Chapter 25

The room looked fuzzy and hazy as Alex slowly opened her eyes. There were shapes and colours but nothing that really made a lot of sense. She blinked a couple of times and things started to become a little clearer but one thing in the room brought her eyes into perfect focus.

"Shit," she cursed, "I was really hoping that was a very bad dream."

"Sorry," Gene sat on the floor in front of her with his knees bent and his flask in his hands, "wouldn't be the first time I've been described as a nightmare though.

She rose to an upright position, rubbing her eyes like she'd just awoken from an hour long nap.

"What happened? Where have you taken me?" she began to panic as she glanced round and saw a couch that appeared decades old in style. "Oh my god, what year is this? Sam bloody Tyler and his stupid stories have gotten into my brain…"

"Relax, woman, it's still two thousand and bollocks," Gene told her and a hint of familiarity passed across her face. She remembered Gene using that phrase when they'd met before. It reminded her of that strange day and brought her more to mind of the man she'd felt so drawn to rather than the blinkered bully that Sam had droned on and on about. There were tapes of it, pages of it, hours filled with Sam pacing up and down, demanding to know why his mind had created such a walking nightmare – and why, now he was home, he wouldn't get him out of his head.

The man in question held out a silver flask in her direction. She looked at it suspiciously.

"What's in there?" she asked.

"Something to stop you going horizontal again," he told her, "as long as you don't have too much of it." He wagged it under her nose. "Take it."

"I don't usually drink in the day." She told him.

"Yer don't usually fall flat on yer face in the middle of the day either, do you?" Gene asked, his eyebrow rising.

She looked at him, then to his flask.

"That is a very good point," she said as she took the flask, if still a little reluctantly. She looked at it warily and used her sleeve to ferociously wipe the top.

"I'm not diseased!" Gene protested. Alex glanced at him then drew a long swig from the flask. Gene almost smiled as he saw her flinch a little. "Not much of a fan of scotch?" he asked, knowing that was something that would change with years of working together.

"Not really," she said, her voice a little raw from the strong alcohol. She handed the flask back to him pulling a face, "but I don't suppose I can expect a nice bottle of red instead." She looked around her, rubbing her eyes again. "Where exactly have you taken me?" she asked.

"Will you stop making it sound like I've bloody kidnapped you?" Gene told her, "god's sake, did you want me to leave you out in the rain for an early shower?"

"I'm starting to understand why Sam Tyler's head was in such a mess," she said with a sigh.

Gene took a sip from his flask and looked around.

"Someone left their garage open to the elements," he told her, "I've been… for a scenic walk," he recalled his three long detours, never quite being able to tear himself from the area, "walked past this place a few times. Looks like someone forgot to put a door on the thing."

After Alex had passed out Gene couldn't think what to do with her. He recalled a garage around the corner that he'd passed a few times. It seemed to be used for storage rather than parking. There was an old couch, a mattress on which Gene had laid her, a crusty looking fridge and what appeared to be an ice cream making machine. There were a some odd rolls of fabric at one side, and a lot of leaves across the floor.

Alex stared at him. She shook her head a little as she tried to tie up the man from Tyler's notes with the one she'd met the previous year.

"You'll have to forgive me if I seem a little confused," she began, "but that's only because… because…" she closed her eyes, "because I am bloody confused. "

"Makes two of us," Gene told her.

"Sam Tyler claims that you were inside his head," Alex told him.

"He also once claimed he could hold his drink before he threw up all over me windscreen," Gene told her.

Alex swallowed. Her heart was absolutely pounding. None of this made sense.

"You told me you worked with damaged officers," she whispered, surprised to feel herself starting to shake, "was Sam one of them?"

"Could say that," Gene nodded, taking another swig.

"I wasn't aware Sam, had had any problems before his coma," Alex said, almost to herself. She looked at Gene, "well, this makes more sense to me now."

"You sure about that?"

Alex nodded.

"You were never a figment of his imagination at all," she said.

"Thanks for the existential confirmation." Gene said gruffly.

"He'd worked with you previously and must have somehow lost you from his conscious memory," Alex continued, her mind searching for the most logical explanation, "during his coma he brought you back into his thoughts and you became some kind of a symbol for his fight to wake up."

"That's a nice story, Bols," Gene said quietly, "shame it's not the right one."

"What do you mean?" Alex asked.

