Hope you enjoy this newest instalment - it nearly had a *very* different outcome but I'm pretty sure it's better this way!

Alex was faced by the two people she cared about most in the world – that is, the world she used to live in. She stepped towards Evan and Molly, reaching out to them with raw relief that she was back, that they were here, that she'd made it home.

When they both recoiled, she froze in shock, her heart rate picking up.

"Molls? What is it sweetheart, what's wrong?" she asked hurriedly. It was a knife in her heart to see her daughter, a little taller than she remembered, deliberately back away.

Molly glowered at her mother. "You never came back – you said you'd be back in time for my birthday party. Look at me now! Two birthdays late, Mum, how could you?"

"You don't understand," she began, twisting her hands anxiously in front of her. "It's not as simple as –"

"As simple as what, Alex?" Evan cut in. His disapproving face forced ice into Alex's veins. "It shouldn't even be a choice – she's your daughter!"

Her breaths sped up in pure panic. "Evan, please," she begged. "Let me explain."

"There's nothing to explain," he said coldly. "I'm so disappointed in you, I can hardly stand to look at you."

Molly's bottom lip trembled but she held her ground. "There's nothing I want to hear, Mum. You didn't choose me, and now I'm not choosing you."

Alex stumbled backwards in shock as Pete Drake strolled into the room towards the daughter he hadn't seen since she was a little less than a year old. He put his arm around her like they were old friends. She felt sick; her rolling nausea made the quickening breaths worse and for a moment she squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to lose control.

"Molly," she breathed. She'd never explained to her daughter, or even to Evan, how things had been before Pete walked out. Neither of them would understand – neither of them wanted to hear what she had to say, now, anyway. "Molly, please don't go with him."

"Always with the tears." It was said with a roll of his eyes that sent Alex flashing back to years previously. "You never could just hold it together and stop being a drama queen over nothing," he taunted. "Pathetic little Alex."

She wanted to warn him not to talk to her like that in front of Molly, or indeed talk to her like that at all. But the words were stuck, trapped between ragged breaths that moved air devoid of oxygen in and out of her lungs. Stars appeared at the corners of her vision, and she folded to the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. Though her vision was blurred with tears and light-headed stars, she saw Molly leave arm-in-arm with her father, without so much as a glance back to her mother.

"Alex? Wake up! Wake up, it's alright. I'm 'ere. You're alright."

His voice was gruff, groggy from sleep, but immediately reassuring. As Alex returned to consciousness, she realised her face was pressed to the front of his pyjamas – in the intensity of the dream, she'd obviously burrowed into him as a place of safety. Her cheeks flushed: she immediately felt ashamed.

"I'm – sorry… Didn't mean – to – wake you," she said, her words punctuated by rushed, erratic breaths the same as she'd had in the nightmare. She reached for his hand and squeezed it.

"Don't be daft," he replied, stroking her back. "Shh, just… Just breathe a bit slower, you're fine, Alex."

It had been a week since the Westminster WPC was threatened on her way home from work, and although there had been no further instances of violence or threats linked to this case, Gene was still in her flat. She was grateful for his presence. The slow progress on the Richards file was beginning to wear on the team, the others out of resentment but Alex due to her knowledge of psychosis and her stress over what might happen next.

While she'd almost returned to normal since the miscarriage, her dreams seemed out to destroy her one disrupted night at a time. This was the first time, however, that a nightmare had spilled over into waking Gene as well, and she felt dreadful for it despite his assurance that he wasn't bothered. No-one would ask for a wake-up call in the wee small hours.

It was impossible to shake off the mental image of Molly walking away with her father. Alex's chest still heaved with every breath. She screwed her eyes closed and forced her breaths through her nose instead in an effort to slow their ferocity. It rarely helped, to be frustrated with panic, but it was as involuntary a reaction as the panic itself. She was impatient with herself and it only served to make matters worse.

Gene didn't move his hand from her back, rubbing up and down the cotton of her pyjama shirt. "You sure you're alright?" he murmured.

"I'll be… fine..." she gasped. "It – it'll pass."

He frowned, glad she couldn't see his face. He stroked her hair with his free hand and kissed the top of her head. "You sound like you know what you're doin'," he said in a low voice, knowing he was on shaky ground. "'ave you… 'as this 'appened t'you before?"

