I don't own Ashes to Ashes
....
Gene couldn't remember the last time he'd been truly blackout drunk, although he supposed it must have been about a year or so after the shooting, when the images of Alex's crumpling body had been starting to fade from memory due to endless nights of repetitive drinking, all of which had led to him waking up with only a vague, hazy recollection of anything that had happened. The guilt when he'd realized he couldn't remember the exact pattern and colour of her blouse had been overwhelming, and he'd dropped the habit like a tonne of hot bricks; that wasn't to say he stopped drinking altogether, of course - he simply drank until every colour of the now more hazy memory was as vivid as was humanly possible, then promptly plonked himself on the sofa, and smoked twenty cigarettes to quell the omnipresent swell of guilt in his stomach.
Now, five whiskeys and a bottle of wine down, he was three-quarters of the way there, his eyelids and limbs heavy with alcohol and exhaustion, tongue thick and dry in his mouth as he slouched awkwardly on the sofa, the smell of her perfume and her hair teasing at his senses as his nose pressed uncomfortably into the sofa cushion. Part of him still hoped he'd dreamt it up, that he'd wake up the next morning and realize he'd never met her in this time at all... but the smell of her was too tangible, the memory of her too real and vivid for him to delude himself for even a moment, and the pain in his chest refused to go away, even as he downed drink after drink as a poor substitute for an anaesthetic.
He felt torn, broken, and exhausted; after years of waiting, of hoping, of holding on to the smallest shred of distant possibility, he'd finally got what he'd wanted since the day he met her.
After a lifetime of waiting, he finally knew what it was like to kiss her, to hold her, to love her...
And after a day of holding her in his arms like a piece of fragile glass, treasuring every scrap of conversation and every whisper of her lips against his, he'd had to let her go.
She knew Evan was worried; she'd managed to wave Molly off before she did so, but she'd broken down into a mass of tears that were well beyond her control the second the door had closed. He'd assumed it was to do with her parents, assumed that the reason she met up with Gene was to come to terms with how they'd died, how their last moments had panned out... She couldn't even begin to explain the real reason behind her tears, because the moment she tried, her heart had constricted, and she'd broken into renewed sobs so intense that she'd slumped to the ground where she stood. Evan had said nothing, holding her and rocking her until she quieted into silence, though the tears still streamed ceaselessly down her cheeks.
Eventually, he'd carried her - with some difficulty- up to bed, and she'd barely been able to crawl beneath the cool duvet before she was wracked with further grief, and buried her face in her pillow. It was only after Evan had left the room and closed the door behind him that she'd pulled her bag up from the floor, extracting the shirt Gene had discarded that morning and lifting it up to her nose, losing herself in desperation; the smell of him overrode everything else, and she burrowed her face into the fabric, inhaling long, deep breaths and losing herself in the fragile memories that would have to be enough to last her the rest of her life.
The pounding knock on the door was just enough to rouse him from his alcohol-induced stupor; he stumbled from the bedroom unsteadily, head spinning, the room seeming to sway along with him as he made his way towards the door, closing his eyes briefly as his hand gripped the handle, before drawing it open.
"Alright Guv?" the familiar voice sounded, and Gene let out a groan as the noise reverberated against his skull, pounding and jarring as it went on. "Shaz said to drop these off for yer – had to pick up little Ray's medicine, an' she didn't think you'd remember to get these yerself." Chris pushed a paper bag into Gene's hand, and a glance down told him that Shaz had thought it a good idea to collect his prescription; Gene rolled his eyes at it, perfectly aware that Shaz knew he hadn't taken the aforementioned pills since they were originally prescribed to him nearly two and a half years ago.
He blinked away from the blue, green and white packaging, and then looked up into Chris' face, struck suddenly by how aged the younger man had become, and realizing, not for the first time, the totally bizarre nature of the situation he found himself in. His former DC's once blonde hair was streaked with grey, wrinkles lined his face, and he wore brown spectacles on his nose. He was still in his work clothes – a dark brown two piece suit, with a white shirt underneath, unbuttoned at the top. Gene realised that the newly promoted DI must have been heading home after his Saturday shift, and he grimaced slightly at the knowledge he'd felt it necessary to take a detour.