Gene sipped from his flask one last time before screwing the cap back on to preserve what was left.

"It's not that simple," Was all he would say.

Alex looked at gene. He had that same troubled look upon his face she'd seen the year before.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"I wish I knew that," Gene's voice was low and grim.

"Well were you here to see Sam?"

"In a way."

"You're really bloody frustrating to talk to, do you know that?" Alex told him crossly.

"So much for the caring psychologist," Gene cried.

"I'm not your psychologist right now," she told him, "this isn't an appointment. You had one of those and you didn't keep it." He noticed that she sounded genuinely angry with him.

"I didn't have a choice," he told her, "I stepped out yer building and got a car up the backside."

"What are you talking about?"

"Came from nowhere, knocked me flying, everything went black and I woke up in time to see Tyler doing his birdman impersonation."

Alex froze. She stared at him.

"What are you saying?" she asked quietly, "You and Sam… were both hit by cars? And you saw him jump? Were you there earlier today?" she saw his expression laden with things he wasn't sure how to say, "what are you doing in Manchester anyway? When did you work with Sam Tyler?" The more questions she asked the less he was answering. A dark and eerie feeling began to creep over her shoulders. "Who are you?"

Gene swallowed. He looked at her seriously.

"I was starting to wonder that meself," he told her.

"When did you work with Sam?" she whispered.

Gene closed his eyes.

"I worked with him from nineteen seventy three to nineteen eighty," he said slowly.

Alex stared at him, her mind working overtime.

"That," she began, "is impossible, he would only have been four in –"

"I worked with Sam Tyler from nineteen seventy three until nineteen eighty," Gene said again.

Alex felt her stomach churning with nervous confusion as his words finally sank in.

"Nineteen seventy three," she repeated and swallowed as all those notes and all those session started to come back to her. "But –" how had he known? How did he know the year Sam had constructed in his mind? "Have you spoken to Sam recently?" she demanded, "did you speak to him about his coma? Did he tell you about his dreams?"

"They weren't dreams," Gene told her seriously, his stare never faltering for a moment.

"When did you work with him?" she demanded, waggling her finger at him as he opened his mouth to speak, "and don't give me any of that seventy three crap again!" She watched as he just stared. "What?" she began to scowl, "why won't you give me the truth? It's not as though it will make any difference now. Sam's dead."

Gene swallowed.

"So am I," he said.

"What?" Alex's face almost folded in on itself. His words were chilling but made no sense to her. She drew in her breath. "Who are you really?" she whispered more questions, "When did you work with Sam? What year did you transfer to London?"

"Nineteen eighty one," Gene told her.

Alex's head was starting to throb.

"That's impossible, Sam didn't even join the police until nineteen eighty eight and he worked in Manchester his entire life!"

"Bolly, listen to me," Gene leaned forward.

"And why are you calling me that?" Alex began to feel scared. Here she was in a grim garage in a strange place with the strangest man she'd ever met – and that was despite the fact that her godfather was Evan White.

Gene hesitated. He needed to stop with the nicknames but it was such a hard habit to break. Finally he reached into his pocket and pulled out his ID again.

"I'm not from here," he told her, "bloody Tyler hasn't got the monopoly on time travel you know."

"Are you trying to tell me you're some kind of space cadet, slipping back and forth through wormholes?" Alex gave a mocking cry as she got to her feet, "you're wasting my time, just like you did that day back in London! And to think I spent so many weeks and months worrying about you, trying to track you down –"

Gene froze at the revelation.

"You did?"

"Thinking you'd done something to yourself," Alex continued, "thinking you'd done a… a… a Sam Tyler because the pressures of work had gotten to you so much! I called Fenchurch East, the place you said you worked, they had no idea who I was talking about! I tried to find out your name, tried to trace your car –"

This was a revelation to Gene who had no idea what would happen between the 'jumps' he'd been making, he just assumed the world would forget about him for all those months or years. Apparently not.

"I'm sorry," he said grimly.

"Why did you never come back?" Alex demanded, "I thought you wanted my help."

"Believe me, I've never needed it more," Gene told her.

"Then be honest with me," she pleaded with him. Despite her worries about the strange situation she was in and her disbelief at his words, above everything she just wanted to help. She recalled how low and depressed he'd been the year before and now here he was again; a different place and a different situation but with the same sadness in his eyes. "I can't help you if you won't tell me the truth."

