The time has come, my readers, for us to part ways with this story. Yes, this is the final chapter. It has been nearly a year since I posted my first chapter on this site, and I want to thank you all tremendously, from the ones who read what I posted that first day, to those that just started reading with this chapter. Thank you all so much for your amazing reviews, they actually cheer me up on bad days. Thank you so much for all of you who have put this story on your alerts and to all of you who have added to your favourites, and to everyone who has read this for making it my most popular story.

Another HUGE thank you to Blue_Jackal, without whom, this fic would not exist at all. And thank you also to Rolephant, to Ferndavant, and to Bloo again for encouraging me to keep writing.

Now, the final chapter.

Chapter 21: Snow

She sat in the corner of the room, staring at the spot where she knew the door to be. She prayed it wouldn't open. He had been in a bad mood lately, and she knew that obedience lessons were imminent when he was angry. It seemed like she could do nothing to please him when he got like this. All she could do was hope that it would not happen the next time he came in.

"DI Drake?"

The door slammed open, the man stalking angrily into the room. He held her food bowl in his hand.

"Eat."

Alex quietly took a bit of the unidentifiable meat, swallowing it down with difficulty.

"You know, you're lucky. Some animals don't get fed once a day. Their masters aren't nice enough to let them out of their cages after only a few days."

Alex said nothing, staring down at the floor.

"Of course, not all animals try to hang themselves either."

Alex looked up at him, wanting to tell him what really happened.

"Did I say you could look at me?" he roared. Alex looked down again quickly, but she knew it was too late. She felt his hands at her neck, unlocking her collar and forcing her to the floor as she steeled herself for another obedience lesson.

"Alex," a voice said firmly, snapping her out of her reverie. "I asked you to describe what an obedience lesson was. It's used multiple times on your statement, but you never describe what actually is going on."

Alex looked down at the man representing the defendant. She didn't like him looking at her. He tried to always look her directly into her eyes. She looked past him, staring to where Gene and Annie were sitting along with Ray, Chris and Shaz. Gene nodded encouragingly.

"Obedience lessons were...were when he raped me," Alex said quietly. "If I did something that made him angry, he'd tell me I disobeyed him and that he'd have to teach me a lesson. He'd take off the collar and...and..." Alex couldn't continue, breaking the eye contact with the man's forehead to stare down at her feet, clad in black heels and stockings.

She hated the way she was dressed today. Her pencil skirt only reached her knees and though the stockings covered her legs, they did nothing to hide the legs they covered. If anything, the stockings accentuated them. Her blouse was partially see-through, but she had paired it with a long-sleeve shirt to make sure that no one could see anything underneath. She wanted to be back at Gene's house, in her oversized jumper and jogging bottoms. Anywhere but in this courtroom where Ryan's eyes were burning into her.

Alex kept her eyes away from him as she continued to answer the questions, trying not to shake as each question brought back a new memory, cutting into her, making the pain of each whip hurt again, making each scar left by a nail throb.

As the defence continued to hound her, she just prayed it could all end soon.

~(*)~

Alex shifted nervously in the seat beside Gene as Ryan Burns started his questioning. He was worried for her. Gene knew Burns couldn't get off with an easy sentence, but a part of him feared he would. Burns was still torturing Alex's dreams. The night before had made that clear. Court had been released the day before after she had finished, reconvening today for Burns to be questioned. They had all sat watching telly, lost in their own thoughts. Finally, the three went to bed. Alex had not said a word all night.

He had been awakened by a scream. Not thinking, Gene ran out of his room, straight to Alex's room where the scream had emerged from. Gene threw open the door and turned on the light, stopping the screams immediately. She sat shaking in the middle of the bed, her eyes wide, arms wrapped around her knees, tears streaming already.

"Alex?" he called quietly. Gene heard another door open and figured Annie had come out to see the source of the noise.

Alex didn't respond. He walked over to the bed, kneeling next to it. "Alex, can you look at me?" he asked, thinking back to what Annie had done when Alex had had nightmares before. "It's Gene, Alex. You're in my house. Nothing's gonna hurt you."

Gene fell silent and Alex, swallowing hard, turned her head to face him. Gene knew her eyes were focussed on the middle of his forehead, but at this moment he didn't care, flashing her a rare smile. "There you go Alex. See? I'm here and Annie's in the doorway. No one else."

Alex turned her head toward Annie, who smiled softly at her.

"Nightmare, Alex?" Annie asked.

Alex said nothing, merely nodded.

"Was it Ryan Burns?"

Alex flinched at the name, but nodded again. "It's the trial," Alex whispered. "I don't want to see him." She looked desperately at Gene. "I can't see him again!" she wailed, close to tears again. "I can't do it!"

