Chapter 24

Gene watched with nothing less than complete horror as Sam took a step that no one had ever taken before. As he jumped there was a moment of glorious freedom about him and just for a split second he could have been a soaring eagle in the sky but all to quickly disappeared from view as he spun and fell and tumbled through the air before landing with a sickening, bone-cracking, back-breaking thud on the tarmac below.

Gene scrambled to his feet, hardly able to keep himself steady and persuaded his limbs to take him to the edge if the roof, falling and flailing along the way. When he got to the edge he peered over and held on, his trembling body putting him in fear if accidentally following Sam over the side. The mess on the ground below made his stomach lurch and he gagged and spluttered at the sight of Sam Tyler's Splat Territory as Kim would name it many years later. He closed his eyes and swallowed very hard indeed, the sounds of screams and cries emanating from below as men and women flocked around the mess of broken limbs and blood that lay before them.

"Shit, Gladys, what the hell did you think you were doing?" he panted for oxygen as he seemed to lose the ability to breathe normally. He already knew Sam had taken his own life to get back to his world. That wasn't news to him. The graphic demonstration – complete with sound effects – was, however. He clutched a hand to his chest and felt his heart pounding. Shit, could there have even been a worse way to go? He'd suffered just about every variation of death in existence over the last few days but the one he'd just seen Sam accept as his fate was the worst by far.

He could hear people yelling about the calling of an ambulance and others begging someone to call the police before someone else politely informed then that this was police property and everyone gathered around the body happened to work for the force. He glanced around and swallowed again. Fairly soon people would be swarming to the roof to check the spot from which Sam had jumped. If they found him up there they would most likely accuse him of pushing the man. That would be bloody typical – the one time he hadn't caused the death at hand would be the one time they'd accuse him.

He found the roof exit and forced his shaking mass of bone and flesh down staircase after staircase, one after another, moving in one direction, down and out of the building. He didn't know where to go from there – he just knew he needed to get away. He left the building and stepped out in to the car park, listening to the anguished sounds of those who stumbled upon the body. He wanted to look…. No, that wasn't true, he didn't want to look but he felt a compulsion to do so. Of course he did – it was human nature. Just like when someone says "Don't look over there!" – your first instinct is to turn your head. On this occasion it was Gene's own mind begging him not to look but he had to. He couldn't help himself. The horrible sight of Sam, limbs bent unnaturally and blood starting to flow around him, would haunt Gene forever.

He started walking, even though he didn't know where he was going to. He didn't exactly have a route in mind, he just kept walking in a big circle until he found himself back where he started, just in front of the building. Time had passed during his long detour. He'd been walking for half an hour. Now he watched as the ambulance crew scraped up what was left of Sam and covered it with a sheet before taking him away. He felt his lip quiver involuntarily and he turned away. He did not wish to see any more.

He took another walk, another long detour as his mind covered a million different worries and once again eventually found himself back in front the station. Another forty-five or fifty minutes had passed by this time; his walking slower and his route a little longer. Now there were many uniformed officers and sombre-looking detectives around the area, sealing it up with Do Not Cross tape, pointing to the swirling pattern of red where Sam had landed. Gene turned away, bile jumping to his throat, and pulled his jacket around him as he embarked upon his third walk to nowhere at all. He didn't know what to do. He knew he couldn't keep going round in circles forever but he had no alternative plan of action. Here he was back in Manchester, he'd watched his friend take his own life and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Why was this time so different? Why wasn't he the one to cause his death, maybe by standing behind Sam when he arrived, only to accidentally fall on him and knock him from the roof? That's what he would have guessed was coming.

He pulled his jacket around him, the nippy April air starting to bite as the day moved on and afternoon began heading into night. It wasn't for a long time after he'd arrived that he noticed his attire. It was wholly more familiar than anything he'd worn so far. In fact, he was pretty damn sure the suit was one of his, the tie definitely was. No other bugger would wear it, that was for certain. He'd been on his third detour for thirty minutes when he dug his hands in his pockets and felt something else that was familiar.

