Epilogue

Robin peered cautiously through the hallway as the front door swung open.

"What are you afraid of? Monsters?" teased Kim.

"There was a squatter a while ago," Robin told her, "just checking he hadn't come back to enjoy the furnishings again." He shuddered, "I don't want to have to try out fake kung-fu moves on him for a second time."

Kim spluttered with laughter, gaining her an evil look from Robin. She tried to straighten her expression.

"Not funny, not funny," she assured him before smirking again.

She followed him through the hallway clutching a pot of paint and a roller while Robin held a bag full of old sheers and paintbrushes.

"I haven't been back since the morning Alex and I set out to find you," he told her.

"An act you've been regretting ever since," Kim teased.

Rob in poked his tongue out at her and walked through to the lounge. It was left exactly as it had been when he and Alex had been there some weeks earlier. The flipchart still stood in the centre of the room and the DVDs Alex watched during her junk food binge were still piled up by the TV. Robin felt a little pang of sadness.

"I miss her," he said quietly.

He heard Kim give a sigh over his shoulder.

"Me too," she said quietly.

He turned back to look at her and they exchanged a slightly sad smile. It was hard to live a full life, Robin realised, when some of the people you were closest to were on the other side of the line.

"It feels weird being back in here," Robin said quietly. Making the decision to move into Simon's old flat hadn't been an easy one to make. The memories that went with it were difficult to cope with. With each day that passed, he missed Simon a little bit more. Going to his flat, the place he'd gone back to so many nights after work, had felt strange and coated with sadness, but at the same time it seemed fitting. It was as though Simon had left him a legacy, a get out of jail free card for escaping a flat that had been the setting for such a horrible attack and experience. It made sense now why he hasn't been able to sell the flat. Fate had intervened. It was always supposed to be his, one way or another.

The flat was certainly big enough for Robin and he'd always liked the décor. The only thing that he couldn't face was sleeping in Simon's bedroom. It felt wrong. He just couldn't do it without Simon there. He had decided to redecorate that one room and change it enough to make it his without taking away all the memories of Simon.

"As decorators, are we not supposed to start with three cups of tea before we even look at a paintbrush?" Kim asked.

"I don't know about tea," Robin began, "but there's definitely coffee in the kitchen, and a working kettle. No milk though."

"Let's live dangerously and have it black," said Kim as the pair walked through to the kitchen. Almost immediately Robin reeled in horror.

"Oh eww!" he cried.

"What? What's wrong?" cried Kim as Robin hid behind her.

Robin gagged.

"I never did the washing up!" he declared.

There in the sink sat a few dishes and a couple of cups with extremely congealed lasagne, coffee and other food and drink cementing them to the sink.

"I knew you had a dark side," Kim teased as he began rounding them up and dumping them straight in the bin.

"Not even going to attempt to wash those up," Robin shuddered.

Kim looked around the pleasant kitchen. She took a seat at the table and watched Robin find some clean crockery to start making the drinks.

"Howe did I get roped into helping with this anyway?" she demanded.

"Oh come on, you know you fancy yourself as a bit of a Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen," teased Robin as the kettle began to boil.

Kim watched as he busied himself masking the coffees. She had to admit she was glad of the distraction for an afternoon. Things hadn't been going very well for her since the Keats ordeal and she was desperate for something to take her mind off of it. In the aftermath of her health 'issues' her return to the force had been delayed by a couple of weeks and she'd been on sick leave from her tattooing work as well to let her elbow recover. Being at home hadn't exactly been a barrel of laughs. The distraction was very welcome.

Not for the first time since the day on the barge she found Moments in Love going around in her head and it made her sigh. That wasn't exactly helping matters. She had been haunted by her memories of the nineties and Gene's world and they were getting ever stronger. She worked hard at blocking them out but they wouldn't go away.

"Sugar?"

Robin's voice broke through her thoughts. She nodded and tried to smile.

"Yes please," she said, "just one."