"Tell 'er thanks," Gene muttered absently, indicating the bag Chris had just handed over, rubbing his head slightly with his hand, then stumbling towards the sofa, where he slumped heavily, head lolling back on the cushions as Chris awkwardly stepped over his feet and settled on the seat beside Gene.
"How's DI Drake?" Chris asked, the same awkward note hitting his voice that had been present for twenty-six years; none of them had understood... none of them could possibly understand how important it was for him to see her.
"Alive," Gene replied, feeling the real truth of those words hit home, and reaching subconsciously for the hip flask in his blazer before taking a large gulp of whiskey.
"That's good," Chris smiled awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head. "Have you err-? Have you been today?"
Gene shook his head, taking another drink and grimacing as it burnt its way down his throat. "Not yet," he murmured softly, swirling the flask absently as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Chris check his watch.
"You erm-... you going tonight?" The question was tentative, but Chris already knew which answer to expect; he always got the same.
"Yeap." Gene answered out of habit more than anything else, but he knew he would go, even if he tried to talk himself out of it; he always ended up going.
Chris nodded, and then checked his watch again with a frown. "You wanna get going soon then Guv; visitin' hours are over at eight- it's half seven now, an' they won't let you in if-"
"They will," Gene murmured absently. "They always do..."
He caught the awkwardness in Chris's gaze, felt the discomfort that radiated from the younger man in waves, and he wasn't at all surprised when Chris pushed himself to his feet, dusting invisible dirt off his trousers and pointing towards the door with a nervous grimace. "I'll just be err- I should get going... It's Billy's birthday, an' Shaz wants me to pick up the cake from the bakery..."
Gene nodded, pushing himself up with a grunt and following Chris to the door. "How old is 'e now?" He asked absently, watching as Chris paused at the door. "Twelve ain't it?"
Chris frowned, shaking his head and wringing his hands together with an air of awkwardness. "No, err, it's his eighteenth, Guv..."
"Eighteen?" Gene spluttered, eyebrows knitting together. "Bloody 'ell..." He shook his head, blinking in bafflement as he did so. "Eighteen years..." he went on. Under his breath, as the realization passed, he repeated, "bloody hell."
Chris nodded, wetting his lips slightly, and then pointed to the now discarded pharmacy bag on the sofa. "Shaz says to tell you it's one a day, take it on an empty stomach, and don't drink while you're on-" Apparently seeing the look of sardonic amusement on Gene's face, Chris stopped, shrugging and grinning almost embarrassedly. "Just passin' on the message, Guv," he murmured.
"Yeah," Gene nodded, swallowing slightly. "Yeah, cheers, Chris... say happy birthday to the lad, 'ey?"
"Will do, Guv," Chris smiled, rubbing the back of his neck and glancing again at the bag on the sofa. "Guv, d'you think maybe you should try the chem-?"
"No I bloody do not!" Gene answered, walking up to the door as Chris stepped into the hall. "Now get home before Shaz 'as me balls on a platter!"
Chris sighed, offered a small, parting wave, then left with a nod of the head and a resigned, "bye Guv."
Gene shut the door after him, reaching for his cigarettes and lighting up before grabbing the pharmacy bag from the chair, ripping the paper away and glancing at the label with a resigned sigh. Sodium clodronate, he mused... whatever the hell that was; he tossed it onto the coffee table a few moments later, and took a long drag on his cigarette in silent defiance, before grabbing his coat and heading out of the door.
"I'm fine, Evan," Alex assured him unsuccessfully from the safety of her bed, wiping at her streaming eyes and forcing an optimistic smile as she went on. "I'm fine – it's just a bit of a shock, that's all... I'll be fine; just getting it out of my system before Molly gets back..."
If he didn't believe her, he said nothing, simply swallowing hard, nodding his head, and leaving the room with a sigh. The moment the door clicked shut and his feet began to pad down the stairs, she drew the shirt she had hidden from view out from beneath the duvet, pressing the fabric to her nose and biting back a sob as, not for the first time, she realized his scent was fading.
