Chapter 22

"You've not been back since it happened?"

Robin's hand trembled as he turned the key in the lock.

"No," he said quietly.

"Where have you been sleeping?" Kim asked.

"I spent a couple of nights on Kelly's couch," said Robin, "and one of Simon's sisters put me up for a night."

"Funny, I had visions of you sleeping in the kennels," Kim teased as Robin opened the door.

"Cheeky cow," he commented, his spirits falling again at the slight of the flat. The light was still on in the hallway and a trail of dirt was clear to see through from the front door to the bedroom. "Shit," he breathed. He felt Kim's hand on his shoulder. He was grateful for that.

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" Kim asked quietly.

"I can't put it off forever," Robin said quietly. He slowly walked through to the bedroom where the overwhelming stench of stale vomit made them both gag and choke.

"Oh, what the fuck is that?" Kim cried, covering her nose and mouth with her sleeve.

"The bastard threw up," Robin swallowed to stop himself doing the same thing, "on my lovely fucking rug!"

"Robin, the severe emphasis of the word 'fucking;' is lost when used between the words 'lovely' and 'rug'," Kim teased as they surveyed the room. She felt her insides turning over at the sight of the place. There were pieces of rope laying on the bed and Robin's ripped shirt on the floor. It turned her cold from head to toe. "Oh Rob," she whispered as she knelt over it.

Robin swallowed hard. He took a slow step towards the TV where his DVDs were strewn around the place.

"He just went crazy, Kim," he whispered, "he flipped out." His eyes ran along the empty shelf where all his boxes and knickknacks had been pushed to the floor. "The insurance will cover the damage, but…" he exhaled, "who's going to replace my love of this flat?"

Kim slowly picked up Robin's ripped shirt. She was shocked by the tears that sprang to her eyes. She stared at him as he stood, looking around him. How had he escaped Keats's terrifying intentions? She shook her head in horror. He actually would have stooped to that. With each trip back and forth, from life to death and so on, he seemed to become more twisted and more demented.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

Robin turned to her. His face was pale and his eyes were haunted.

"I can't do it, Kim," he whispered.

"Do what?"

"Sleep in this room," Robin said quietly, "I can't… I just can't be here any more." He closed his eyes and desperately wanted to sit down but couldn't bring himself to sink onto the bed; the bed where he'd been chained and mauled. "This was my home," he whispered, "this was the place I'd come back to every day after work, the place where I knew I had all the food I needed to make whatever I pleased, the place where I knew my couch would be the comfiest place to watch TV, the place where I knew all my stuff was close around me. This is the place Simon came back to every other day for years… then the place he came home to permanently."

Kim felt her heart sink as he hung his head.

"Rob, I'm so sorry," she said quietly, "and I know there's nothing I can say… nothing's going to change the way you feel about this place now." She knew that for certain, "is there… is there anywhere else you can go?"

"I can't spend my life on sofas and spare rooms," he said quietly.

"I mean, to live?" Kim suggested, "Maybe it's the time to move on? I know you've got a lot of memories here, but…" she paused, "they'll all stay in your head and your heart."

Robin looked at her warily.

"That's a bit poetic for you," he commented.

Kim rolled her eyes.

"OK, well, what about Simon's old flat?" she suggested.

Robin hesitated. He hadn't thought about that. In truth, he'd spent a long time struggling with the thought of setting foot in that flat again, until he and Alex had spent a couple of nights hiding out there. He nodded slowly.

"There is that," he said quietly.

"I know it's further from the station and it might need some work if it'd been empty a long time but you won't have to worry about Keats-cooties. And you'll still have memories there."

Robin gave a distant smile.

"That is true," he said quietly. He gave a slow nod. "I'll think about it," he said. His attention was caught by something on the floor and he knelt down above it. "Ohhh… the frame," he whispered. He took the outside from the pile of glass and sighed. I'll need to find a new one."

"At least you got your picture back," Kim reminded him.

"And a half a picture," said Robin, "Love the way he kept your bit and couldn't stand to leave me in it."

"I wonder whose the other photo was," Kim wondered, "where he took that from."

Robin shrugged.

