A/N: This was supposed to be a oneshot, even though when I wrote it I could see in my head how it would have gone if I were to continue it. I was just going to leave it as a oneshot for the reason that I thought it was too dark. But for some reason a combination of the pain and medication has brought me back to this story. Maybe it'll be a way to channel the pain into something constructive. I'm still in two minds about writing this but Rant is threatening to dissect medical instruments if I didn't write chapter two so here it is. The rating will change at M at some point and it's going to be very dark throughout.
~xXx~
Chapter 2
Alex stared at the clock in the basement as the hands seemed to stall and stumble. It was still 9:06 just as it had been forever and a day. She was almost glad in a way because at least then she couldn't clock-watch. She knew the clock would betray her and time would move too slowly if she'd had the chance. It could never move fast enough as far as she was concerned.
It was another long, lonely day. The latest in a long line of long, lonely days. There were no other kind. Not for Alex. Not any more.
She thought she heard a footstep on the stairs and jumped to attention but whatever the sound had been, no more followed. Either it was a figment of her imagination or whoever it was had changed their mind. And she couldn't blame them. Why would anyone go down there voluntarily? Even Keats rarely made an appearance any more.
How many weeks had it been now? Three? Four? It felt like a lot longer but she was trying to give a conservative estimate. She wondered why calendars didn't stay on the same page forever. If clocks never changed once you'd passed away then why didn't calendars do the same? Because she knew the month had gone by; the picture on the calendar on the wall had changed at some point from one of a hole punch to one of a sexy selection of neatly-arranged biros. But that was as much as she knew about the passing of time.
In actual fact it had been a day shy of three weeks since the day. The day her life fell apart. The day that Gene packed her off to the pub and banished her with one word; 'Go'.
And she had. She'd gone. She'd gone and she'd regretted it. The one time she'd listened to him, and the one time she should have fought her corner. Once inside those four walls she knew she'd made a mistake and the appearance of stars on the wall confirmed it to her. She took the only exit she could; out of the window. But although physically she had landed on her feet, in a different sense she couldn't have fallen any harder.
She wondered what would have happened if she'd chosen another window. Maybe if she'd gone to the cubicle beside it she would have landed in a different place, with no sign of him there; delaying her, stalling her, taking away her chance to be happy.
He didn't know what he was doing, she told herself again and again, he didn't stall me on purpose.
Even she didn't really believe that. But it hurt less to think of it that way.
She stared at the pens lined up along her desk and licked her dry lips as she longed for him to arrive soon with a glass of water for her, or maybe even allow her to visit the canteen. He had promised. But then she knew she hadn't done well at their meeting that morning. She'd just been so hungry, and she thought it would have been rude not to take the hors d' oeuvres from the Super when he offered her the platter. And she never would have started a conversation with the Super if she'd known she wasn't supposed to speak to him unsupervised. Mingle, he'd told her. Look pretty, he'd said. It was a little hard to do that when she could barely straighten up from the pain in her back where she'd spent the last three nights sleeping on the floor.
She pressed one hand to the side of her throbbing head and leaned against her elbow on the desk. Surely this wasn't right. One minute she'd been in whatever passed for heaven, then the next everything was turned on its head. How could jumping from the window lead to hell? She supposed that was why people signalled downward when they thought about the fiery place. But it still made little sense.
She wondered if there was some parallel universe out there where there was another her who was doing it right; who'd jumped from another window, outrun the threat of Keats, made it into the station in time to find Gene with his new recruit and salvage something from her life. Perhaps there was a parallel universe out there in which they'd actually made it, they'd gotten over all those months – years even – of playing around and actually decided to give it a go. There'd been that kiss, after all. That wasn't a kiss between friends. That was a gesture of something far deeper. And even though it had been a goodbye kiss she couldn't shake the feeling that there could have been so many more where that came from.
If only she had landed differently.
Her eyes skipped to the clock again. 9:06 once more. She exhaled and listened to her stomach growling loudly. Maybe there would be food on the way? Perhaps hem would bring her something like he used to. Like he had at first. The little visits down in the basement, the smiles the little touches to her hand and her arm, bringing her drinks and snacks, checking to see how she was getting on. There had been a time at first where she'd genuinely thought that perhaps she was wrong about him when she'd come to doubt him outside the pub. Perhaps she'd trusted the wrong man after all.
"I told you I'd take care of you, Alex," He would tell her as he smiled at her, peering over the top of his glasses, "I told you I'd look after you. Hunt was stupid to let you go."
She had started to look forward to those visits, the two or three times he'd appear in the course of the afternoon; a coffee, a couple of biscuits, a nice cool glass of water to counteract the stuffy air. Broken air conditioning, he'd told her.
After the first week the visits to her desk slowly faded away. She'd barely noticed the first day. He was busy, so he said. Important meetings, Going to court, department appraisals.
"You understand, don't you, Alex?" he'd told her as he finally put in an appearance with a steaming mug of coffee, "besides, you don't need me. You've got everything covered down here."
That might have been true but what she didn't have was any company. Nor any food or drink, and the last time she'd come up for air in the course of the day his reaction had been so angry that she'd been afraid to leave the basement without his permission again.
She needed to remain on his good side, she knew that much. She had no one else to turn to. And he had been taking care of her. He'd put clothes on her back, food in her belly, even given her a bed to sleep in. For the most part, anyway. It wasn't his fault he hadn't had time to restock the cupboards yet. Or that the bed had become damaged. And the blankets were warm enough, she supposed. And the floor wasn't that hard once you were used to it. Not once you were tired enough and could pass out on it, anyway.