It had been the pre-cursor to another emotional breakdown, and despite her best intentions to remain quiet enough to evade Evan's notice, he'd walked in to find her grasping a pillow to her chest and sobbing incoherently into its casing. The absent smell, the memory of Gene's warm chest, strong arms and gentle hands, had sent her reeling, and much as she wished it were possible to forget, she was consumed by him, spinning off course as she found that he caused a raging battle between her head and her heart.
It shouldn't have bothered her this much, she knew; a single night with any man should never have held this much emotion, meaning, attachment... She remembered everything they had shared, and it shook her with more physical grief than she could have thought possible. She recalled the gentle way in which his fingers had combed through her tendrils of hair, the way his hands had felt pressed against her spin, the way his arms had wrapped around her so tightly, forcing out all thought of anything but him, erasing any premise of danger, blocking out the pain of losing him, leaving him, knowing him and letting it go again...
She was well aware that she was lost to him; she hadn't known what it was like to be so intricately bound to another person before, but the sudden tearing loss that ripped at her chest opened up realms of achingly painful possibilities which, prior to seeing him, had been impossibly distant and unimaginable.
She was torn; torn, completely and utterly, between the knowledge that she could never rightly be without her daughter, and the resounding feeling in the pit of her stomach that said Gene needed her, just as much as she needed him – and she knew now that she truly did need him; she needed him more than she could ever have comprehended whilst putting up a constant fight for return, but now, with him less than twenty minutes away, and having found herself isolated from him against all the rising hopes she had felt upon seeing him, she felt it like a physical pain, a craving, a desperate need to be close to him that refused to go away; she'd tasted it, felt the buzz, the high, the wonderful, all-too fleeting sensation of incredible happiness, and it had been torn from her, ripped out of her grasp before she was ready, before she could consent to it...
With a shuddering, rasping gasp, she tugged off her t-shirt, dragging Gene's shirt around her shoulders and lifted the collar to her nose, sobs wracking her body as she drew the duvet tight around her shivering form.
At first he was silent; it felt strange to talk to her, knowing that she lived, breathed and walked around in the present day, perfectly healthy in every sense of the word, and, for all intents and purposes, detached from the life that they'd shared in the eighties... She wasn't this Alex anymore, he reasoned, but it didn't change the fact that he needed to see her, needed to talk to her because, whether he'd been with her or not, he couldn't simply let her go.
Not that he was doing much here, he thought, clenching his fingers slightly against the nicotine craving suddenly rising in his stomach. Christ, he needed a fag; this whole situation was so far beyond comprehension, that unless he was pissed and dosed up with nicotine, he didn't think he'd really ever be able to accept it, let alone understand it.
He looked down at the warm, dry hand held loosely in his own, and the first, most ridiculous, unreasonable thought that came to mind was that this wasn't really Alex; he'd held Alex's hand – the real Alex, the now Alex – and it was softer, warmer, gentler, more responsive...He looked at the scars, tracing each one familiarly, then sighing softly as his fingers found the gentle white line that was, for some unfathomable reason, not present on the real Alex's hand; he still failed to comprehend it, but in the circumstances, he supposed the lack of a scar after hopping twenty-six years in time wasn't too big a deal in the larger scheme of things... Doctor Who could have a field day with this, he thought briefly, before sighing and shifting the chair slightly closer to her bed.
This was the part he didn't get, though, he realised, looking at her aged face. How could she be here and there both at once, old and young, awake and asleep, when really they were just two facets of the same person, two representations of the one same physical being? How could she have aged so much, and yet outside of these four walls she was still the young, vibrant, unblemished woman he'd known twenty-odd years ago?
The door opened hesitantly, and a familiar young nurse poked her head around the door to smile warmly across at him, before moving in to do something with Alex's drips and readings; in the first year or so, he'd been vaguely interested in what the readings were – now he could guess them, and nine times out of ten he was right.
"We were getting worried about you," the nurse teased good-naturedly. "Hadn't known you miss a day before, and then you go and miss two! Thought maybe you'd walked in front of a lorry or something!"
Gene offered a half-hearted, painfully forced smile and shrugged. "Busy," he murmured in explanation, wetting his lips. "Had some stuff to sort out..." He didn't comment on the frankly surprised and disbelieving look that passed over her features, and a moment later she'd finished scribbling something on her pad, and left the room with a shaky parting smile and a murmured goodbye.