"Who knows what else he did whole he was on his rampage?" he sighed, "You know, I actually feel kind of sorry for Layton. He's getting asked all these questions about things that he has no idea about and he's going to end up in prison for even longer."

"Couldn't happen to a nicer man," said Kim.

"I just thought it was kind of funny," said Robin, "on the run for years from something he did do but for all these crimes he didn't commit there's a ton of evidence about and he'll never convince a jury otherwise!"

In the aftermath of the whole ordeal Kim and Robin had decided the easiest thing to do was to simply tell try whole truth as it was, simply missing out the one vital detail that Keats was the one who'd committed the crimes. It wasn't as though anyone would believe them anyway. The outcome of this was that Layton found himself charged with 3 counts of abduction, 1 of GBH, 4 counts of vehicle theft, one of attempted rape and one of attempted manslaughter, amongst others.

Evan had recuperated from his brush with Keats, although his beard trimmer had not. He and Molly had gone some way towards reconciling but Molly hadn't come much closer to forgiving him for what had happened with Alex. Her own ordeal had left her shaken but it was the questions that she had for Robin and Kim that were troubling her more than her actual kidnapping. She had asked them several times why they referred to Layton as 'Keats' and also about one or two of the things he had said that tied in with her suspicions after her mother had gone back into a coma. Robin and Kim felt uncomfortable knowing she was getting closer to the truth but it really wasn't their place to tell her.

Kim had found it hard to adjust in the days after their released from the boat. Her relationship had become strained and there was pressure on her from her wife to give up on her intention of rejoining the force. Linda had used a lot of sentences like I thought I was going to have to tell the boys that you were dead or you don't have to worry about this kind of thing when you're tattooing lions on someone's thigh. She'd used a lot of lingering, guilt-inducing stares to try to get Kim to back down or change her mind.

But Kim knew that she had no choice. It was in her blood. She needed to get back out there. If anything, the whole ordeal had confirmed that to her. She wasn't sure how much more guilt she could take though, especially when she was also trying to cover up for the kiss that should, by rights, have never happened in a million years. There were lots and lots of flowers, chocolates and apologies but still Kim's guilty conscience seemed to win the day.

Like the aftermath of Alex's return to the nineties, Kim and Robin felt an extreme need to be together. They felt relieved and relaxed when they were in each other's company and became anxious and twitchy when apart. They supposed that, after any intense experience, such a reaction was natural but they couldn't live in each other's pockets forever.

Robin had found himself in a state of sheer confusion for the past few days. His latest brush with the other world had left him confused. Every now and then he stared at his hand as though he expected to find some evidence of Simon's touch upon it, but of course he never found any there.

There were two things that were giving him migraines trying to think about – the first was trying to accept that – however close he'd been to crossing the line – he was still on the side of the living, and that meant that there was another job for him to do, somewhere along the line. He didn't know what that would be, but he knew it couldn't be good. Not going by the level of the previous two. He felt as though he was playing Grand Theft Auto and kept receiving missions before he would complete the game. Grand Theft Auto: Fenchurch, he thought to himself. Not quite as catchy as Vice City.

The second thing that he was having trouble dealing with was his thriving will to live. From the moment he'd awoken after his car accident and been told that Simon hadn't made it he had longed to join him in Gene's world. Every moment of every day had been spent wishing his life away so that he could join him again. Now suddenly he had gone from wanting fate to intervene and take him away to feeling grateful that he had survived. He felt so guilty about that. It wasn't that his will to be with Simon had diminished – but he had a growing, thriving sense of life now. The two didn't sit well together.

"Come on," Kim's voice broke through his thoughts, "let get out this stinky room. Cup of coffee first then we're finding you a bed for a few nights."

She helped him up slowly and he moved awkwardly though to the kitchen. His cuts and stitches still stung and would take some time to heal. He was going to be left with some pretty nasty scars, he knew that much. But it was the emotional ones that would take the longest to fade.

"Sorry," he said as he lumbered a bit like some kind of genetic mutant towards the kitchen.

"God, Rob, the state of you," Kim said quietly, "are you really sure you want me to book you in for that tattoo next week?"