This time there were definitely footsteps. She knew it. She could hear them approaching fast. She sat up straight, smoothed back her hair and jiggled her chest a little to settle her cleavage into the right place. She knew he liked to see a little. Making the best of herself, that's all it was. At first she'd thought it was sexual harassment but he'd explained it to her, time and again, and eventually she could see it his way.
"Yes, it's a sexist system, Alex. So play the system. Give these big boys on their perches something pretty to look at and they'll be too busy looking at you to look at anything else. To look at the figures, To look at the possibility of redundancies. You wouldn't want to see any of your fellow officers out on the streets would you, Alex? Or yourself. You know how hard that can be, don't you?"
And she did. She did know, She'd had a very practical demonstration when she found herself with no ID, no money, no home and no possessions. She was 'dead'. The paperwork said so. Killed in a heist gone wrong, along with everyone else who'd slipped through the doors of the Railway Arms that same night. Of course, it had to be covered up somehow. She could see that. She understood why it had happened but now she found herself with no identity of her own and nowhere to go.
Except to the basement
"You need me, Alex," he reminded her time and again, "remember, this is the only job you're going to find."
She'd already been arrested for using a 'fake ID' – her own ID – and imitating a police officer – herself. Alex Drake was dead. Just having her arrest warrant meant nothing. She had no way to prove who she was and if she tried to run, to begin again somewhere else, she could end up straight back in the cells and next time he might not be there to bail her out.
I do owe him, she told herself as she watched his feet trotting down the stairs. And it was that thought and that thought alone which allowed her to force a smile.
"Jim," she said, trying to keep her voice bright. She didn't want to sound depressed. God, he hated it when she was low. Sulking, he called it. Sulking like a child waiting for an ice cream on a rainy day. That was what he'd said the day she dared to ask him where her coffee was. She never made that mistake again.
She looked at him eagerly as he fully arrived at the door. What did he have for her? Some water? A snack perhaps?
"Paperwork," he said, slamming a large pile of the stuff on her desk.
Alex's eyes focused on it. The stack was bigger than all of the papers she already had there, which were building up quite steadily.
"I… still have a lot of work to do," she said, half angrily and half apologetically.
Unfortunately he sensed the anger in her voice.
"Maybe this morning was too much of a distraction then," he said, "Perhaps we should cross the functions off your calendar in future. What do you think?"
Alex's spirits sank as a lump formed in her throat.
"No," she said quietly, "no, that's OK. I'll get it finished," she swallowed and sighed, "It's just… it's very difficult to work when I've got a headache."
"Hangover," he told her, "That'll be the champagne."
She had consumed one glass of the bubbly stuff; at the function that morning. But Keats's watchful eye had kept a cap on how much she'd been allowed and it hadn't even been a full glass. He'd whisked it out of her grasp at some point to prod her into shaking hands with some sweaty-palmed tosspot with a comb-over and the inability to look beyond her chest.
"I don't think it's a hangover," she said weakly, "I think it's because I'm a little dehydrated," she pulled her top away from her skin as she said quietly, "it's very hot down here."
"You must remember to drink more water tonight," Keats told her, "when we get home. That'll help fill you up as well."
"Why… what are we having for dinner?" she asked.
"Something healthy for you," Keats told her charmingly, "Got you in a fresh salad. Keep you trim. Got an important budget meeting coming up next week. We want you looking your best."
"I think I could do with something more substantial than a lettuce," Alex said, a little sarcastically, "I think my blood sugar is too low." She looked at him hopefully, "I'm a bit lightheaded."
"Oh, are you?" Keats flashed her a charming smile, "in that case, you'd better stay sitting at your desk," he said, "don't want the world to start spinning around, do you?" he turned to walk away, "after all, the world doesn't revolve around you, Alex." His voice began to fade away as he moved back up the stairs, "The world doesn't revolve around you."
She he'd her breath as she watched him disappear. That was a habit now. She'd started doing it to stop herself from blurting out something that she would regret. Now she found herself doing it all the time, holding her breath until her lungs couldn't take it anymore and it escaped from her body in a rush. It was one of the ways in which she found herself trying to keep control. He could control almost everything else about her; what she wore, what she ate, what she had to drink, but breathing was the one thing even he couldn't control.
Not unless she found a pillow over her face in the middle of the night.
She turned cold as the thought passed through her mind, but even so there was a hint of blessed relief in the idea. At least death would take her away from the situation. What the hell had happened to her anyway? She was tougher than this. She was strong. She didn't take shit from anyone, no matter who they were. Alex Drake was not a weak soul.
But then again, someone else was in possession of her soul now.
As she bowed her head and flinched at the feeling of another wave of hunger she reached for the top file from the papers he'd thrown on her desk and flipped it open. She knew she wasn't going to take in any of the words. She'd skim it and they would make no sense to her, just like usual.
The words swam around on the page like the useless numbers on the clock and the words of torment in her head. She didn't know how she was going to take another day of this. But she knew she didn't have a choice.
She was trapped like a rat, while the real rat was out on the loose.
As she scanned the page for the third time, hoping she had enough mental capacity left to take in just a few of the words, she longed more than anything to turn back the clock; to stay inside the pub and wait patiently for the day that Gene joined her.
But there was no turning back the clock. Nor turning it forward. As 9:06 stared back at her yet again all she could see was a never-ending expanse of darkness; the light extinguished and the night forever fallen.