She tensed in his arms.

"Alex?"

"Yes," she said at last. "I've had a… a panic attack, before." It was a moot point, now that the timeline of her life held no meaning, that it would be more than ten years until her first panic attack, in those dark months after Molly was born. "I don't expect… you don't have to know what to say," she said, her words tumbling out in a rush.

Gene held her tightly for a few seconds. He didn't know what to say, and doubted that he ever would – he'd been brought up thinking that anything like that made you an absolute headcase, and wasn't the whole Richards case based around locking one of them up? But Alex was as far from all that as it was possible to be, and yet here she was, sounding like she'd had these… these panic attacks, for years. It made no sense to him at all – but she was still Alex. Still Bollyknickers, still one of the very best DI's he'd ever come across.

He'd heard her muttering in her sleep before, when that brain of hers had been powering away but not stirring so much as to send her into a nightmare. Whoever 'Pete' was, if Gene ever came across him, he'd happily break every bone in the wanker's body for whatever he'd done to this beautiful woman.

As he turned one of her curls between his fingers, his fingertip brushed over the clasp of her necklace. He hadn't seen it off her since he'd first fastened it, more than a week ago, but he hadn't realised she'd been sleeping in it too. She'd obviously meant it when she said she wasn't used to being given pretty things.

The front door of the station swung open and a glacial blast of winter air shot across the front desk, rustling the papers Alex was going through. She wasn't wearing a jacket: it was warm enough up in CID not to need more than her soft batwing top, so she ducked behind the desk to escape the icy draught. It wasn't her job to deal with walk-ins anyway. She tuned Viv out as he handled whatever situation had arisen, concentrating instead on the file. It was an unrelated case to the ongoing one, but the Chief Super was breathing down the neck of CID for taking so long on the Richards case at the expense of any others. To have her head elsewhere than a triple-murder inquiry with a mentally-ill prime suspect was a walk in the park. She'd take a simple robbery any day of the week over the absolute headache of the Richards case.

"… you're in luck, Madam, DI Drake here is working on that case and she'll be able to talk to you, no problem."

Alex started in surprise on hearing her name and hearing it be volunteered. She stood up with the messy heap of notes clutched to her chest and tried to project the expected image of Detective Inspector. She shot a look at Viv that told him clearly how she felt about being dropped in it, and then turned her attention to the young woman who'd walked up to the desk with a long-perfected gentle expression.

"How can I help –" She froze mid-sentence, which no-one seemed to notice. Her throat constricted and her stomach lurched on seeing the tiny baby in the woman's arms. This is ridiculous, she told herself firmly. You can't just avoid ever seeing a baby again, you're being pathetic. Get a grip, Alex!

At that moment, Shaz breezed in, and her eyes immediately fell on Alex, who wasn't taking in anything being said by the woman in front of her. She hovered, listening in.

"… I know you're looking into what happened to Patsy, and there's all kinds of gossip about looking for Peter now as well. I… I've got some information, but I can't stay long, I'm sorry. This little one's due a feed so I need to get home."

Shaz glanced at Alex, whose eyes were wide. Her hands were occupied, her arms being folded around a clutch of papers and files, but the fingernails of one hand dug into her exposed shoulder, leaving deep pink crescents above the neckline of her top. It didn't take a psychology degree to work out what was wrong, and someone had to intervene.

"I can take you through to an interview room now, saves you a job Ma'am," she said airily. "Think the Guv wanted some of them notes on the Yates robbery, actually, if you want to take them up."

Alex blinked hard and came to her senses a little. "Of course, um, if that's okay with you?" she asked the young woman, who shrugged.

"Makes no difference to me, as long as it gets heard!"

A gentle touch on Shaz's forearm was the last she knew of her DI, who seemed to disappear back upstairs like a wisp of smoke, without a trace.

Alex headed back up to CID in a daze: once she sat down with the paperwork, she couldn't remember her walk up from the front desk. At first she thought it was pure green-eyed jealousy she was feeling, and she hated herself for it as she forced her attention onto the notes she'd brought upstairs. She tried to mentally connect the dots of this case but her brain just wouldn't work, nothing made any sense at all. She drummed her fingers on the desk and absent-mindedly chewed on her lower lip.