"Yeah," Robin said a little indignantly, "besides, isn't it better to do it while I'm still doped up on painkillers?"

Kim pulled a face.

"Sit," she commanded him.

"You sound like me," said Robin, "ever fancied a job in the canine division?"

Kim's pulled another face.

"I think I'll stick with human company, thanks," she said.

She pushed Robin into a chair at the kitchen table while she filled the kettle and started to boil it. So many questions remained unanswered in the aftermath of Keats's 'holiday'. Neither of them would ever really know how come he had been able to inhabit Layton's body or what his ultimate plans were beyond just trying to spread pain and fear throughout London. Maybe that was all he really wanted to do? There didn't seem to be a coherent strategy behind it.

The bigger pictures were more worrying. Their discussion about Robin and his mortality hadn't been brought up again, but it was dwelling on both of their minds, and more than that neither could shake the parallels with what Kim had been through. The unexplainable heart attack was a carbon copy of what Robin had been through after the crash with Alex.

Kim hadn't told Robin everything. She couldn't bring herself to talk about the voices calling her, or the feeling of being pulled towards them, or the dreams she'd had since. She told herself that Keats's trip to 2011 had just brought back the memories, or hearing the song on the barge had stirred things up again, but she knew it went beyond that. It made her shudder inside to think about it. Through all those years since she awoke in 2003 she'd not seen or heard a thing. She'd even said that to Robin while they were tied up on the barge. Now, suddenly, something changed.

She finished making the coffees and sat down opposite Robin

"Thanks," he said gratefully as he took the cup and warmed his hands against it.

Kim took a sip and burned her tongue on it. She swore and cursed herself for her impatience, then turned her attention to Robin.

"We were on the telly again this morning," she said.

"When are we ever off the telly?" Robin sighed.

"Redeemed beard Model Evan White was thanking us for what we did." Kim said, pulling a face.

Robin choked on his coffee.

"At what point did he become redeemed?" he cried.

"I think the being tied up with no trousers on and the emotional plea to get a new beard trimmer went some way towards it," she told him.

Robin shook his head disapprovingly.

"Well that's put me off my coffee!" he said.

Kim stared at him. A serious and stony silence passed.

"You killed Keats," she whispered eventually, "didn't you?"

Robin stared back at her. Since it happened they had avoided that very topic. Kim hadn't asked and Robin hadn't volunteered any information. He felt his heart sink.

"Yes," he said quietly. He wondered for a moment whether she would think badly of him for killing a man and added quickly, "I had to, I didn't have a choice."

"I know, I know," Kim said quickly. She looked at him seriously, "I… I'm just confused… how they found Layton unconscious in Alex's hospital room without a scratch on him."

Robin looked down and breathed deeply. He knew that he would have to tell Kim sooner or later. He felt his guts twisting into knots as he thought about it.

"Kim… I don't know how to explain it," he said quietly.

"Just start at the beginning," Kim told him. She saw him hesitate. "Come on, Rob, you know this is me and I'm not going to call you crazy or think badly of you, however it happened."

Robin felt nauseous. He hadn't let his mind go over the events of that day since it happened. He hadn't dared to. It took all he had to relive it for Kim.

"After he took me from the barge he put me in the car," he said quietly, "drove me here. All the way he tried to taunt me. I wouldn't let him. I had my mind on…" he coughed, "…other things." He knew Kim didn't want to talk about the kiss but nonetheless he felt himself blush a little. "When we got back here he got a breadknife from the kitchen and cut off my ropes. He found my handcuffs and chained me to the bed. All the time his face was…" he shook his head. It sounded so stupid, "his face was morphing back and forth. Layton and Keats. Like he was trying to fight his way out of Layton's body." He looked down and his voice grew weak. "He started to take off my clothes," he choked as he remembered the night, "I thought that was it. I'd fought all I could. It was over." He closed his eyes. "He taunted me about my tattoo and about Simon's picture next to the bed. Then he saw the picture of my mother." He shook his head and Kim started to feel guilty about asking.

"I don't understand how you got from there to the hospital," she whispered.