Gene tried not to let his frustration show. When Alex and Annie had returned from CID that night the month before, Alex had gone straight to bed without a word to Gene. Gene had offered Annie the third bedroom in his house to stay that night. Annie had ended up staying since, and her presence had helped Alex in a way he knew he never could. She had told him about the conversation in CID, about Alex resolving to make small steps.

And it was small steps indeed that Alex took over the next few weeks. Sometimes, Gene thought they were too small, but Annie continued to reassure him.

"She was crucified, Gene," Annie reminded him one night after Alex had gone to bed. "Even if she hadn't been held hostage for six weeks before that, she'd still have issues to be dealing with."

Gene had nodded, knowing that Annie was right. He had always been impatient, however, and watching Alex only take tiny steps forward frustrated him often. It had been over a month since Annie had come, and Alex still would not look anyone in the eye. She had mastered giving the illusion that she was, however. Gene had realised when she was looking someone in the face, she was actually looking into the middle of their forehead, successfully keeping from having someone stare her in the eye. She still didn't talk much, but had started to volunteer a few sentences here and there without being asked. She still refused to be touched, but was no longer having panic attacks if she was accidentally brushed.

Swallowing his frustrations, Gene gave a small, reassuring smile. "Yes, you can. You're strong. One of the strongest women I've ever met. In fact, I think you beat me in being stubborn. It's bloody annoying at times, I can tell you that."

Alex was crying again, but it was silent, instead of the violent sobs he had come to expect. Neither had noticed that Annie had left the room, padding downstairs silently. "I'm not stubborn anymore," she whispered. "Broken. Like a house pet."

"No," Gene said firmly. "Do you remember your first few days after you transferred? Walking around, dressed like a prostitute, acting as though you owned the whole bloody world? Convinced Arthur Layton was the head of the drugs ring? Never shutting up, letting me get a word in edgewise?"

Alex nodded miserably.

"That's still you. That stubbornness is still there, Bolly. You just need to find it again. Then you can be your annoying self again, convinced you're absolutely right and thinking that you own the whole bloody world."

Alex hadn't moved. The tears had stopped again, but the collar of her pair of men's pyjamas she wore was soaked.

"How?"

"Small steps, Alex," Annie interjected, three mugs of tea in her hands. "Just like we've talked about." She walked into the room, handing both Gene and Alex a cup of tea.

"Can you get back to sleep, Alex?" Annie asked.

Alex nodded. "You can go back to bed, Annie. Thanks for the tea." Annie nodded and said her goodnight, leaving the room.

"Er...Night Bolls," Gene said, unsure of how to exit.

"Gene?" Alex whispered. "I...I don't want to be alone."

"You want me to sleep in here tonight?"

"Please."

Gene nodded. "Just a minute, Bolly," he said, leaving the room and going down to the sofa. He knew that there was no way he could sleep in the same bed as Alex and didn't fancy laying on the wood floor all night.

He stripped the sofa of its cushions and took them back upstairs, stopping in his room for a moment to grab his duvet and a pillow. He went back to Alex's room, where she was still sitting with her arms wrapped around her legs in the middle of her bed.

Gene put the cushions on the floor, halfway between the door and the bed. Alex watched him, looking guilty. He turned off the lights and sighed as he relaxed into the cushions.

"I'm sorry, Gene," Alex's voice said quietly.

"Don't apologise Bolls. You're fine. Try and get some sleep."

He heard her adjust in the bed and then the room fell into silence. Gene adjusted himself on the cushions, finally finding a comfortable spot and started to doze.

Halfway to slumber, her voice seemed to come from a distance. "G'night Gene."

"Night Bolls."

Gene focussed back on the questioning. With each question that was asked, he felt a grin growing wider. The man was digging himself a hole that he was never going to get out of. Alex kept shifting next to him, and he wondered if she was considering running out of the courtroom. He and Annie had debated that morning, whilst Alex was getting ready over whether or not she should go at all. She had told Gene that morning that she had decided she should go.

"Do you think that we should let her go?" Gene had asked Annie.

"There are two ways Alex can react to this," she had said. "Either it will help her tremendously, or make her pull back into her shell once more. There's no way to tell until it happens though."

"What do you think, Annie?" Gene had asked. It was a sign of how close their friendship was that he was asking her opinion. Gene never asked anyone for any opinion, especially not psychologists. He didn't understand how they worked, and anything he didn't understand he didn't like. Annie knew this and looked at him in surprise, but said nothing about it.

"I think...At this stage, we should let Alex make her own decisions. This is really one of the first decisions she's made since I've met her. If we tell her that she can't go, that's reinforcing what Ryan Burns was telling her. I don't think we should try to dissuade her."

