A/N Thanks for reading and, as always, special thanks to everyone who left a review. Erm... Would you lynch me if I said I was seriously considering making this the last chapter? I know people in the RSPCA...

Everything We Apprehend

Chapter Six

November 1981

"You stupid man."

The words were meant to be stinging, the way she had spat them out left him under no illusion about that fact, but there was an underlying tone to her voice that suggested she was as worried as she was annoyed. She had good right to be, he thought as she knelt down beside him. Gene sucked in a breath as she roughly pushed his hand away from its location and replaced it with her own; it should have been the ripple of pain he'd felt at her ministrations that had him reacting so openly but the all too fleeting contact of her hand against his had been just as responsible.

"I just saved your bloody life!" he defended angrily, the pain as much as her words eliciting such a response. That and the fact that he was right. He kept his gaze locked on hers but using his now free hand he pointed to the body a few feet away from them, almost in the very same spot where they'd found Markham just weeks ago: "He was going to kill you." He would be eternally grateful to Shaz, recently returned to duty and just in the nick of time in his opinion, for quietly bringing to his attention the fact that DI Drake had slipped out of the office. But it had been his own coppers' nous, or maybe just that fear of something awful happening to her, coupled with what she'd told him the other night at Luigi's, that had surmised that her disappearance had something to do with Layton. It was the same instinct that had sent him driving like a bat out of hell to the 'Lady Di' - thankfully just in time to stop that bastard shooting Alex.

Her gaze bore defiantly into his and he could almost hear the rebuke that was on her lips before she voiced it. Indignant to the end - even when it was his end. "I was in complete control," she shot back and he could only grunt his disagreement; it hadn't looked like that to him, all he'd seen was her life in danger and he'd acted accordingly. Okay, maybe not accordingly - the thought of losing her had pretty much overridden everything else. Getting shot himself wasn't what he'd intended; stand-offs were unpredictable at the best of times even more so when all the players involved were bent on getting their own respective outcomes, but at least it wasn't her lying here, bleeding. Fading. "Everything was going as planned until you blundered in with your size elevens!"

Her eyes burnt with that enticing fire he knew so well and it struck him then that, if this was how it all ended, if she was the last thing he ever saw then he could live with that. He'd always assumed that, as the booze and the fags were failing miserably in their attempts to finish him off, he'd die on the job - fighting on until the end, he knew he wasn't immortal and it would only be a matter of time before a bullet hit the right place; Scarman had seemed set on denying him even that much but obviously the old bugger hadn't planned on Bolly arriving and turning everything on its head. Though neither had he. He continued to meet her gaze, using his anger to hold in the pain and to mask the fact that he was reluctant to look down, knowing he'd only find his blood sodden shirt and her delicate hands pressed against him. And he didn't think he could look at that.

He grunted involuntarily at the pain, and at the strain of holding it in; annoyed that he failed to contain it made the moan deeper and rawer and she flinched, her own pain scrawled vividly across her face. "Gene, hang on," she said steadily, and he found the composure in her voice reassuring. He found her voice reassuring. "Just hang on, please."

"I'm not going anywhere, Bols," he said confidently but inwardly he wasn't so sure. This was bad; even if he refused to look down, there were plenty of other indicators that he couldn't ignore. He'd been shot before but this was different. He suddenly didn't want her there; he didn't want to die on some poncey boat down South - and he didn't want her to see him die on the aforementioned vessel. The worst thing was that he most likely wouldn't be able to get her to leave now, she was far too stubborn and had a tendency to ignore his orders. It'd take a bloody miracle to get rid of her. "You should go get help," he tried, his voice quiet when he'd been trying so hard for assertive but it didn't matter.

"I need to stop the bleeding," she said, ignoring him completely. She quickly withdrew her hands, removed her jacket and began to take off her blouse. If she noticed his eyes dropping to the view she never mentioned it, she merely completed her task then shrugged her jacket back on, zipping it up. She pressed the garment against him, her eyes set downwards, a fixed line on her mouth. The brief remission he had experienced with her floor show vanished when her hands returned to his body and he hissed in pain once more. "Sorry," she whispered, drawing her eyes upwards again. Shit; if she was apologising it must be really bad.