He froze, stopping right where he stood, and pulled put a shiny silver item from within . He stared at it. There was a strange sensation building in his chest as he examined it. This was more than just familiar, it was the ultimate token of familiarity. With shaking hands he unscrewed the cap, held the silver flask to his lips and allowed the burning liquid to tumble down his throat. He had to close his eyes to savour the moment; not the alcohol but the taste of his own life. He didn't know how to handle it. After so many days and nights roaming in unfamiliar years, to get a little of himself back was some sort of miracle.

He looked at the flask one last time before he re-screwed the cap and slipped it into his pocket. What was happening? Was he actually himself again? How could that be? He was in two thousand and bollocks still, he wasn't back in the 90s. he'd just encountered Sam Tyler splat territory – everything was becoming more confusing than ever.

He slid his hand into anther pocket and closed around another object. He hesitated momentarily before pulling it out and cautiously opening it up. He drew in a deep breath and turned his eyes to the sky, hardly believing the fact that his own arrest warrant was there in his hand.

One deep breath turned into two, then three. He just wanted to stand there and let the world fade away around him. He had his clothes, he had his ID and he had his scotch. But he still didn't have his home.

Where to go now? What to do? Where to go from there? His legs finally began to move again, taking him through the rest of his detour until he found himself back on familiar territory outside of the building again. There were no fewer officers gathered around it than the last time he'd stood there, all pointing at the splat pile, shaking their heads, wondering how someone who'd fought so hard to emerge from his coma could make a decision that way, but there was one face in the crowd that he had never expected to see.

Every inch of his body grew weak as he caught sight of her face. His heart began a series of loop-the-loops inside his chest and his head started to spin. It couldn't be –

But it was.

He closed his eyes and swallowed. This was it. He didn't know what was going to happen from there on in but he needed to speak to her. Things were moving apace now and he knew home was closer than ever.

X

"Were there any signs of something wrong beforehand?" Alex was trying hard not to look at the large red stain on the floor but it was difficult not to, "was he behaving strangely during his meeting? Withdrawn? Depressed? Anxious?"

"He'd been quiet," the gentlemen in front of her admitted, "it wasn't like him, he usually had input on any –"

"Alex!"

Alex's eyes moved to the side as she heard her name. Who the hell was calling for her when she was –

She froze as her eyes met a pair of blue ones focused firmly in her direction. The man beside her was still yacking away but all of a sudden she couldn't hear him, as though someone had turned down his volume. Shock crept across her brow which furrowed with confusion and her eyes glistened with familiarity as she focused upon the man in the suit who was striding purposefully towards her.

"My god," she breathed.

How long had it been since that oh-so-strange day; the day that he, him, the man with no name had wandered from the street and spilled to her his troubled mind? A year? Maybe more? Yes, about a year, give or take. That strange day, the electricity she'd never felt before… she had never forgotten it, not for a moment. She felt herself trembling on the spot as the sight of him turned her knees weak and her legs to jelly.

Suddenly he was there, right before her, right in front of her, just as close as he'd been during his lone appointment.

"You never came back," She whispered, recalling how she'd sat and waited that full hour, a week after the strangest day of her life. She swallowed nervously as she thought back to it; her eyes on the clock, watching his hour slip away, staring at the entry in her diary where a question mark stood instead of his name, a tiny 'not Edgar' written in pencil to remind her that his alias was not to be used. She remembered waiting for a call, for him to apologise for missing his appointment and to ask for another. She remembered waiting for the day that someone burst into her office again, threw various members of the building against filing cabinets and told her he needed her help again. For the day when someone waltzed into her life, called her myriad nicknames she'd never heard before and lit a spark in the air.

"I know," he said, barely aware of the drizzle that had started to fall around them. He watched her draw her jacket together as her eyes fixed upon him, "I couldn't. I wasn't there any more."