Chris looked up with a confused frown. It took a moment for him to tune in to the tapping sound; with Shaz absent it clearly wasn't the typewriter, and anyway the taps were far too erratic to be Shaz's typing. He scanned the room and narrowed his eyes when he saw DI Drake at her desk. Something was up. He looked over at the Guv's closed door, then back to his DI.

Walking across to her desk, he cleared his throat gently to get her attention without making her jump. "Uh, Ma'am, can I… can I get you anythin'?" he asked, more than a little uncertainly. "Cup of tea, maybe?"

She didn't look up. To Chris it looked as though she was deliberately avoiding looking up at him although of course he could never prove that. "I'm fine, thanks Chris," she said, her eyes glued to the notes in front of her. Her fingers never stopped moving: she didn't seem aware of her almost-desperate expulsion of nervous energy. Her eyes hadn't actually moved across the page; she was staring statically downwards. Her eyes were full of tears despite her emotionless voice.

"Right you are, Ma'am," he replied quietly. As he sat back down, he rounded his shoulders, deep in self-critical thought. He didn't have the friendship with DI Drake that Shaz had, that mentorship mixed with easy kindness. He wasn't abrasive enough and he definitely didn't have the balls to say the things Ray did that got right under her skin and cut through whatever else she was doing at the point of starting an argument with him. And he certainly didn't have whatever it was the Guv had going on with her. He was stuck on the other side of a brick wall and it usually didn't bother him so much, but usually, she was all over the place giving orders and getting cases solved, not collapsing inwards and silently falling apart at her desk.

His resolve only lasted a few minutes before he found himself at the Guv's door.

"What is it?" came the typically gruff call from within.

Chris entered the office quickly and bit the bullet. "There's somethin' up with DI Drake, Guv. She's been fine all mornin', and now… she's not."

"What d'you mean, Christopher?" Gene covered the fact his heart had started racing by seeming to reject what he was being told.

"How am I s'posed to know? She don't look good, that's all, Guv. Thought you'd want to know." He shrugged, but his eyes shot a slightly pointed glance at his DCI before he left the office.

She don't look good was an understatement, Gene realised as he swept out of his office a few minutes later. She might have been silent and taking up perhaps even less space than usual, but Alex looked absolutely heartbroken. Why hadn't she said anything, or just upped and left? But he knew why: she was too bloody stubborn, and was too determined to get a job done, and… She might have stood out a mile in her usual classy get up, but underneath it all she hated anything that marked her out as different from any other detective in that room.

He paused in front of her desk and rested on his two fists, leaning down so he was closer to her. He touched one hand to hers that was still tapping away: she flinched, froze, then swiftly retracted the hand into her lap. Eye contact with her was a challenge, but he got it eventually. Her eyes were saturated with unshed tears as he held her gaze tenderly for a few seconds before standing back upright.

"Right, you and me Bolls, we've got a suspect on the Yates robbery due in for interview. Come on."

Alex blinked hard, and cleared her throat. She shuffled awkwardly in her seat then unsteadily got up.

"Guv, I'll go instead o' Drake."

Alex, Gene and Chris all turned around in surprise when Ray pushed back from his desk and spoke. Chris didn't think Ray had been paying attention. Alex didn't think he liked her enough to try and be genuinely nice. And Gene didn't think Ray gave a shit, most of the time. (He still held something of a grudge for the comments made in the aftermath of the miscarriage.)

"I'm not takin' you, Carling," said Gene adamantly. "It's not the main man, it's some scrawny little side-amigo who doesn't need to be 'avin' nightmares about you for the next fortnight!" There was a ripple of amusement followed by a definite air of uneasiness as he continued his mission to return DI Drake to her prior power. "Right, Bolly, let's go."

Her reluctance was palpable and for a moment he wanted to tell her the truth, tell them all the truth. But he couldn't face being called 'soft' or worse, and didn't want to hear meaning about Drake getting any preferential treatment.

If she'd been herself, she wouldn't have thought twice about telling him where to go if she didn't feel up to interviewing. She did everything by the book, except she never took any notice of rank where he was concerned, if she thought he was wrong. It was all kinds of awful for her to wordlessly follow orders.