Alex had walked into the end of their conversation. "I have to do it," she said, her voice still small and quiet, though not nearly as hoarse. "I want to make sure he's sentenced." Gene knew if this was the old Alex, her eyes would be glinting, sparking, daring him to challenge her. This was not the case, however.

Her eyes were something that had barely changed at all. Though her face lit up with a smile on rare occasions, it never met her eyes, which were still hollow and dead. It was the expression in her eyes that Gene found he missed the most. Her eyes always showed how she felt, betraying her anger or her happiness. Now they showed nothing except the depth of her misery. It hurt Gene to look into her eyes, to see the hollowness. He hoped that soon, she'd get a flicker of something else. Of happiness, or even anger. Anything besides the vacant expression of utter desolation.

Gene and Annie had both nodded, and they left minutes later.

"Mr. Burns," the prosecutor asked Ryan. "Why were you at the warehouse that night?"

"I had to check that the Lord's will was carried out," Burns said, staring at Alex.

Alex shifted nervously next to Gene, continually crossing and uncrossing her legs and tucking her hair behind her ears.

Gene hoped that this wouldn't make her retreat once more. He didn't know if he could deal with that again. Annie was leaving after the New Year, and if Alex had retreated again, he didn't know if he could take care of her when she had her panic attacks, when she refused to eat or speak. Annie had helped her through all that, trying to involve Gene as much as possible, but still taking the brunt of it. After last night, however, maybe Gene could deal with it. He hoped he wouldn't have to, though. He wanted his posh, mouthy tart back.

"So you confess that you tried to murder her?" the prosecutor questioned, cutting into Gene's fears.

"No. I was sending her spirit to God. Just like with Delphine."

There was an audible gasp from the people in the court. The prosecutor, looking delighted, flipped through Ryan's file. "It says here you were arrested for the murder of Delphine Parks in 1981."

Ryan sighed. "I did not murder her! She was dirty. She had to be cleansed. Just like that whore that's sitting up there."

Gene felt Alex tense as Ryan pointed directly at her.

"I was saving her soul! I was saving her from going to hell! I saved the rest of the CID, but they wouldn't let me save the DI!"

Burns was standing now, and an officer had approached him, ready to restrain him if need be. "YOU ARE ALL SINNERS!" he bellowed. "You lie, you cheat, you whore yourselves out! And then when someone comes along, trying to save your souls, you lock him up in prison! You tried that two years ago when I was arrested for some trumped up drugs charge, but the Lord released me! If you try again, the Lord will interfere again! I dare you!"

Burns had been restrained during the middle of the rant, and was now struggling with the guards. The prosecutor, however, looked gleefully at the judge.

"The prosecution rests."

~(*)~

Gene walked out of the court, followed closely by Alex and Annie. Burns had been sentenced to life in prison. The spirit of the crowd was excited and everyone was chattering happily.

Alex was silent, her face one of shock.

"You okay, Bolls?"

"I never thought it would happen," she said in shock. "He's gone. For life." Her face broke into a small smile and this time, for the first time in months, it met her eyes. Gene was so excited at that moment that he would have kissed Ray.

"He's gone, Alex. He's where he deserves to be. A cage."

Alex nodded. "He's the animal," she muttered, mostly to herself.

"C'mon, Bolls, let's go celebrate."

Alex nodded and Gene started out the door. He was stopped in his tracks, however, when a hand cautiously filled his. A soft, feminine hand that he could never forget the feel of as long as he lived.

Gene turned in disbelief, confirming the fact that Alex was indeed holding his hand. Annie was beaming in delight.

Alex, however just looked at him, her eyes hollow again, still focussed on his forehead. "Small steps," she whispered.

Gene knew that eventually they would get over this. He knew that Alex would never be the same after her ordeal, but maybe, just maybe, there could be some normalcy in their lives once more. Eventually, maybe her eyes would express her feelings again. Maybe she would be able to stare him straight in the eye, to defy him and damn the consequences. But for now, she was willingly touching his hand. And for now, that was all he needed.

"Small steps," he replied happily.

~(*)~

He sat on the bed, staring at the door of his cell. Life. He had gotten life. How was he supposed to help anyone now?

Ryan continued to think as the day faded into night. Finally, around midnight, he sat up, a huge smile on his face. The Lord could still get him out of this. With any luck, he'd be up for parole in forty years.

He could save Alex Drake yet. And after forty years of careful planning, his scheme would be indestructible.

"I'll save her soul, Lord," he promised. "Even if it is the last thing I do, Alex Drake will be punished."

Rant