With a soft sigh, Gene turned and glanced at Alex's face, swallowing hard as the familiar lines of age burned into his irises. He grimaced, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue and then pressing his fingers into his eyeballs with a groan.
He knew her; he knew her like this, and he knew her as she'd been the day before, and the frank truth that he couldn't escape from was that, either way, she wasn't coming back to him. She couldn't leave her daughter, and she couldn't wake up; he was stranded and lost, caught between two choices that could only spell out disappointment and pain, whichever way he went. He could leave now, abandon her here, in a lonely hospital bed with no company and no comfort, and go on with his life as most retired coppers did these days – pissed and horny, lying smoking on a beach in Alicante, and wondering if he had made the right decision.
Or he could stay; he could come back every day, just as he always had, sit here holding her hand day-after-day knowing that it would never happen, feeling pain and anguish beyond imagination every time he looked at her familiar and yet foreign face, pretending to be optimistic when all the while he knew there was no hope at all...
He sighed, pressing a gentle kiss to her palm briefly, still looking at her face, before standing up suddenly and moving to her ear, breath teasing across its shell as he whispered gently to her. "See yer soon, Bols..."
He kissed her forehead lingeringly, smelling her hair and grimacing at the sterile scent of hospital shampoo, remembering with a wave of longing the apple-scent of her hair the day before, the warm, soft scent of her skin as his mouth and nose had brushed across her neck... With a hiss of pain, he stood up and left, trying his best not to think about what Alex was doing now, whether she was asleep, making tea, having a shower, watching the telly, thinking about him... He failed miserably, and when he climbed back into the battered Quattro a few minutes later, he could think of nothing else.
The cigarette burnt slowly in the makeshift ash tray on the window sill, tendrils of smoke lifting upwards and catching in the slight draught that slipped through the open window, blowing towards the bed where Alex lay curled beneath the duvet, shivering silently, her eyes closed as the familiar smell invaded her senses.
Stupid, she told herself time and time again; the smell would never be enough, and if she kept going like this she'd have done enough passive smoking by Monday to earn herself a year's worth of chemotherapy. It didn't stop her though; if she kept her eyes closed, and if she wrapped her arms around the pillow as the smell overtook her, for a few moments, every now and then, she convinced herself he was there.
It hadn't been easy getting hold of the cigarettes, mind, she recalled. The look on Evan's face when she'd suggested that she might perhaps be interested in leaving the house to buy a paper had quickly dissuaded her from making the trip out herself, and she'd promptly rung Malcowitz and asked him to send over a packet of Mayfair by courier; he'd questioned it briefly, and she'd explained they were for Evan, and much as she was certain he hadn't believed her, he'd had the decency to keep his thoughts to himself, and a rather large brown package had arrived an hour later, bulging with a variety of sweets and magazines to convince the ever-watchful Evan that it housed nothing sinister.
She'd waited until he'd left her room again, and then discarded the sweets, tossing them to one side before fumbling around in the bottom of the package for the cigarettes and, to her amusement, a pink lighter, complete with sticky label, reading simply: You might need one of these.
She'd lit one almost immediately, setting it on an old saucer which had once been the stand to a potted plant, and leaving the window slightly ajar to filter out the worst of the smell; she knew it wouldn't stop Evan from noticing, knew full well that Evan would recognise the smell the second he entered the room, and if that wasn't enough, he'd certainly notice the thin grey haze that hung in the air...
She sighed to herself, laying down silently, her eyes closed, inhaling deeply, and deluding herself, however briefly, that Gene's hand was holding gently onto her own.
"I've told you before, Gene," the man beside him scolded, "them things won't do anything to help."
Gene rolled his eyes, deliberately exaggerating the next puff he took on the cigarette he was smoking, awkwardly avoiding a scurrying two year old and her baffled grandmother as they walked down the crowd that filled up Oxford Street. "An' I've told you before," he said, grimacing at a slight twinge in his chest, "if I try an' quit these buggers I might as well chop off me bollucks, cut 'em into thin slices and pickle them fer breakfast."
"You mean they're phallic?" the younger man smirked, straightening his dark blue tie as they continued on down the street.