She followed him out into the corridor like a shadow, another red flag. He was unused to having her anywhere but beside him: it was practically their signature to burst through the doors as one. He didn't object to holding doors open for her, of course. It was simply that she had never needed him to, before.

Out of view and earshot of CID, Alex stopped and leaned against a wall.

"Gene, I'm not fit to be here," she whispered, the admission hurting in her throat as the words emerged. "You should have let Ray take my place. At this rate," she choked out, "he may as well take my place full stop."

"Bolly," he said, his voice low and gentle in the register reserved only for her. He looked up and down the corridor before taking her lovingly by the hand, half-leading and half-pulling her out onto the fire escape. She wouldn't want the world and his dog to see her crumble.

The wrought iron steps were intensely cold, but they sat regardless. Alex cried, and it first it seemed she was ashamed of herself, embarrassed to release her emotions. But as the minutes ticked on, Gene found the courage to wrap a tentative arm around her. She leaned into him at once; she was desperate for proximity, his especially. He rested his head down on hers and put his other arm around her too. This was uncharted territory, and on top of that it was desperately sad. He was used to striding into situations and taking control, fixing it all with a few punches or a wave of a warrant card, neither of which would do any good here.

"Can I… can I tell you what set me off?" she murmured at last.

Her voice could easily have been carried away by the early-December breeze, but somehow he heard every word.

"Course." It was just one syllable. He didn't know how to make it softer, how not to sound like himself.

"It's stupid really – I… If I can't even go down to the front desk and… I shouldn't be here. There was a woman with a newborn baby. That's all it was, and… and… it shouldn't have affected me so much!" She frowned, a fresh crop of tears making their presence known. Her throat ached and pressure was building behind her eyes. It came as a shock to feel a shudder in the strong arms around her. "Gene?"

He shook his head, his face buried in her hair, and held her tighter. When he at last sat up and released her, his eyes were red. He cleared his throat. "Not one word to the boys, Bolls," he warned, scrubbing a coat sleeve across his eyes and deliberately looking away from her.

"Of course not," she said loyally. She pressed her lips together tightly. It moved her deeply, that in her presence alone, he could be vulnerable enough to experience the full spectrum of emotions.

Alex rested her elbows on her knees and stared dead ahead. Her breath rose in little white puffs with every exhalation, and the icy air nipped at her ears and fingertips, but she barely seemed to notice. "Whatever the boys might think, if they saw you now," she said thoughtfully, "I love you." There was something fond about the way he had referred to his junior officers. "And I love that you still believe in me, even if you have to drag me out onto a fire escape before we..." She stopped. "There's not an interview at all, is there?" she asked, one eyebrow raised.

Gene looked at her with a crooked half-smile that made her weak at the knees, even sitting down. "Is there fuck," he said wickedly. He stood up and pulled her to her feet. "I just needed an excuse to get you out of your 'ead and out of that bloody room!" He leaned her against the wall and kissed her. Gently at first: his lips quivered as they met the dampness of tears that had reached as far as the corners of her mouth, and then needily, hungrily, desperately.

She didn't have the energy to give back as good as she was getting, but when he put one hand in her hair, she met it and entwined her fingers with his, her palm flush with the back of his hand. She squeezed his hand and dropped her shoulders, feeling a little of the day's tension slip away. The memory of that newborn was duller, less piercing.

He took a step back and for a moment, looked straight into her eyes. "You're a bloody strong woman, Alex."

"I'm not," she disputed, shaking her head and looking down at her shoes.

Gene cupped one of her cheeks with his hand. "You are." He took a deep breath before continuing. "Tyler an' – Sam and Annie couldn' 'ave kids. Not at all. They lost one, early on, and then nothin'."

Alex's blood ran cold. He hardly ever spoke about Sam, especially not voluntarily or using his first name.

"Couldn' find a reason for it, either. Damn near broke 'er; she 'ad months an' months away an' she got over it a bit, but she were never quite the same after. Then, obviously, they ran outta time..." He paused. "Look, what I'm tryin' to say… is you're still 'ere. It only 'appened a few days ago, and you're back givin' that lot marchin' orders and tryin' to solve a triple murder, for cryin' out loud! You're a bloody strong woman, Alex," he repeated.