"You won't know the truth if yer not listening to it," Gene told her. He opened up his ID and passed it to her.

"I know your name," Alex told him crossly, "I just want to know your real story."

"Alex," he began seriously, "look at the date."

"What?"

"What date does that say?"

Alex stared at it, then back up at Gene. It didn't make any sense. No sense at all.

"I don't understand –"

"I'm from nineteen ninety seven, Drake," Gene told her, "I was on a bloody stake out, impounded a bunch o' wooden crocodiles and went to check a report of a body washed up at the dock. Someone clobbered me over the head and I woke up in two thousand and twelve with a wife I'd never met, a hole in me head and a bunch o' parking tickets."

"So now you're from the future?" Alex folded her arms.

"I'm from the past," Gene told her, "I woke up in the future, and I know what that sounds like. Believe me, I've been on the other side of it often enough." He saw her open her mouth to deliver another scathing comment but he wasn't going to listen. "I'm not part of this place, Bolly. Got me own world, some other place. They come to me when they need me and I help them best I can. Now I need someone to help me."

"I'm trying, Gene, but –"

"When I say I get the damaged ones I mean exactly that," he said, "literally. Very literally. I get the ones whose brains have been smashed up in a car crash, whose guts have a knife in them," his voice almost shook as he added, "who've got a bullet hole in the head. They've lost their lives too soon. Or come bloody close to it. Just like Tyler." He looked at her very sincerely. "His body was out here. His mind? Well, I got stuck with that. Bringing his bloody puffy twenty first century forensics and ethics into me station. Took one look at him, and knew I was in for a nightmare. Course, he probably said the same thing about me."

There was an imperceptible smile in Alex's face.

"Yes," she said quietly, "he did."

"Might have got a filing cabinet or two in the back… might have taken one or two pranks from me team of jokers, might have driven me round the bloody U-bend with his by-the-book bollocks. But I can't deny he was a bloody good DI. And I was proud to have him on me team." He grunted, "eventually."

Alex stared on, scarcely believing what she'd heard. Echoes of everything Sam had told her now came from the other side of the story. It seemed unbelievable. She held her hands together and tried to stop them shaking. She had to test him. Had to find out for sure how much he knew.

"Sam Tyler went home –"

"In the middle of a job," Gene continued for her, "in a bloody tunnel if you want to be fussy. Couldn't have buggered off at a worse moment, bloody Gladys, existential crisis, vanishing back to two thousand and bollocks, leaving us in the lurch."

Alex's heart dropped right out of her body. At least, that's how she felt.

"How could you know that?" she whispered, "he… he told no one else but me… "

"Maybe because I was the twat with a bullet in me leg screaming at him to bloody do something," said Gene.

"Screami-" Alex froze and swallowed, "He heard you," she whispered, "he used to hear you all the time, screaming for him… calling him back. You, and the girl…" she paused, testing him.

"DC Annie Cartwright," Gene sighed, "All very well for Tyler to do his bit for the feminist movement, persuading me to get a bird into me team, turns out all he wanted was to see the other side of her knicker elastic." He watched her mouth falling open slowly, "which he did, eventually." He nodded his head vaguely to one side. "He's there now. Probably peeling down her kecks and trying to remember which part he was supposed to stick it in, he wasn't exactly a hit with the ladies. Didn't have the Gene Genie charm."

"The –" Alex gulped as her eyes widened and her body started to feel weak again.

"One of a kind, I am," he continued, "And Tyler? Well, somehow Cartwright put up with all his poncey nonsense, used more of her face cream than she did."

Alex felt herself shaking.

"What do you mean, 'he's there now'?" she whispered.

"What do you think he was doing on the roof?" asked Gene, "skydiving without a parachute?"

Alex swallowed,

"He wanted to get back to you," she whispered.

"Managed it too," he said as he saw her starting to weave, "oh bloody hell, you're not passing out on me again, I've left me smelling salts back in ninety seven, I'll have to use me sock if you're not careful."

In an attempt to halt any possible fainting spell before it began he reached out, grasped her shoulders and laid her back against the mattress.

"What the hell are you doing?" she cried.

"I'm not having you splitting yer head open on the bloody concrete floor!" Gene told her.

"So, what, I faint once and I'm marked for life?" she pushed his hands away, "Well excuse me but I'd just had a bit of a shock!" she sat back up and held out her hand, "just give me the bloody flask. I'm sure that will do the job."