Robin sat down beside her, one mug in each hand, and looked at her seriously. She seemed to have changed so much and in so many ways, in such a short space of time. Her appearance, for one. A few days after the barge situation had ended she made the bold decision to bleach the new short hair she was sporting, taking her mentally back to her time in Gene's world. It hadn't been an easy choice but she couldn't see herself in the mirror with short hair without seeing the bleach-blonde look. As her hair had gone back to her 90s appearance, so the rest of her look had changed too. She had slowly been dressing more androgynously and leaving behind the make-up too. Where a couple of weeks earlier long black skirts and dark, patterned tops were the order of the day she now wore a lot of jeans and plain, masculine shirts, just as she had in Gene's world. Her gothic make-up had phased itself out and now she wore little or nothing on her face. The change in image had struck Robin as a little strange, but he had other concerns too.

"Kim?"

"Hmm?"

"How are you doing?"

Kim frowned.

"In what way, how am I doing?" she asked.

Robin hesitated.

"Your heart," he said quietly.

Kim looked down.

"I'm fine," she said quietly.

"You sure?"

She looked him in the eye.

"Seriously, Robin, I am fine," she said, "unlike you I actually had the tests."

Robin looked at her expectantly.

"And?"

Kim sighed.

"And nothing" she said, "they found nothing. No problems at all. They had me hooked up to every monitor, gave me every scan, took a million blood samples and nothing. There was no conceivable reason why my heart stopped."

Robin hesitated.

"Well, that's good, isn't it?" he asked nervously.

Kim stared at him. She knew she was expected to say 'yes'. But she couldn't.

"No," she whispered, "there was no reason behind it. It just happened. Just like yours." She paused as she took a deep breath. "Just like it 'just happened' to you. Just like you never found out a cause." Her eyes dropped. "Just like we were talking about. On the barge."

Robin swallowed. He didn't want to think about that conversation, or the implications for himself or Kim. He fell silent for a while, trying not to let his mind dwell on it. Eventually he looked back at her and asked,

"How's your elbow?"

"Little sore, but OK," Kim told him, "I wouldn't be helping you decorate otherwise, would I?" she paused. "That reminds me, I've booked you in for Saturday. Ten a.m." She saw him looking a little blank. "Your tattoo," she explained.

Robin smiled.

"I like how the thought of applying paint sloppily to a big wall with a paint roller has reminded you about creating a piece of intricate artwork on my back," he teased.

"What are you going to do to pay me back for all these tattoos then?" Kim asked.

"I told you I'd pay for them!" said Robin, "you don't have to do them for free!"

"Couldn't charge you," said Kim as she sipped her coffee with a slurp, "besides, I want to see how you'll pay me back in kind."

Robin hesitated.

"Get a dog and I'll train it for you," he offered.

"Sod that," said Kim, "I'm not taking one for walks."

Robin shrugged.

"Looks like I'll be making pizza for the next ten years then," he said.

Kim smiled.

"I'm still determined to get you to get something pierced," she teased.

"No way," Robin recoiled, "I had enough of needles with the bloody stiches," he shuddered. The thought of the state of his torso saddened him. Would the scars travel with him when he finally crossed over? Would Simon be repelled? He couldn't shake that fear. He looked down and Kim saw his face falling. She didn't want Robin to start feeling morbid. They'd done far too much of that since Keats had made his way back to the real world. She got to her feet and held out her hand.

"Come on," she said, "Up."

Robin hesitated, then held out his hand and allowed himself to be dragged out of the chair.

"I thought we had to have three coffees first," he said.

"That was teas," said Kim, "since we've got coffees it's time to get to work."

It didn't take them long to get things moving. As soon as they got into Simon's bedroom they'd moved the furniture into the centre of the room and draped sheets all over the place. Kim took a picture frame from the wall and stared at the picture.

"These are his sisters?" she asked.

Robin glanced around.

"Claire and Elaine," he nodded.

Kim studied the picture.

"He doesn't look much like them, does he?" she commented.

