Work Text:
London, 2008
“You feel trapped, I can...I can understand that…”
Alex tries to reason with her assailant, words tumbling out of her mouth without the calmness she has been trained to employ in these situations. Even as she speaks, she watches the man’s every move with a strange sensation of everything suddenly happening very fast while simultaneously passing in slow motion. She watches him take a pair of shades out of his pocket, watches him put them on, all excruciatingly slow and yet happening far too fast. She knows she doesn’t have time. She can tell he is not listening and yet feels compelled to continue talking:
“Those officers were itching…”
He raises his hand, gun pointing now straight at her.
“...for a fatality outco-”
The shot comes before she can finish her sentence and she lets out a shriek, instinctively shutting her eyes in expectation of pain, possibly even imminent death, or whatever it is that a shot in the head from a point-blank range is usually followed by.
Then a beat passes and she realises she hasn’t been hit. Whatever she had been bracing for, has not happened.
A warning shot, perhaps.
Slowly, she opens her eyes, half expecting another shot to follow as soon as she does.
It doesn’t.
In place of her assailant now stands a different man. A man with yellow hair and piercing eyes. A face that appears to have been weathered by everything the ugly side of this world can throw at a man without turning him the same shade of ugly in the process. Neither young nor old, he looks like…
“It can’t be…” Alex breathes, blinking rapidly to dispel the mirage, but even as she refocuses her eyes, the man is still standing before her. Her assailant, she sees now, lies in a heap of his own blood at the stranger’s feet. Dead.
“Go,” the man says simply, the rough and commanding tone of his voice somewhat at odds with the softer look that briefly crosses his eyes.
Alex moves tentatively, her hand rising to touch her forehead as a strange sense of déjà vu washes over her.
“Do I know you?” she asks as she finally stands up and steps forward, a frown forming between her brows as she looks at the strange man more closely. Snake-skin boots, a suit that doesn't belong to this decade, and a faded trench coat hanging loose over his broad shoulders.
He lets Alex take her time, allows her eyes to explore him without interruption, but she can feel the intensity of his stare on her as she conducts her silent examination. As soon as she looks up to his eyes, however, he averts his gaze, the answer to her question passing his lips as he does so: "No. You don't."
There are many more things Alex knows she should ask the man. Where did he come from? Is he here by chance or design? Does he have a license for that gun?
Does he know her?
Instead, she walks past him, heading towards the exit, towards the light and noise of the buzzing city outside - towards Molly.
By the bridge, she pauses - turns back to face her rescuer.
“Thank you,” she says, “You…” she starts, but doesn’t quite know how to go on. “Thank you,” she repeats, sincerely.
She moves to leave but then pauses again, something about the man pulling her towards him. “Won’t you come with me?” she asks, tilting her head, but somehow she is certain she already knows the answer.
The man looks at her for a moment, then shakes his head.
“You go,” he says firmly. “Go be with your daughter.”
Alex lets her eyes linger on him a little while longer. It should concern her, perhaps, that he seems to know she has a daughter, but she cannot muster up any fear towards this man. If anything, she feels safer than she ever has before. Finally, she simply nods her head in silent acquiescence.
“My guardian angel,” she half-whispers, a small, almost teasing smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she shoots him one more lingering look.
He meets her smile with an intense look and then bows his head as she turns to leave, raising his fingers to the side of his head in something like a salute.
She knows she should ask more questions. As a police officer, it would even be her duty.
But some questions, she feels in that moment, are perhaps better left unasked.
Besides, there’s a girl with a birthday cake waiting for her.
***
For the second time, Gene stands by and watches Alex as she walks into the light. This time, though, it’s a different kind of light - the harsh, noisy, pulsating light of a life that she still belongs to.
It isn’t her time. Not yet.
But it is his time. The small pocket of the city that he once reigned over has ceased to exist the way he knew it. There is no room for Gene Hunt in this world anymore, hasn’t been for many years, and if it hadn’t been for his one final task, he might have faded into oblivion long before.
“See you around, Bolly-kecks,” he finally allows himself to say when he is certain she can no longer hear him.
He has waited twenty-five years to set things right in this life. It’s not the full length of his service, of course, but it is how long he has known his final purpose.
Twenty-five years of filth and blood in the underbelly of this wretched city just to look upon her face again, living and breathing. Twenty-five years to see Alex Drake walk away towards a light that promises life.
As she disappears from his sight, her retreating steps echoing on the bridge, he knows his work is finally done.
Today is the day his shallow grave will be discovered, his mortal remains unearthed and eventually laid to rest, but not before news crews have reported the find to the entire nation - for Alex’s eyes to see and then forget as she turns off the tv and goes to tuck her child in for the night.
He has known for twenty-five years that the concurrent timing of these two events could never have been a coincidence. This was always the reason he was meant to linger. The reason he could not join the others when he had the chance.
There had been nothing he could do to help her then, even as her desperate words about whether she had meant nothing to him had cut through him, but he had determined there and then that he would stay behind and wait for the day that he could.
His own life had been cut short with a shot in the head.
Alex’s didn’t have to. Not on his watch.
She always had been different from the others, even Keats had known it. Ray, Chris, Shaz...they had all been compromised. They had needed help in passing through - not just his help but Alex’s too.
She had been there to help him to help them.
But she had been there to ask for help, too, and in helping her, he knew he would finally find his own salvation - their lives and deaths, firsts and lasts, needs and wants somehow intertwined together in such intricate ways that were as impossible to deny as they were to explain.
All he knows now is that she still has a life to live and, thanks to her, he can finally let go of his.
But he cannot let go of her.
He will wait for her on the other side, or whatever lies beyond. He will wait however long it takes to meet her again in another life.
“You and me, Bolly,” he says to himself as he follows her out, his feet taking him across the bridge, back to solid ground and towards the pub he knows is waiting for him. On the street he pauses to lay his eyes on the distant figure of Alex Drake one last time. He watches as she slows her steps and comes to a halt, turning one more time to look towards the bridge and the boat where her life might have ended. Her eyes scan the street for a moment and then land on Gene, a relic of an old world that no longer exists, even more out of place here in broad daylight. He thinks he can see her smile.
“Good bye, Bols,” he says as he drinks in the sight of her, knowing she is too far to hear him. "For now."
This life was never meant to be theirs to share, except for that brief time when they could help one another, but somewhere out there will be another time and another place where they will share a different fate.
They still have a dance to finish, after all.