"No," Gene replied tersely. "I mean they're as much a part of me as the old todger is." He took another drag, glancing across at the smart suit and shoes, with the black spiky hair and laughing brown eyes. "Doubt a poof like you would understand that, though," he added under his breath, sniffing slightly and exhaling.
He rolled his eyes, running a hand across dark stubble and grinning at Gene warmly. "I look after myself, Gene - which is more than can be said for you, but it doesn't make me gay."
"You spike yer hair," Gene said bluntly, shrugging absently. "Poof," he concluded, finishing the cigarette and flicking it uncaringly in the direction of a long haired teenage boy in a knee-length leather jacket. The teenager glowered darkly from beneath heavily made-up eyelids, and then stomped across the middle of the road, ignorant of the large double-decker bus which slammed its brakes on a moment later to avoid hitting him. "Deny it all you want Benny boy," Gene went on to the man at his side, "but you're a poof."
Ben Foreman grinned, shaking his head and swigging on the bottle of water in his hand. "Whatever makes you feel better, Gene," he laughed, side-stepping a Chinese couple who were jibbering away rapidly. He glanced at his watch, and then frowned. "Bugger, I need to be getting back. I'm meant to have a two o'clock appointment." He grimaced, hailed a passing taxi, then glanced worriedly back at Gene. "I guess you're still refusing to-!"
"Yes," Gene answered, lighting up a fresh cigarette and ignoring the narrowing of Ben's eyes.
"You know, they really won't make you any-!"
"Yes," Gene sighed, nodding tiredly. "I know; contrary to popular belief I 'ave heard the news."
Ben sighed, showing a sad smile, before opening the taxi door and pushing his brief case onto the back seat. "I guess nothing I say will convince you?"
Gene shook his head, wetting his lips. "Nothing."
"And you won't just come down and-?"
"Nope."
Rolling his eyes, Ben leant against the car door briefly. "I wish you weren't a patient, Gene," he grinned jokingly. "At least then I could punch your lights out and drag you down there myself."
Gene chuckled, shaking his head and taking a slow drag on his latest cigarette. "I'd 'ave you arrested for assault."
"True," the younger man smirked, running a hand through his black hair and sighing. "But then, who's going to believe a washed out copper over a highly respected Doctor?"
"Watch it, son," Gene growled. "Just because you're writin' me pills doesn't mean I won't punch you to kingdom come."
"Are you taking them?" Ben enquired, almost accusingly; Gene rolled his eyes, exhaled a large amount of smoke, and stepped back into the busy crowd.
"See you later, Doc," he said, lifting one hand in a half-hearted wave.
"Gene!" Ben shouted warningly above the loud noise of the crowded street. "Gene, you take them fucking tablets!" Gene kept walking, grinning as Ben went on. "You've got an appointment tomorrow! You better be there! You better be there, or so help me I'll-!"
Gene waved his hand over his shoulder, tossed aside his dead cigarette, and lit up another.
Bens shouting didn't stop for a while; there was a faint noise of yelling that followed Gene the whole way down the street, and he felt a tired smile tug at his lips as he took a gentle drag from his cigarette.
He liked Ben; when he wasn't mouthing off about patients, medication and Gene's incessant smoking, he was a good laugh, and a more than respectable drinking partner. In fact, if the bloke hadn't become a doctor, he could have made a damn good copper – not that Ben had particularly liked hearing that particular shred of opinion, but, in Gene's eyes at the very least, it was the truth. He was smart, clever, and, unfortunately for Gene, could sniff a rat out quicker than a starved cat, making it rather the more difficult to lie about taking his medication, a fact that rankled more than a little.
They'd met a few years ago; Ben was a newly qualified doctor, eager as a puppy, and light-hearted enough that, when Shaz finally convinced Gene to go and see him about the crippling pains in his legs, they'd ended up going for a drink and getting nostalgic for days Gene was sure the younger man couldn't even remember. It had become a regular thing after that, and, whilst Gene wasn't entirely sure about the ethical implications, Ben remained his assigned doctor, despite Gene's unwillingness to attend appointments.