"Simon was always the oddball and proud of it," Robin smiled distantly. He felt a sudden heaviness in his heart as the reality began to sink in. He'd stayed in that room so many nights, lying beside Simon, feeling so loved and at ease. Now he was erasing the identity of the room. He knew that he had to do it – he couldn't just take over the room as though nothing was different, he needed to make it his own. But the fact that Simon would never again sleep in that room came crashing down on him all, it was just like the day he found out that Simon had died all over again.

"Hey." There was a hand on his shoulder. Kim looked concerned. "If it's too much we can wait until another day."

Robin hesitated. He almost said yes but eventually he shook his head.

"No," he said quietly, "I'm OK." He took a deep breath. "I think it's time." He stood and looked around the room for a moment before he said, "you get the paint. I'll get Simon's stepladder."

"Simon had a stepladder?" somehow that thought was amusing to Kim.

"Yeah," said Robin, heading out of the room, "he had one. He couldn't work out how to put it up though."

Kim nodded and chuckled.

"That sounds more like it," she said.

~xXx~

Radio blaring, Kim and Robin rolled their paint onto the wall in time to Stayin' Alive. In truth, both were ashamed to be doing BeeGees impressions, but no one else would ever know. And it did help them to get the wall painted a little faster. The irony of the song title wasn't lost on them but they decided, for the sake of their sanity, to ignore it.

As the song came to an end and the frantic rolling ended too they realised they were almost halfway through the painting.

"Not bad so far," Robin said as he stood back to admire it.

"Even though you put your paintbrush in your coffee twice," Kim teased.

"It was the paint fumes!" Robin protested, "I was getting all disorientated!"

They sat down on a sheet-covered cabinet in the middle of the room and silence descended for a little while. The paint might have been Warm Apricot Fuzz but there was a white elephant or two in the vicinity and they chose that moment to make an appearance as Robin glanced sideways at Kim and asked,

"Kim? Before the whole Keats and Layton thing happened…"

Kim glanced at him.

"Hmm?"

"You asked me a favour," Robin reminded her. She looked at him a little blankly. It was hard to focus on anything from before Keats arrived. Robin felt himself turning red. "You wanted me to, um," he coughed, "give you a little pot of my DNA."

"Oh… ohhh," Kim remembered the conversation at last. She closed her eyes and gave a laden sigh. "I don't think we're going to be needing your, uh, input any more."

Robin looked at her sad expression.

"Oh?" he said quietly.

Kim looked down. Her chest felt so heavy she could hardly breathe in.

"Me and Linda," she said quietly, "things haven't been going well."

Robin's brow furrowed.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, "is it… is it the rejoining the force issue?"

Kim sighed again.

"Partly," she nodded. She looked away so Robin couldn't see her eyes becoming moist with tears. "She's never been happy about it, right from the moment I brought it up. But it's something I have to do and she just can't understand it. Or won't."

Robin bit his lip.

"And she doesn't like me very much, does she?" he asked.

Kim glanced back at him.

"First we were on the run together, then you call on me for help and I get kidnapped," she said, "what's not to like?" She was trying to make a joke but she knew it wasn't funny. Rob, it's nothing personal, she… I think she's jealous because we had an instant connection. Because of what we've been through." She hung her head. "It's not her fault… it's not your fault either… there's nothing that we can do to change that. She doesn't know about that world and it's not like I can ever tell her."

Robin looked at her sympathetically.

"No," he said quietly, "I suppose not." He bit his lip. "Are you going to be alright?"

Kim finally looked him again. She looked very lost and young suddenly.

"I really don't know, Rob," she said quietly, "I thought we were solid… but we were only solid as long as I was keeping that world out of my head. And I don't want to do that any more." She felt butterflies in her belly as her mind strayed slightly and she whispered, "and lately, that's made me think about somebody else."

"Who?" Robin asked.

Despite everything, thinking of Shaz brought a little smile to her face.

"Someone I knew back there," she said quietly.

Robin hesitated.

"Is this the same person that the song made you think about?" he asked.

Kim nodded slowly.

"Now I can't get her out of my head," she whispered, "and suddenly I see all the flaws in our relationship and everything that's wrong."