She couldn't smile, but she met his gaze and held it.

Shaz hurried into CID, almost tripping over her own feet in her haste. She made it to the Guv's office door before realising it was ajar and the office was empty.

"Where's the Guv?" she said.

Ray didn't look up. "Interviewin' downstairs with Drake," he said blankly.

"You been runnin'?" Chris asked, mildly amused.

Shaz smoothed her skirt and rolled her eyes. "Shut up," she said. "Where's the Guv?" she persisted, asking Chris directly this time.

Looking confused, Chris repeated the same information Ray had given.

"No, 'e's not," she replied testily, assuming that this was some kind of in-joke. But she wasn't prepared to wait around for Ray and Chris to actually take their job seriously, in order to share the information she'd been given. "I've just been in one of the interview rooms, and the other one's not in use this mornin' while the carpet gets done!"

"Well, 'e's definitely got DI Drake with 'im," Chris put in uncertainly. He exchanged a glance with Ray. "You don't think they're..." He raised his eyebrows. "Nah, I can' say it," he decided, pulling a face.

Shaz let out a frustrated sigh. "Bloody 'ell you two, is that all you think about? Christ, you could show a bit o' compassion! I were down there first thing and some woman walked in with a baby; DI Drake went white as a sheet and looked ready to pass out or somethin'. Do you not think the Guv might be lookin' after 'er a bit?"

"Lookin' after 'er..." Ray repeated darkly, eliciting a snigger from Chris and a few nods of mocking agreement from the other men in the room.

They all froze as the doors crashed open. Shaz held her breath and was relieved when neither Ray nor Chris decided to divulge that they knew there had been no interview taking place.

"Guv," she said, "there's a solid lead on where we might find Richards."

Gene rubbed his hands together. He took a seat on Alex's desk and gestured for Shaz to go on.

"I've just been down takin' a tip-off from one o' the wife's close friends, who told me the Abbey National Christmas party is this weekend at one of the big 'otels in Canary Wharf. Richards 'as never missed it, long 'as 'e's worked for them – usually takes 'is wife but there's been two where she couldn't go and 'e went anyway."

Gene thought for a moment. "And she reckons 'e'd still go, even with 'is wife missin' an' murdered?"

Shaz nodded. "Said 'e wouldn't miss it. 'e's high up an' still climbin', won't miss an opportunity to rub shoulders with the top dogs."

"What a kiss-arse," Ray remarked under his breath.

"Considering the fact 'e's a kiss-arse might just get 'im bagged for a triple murder, Ray, I'll leave 'im to it!" the Guv said decisively, closing that topic of conversation immediately. He stood up and made towards his office. "Thing is, seein' all of us hangin' around 'is idolised bankers… I don't want 'im doin' a runner and endin' up in the Thames, if 'e's really gone round the twist. I need suggestions, and if it involves goin' undercover, forget it. 'e's seen the lot of us already, more than once most of us."

Alex cleared her throat. "He hasn't seen me." She felt all eyes turn on her, and it didn't take the letters after her name from her psychology studies to know what they were all thinking.

"Don't even think about it, Bolly." What was she thinking? Going undercover after what she'd been through lately? 'Fruitcake' didn't even begin to cover it. Not to mention the bleedin' obvious. "There's no way I'm sendin' my DI undercover with a murderous psychopath who's wanted on three counts of murder and one of being a prick to one of the Met's plonks! You're not goin' an' that's that."

The atmosphere in CID could have been cut with a knife. In a moment, the mood had changed from one of them all being on the same page against another of DI Drake's crackpot ideas, to an extreme awkwardness as it dawned on them that there was more than her hospitalisation making the Guv's decision. Even Chris, who was not particularly gifted in reading social situations, wanted the ground to swallow him up rather than have to be subjected to a very public relationship issue between the Guv and Ma'am.

Alex stood her ground, not even flinching although she knew exactly what was going on. "First of all," she began, "Richards is not a confirmed or even a probable psychopath. He's in the midst of a psychotic episode."

As she was facing away from him, Shaz could sardonically whisper the Guv's response, behind the shield of a hand over her mouth, as predictable as a morning sunrise. Same thing!