"He smashed the photo frame," Robin said quietly, "and suddenly he went insane, screaming at me about my father. By now, there was none of Layton left. He was Keats through and through. He smashed everything up and then told me he needed me to get him in to see Alex."

Kim turned cold.

"Oh shit," she whispered, "What… what did he want to…"

"I think he wanted to take her soul," Robin said quietly, "he stole my uniform, made me get dressed again, cuffed us together and drove to the hospital. I stole a pair of scissors from a trolley in the corridor. They were only small, but they were sharp." He saw Kim's eyes staring at him, wide and anxious, "He didn't see. We went past the guard outside the room – I sent him off for coffee. He just thought we were a couple of chief inspectors, he thought Alex would be safe with us." Robin took a deep breath. "Keats saw Alex's tattoo and went a bit mad. I don't know why. Maybe he thought you'd gotten us all into bad habits or something."

Kim gave a little smile.

"That'd be about right," she said.

"He chained me to the light over the bed," Robin continued, "and…" he hung his head a little, "after that it's kind of a blur. I hit him with the lamp… a couple of times, I think. Stabbed him in the neck with the scissors, tried desperately to kill the bastard. He came at me with the knife… we fought and fought and in the end…" he swallowed. "In the end I took his life." He saw Kim staring at him, shocked and silent. "There was no pulse. Nothing. Then suddenly the pulse came back… but so did Layton's features. And Keats… Keats had vanished. So had his wounds."

"God," Kim breathed. She ran a hand nervously through her spikes. She was finding it hard to adjust to her short hair. She'd seen herself with the long, dark locks for so many years that Keats had stolen from her a big part of her image. She'd had what was left of her hair professionally cut and found herself slowly adopting the spikes she'd warn for the latter part of her time in the nineties. It reminded her of someone special. Someone she missed a great deal.

"It all feels so surreal," Robin whispered. He looked her in the eye. "I sent him back, didn't I?"

Kim nodded slowly.

"But you didn't have a choice," she whispered.

"I know," Robin said quietly, "doesn't stop me feeling wretched though."

"You did what you had to do," Kim told him, "and you're not the only one who's had to do it."

Robin sighed.

"No," he said quietly, "I know."

"Simon and Gene have both had to do the same."

Robin nodded.

"I know," he said again.

"You're like an exclusive club," said Kim, "you should have an AGM." She saw Robin try to smile but his heart wasn't in it. He cupped his coffee mug in his hands but didn't drink from it.

"Do AGMs work across dimensions?" he asked, "can't exactly use a video link up."

Kim looked at Robin and her heart jumped a little. There was something else that she needed to say. Something she'd been putting off because it meant having to face something that she'd been trying to bury. She took a deep but jagged breath as tears threatened to fall and whispered;

"Rob?" he looked at her, shocked to see how fast her expression had fallen, "thank you."

Robin frowned.

"What for?"

Kim swallowed.

"You saved me," she said quietly, "you pulled him off me," her voice started to give way. "If you hadn't, he –"

That was the last word she was able to breathe before the full horror of their ordeal came crashing down on her; on both of them. Somehow the seal that held back their emotions was broken suddenly and every moment of terror, every fear, every nightmarish thought came back to them both. For some time all they could do was to sit, to cry, to hold each other and do what they could to block out the memories and flashbacks that would never truly go away. Eventually, as time passed and tears dried both felt just a little bit lighter. So much heavy baggage had come with Keats's arrival and demise that they knew it would be a long time before they could put it to rest.

One man – one monster – had caused untold terror to two worlds, but there was something he could not do and that was to break a strong friendship. Both Robin and Kim felt sure that this wasn't the final battle. That was still to come. Because Keats couldn't be allowed to continue his reign of terror forever – he wouldn't be allowed to, not when there were people like them, and like Gene and Alex and everyone on the other side of the line to stop him. No one knew where or when the final battle would play out, but one day it would arrive. And on that day Keats would find that strong hearts and wills could outweigh all the power of evil.

The countdown was on.

Evil, bring it on.

The End

That was the last proper chapter! Whew! But there's an epilogue still to go up tomorrow! -x-