Their meeting that day had occurred quite by chance; Gene had taken to jumping on the tube and wandering the length of Oxford Street in the last few weeks or so, hoping to lose himself in the crowd, the loud noise, the laughter, the hurry... It didn't work often, but at least it stopped some of the raging loss that nagged at his mind and his heart all day from breaking too far into conscious thought.
He walked from one end to the other, amidst crowds of people he didn't know or care for, smoking his cigarettes, swigging on his whiskey, and silently contemplating the upheaval that his life had undergone over a month ago now. At least in the crowded streets, when the pain got too much or the anger became too intense, he could jerk himself briefly from his reverie and distract himself by crossing the street, avoiding the buses and the taxis, awkwardly sidestepping old ladies and giggling teenagers, and taking as long as possible to cross, just to put off that moment in the sanctuary of the crowd where his thoughts would drift back to Alex.
He'd been thinking about her alot; more than ever, in actual fact, and the pain and the anguish was almost too much, engulfing every thought and action whenever distraction was unattainable. Even the crowds weren't really enough, but they helped, at least a little. It had been a huge relief though, to have Ben interrupt his thoughts today with a startled exclamation, ensnaring him in conversation and falling into step at his side with ease. He'd asked him the usual questions first; how was the pain? Was he still seeing her every day? Would he ever stop? Apparently he wasn't pleased with any of the answers Gene had provided, grimacing slightly when he said the pain was a bitch, clenching his jaw when Gene confirmed that yes, he was still visiting Alex daily, and letting out a small groan when Gene answered that no, he wouldn't stop.
The doctor knew better than to question him; they'd argued about it almost non-stop in their second meeting, with Ben attempting to understand why Gene would put himself through it every day, and Gene explaining, quite openly and uncharacteristically, and in his own roundabout way, that if he didn't see her, he'd only have to deal with the memories and the guilt which, for reasons unbeknownst to either of them, increased tenfold when he didn't see her, despite the knowledge that Alex didn't really have any senses left with which to recognise Gene's presence.
He wasn't surprised when the pills came up; frankly, he'd been expecting the question sooner, and had been mentally rehearsing his reply, but he knew Ben wouldn't have believed him, even if he'd answered in the affirmative.
The truth - as Ben knew, however much he liked to pretend he didn't - was that Gene felt no inclination whatsoever to take the medication, and that, in some sense, the pain in his lungs and the creaking of his bones was a welcome distraction away from the horrible truth of his broken emotions. Not that that had stopped the younger man from prescribing him pills every month; Gene only tossed them in the bin, but the sentiment was there.
Every now and then he'd been tempted by them, though; when it was almost unbearable pain, when breathing became damn near impossible, when his head pounded with agony and his gut felt fit to burst, sometimes he was tempted... But never enough; most of the time he just drank copious amounts of whiskey, went to bed and slept it off. If it still hurt the next morning, he just drank some more.
It had been worse recently, though; he didn't know if he'd given up, gotten worse, or simply started noticing it more, but he'd felt it. The last few weeks had been so bloody unbearable anyway, he might have expected to remain clueless as to the shooting, sharp pains that spread through him when he moved, or the ragged, harsh drag of his breathing as he climbed the stairs to the flat; it hadn't been that way at all. If anything, he supposed he'd gone in the other direction with the whole thing, feeling everything more acutely, sensing every movement of each bone within his body as he moved... He didn't feel good, he admitted to himself. In fact, it was fair to say he felt like shit... Not that he'd ever tell Ben that...
He sighed, stubbing out his cigarette with his shoe and groaning as sharp pains raced up his leg, before heading down into the station and boarding the tube, complaining inwardly as he went about public transport, the government, and bloody teenagers.
Alex listened as Molly trudged grumpily up the stairs to bed, hearing her slam the door angrily behind her, and feeling the sigh of tired relief leave her lips before she really had the chance to stop it.
Typically, Molly had boarded the teen-train at just the wrong moment, and Alex was struggling, not for the first time, to deal with her grief for leaving Gene, and the constraints of being a mother. It was difficult; she rarely found the time to sit by herself, and sometimes when Molly absented herself to use the loo, Alex would break into convulsive sobs over the washing up bowl, only to have Evan shoo her instantly to bed and take over washing duty. Occasionally she heard him scolding her for not helping, heard her snap back angrily, then found herself crying not just for Gene, but for the fact her daughter was growing up, and she had no idea how to react.