"Secondly," Alex added sweetly, although there was tension straining her voice somewhat, "can I have a word with you in private, DCI Hunt?"

There was a low chorusing rumble of amusement as she spoke. Gene scowled. "Piss off, the lot of you. Drake –" He pointed into his office and waited for her to go in ahead of him, before slamming the door behind them.

Ray smirked. "Well this should be good," he said, jerking his head in the direction of the office.

Alex was furious, and if he dared make a comment about her anger turning him on, she was sure she'd overturn his desk. It was the barrier between them: she stood a pace back from it and looked down at him, sitting in his chair with his hands knotted and his face set for a fight.

"You are unbelievable!" she exclaimed. "If anyone else had offered to go undercover you'd have taken them up on it in a second –"

"Wrong." He leaned forward, his elbows on the edge of the desk. "I'm not 'appy sendin' any of my team anywhere near that nutter Richards. The fact it's you has got nothin' at all to do with it."

Alex waved her arms in the air. "Well that's pure bollocks, Gene, and you know it. The only reason you stopped me is because we're together and you've got some frankly medieval idea that you need to protect me!"

"Hang on a minute! You were quite happy for me to be there for you when you 'ad nightmares, when you've needed a cry, even 'alf a bloody hour ago we were out on that fire escape and you could barely 'old it together!"

"You'd let any of the other women in this station go. You'd let Shaz go – you'd send her, if Richards hadn't already seen her and clocked her face! It's a matter of principle: you're not treating me the same, you're not treating me like your DI, and it's shit!"

Gene stood up, pushing his chair back with such force that it crashed into the wall. "Yes, I would send Granger," he conceded. "I would let her go, because she wasn't 'avin' a miscarriage this time two weeks ago!"

His words were like a slap across Alex's face. She stepped back as though he really had hit her, stumbling backwards until she leaned against the back of the door.

"Maybe I'm not actin' like a DCI, but I don't care," he said, lowering his voice once more. "It matters more to me that you're safe – and considerin' that headcase has gone so AWOL even our surveillance can't find 'im, I'm not prepared to send you to 'im alone, to do God knows what to you! Sorry if you don't like that, Alex, but that's 'ow it is!"

She was reeling enough before, but her head spun afresh as soon as the word 'surveillance' registered in her mind. "The man's having paranoid delusions! If he sees a car full of uniformed officers stationed outside his house taking notes, he's hardly going to wander over and make them a pot of tea!"

"No-one in the 'ole history of surveillance 'as ever made the patrol a pot of tea, Bolly."

He was winding her up, maybe in some weak attempt to diffuse the row? It didn't work on her. "You know exactly what I meant! Stand them down!"

"No!"

"I'm serious, it's not safe for him to have uniformed surveillance… or any surveillance on him 24/7. I'm not just saying it to be contrary!"

"Oh, that's good," Gene said scornfully. "I hate to imagine what you'd be tellin' me to do if you were bein' contrary! Why d'you care so much anyway about what 'appens to a murderous psycho?"

She folded her arms. "He's ill, he has rights!" She couldn't explain it with her twenty-first century head on, she couldn't tell him that twenty years from now, the law would be designed to protect people like Peter Richards so they didn't reach the stage of committing triple murder."

"Why're you so sympathetic to 'im?" 'Changeable' wasn't even the word – she'd looked terrified of him, that night he'd told her about the WPC from Westminster being threatened by Richards, and now she was trying to convince him to treat the man with kid gloves?

"What do you want me to say, Gene?" Alex said, aware that she was teetering dangerously close to a cliff-edge. What do you want me to say? That I was a postnatally depressed mother with a husband who couldn't see past my mental illness and walked out? That without help I could have ended up like Peter Richards, doing something I'd regret in a fit illness-fuelled hysteria? "What do you want from me? I'm never going to be a yes-woman when you're refusing to stop with Neanderthal bigoted views! I thought you liked it when I argued back?" she challenged.

"Jesus Christ, Drake, not like this! Not when you're acting all defensive and secretive and can't even take a breath without fighting more! Stop being so bloody fragile!"