"Cheek of it," Gene grumbled surrendering it reluctantly and surprised by the vehemence with which she snatched it. "Oi!" he saw her press it to her lips and gulp down several mouthfuls before he snatched it back, almost pulling her hand and her lips along with it. "Steady, I need that brain in one piece not sloshing around inside yer pretty head." He paused as his expression darkened. "I need help."

"Well one of us does," Alex told him, panting a little as the alcohol took her breath away, "I don't know what's worse, the things you're telling me or the fact that I'm starting to believe them."

"Well now you know how I feel!" Gene cried, "it's a pain in the bulging backside when some twat turns up in yer station, jabbering about some other year, demanding their office back."

"You're not having my office," Alex began to get confused by the conversation.

"I don't want yer office, I want mine back!"

"Well where is it?"

"Fenchurch East CID."

"You're not in Fenchurch East CID, I checked!" Alex reminded him, "and I keep checking because I've been so bloody worried about you. "

"Not Fenchurch East two thousand and bollocks, Fenchurch East nineteen ninety seven."

"So you're… what… retired?"

"How bloody old do you think I am? I've got the body of a thirty year old."

"And the brain of a twelve year old boy from what I've heard."

"You shouldn't believe everything Tyler Tells you," Gene warned, "he told me I was a figment of his imagination."

"Well apparently you're now a part of mine," Alex said crossly. She reached out to grab his flask but he responded quickly by grasping her wrist and holding it firmly, enough to shock her into silence without ever hurting her.

"Does this feel like a figment of your bloody imagination?" he asked her. He caught her in his stare and she couldn't move. She felt just the same pull to him that she had that previous year, their eyes locked in a stare that neither seemed able to break. Alex found herself breathing heavily, her head starting to spin just a little. Was it from the alcohol? That's what logic would suggest. But as she looked at him she realised it was from the look in his eyes and the strange sense of déjà vu inside her.

"Who are you?" she asked yet again. Her tongue skimmed around her lips, "and this time, whatever you tell me, I'll believe you."

He stared back at her, certain they were just going to end up in another loop of disbelief and confusion, but as he looked deep into her eyes he could see that she didn't want to fight any more, not with him and not with the truth. She pleaded with him silently to open up to her, to confide in her. His touch had been as real as anything she had felt in her life and as much as she hated to admit it so were his words. She knew the difference between someone who was delusional and someone who was simply lost. "Just tell me," she pleaded.

Gene stared and swallowed. His grasp on her wrist loosened as he drew together his strength.

"I am Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt of the metropolitan police force, head of CID, Fenchurch East. But I'm also…" he sighed and placed his palm across his eyes desperately begging with unseen forces that, when he looked to her again, he wouldn't see disbelief on her face, "I'm also the one you go to when you've still got things to work out. Still got a life that needs living. When you leave yer world too soon." He breathed deeply. "They come to me. They grow. They learn. Then when they're ready to move on I take them where they need to go." He paused. "But this time it's me who's on the other end of this. I'm the mug that's woken up somewhere I don't belong. And just like bloody Tyler I just want to get home." His heart sank as he concluded, "I'm lost. No idea where I am or how to get back. And I hate every bloody, miserable second of it."

There was silence. A lot of silence. A long time passed until finally he heard her speak. The words she spoke weren't ones he'd expected to hear.

"I'll help you."

He dropped his hand from his face and met her stare again. There was something different about it. A sense of pity. No, a sense of sadness. She reached out and laid her fingers against his hand and a bolt of electricity ran through him from her touch.

"What did you say?" he found himself shaking.

"I said I'll help you," she whispered. She took a deep breath. "Gene, I don't understand everything you've told me, and I don't know how to make sense of it either. But I want to help you. I'm going to help you." she bit her lip. "it's what I do."

The cautious but reassuring smile she gave him sent sensations through his body like tiny electric shocks. For the first time since he awoke on this strange world full of tragedy, death and despair he started to feel like he had an ally and that he just might find a way out of his godforsaken horror. As the sky darkened quite suddenly to night and the stars came out to play he had a feeling his ticket home was closer than ever.

~xXx~

A/N: Expect me to go overboard with the writing this week. I'm escaping into this world for a bit. By the way, has anyone noticed what I've been doing with the chapter titles yet? :P