"You're no Florence Nightingale, Bols," he muttered, his eyes closing, suddenly so very tired and the thought that his job was pretty much done - he'd kept her safe, kept Layton from harming her - lulling him towards sleep. The memory of Alex at Layton's mercy ran through his head and he recalled her declaration from the other night, when she had told him that Layton had shot her and on this boat too; had it been some sort of premonition or was that psycho profiling lark really the future of policing? Or had she been telling him the truth all along? Either way, the thought of it almost coming true chilled him - or maybe he was just cold. His coat, hastily slung on as he'd left the station in pursuit of Alex, didn't seem to be offering much warmth. However, behind his eyes, the darkness of sleep felt almost tepid - an enticing proposition despite his determination not to die in front of her.

"Gene, don't go to sleep," Alex's voice sang in his ears, like a siren, drawing him back towards the cold reality he'd been ready to leave behind. Sleep faded from him at her tone, lost in a swirl of misty grey and for a moment he struggled to remember what it was that he'd been trying to think of. Something about Layton? Something Alex had said? About the future? About her daughter? "Please," she begged, her voice drawing him ever closer towards her. "Stay with me, Gene."

Fighting his way out of the fog and back to her he found only a deep sadness resplendent in her eyes and he had to look away. But that was when he saw it, his miracle. He wasn't really a religious man; he'd spent his life dealing with the very worst society had to offer, had seen more pointless and tragic deaths than he cared to remember, so the idea of an omnipotent higher power, someone in charge of all this madness, all this depravity, was a tough idea to swallow. But maybe there was something more to this life, something more than just timing. There was a strange light ahead, standing at the entrance and spilling down the stairwell into the boat; it was bright, too bright to be caused by the early Winter sun that burned so feebly outside, and there was a shape to it, inside of it perhaps. Small and angelic looking.

He hadn't realised that Alex had followed his gaze until she spoke, breaking into his thoughts and completely ruining his idea about redemption with just one word: "Molly?"

It took a second or two to make the connection, and he was blaming his current condition for that, but then he remembered. "Your daughter?" Gene asked quietly, still surprised at the strange sight ahead but also by the fact that she could see the image too - and that she knew exactly who was there. So many questions flooded his thoughts that he struggled to make much sense out of them. How had the child suddenly turned up and here, of all places? Alex had insisted that Layton was her way home, her way back to her daughter - but how? Searching for an answer that wasn't mired in her tales of madness he briefly wondered if Layton had somehow kidnapped her daughter; it would explain why Alex had just turned up in his life out of the blue and in pursuit of Layton but she would have told as much, surely, rather than coming up with such an unlikely story as the one she had given him? Neither explanation seemed entirely plausible and it made his brain ache.

Alex never answered his question but the figure, the child, did so by calling out for her mother and her voice, with its obvious sadness and longing, resonated within him, causing him to recall Alex's own yearning to get home, to be with her daughter. Wherever home was.

"You're leaving," Gene said, not asking a question but giving voice to a dawning realisation. He didn't know how the little girl's appearance fit into any of this; the idea that Alex had been telling the truth all along, and that this meant so much more than he could ever comprehend, played about in his head. It picked away at his thoughts, reminding him of all the strange things he'd seen her do, all the odd things she'd said, and pleaded to be understood, to be accepted. Just as she'd asked him to believe her. He didn't want to accept it though because it couldn't be true; this was all real, his life was real, he was real. But what did it matter - whether he believed her or not, he was going to lose her anyway.

There were tears behind her eyes as she finally tore them from Molly to him. "I..." she began but her voice struggled and faltered into the cool air between them. "I didn't want it to end like this," she eventually choked out, as if it was all somehow her fault and confirming what he already knew. It was over; she had what she wanted and he was never going to see her again. The thought tore at something deep inside of him, something that had been hidden for far too long.