That was it, that was her hard limit. She'd thought she'd push herself over the cliff-edge by saying too much, not that he'd be the one to push her. 'Fragile' had been the worst insult hurled at her in the dark days, when Pete had asked her again and again why she wouldn't snap out of it – and then wondered aloud if she was too fragile to be a proper parent, before he left her with that bombshell and a baby of eight months. It was too much to hear that word from Gene's mouth.

Her eyes filled with tears and she stared blurrily at him for a moment. "I thought we could have had something," she whispered. It was cryptic but she said it anyway, before storming out through a deathly silent CID.

Alone in his office, Gene reached for his cigarettes, only to find an empty carton. "Fuck," he hissed, crumpling the carton in his fist before launching it across the room. What pissed him off more than anything, was that Alex wasn't wrong. She'd stretched the truth a bit in parts, but excepting that psychiatric rubbish about getting rid of the surveillance, she hadn't put a foot wrong. Something wasn't right about the way she was defending that no-hoper, but there was fat chance of her speaking to him again in the near future to dig out the truth on that. Why had she had such a reaction to his raised voice this time, when they'd shouted at each other worse than that in the past without so much as a lifted eyebrow? She'd looked at him like he'd punched her or something, before she stormed out, in tears again.

That 'bloody strong woman' seemed to have dissolved into dust, and it was his words that'd done it.

She was more complicated than that fucking plastic cube Ray and Chris had tried to solve for a week straight before chucking it out the window in frustration.

Shaz was in the Evidence Room when Alex entered, silently sifting through a box and cataloguing the contents. She made eye contact with her DI, and then swiftly looked down again. Without a word between them, Shaz pulled a second box of mismatched rubbish from the shelf behind her and laid it on the table for Alex, handing her a pair of gloves and an inventory form to go with it.

"Thanks," Alex murmured, painfully aware that she still had tears streaming down her face.

Twenty minutes passed in the strange, silent arrangement. Both women knew it was a one-person job, really, but neither was about to turf out the other. There was solace for Alex in not being alone, and Shaz knew it.

After a while, Alex reached into the box and her fingertips met only cardboard. She blinked hard in disbelief before beginning to stack the labelled plastic bags neatly into place. When she'd returned the box to its shelf, she leaned against the cold concrete wall and found herself sliding down it until she was sitting on the floor.

"Ma'am?" Shaz was immediately concerned.

Resting her elbows on her knees, Alex rubbed her eyes. "I'm fine, I'm fine. Just… What am I doing, Shaz?"

The younger officer opened and closed her mouth in confusion. What was she supposed to say? What was she allowed to say, considering the situation playing out was between two officers vastly superior to herself?

"You heard what went on, I know you did," she said pointedly. "While I'm sure the lads were taking bets on how long it'd be before I stormed out, you heard it all."

Shaz sighed. Resignedly, she took a seat on the table, her feet dangling a few inches above the floor. "Yeah, I did; so did 'alf the station, I reckon. The Guv were out of order with some o' what 'e said, but–"

"But what?" Alex raised an eyebrow. She watched Shaz appear to steel herself for what she was about to say.

"But… so were you, Ma'am. I mean, can you blame 'im, when Richards 'as proved 'e don't give a shit now what woman 'e goes for next? The others were all in quick succession, and it's nearly been a fortnight since the last one so God knows what'll 'appen the next time! 'E's not messin' around wi' you, Ma'am, not like 'e used to with the other girls in Luigi's or wherever. It's not my place to say, and tell me to stuff off if you want, but 'e loves you, so can you blame 'im for gettin' in the way? Surely you can see 'ow much danger you'd be in?"

Alex was dumbstruck for a moment. "I need some time to think," she said quietly.

"Look," Shaz said, dropping her voice. "If you know all that, and you still wanna do it, you're gonna need a bloody good plan to convince the Guv it's worth it. Use your thinkin' time well." She hopped off the table and left without another word.

Two hours after their argument, Gene hadn't seen a trace of Alex in CID. He kept his attention only half-on whatever he was doing, the other half always trained between the blinds, waiting for her to return to her desk, to no avail. After a phone call from the Chief Super about moving the Richards case along, he knew what he had to do.

