"Get out of my sight, Drake."

A sob had formed in Alex's throat and it broke as she spoke. "Gene, please – "

"Get out." There was a dark storm swirling in his voice and in his eyes as he took a step towards her. "I won't ask again."

"Gene, no, you have to understand. It isn't what it looks like, I didn't – "

A vicious swipe from Gene dashed the photographs from her hands to the floor and he towered over her, furious and injured and breaking her heart. "I thought I could trust you, Alex, I thought you… I thought me and you, we 'ad a connection, an understanding." His words were like thunder, earthquakes in her bones, but when his anger broke the hurt that sagged his next words was so much worse. "I thought you cared, Alex."

Hot and heavy, tears welled in Alex's eyes as she stepped closer, hands reaching for him. "I do, Gene, so much, I never – "

"Don't," Gene thundered. He took hold of her wrists before she could reach him. "Don't touch me."

She was crying now, the bitter taste of salt on her lips as she felt herself shudder beneath his gaze. His touch on her wrists was cold and too tight. She hated the weakness she could hear in her voice, the whine of desperation and her sobs. "Gene, y-you have to…have to let me explain, it wasn't…I would never… please, Gene, you have to believe I could never – "

He thrust her away from him, face guarded and hard as steel. Alex thought he was going to shout again, thunder and rage about broken trust, but instead his voice became plain, his words edged like flint. Somewhere beneath it all, he sounded disappointed. "I don't own you, Bolly. Damn it all, Bols, I couldn't ever try." He backed away from her and somehow the loss of the heat of his rage was worse than the burn. "You could 'ave slept with a thousand thatcherite wankers and sent me photos of every time and I'd 'ave swallowed it. But Keats? Jim sodding Keats, the slimy pencil-pusher who almost had our heads? You know for a moment, Bolly, I thought it was a sick joke, some kind of game you'd cooked up between you but no. This is just good, old fashioned betrayal and you are nothing I thought you were. And I keep trying to think of an explanation you could give me to make this okay but there isn't one."

The weak plea of his name from Alex's lips couldn't stem the flow of contempt from his tongue.

"Did you hear me, Drake?" He opened the door to his office and stared at her coldly. "You're nothing to me. Get out."

"Gene, please, you can't do this, you have to know…" She was sobbing openly now, tears streaming down her face as she looked helplessly up at him, lips trembling. "You can't send me away, not now, now when e-everything…when everything was going to be okay again. You have to listen to me – "

"I don't want to listen to a word you've got to say to me, DI Drake. I'll 'ave your transfer papers served up by the morning. Go home."

Alex felt the world crumble away from her, felt her heart falter in her chest as she walked out into CID. The team were staring, perplexed and on edge. The walk to the double doors at the far end felt like a lifetime, her legs trembling with every step. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Shaz rise to go to her, but Gene barked an order for her to stay put. The doors seemed to clang behind her as she slipped through them – a prison sentence, except she was on the outside.

She barely made it to her flat before her strength gave way and the black crashed into her lungs.

She remained crumpled on the floor for a long time, back against the inside of her own front door as the sobs exploded through her ribs from the inside and the panic mastered her throat, clogging and fluttering, pounding against her skin as she screwed her eyes up against the darkness. She could still see Gene's eyes, hard and cold and petrifying, could still hear the edge in his voice, the hurt beneath the disappointment and the rage. She had broken them, had broken him. Keats had only taken the gun from his own hands and placed it into hers, had slid away with her self-respect, her dignity and her strength and left her nothing. She was nothing.

Gulping in air as though drowned, Alex hauled herself to her feet and lurched toward the kitchen. She located half a bottle of malt whisky and a few of red wine in the back of a cupboard and sat there on the floor to drink, not caring as the glass of the whisky bottleneck clinked painfully against her teeth, not caring as most of the amber liquid sloshed down her chin. It burnt the back of her throat and her stomach, hit her gut painfully but it was a good pain, the kind of pain that soothed afterwards and had her reaching for more. She felt reality disintegrating around her, the shame and the desperation of defeat clawing at her insides. Keats had won. He had won.

She wondered, later, in a hazy and still sobbing stupor, if Gene would have believed her had he given her chance to explain. She was certain he wouldn't, and the bitterness of her conviction stung her throat. She emptied the last of the wine, smearing her hand across her mouth to catch any that had spilled. Bitterly, she thought how this was what Keats must have really planned from the start – the conspiracy, to frame Gene for her murder, to reveal the truth to the others and have them join him – it was too perfectly complex, just complicated and outrageous enough to sound like the mad ravings of a desperate woman should she try to explain what she had been trying to prevent. There wasn't a soul who would believe her.

Alex laughed, a hollow and angry laugh that soon turned into sobs. She almost wished Keats were back before her, so she could congratulate him on his genius and his victory. He had led her, blind and willing, to break her and Gene, and the team as a consequence, as easily as he had coaxed his way into her bed, into all her worst nightmares. The blood was on her hands and all the rewards collected in his. No escape. No way to undo the damage she had caused. No way to fix it.

Alex's last thought as she slipped out of consciousness was of Molly, the little girl who felt now like the ghost of a dream, the shadow of something undiscernible in her past never to be retrieved.

Gene's footsteps were heavy as he made his way up the stairs to Alex's flat, thoughts only mildly blurred by the effect of a few pints. His own bottle of whisky lay smashed in the corner of his office, leaking the amber warmth he knew the cleaners would curse him for. The photographs were still swimming before his eyes, a blur of skin that churned his stomach and made his hands curl into fists. But still he needed to see her again, needed to look him in the eyes and admit it, needed to know why.

He reached her door and raised a fist to knock, but his resolution wavered and instead he dropped to the floor, back against the wall and knees drawn up, defeated. He stared at the chipped wood, the wonky number hanging below the peep hole, undecided. When Luigi found him asleep there hours later, bent at an awkward angle and impossible to wake, he only sighed and dragged him round to lie more comfortably. He wondered which one of them broke the other's heart this time and shook his head, wondering if it was the stars or merely their stubbornness that kept them from each other and if they would ever learn.

It hurt my heart to write this, but I am happy to say this is probably the peak of the angst in this fic and hopefully things will get a little brighter from here. Thank you all again for your continued reviews, your words mean so much to me :)

Eleanor :)