"Mum? Mummy? Mum? Nurse, I think she's waking up!"

A flurry of activity caught Alex's attention, and the first thing she was fully conscious of was that the pain from her side where Keats had shot her was gone. The second thing was that Molly was there.

Wait… MOLLY!

"MOLS!" Alex screamed, pushing herself up and throwing her arms round her little girl, ignoring the banging pain in her head and squeezing Molly so hard the girl began thinking her mum would never let her go. Which, of course, was fine by Molly.

"Mummy… They thought you'd never come back… but I said you would and you have. I knew you wouldn't leave me, Mummy."

Alex choked back tears, with limited success; some spilled over her eyelids and began staining the hospital gown and Molly's hair. Molly sniffed as well, and the warmth of the tears leaking onto Alex's chest told her one thing; that this was the real world, she had woken up.

But what about Gene?

The nurse turned suddenly at a summons from another nurse, and put her hand on Alex's shoulder lightly.

"Sorry, Alex, one moment. The man in the next room's waking up as well- must be something in the air!"

It was just as she finished saying this that Alex heard a very familiar groan from someone, and a rugged Northern accent managing to say something semi-intelligible from the other side of the wall.

"Gene…" she whispered, and Molly gave her a surprised look.

"Do you know him, Mummy? They've been talking about him a lot in here. He was shot in the side of the face; they're amazed he managed to hang on long enough to get to the hospital."

Alex gave the broadest grin she had ever given, except maybe for the one when she had been holding her newborn baby Molly in her arms, as she realised exactly what Keats's bullets had done to her and Gene- instead of sending them on their way, to death, destroying them, they had sent them back to the real world, simply giving them the injuries that had forced them into limbo and saving their lives in the process. He would be livid if he knew, Alex thought, cuddling her daughter again and waiting for a nurse to walk back in before asking about Gene.

"Oh, you must have been listening," the nurse said, smiling. "Yes, a huge success story. Like with you, we managed to get the bullet out before it did enough damage to kill him. A very lucky man, he was. Found on a farm in Lancashire, but he was brought here for specialist treatment once he was stable."

Alex's smile was beginning to beat the sun for brightness. The nurse smiled back, a little confused but just happy to see both patients awake. This would call for some champers later on in the hospital canteen.

"Can I see him at some point?" she asked, and the nurse looked surprised but maintained her smile.

"I suppose. Sounds like you two went through a similar thing, anyway."

Molly turned and carried on hugging her mum as the nurse left, her smile luminous, and her young heart bursting with love and happiness and relief as she felt her mum's arms round her.

Alex knew then, for definite, that she was once again in the real world.

"You have a visitor, Mr Hunt."

Gene twisted round with a look of surprise on his face, and then clapped eyes on Alex, who was sitting on a hospital trolley with a huge grin on her face and a drip in her left wrist. Gene smiled as well, reaching out with one strong arm to take her hand in his, their beams telling each other everything they needed to know.

"Gene, I can't believe all this…"

"I know," Gene said softly, shifting to the side of the bed with some difficulty and getting one arm round her to hug her. Alex snuggled into his side, breathing in the familiar man-stink and feeling more than relieved at his calming presence. One vivid blue eye was covered by a bandage on the side of his face, covering the wound that had started the whole adventure in the first place, and Alex stroked it gently, knowing that it would be one scar that she would treasure forever.

"Careful, Bolly-Kecks, it's sore," Gene murmured, his hand catching hers and stroking it. Alex nodded and put her other hand up to carefully push a small section of bandage away and find the wound itself, red and stitched but no longer the horrific injury that had killed PC Gene Hunt.

"How's it feel, going straight from DCI to PC in the files?" she joked, and he grinned, leaning back against the headrest and closing his eyes as she slotted the bandage back into place.

"I'll always 'ave been someone's Guv, tha's all I need, Bolly."

Alex smiled, holding out an arm as Molly walked in, unsure of what to make of this situation but happy that both people had some company for once.

"Mummy?"

"Come here, sweetheart."

Molly gladly walked over and snuggled in, sitting on the chair next to the bed, her eyes on Gene.

"How do you know him, Mum?"

"We worked together for a long time, I just wanted to see if it was the same person, Molls," Alex replied, her spirits soaring as Molly gave Gene a smile and he returned it, in Alex's eyes not even looking the slightest bit less handsome for the bandage wound round his head. But then again, Alex might have been a bit biased with that opinion.

"What position are you, Mr Hunt?" Molly asked, and Gene and Alex exchanged glances.

"He was my DCI, Molls," Alex said, and Gene grinned.