He barged out of the office and rounded on Shaz, whom he knew could dependably tell him Alex's whereabouts, providing she hadn't been sworn to secrecy. "Where's –"

"Evidence Room, Guv." He didn't even have to finish his sentence for her to know exactly what he was asking. Maybe DI Drake wouldn't want to see him, but the sooner they cleared the air, the sooner the team would go back to normal.

"Cheers, Granger."

His heart pounded as he paced the corridors of Fenchurch East. This was such an alien scenario to him – not that anything that had unfolded in the last fortnight had followed any kind of precedent. Hesitating at the corner beyond which she'd see him even from inside the Evidence Room, he was in total awe at how much he'd changed since admitting that he was in love with her. Relationships used to be monosyllabic uncomplicated affairs, not multi-faceted chasms deeper than the bottom of the bloody ocean. He wouldn't swap it for anything, but he might be tempted to trade away this foreign sensation of malaise in his stomach, like some lovestruck teenager.

The concern that she would see him as soon as he rounded the corner turned out to be unfounded. At first, he thought Granger had spun him a yarn and she wasn't in there at all – until he was close enough to the door to see the makeshift desk she'd created at one side of the room.

Papers were spread out across the desk: copies of maps from the Richards case, transcripts, typed notes and her own handwritten thoughts in immaculate blue cursive. A pen still gripped in her right hand, Alex was slumped over the desk with her shoulders rising and falling with the rhythms of sleep. She must have been operating on less sleep than he thought.

His hand hovered over the doorknob indecisively. She'd been furious as well as heartbroken when she left CID. She probably still had every right to tell him to do one, and would almost certainly hate him for jumping in first to talk over her, but that would be the only way.

Once inside the room, he closed the door quietly behind him.

"Alex?" he said softly. "You prob'ly need the sleep, but this is important, wake up!"

She made some indecipherable noise and lifted her head minutely, shoving a hand into her hair to push it out of her face. "Oh Jesus," she muttered. "I didn't mean to fall asleep." She stretched in her seat, yawned and rubbed her eyes roughly.

"Right, you got two working brain cells to rub together yet?"

Alex frowned. "And there's me thinking you'd come to apologise to me for being such a stubborn git."

He sighed. "Well you don't make it easy, d'you?" he retorted. He leaned against the wall beside her 'desk' and balanced a cigarette lazily between his lips, though his teeth were clenched nervously behind his calm façade. "You're goin' undercover," he said nonchalantly.

The penny didn't drop immediately. "It doesn't matter either way," Alex said, steamrollering on with her plan of attack, having not taken in a word of his last sentence. "Whether you like it or not, I'm going – wait, what?"

Gene smirked. There went the penny. "Chief Super called down, wantin' to know 'ow far we'd got. I 'ad to tell 'im about the Abbey National Christmas do, an' that was it..." He rolled his eyes. "Told 'im it'd make your 'ead swell, but apparently I'm to pass on that you're the 'ighest rankin' female officer in the station, so the best woman for the job."

"That's what he said?" Alex questioned with one eyebrow raised.

"Well, no, the original comment 'ad the word 'tits' in it, but I thought you migh' not want to 'ear that, so I cleaned it up a bit for you." He enjoyed her irritation before casting an eye over her bombsite of a workstation. "So, what were you workin' on down 'ere, apart from rightly makin' me feel like I'd been an absolute tosspot?"

Alex gathered her notes, somewhat proudly. "That, is classified information until such time as you let me present it to the team. You don't get special privileges just for attempting to make recompense with me!"

"You're bloody annoying, I know that much," he grumbled, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking down at the ground for a moment. "Bolls," he said quietly. "I know I said somethin' up there that really threw you. I don't know what it was, but… You remember when you asked about my ex, an' you said you didn't want an answer straight off? If it's anythin' to do with yours… Just… some time, tell me what it is, so I can make sure I'm not ever the reason you look so upset again."

Alex's mouth was set in a straight line. She nodded tightly, meeting his gaze unambiguously. "One day," she said. "Not today."

"No, not today."

She wasn't sure what made her do it, but she hugged him. "I pushed it too far up there too," she admitted. "I can't remember what it's like, having someone care so much what happens to me."

Gene shook his head in disbelief. "Well, you better get used to it pretty quick, Bolly, if you're serious about solvin' the Richards case your way. You better believe there'll never 'ave been an undercover DI with so much protection before."