"I thought the worst," she whispered, hating herself for assuming that he had taken a terrible step; a step as severe as the man whose blood lay beside them.

Gene shook his head.

"I had to go away," he said.

"So what are you doing here?" Alex demanded, her level of confusion hitting the roof, "I don't understand it. Why are you in Manchester? Why are you here? Now?" she turned to the splat mark in the floor, "A man just took his life –"

"I know," Gene said grimly.

"I'm needed here," Alex explained, "I was his psychologist, they need me to help them establish why –"

"My name is Gene Hunt."

Gene's words stopped her sentence in mid flow. It stopped every thought in her head and every motion in her body. Her face contorted into a look of disbelief while her brow creased as she tried to understand what he was telling her. Her head tilted slowly to one side and her mouth hung open as she replayed his words again and again.

"What?" she breathed eventually, disbelief in her voice.

"Gene Hunt," he repeated, "that's me. That's who I am."

Alex's lips moved but no words emerged. She turned from Gene to the spot on the ground where Sam had lain just a couple of hours earlier then turned to the man she'd been speaking with previously.

"Excuse me," she said, "can we finish this later? I-I need to speak to this gentleman." The man frowned and looked annoyed but nodded and walked away leaving a shocked Alex to face Gene again. "Sam…" she whispered, "he…"

Gene just nodded.

"I know," he said.

Alex flailed. She struggled for words. There were pages and pages sat on her desk back in London, there were tapes, there were whole conversations where that name, that man, had been in every single sentence.

"B-but you can't be?" she breathed, "Sam Tyler was a deeply disturbed indivi-" she trailed away as Gene pulled his warrant card from his pocket and her frown increased as she took it slowly from him. Her eyes focused on his name, his photograph and then back to the man himself. She remembered every description of 'Gene' that Sam had given her. And he had given her many. Their sessions had revolved around that man. He was all Sam spoke about and as much as Alex had tried to help him work out what part of his psyche had manifested itself as the boorish, bullish, pickled bigot that drove Sam to distraction she had never been able to figure that one out.

Perhaps because rather than being inside a dead man's psyche he was standing there in front of her.

"Is this…. Some kind of a sick joke?" she whispered.

"Do I look like I'm laughing me knackers blue?" Gene demanded.

Alex stared on, her head shaking slightly as she tried to work out what to say or what to do. Never in her life had she reached a moment of such strange and layered confusion with a side-order of mixed emotion as Gene stared at her, his eyes pleading with her to believe him.

"You're not real," she whispered, "I mean, Gene Hunt… is not real, Sam –"

"Sam bloody Tyler is more trouble than he's worth," Gene told her, "I bet he's told you a few stories about me. And you know what? They're all true too, but don't hold that against me." He took a deep breath as the drizzle grew heavier and his fair hair darkened with the water that slicked it down. "My name is Gene Hunt. I was attacked and woke up in two thousand and bollocks. Am I mad, in a coma or back in time? I think I'm probably all three, love."

"This… can't be happening," Alex shook her head as her legs weakened and she felt them slip away from beneath her.

As he watched her sink to the ground in a less-than-conscious heap Gene closed his eyes and cursed the known universe and everything in it.

"They're only supposed to bloody faint when they're the ones who've gone back in time!" he growled, "this is an unauthorised fainting, Bolly, d'you hear me?"

But Alex stayed right where she was with rain falling around her. With a sigh he shook his head and knelt down to scoop the familiar stranger up in his arms.

Some things, it seemed, were destined never to change.

~xXx~

A/N: So I was apparently LYING THROUGH MY TEETH about not posting again until Monday because this chapter 'happened' in the space of about an hour this morning! What's really strange is I don't personally ship Alex and Gene, never have done, never will do but I feel differently about Gene and 2006/7 Alex and I'm totally shipping them! WTF?