"So why are you hugging?" Molly asked shrewdly, and Alex laughed, her laugh mingling with Gene's muffled sniggers, both trying to hold themselves in and failing.

"Mummy…?"

"It doesn't matter," Alex giggled, just as a nurse came in and motioned to Gene and Alex that they would have to cut this meeting short. "I'll tell you later, Molly."

Molly nodded her understanding and Alex pecked Gene on the cheek, very aware of Molly watching, before she was wheeled back to her own room and taken back to the peace of slumber, reassured that everything, it seemed, was going to be OK.

The familiar, slightly breathy voice began finding its way into Alex's ears, and she shuddered as she recognised it for what it was; Keats's voice. He was walking towards her, the room they were stood in getting darker and obscuring him more and more as he approached her, until only his face was visible and his plump lips, moving carefully as he talked, the lips that had spat such poison and malice at Gene and belonging to the man who had tried to destroy Gene and Alex's happy ever after but instead had given it to them.

"Alex… Gene doesn't trust you, he doesn't want you or care about you, he's just a brutal, lying Northern bastard. You're better off without him, Alex, he's not the man you want to spend the rest of your life with, is he?"

"Yes," Alex hissed back, only just able to see Keats's face in her dream but hoping that he could see hers, her narrowed eyes, her hate of him. "Yes, he is, Keats, and you know it. We're safe now, and you're just a sore loser; because of us, you lost Chris, Ray and Shaz, and now you've lost us as well and you didn't want to. You wanted to incarcerate us in Hell forever, and your little plan failed, didn't it? Well, we're free now, you failed and I'll never have to see you again, ever, only in my dreams, and I can deal with you here. I bet you were mad when you found out you'd sent us back to the real world, weren't you? We'll always win, Keats, because we're a team, unbreakable, un bloody breakable, and nothing you say or do can ever change that now. OK? So leave us alone."

Keats snarled at her, his animal face becoming savage and cruel, and swept away in a dramatic flurry of long, dark, red-tinged coat and vicious but meaningless threat. Alex stood in her dream with a smile on her face, Gene's presence appearing next to her but not visible, and reached back to take his hand as Keats vanished from her world, forever, beaten and subdued and sore.

"We're free now, Gene. Free forever."

Gene's smile was felt instead of seen, and his gratitude and relief radiated from him as he squeezed her hand and the dream ended, with them the winners and the Devil returned to Hell.

In the year after Alex's shooting, she gradually rebuilt her life and returned to work, back in her position as DI. But after being away from Molly for so long, she was no longer quite so into her work, as was noticed by many of her colleagues, and she seemed to have a new obsession with 80's memorabilia and specifically 80's police memorabilia, collecting epaulette numbers, uniforms and old records in her garage. The number 6620 was always right at the front of the epaulette collection, although she would never explain why to her colleagues.

The other noticeable change about her was that she gained a new partner, one Gene Hunt, who shortly afterwards secured a position as DCI when Alex's DCI retired. He seemed very different to the staunch, upright DCI who had left, and for that he earned a lot of respect and warmth from his fellow officers, even though he did get into trouble pretty much every day for using "inappropriate language" in the office and seemed to be the sole user of the swear box sat next to his office, which became full of 50ps and pound coins surprisingly quickly, much to the amusement of the department. At least it paid for the occasional drinking session after work, which Gene and Alex enjoyed most of all.

Molly was the person who noticed the most differences in her mother; the main one was that she spent a lot more time at home and with Molly, taking her out somewhere every weekend, be it bowling, shopping or just wandering around the park. Gene often tagged along, joking around with Molly and relaxing from long days at work. He hit it off instantly with Molly, due to their similarities- both stubborn, both hard-working, both irritated when told they were wrong, both headstrong and determined- but these qualities did make for long silences after arguments, and more than once Alex had had to spend days making peace in the household again. She seemed to be a lot more relaxed and peaceful herself, but no longer allowed Molly to watch films with a lot of shooting in, saying it reminded her too much of what had happened to her. Gene, having no such qualms with these films, became a regular at the local cinema, taking Molly and occasionally a friend in to watch them instead. They weren't a perfect family, Molly would often reflect, but they were perfect enough for her, and she knew it.

Just like they had always said they would, Gene and Alex had stuck together, and fought together to get the ending they wanted. Or, as Gene would say, they were still un bloody breakable.

A/N: And that concludes this fic! Yay! :) If people want a sequel or something, just PM me or say in a review. I hope this went OK, and people enjoyed it- please review! Thanks for sticking with me, you guys rock. :) Jazzola :)