She knew the teenage years were going to be the hardest – they always were, weren't they? – but she hadn't been prepared for it just yet. For a while, she blamed herself; she knew Molly had struggled with Alex's illness, knew she'd felt alienated when Alex could do nothing but sit in her room, but it didn't make her feel better. It had taken Evan regaling several of Alex's own worst teenage moments for her to even begin to accept that, whilst none of her visits to hospital could have helped, they weren't to blame for Molly's sudden hormonal mood swings.
But even so, she couldn't help feeling slightly responsible, feeling as though she'd let her daughter down by becoming so caught up in her own life... A life, she realized, that Molly knew nothing about, and never could; because what sane person told their daughter that they'd gone back in time to the nineteen eighties, seen their parents die all over again, seen her ex-husband at the age of fourteen, and fallen in love with a man who was, in every sense, the complete opposite to all of the other men she had been attracted to; violent, corrosive, argumentative, stubborn, sexist, racist, homophobic?
She could only imagine what Molly's reaction would be were she to turn around and tell her all of that, and to then tell her that she'd seen him in this life, seen him crippled with physical and emotional pain as he visited her comatose other self, and that she'd still loved him despite the age, the crippling agony he was so evidently in, the unchanged persona and the still rampant opinions; Molly wouldn't understand that, she had realised, tears springing to her eyes.
"Mum, where's my phone?" The shout echoed down from the landing, jerking her from her reverie, and Alex sighed, glancing around the now empty kitchen for Molly's tiny pink Samsung.
"It's no wonder she bloody loses it," she muttered under her breath, lifting up a stack of post, then standing up and moving over to the counter, rummaging on the top of the microwave, opening cupboard after cupboard, then walking into the hall, glancing around there, too. She eventually found it beneath a folded pair of socks beside the telephone, and she lifted it up with a half-smile.
"It's here, Mols," she called back, holding out her hand as though Molly were a foot away and about to take it from her. "It's-!" She stopped as it began vibrating in her hand, the screen lighting up and flashing 'Unknown Number' at her repeatedly. "Mols, it's ringing!"
Molly didn't reply, and Alex clenched her jaw before trying again. "Mols!" She called. "Mols, your phone's ringing, and-!"
"Answer it then!" Molly called back agitatedly. "I'm on the loo!"
"But Mols, why don't you just-?"
"Answer it!" The shriek Molly sent back in reply shocked Alex, and for a few brief moments she wondered who exactly would be on the other end at this time of night that could make Molly so evidently agitated, but a moment later she sighed, pushing the green button and lifting it to her ear.
"Hello?" She said, sighing and absently fiddling with the hair as she glanced in the hallway mirror.
"Bols?" She straightened up suddenly, hand freezing in her hair; there was no mistaking that nickname, she thought, heart skipping a beat. And there was no mistaking the now familiar, worn, gravelly, rough voice that reached her and fell on her ears like warm rays of sun.
"Gene?" Alex asked, gasping her surprise and pressing the phone tighter to her ear. "Gene, what's wrong? How did you get this number? When did I-?"
"Bolly?" He sounded agitated and worried, and Alex found herself nodding as she answered.
"It's me, Gene," she assured him, feeling the smile on her face. "Gene, it's-!"
"Alex?" He said more urgently, his voice getting slightly louder, rising in pitch. "Alex, can you 'ear me?"
"I can hear you, Gene!" Alex answered, raising her voice slightly. "I can-"
"I need you to hear me, Bolly," his voice was pleading, desperate, tired, old, and she bit down hard on her lip as his voice went softer, as it did when he felt uncomfortable, worried, out of place, nervous...
"I can," she whispered back. "Gene, I can hear you, I can-"
"Need you to come back, Bols," he ground out, a soft hiss escaping him, and Alex could imagine the grimace of pain on his features, the stubborn line of his mouth as he schooled himself back into a mask of calm. "Just- just for tonight... Please Bols... please come back..."
His sharp breath reached her ears, a soft hiss left his lips, and then the line went dead.
Thanks for all the positive feedback - hope this was alright! I know it's a bit angsty... but it helped me immensely :p
Mage of the Heart