Robin bit his lip.

"It wasn't Alex was it?" he asked.

"What? No!" cried Kim.

"OK, just asking!"

"No… you didn't know her," Kim told him, "besides, you were the one with the mind-bending crush on Alex!"

Robin changed colour several times in the space of ten seconds, from deathly pale to pink to bright red to purple and then back to pink again.

"I told you that in confidence," he cried, "never to be mentioned again! And besides, that was all over in a week, stupid pressure of being on the run made my brain go funny."

"I had a snog with her once," Kim boasted.

"With who? Alex?" cried Robin.

"Well, it was a kind of a dare," said Kim, "but a kiss is a kiss. Right?"

"Is there anyone you haven't kissed?" Robin teased.

Kim pulled a face.

"Yeah, Gene Hunt," she said, shuddering at the thought.

Robin laughed as he looked at her expression.

"So was Alex a good kisser?" he asked.

It was Kim's turn to blush.

"I'd give her eight out of ten," she mumbled, "are you sure you don't still have a crush, you seem way too interested."

"Only because I hadn't heard about this kissing dare before," said Robin.

Kim rolled her eyes.

"Are you sure? You were the one who claimed you were tenting all over the place whenever she got too close…"

"Kim! Again, that was told to you in confidence" cried Robin, but he was laughing now.

"I should be offended," Kim told him, "I kissed you and not so much as a flicker!"

"I thought we weren't talking about that," Robin pulled a face.

"You've given me a complex," Kim teased, "never felt so unattractive."

"Shut your trap," Robin teased, dabbing paint on her nose.

Kim swore at him a few times and wiped her nose off on a sheet but by the time her nose was a more normal shade again she was laughing. She was grateful for the humour they shared. Their friendship had been somewhat unlikely and unusual but they brought out the best in each other and for that she was glad.

Robin got to his feet and picked up his roller.

"Come on," he said, "two down, two to go. Ready for some more rolling?"

"There will be pizza at the end of this, won't there?" she asked.

Robin raised an eyebrow.

"Depends on the quality of the painting," he teased.

"Cheeky git," Kim commented as she embarked on painting another wall.

They rolled the paint across the vast expanse for some time in silence, listening to the music and breathing a sigh of relief every time a song that wasn't a Wham song came on the radio. Eventually, when they'd been painting for a little while Robin's curiosity got the better of him. He looked back at Kim and he asked,

"Aren't you going to tell me then?"

"Tell you what?" Kim asked, "that you're a big geeky nerd-head?"

"About this wonderful woman who stole your heart on the other side of the line," said Robin.

Kim felt her heart do a flip-flop in her chest as she thought about it. She had never spoken about Shaz, not to anyone. She'd kept it all a secret for such a long time. But with the song, then the heart attack, then the dreams and the voices… her connection to Shaz and her time in Gene's world felt closer than ever. A gentle pink glow spread across her cheeks as she said,

"Well – it all started one night in this club –"

The End

~xXx~

Author's Note: I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who followed this story – thank you for reading and thank you for coming along for the ride! Extra big thank yous to Oceancounty and MorganaNK for the reviews and all the laughs too :)

I wanted to say, I always knew that this story would have limited appeal because it doesn't include the main protagonists of Gene and Alex (well, A brief comatose Alex but that's not quite the same!) but from my point of view this has turned out to be the most enjoyable thing I have written since I got over my writer's block a year and a half ago. And it had helped me through a couple of really, really rough months when the only thing I have felt up to doing was writing. (At this point I am seriously considering Kim and Robin as baby names!)

Because I've enjoyed it so much I've decided to branch away from just writing A2A fics and I'm letting Robin and Kim loose in their own story which I'm now starting for NaNoWriMo (yes, I know I'm a week late!) and hoping to start posting on FictionPress in a couple of days, to fill in the gap for them until they get to play in the Geneverse again. I'll be posting on there under the same pen name and I've put a link on my profile on here too.

Thanks again for coming on this journey – I have loved writing every word! x x x