Molly called out once again and Gene placed his hands on top of Alex's, fingers rubbing gently against hers, memorising the feel of her skin against his but also reassuring her. His eyes searched hers as he did so, hoping she could see everything he was unable to say, even under these circumstances. He eventually moved her hands away, letting his own hold onto the covered wound. "Go," he said, his voice quiet and tired despite his best efforts to cover it and he regrouped his efforts. "Get her out of here. I'll be okay. Ray and Chris are on their way."

From the look in her eyes he knew that, she knew that, he was lying. He just hoped that she'd play along because he was fast losing control. Alex looked back to her daughter, then back to him and his heart soared at the fact that, even though the choice seemed inevitable, she was finding it so difficult; he meant something to her - whatever it was that he'd felt between them it hadn't been imagined, it was real and quantifiable and painful. Her tears fell silently, slowly navigating a route down both cheeks and she brushed at them with the cuffs of her sleeves, her hands stained red with his blood. His blood on her hands; how could that not be real? "I don't really understand any of this, Bols," he admitted softly, his head swimming with ideas but his body slowly losing the battle. "But I know you have to go," he ground out, hoping to persuade her to leave before he passed out.

She only smiled in response; a pained, forced smile that asked him to forgive her for the choice she was about to make, to understand why she was making it, but one that offered no further explanation than that. He smiled back at her, knowing it was what she wanted, what she needed, what it would take to make this easier for her. One hand, bloody and warm, slipped on top of his, whilst the other reached out for his cheek, her slim fingers brushing against the skin. Her actions sent a jolt of electricity through his body, warming him from the centre outwards, but his heart almost stopped beating there and then when she slowly bent her head towards him, her eyes burning into his. Her lips were soft against his own, as he always imagined they would be, and, giving into an urge that had been building for far too long, he kissed her right back with everything that he had left. It should have been bittersweet, tinged with regret and lost opportunities, and there were tears cascading down her cheeks once more as she pulled back telling him that was how she felt, but it wasn't so for him; despite his bleeding wound and growing exhaustion he'd never felt so very much alive, his heart had never pounded so strongly in his chest, his senses had never felt so sharp. A notion hit him then, a strange idea that suggested he must have spent far too much time in her company because he was now thinking like her too. He brushed it away, attributing it to the realisation that just as he had finally found what he'd been looking for, what he'd been searching for since he'd arrived in London, it was about to fall out of his reach.

"Always said you were handy with your mouth, Alex," he smiled, enjoying the feel of her name passing over his lips one last time. His lips were still tingling from their kiss and he could taste her on them; if this really was the end, and it seemed likely, then it would be one hell of a way to go. He watched her struggle for a moment longer, silently willing her to leave with the last of his energy, before she finally, reluctantly, withdrew her hands. She stood slowly and with one last smile turned away from him and towards her daughter. As he watched her walk away, he let his own smile fade, too much effort was required to keep it there. The light, that curious light, was surrounding Molly, almost consuming the child, and within a few steps Alex was virtually there, nearly into the brightness herself. With her last step towards it she turned suddenly, taking one last look at him, an apology in her eyes, and then she was gone.

He screwed his own eyes shut tightly, fighting against the fatigue that was sweeping over him; he was tired, so very tired, of this existence, of this world even, and without her in it there didn't seem much point in hanging on any longer. He opened his eyes slowly, half hoping to see her once more, half expecting the light to have vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared only to find that neither outcome had been met. And she'd just vanished in front of his eyes. Vanished into the light that still hovered ominously ahead of him. How could that be? It just wasn't possible. It just wasn't... real. Her assertions slipped back into his thoughts; if this was all in her head, if it wasn't real, then why was he still here when she wasn't? The light was still there, growing or moving perhaps; it was only its existence that caused him to wonder, in those few final moments, if she'd been right.