he made comments about their upcoming big day. They might have set off for bed together that night but Alex's body posture and coolness left them worlds apart and when Gene finally drifted to sleep she slipped out from under the covers and took to the couch, alone. The next morning he found Alex sitting at the table, not eating a bowl of cornflakes, and the calendar missing from the wall. He hadn't dared to ask where it was.

As the days passed things hadn't changed in the slightest. Gene kept a constant and careful watch over Alex's hand. The ring was still on her finger but in all honesty he had a feeling that it wasn't going to be there for long. She was slipping away from him and he didn't have the faintest fucking idea how to stop her.

X

"…One of Edward's colleagues would like to read to you today…"

Gene's attention came back to the present as Marci stepped to the front of the church and began a reading that Gene presumed was from the bible but could have been from Noddy Goes to Toytown for all the attention he was paying. He stole a glance at Alex beside him. Her eyes were fixed on the front of the church but he could tell her attention was as far away as his own because far from being focused on Marci her gaze was blank and seemed to roam all over the place.

"Bolly," he hissed, trying to get her attention but he saw her face darken with his use of that word. What the fuck was happening to her; to the woman he'd known for sixteen years and loved for the best part of that? He knew that what she had been through was more than anyone should ever have to; let alone the person who meant the most to him in that world or any other. He'd seen victims at the station destroyed over less. But he wanted his Bolly back. And right there and then he wasn't sure whether she would ever even allow him to say that word again.