A/N: I was furious at the way Ashes ended. It was beautiful and broken and GALEX DESERVED BETTER. Here is my fix-it fic.

My first published fanfic, so please be kind! Reviews are to me as air is to non-fandom members. Enjoy ;)

Obviously I don't own Ashes. If I did, this would be canon! I also don't own Meat Loaf's Heaven Can Wait. Beautiful song though.

Fuck Keats.

Dragongrl04 x

Chapter One

Heaven

Heaven can wait,

And all I've got is time, until the end of time…

Turns out Heaven, even in a pub with free booze, is nothing without the people you love.

Yes, Chris and Shaz were there, and even Ray had dialled down the racism and misogyny. It's wonderful to see Sam without thinking he's insane, and the happiness he had with Annie was definitely worth jumping off a building for.

Everyone else was at peace with their happy endings, their forevers. It was only Alex who'd been left unsatisfied, left with the aching knowledge that the two people who mattered most to her had been left in the dark while she moved on.

Her daughter, Molly, was left motherless, the same way she had been, all those years ago. She would never see her grow up, into the strong, confident, amazing woman she knew her daughter would one day be.

And Gene. Gene. The flawed, honourable ferryman, who saved others' souls but refused to save his own.

She missed him.

His pout.

His smile.

His laugh.

Bollykecks.

She missed the person she was when she was with him. The person he was with her. God, she even missed his sexism and mangled metaphors. She had it bad, she knew, but she was too far gone to even care anymore.

She could have been sitting at the bar a week, a month, years or less than a minute when Nelson approached her, chocolate eyes full of concern. Time was strange there- all she knew was that it was long enough to feel like forever, but brief enough that the pain of missing him was sharp and raw as ever, a constant agony in the deepest depths of her soul.

"Ah, ma cher," the barman (God?) sighed, topping up her glass of champagne (Bollinger, what else?). "A beautiful woman like you being so sad is surely a crime."

She liked Nelson, with his broad accent and warm smile, but this remark only served to make her snort bitterly. "Why should I be happy? Everyone I love is elsewhere."

"Molly will be fine, Alex."

"How do you know-" she stopped herself, shaking her head. "Never mind. Of course you know."

"I know about Gene Hunt too, ma cher."

"What about him?" She snorted again. "Bloody man's too stubborn for his own good."

"And for yours." She glanced at him in silent agreement. "You love him."

"I shouldn't." He hummed in amiable disagreement.

"It's a bad idea."
"Love always is."

"What's the point, anyway?" She asked with a sudden flash of anger. "He's never coming. He's going to stay the same 'armed bastard' as always and- and-" She stuttered to a halt, tears clogging her throat and her vision.

"And what, ma cher?" Nelson pressed gently.

"And forgetting. Alone." She said softly. It hurt to say it, let alone believe it to be true.

"We all forget, eventually, if we're left alone," he told her.

He left, presumably to serve drinks or advice to some other dead copper who needed it.

Alex liked Nelson, but he never provided answers to the questions she really needed.

"He's got a point, I think," A voice behind her commented. Sam.

"What point?" She asked, pain lending her voice a knife's edge.

Annie joined them, her soft Mancunian accent soothing her a little - enough that she felt guilty for being so harsh, anyway. "If you leave 'im alone, 'course 'e'll forget. The Guv needs to be reminded."

"How? I'm stuck here, aren't I?" she replied hopelessly.

"Nothing's certain here, Alex. Surely you know that by now," Sam reprimanded gently. "Anyway, the fire exit's still open."

Sure enough, FIRE EXIT glowed green over a door in the corner. She wondered why she hadn't noticed it before- too wrapped up in her grief, she assumed.

Hope glimmered, for the first time since she'd arrived.

"I'd have gone myself, but I couldn't leave Annie." Sam mused. "He needs you, by all accounts. Looks like you need him and all."

He was right, she knew, and in that moment she made a decision; the only decision that had ever truly mattered.

She took one last look at the Pub, at her friends and the happy ending she couldn't share, and stepped through the door, back to London.

Back to Gene.