A/N Okay, so this is my first attempt at fanfic :S It's set around the idea of Alex waking up from her coma post 3.05, and its totally AU from the finale, mainly because I didn't really like the ending. Let me know what you think!

I do not own Ashes to Ashes-though I wish I did.

It's like walking from a dream, coming back from a world far away, to which you will undoubtedly never return, to the real world. Your eyes are closed, but you can tell the sun it shining, distant voices seem to mutter in the silence pierced by a faint ringing, you can almost make out what they say, but not quite. It is then the smell of disinfectant and other harsh products hits you like an electric shock, and you realise that what you had prayed for for so long has happened. Your home. You have left the dystopia that was 1983 and come home at last.

You force your eyes open to the expected doctors and nurses, and someone else, a young girl with mousey hair and a distinctive birthmark, grinning from ear to ear and ducking away from the medical staff trying to remove her in order to throw her arms around you. Telling you how much she loves you and how everything will be okay. You believe her, you do, and you could not be more happy to be home, but you can't help but consider the world you left behind, because, no matter what your years in the psychology field tell you, your gut instinct (your beginning to think like him, you realise with a hidden smile) is telling you those people had to carry on without you. You also know, the real or imaginary, that world, and the people in it, have changed you forever.

After hours of endless tests to determine the extent of the trauma (Evan tells you that your lucky, the bullet didn't penetrate and your expected to make a full recovery) you are allowed to sleep. That night, you dream of him. Your standing behind him in his office, he is hunched over the table, head resting on his hand, staring into his glass of whiskey. CID is in darkness, you glance at the clock, 1:30am, no wonder. There's more paperwork on his desk than you have ever seen before and when you glance at it, you are stunned. Missing person's reports, for DI Alex Drake, who had vanished 2 months ago without a trace. In 1983, you had just….gone, they would never know….and Gene….It was destroying him. This man in front of you is a shell of the 'manc lion' you once knew. If I mean anything at all to you Alex…You had mattered to him it seemed, more than you had ever known.

By day, you put on a brave face for your daughter. She is so excited, telling you how you must have a party for your homecoming. Evan suggests making it a double celebration, partly a belated birthday to make up for the one which was so cruelly destroyed for Molly three days ago. Three days. Nearly three years in the 80's took up less than three days here. How is that possible?

You pluck up the courage to ask Evan for the truth about what happened the day of the car bomb. He immediately turns ashen and you worry for a second he is going to collapse. He wants to know, of course, how you came to find out the truth he was so sure had been carefully covered up that it should never emerge. But that is the point of course, covered up, not destroyed. Most importantly, Evan reveals that there was a man named Gene Hunt who had carried her away that day, but no, he had never heard from him after the custody court case. Evan then left, visably shaken and guilt ridden. Your not sure whether you will ever be able to look at him the same way again.

He was real, you tell yourself, that must mean, surely that 1981 and everything that followed, was real as well. Images flash through your mind too quickly to process. The bomb going off, Shaz being carried into Luigi's by Chris and ray, you and gene toasting the future, Summer's face contorted in malice, falling to the floor after being shot, Keats pouring poison into your ears, the team laughing, Gene's face as Jim leads you from the office, Layton's bullet speeding toward you with no way of stopping it…

You mentally shake yourself. There's nothing you can do now. Molly needs you, and you need her. You have what you wanted. Your home. This isn't the fake 2008 you found yourself in once before. This is real. Your responsibilities are here. You have to put 1983 out of your mind and be there for your little girl, she's been through so much. This is it Alex, you tell yourself. This is life.

July 2010

"We'll probably go to the movies after school, mum, so I won't be back until later"

With that, a slam of the back door and the sound of footsteps running down the garden path. I smile fondly, always straight to the point, my molly. So much has changed for her in the last two years. She's no longer a child, but a teenager, who has discovered the wonders of things like makeup, trashy novels and, unfortunately, Robert Pattinson. She's as confident and sassy as ever, maybe more so, but wiser to the ways to the world, something she learnt very quickly in the days following my accident. I immediately feel a fresh wave of guilt. No child should have to experience that. I made a promise after my return home that I would make sure it never happened again. I stepped down from hostage negotiation and now work mainly behind a desk, filling out reports, mostly without ever meeting the subjects of them. I also work a lot from home, in order to spend as much time as possible with my daughter. I'm all she really has now. Her dad's about as reliable as he ever was and Evan…Evan has been distanced from us since I questioned him about the truth as to my parents deaths. It seems neither of us is confident enough to make the first move to rebuilding our relationship. Molly understands that something important must have happened to drive us apart, but I know she misses him. After all, he was practically her grandfather and loved her to pieces. At least of that I am sure.

I return to my seat at the desk. I have arranged it so I faces the window, giving me a view over modern London in all its glory. There is still something beautiful about this urban landscape, even though I secretly long for the London that Gene and I whizzed around in the Quattro, invincible. Or so we had thought. The truth was, Gene and I had been separated long before I came back home. All it had taken was my stupidity. I couldn't understand how. How has I ever believed Keats's lies? That's all they were now. Trust the Gene Genie…I did, I never stopped. I didn't understand how I had ever convinced myself otherwise. I know Gene could never have killed Sam. Sam's death in 1980 had been a tragic accident. I'd gotton hold of the report last year. Gene had arrived on the scene, accompanied, as he had been all afternoon, by two DC's, less than 10 minutes after I happened. There was no way he could have been there when the car went under. The truly sickening thing was, I had known without this report that it was the truth, so why had I been so determined to fight it?

Because Keats knew what you wanted to hear…somehow…he prayed on you weakness, and you fell for it…pathetic…you how thinks your so strong, who would never be misled by anyone else, falling under the influence of a guy like that. How could you…

I tell my mind to shut up. I know all off this. I've been over it a thousand times already. A thousand times more and it still wont change what happened.

I move your elbow and knock a pile of folders off my desk, snapping me out of my revive. I sigh and bend down to pick them up. I know these folders word for word. Old police records for all my colleagues in the 80's, as well as some Sam worked with in 70's Manchester. The only link I have to them. I sobbed the first time I read them. All those wonderful people, and their ending's he been so much less that what they deserved.

I glance over them once more. Sam Tyler, GMP 1973-1980, Rank: DI, Deceased, killed in action. Annie Tyler, GMP 1970-1981, Rank: DS, deceased, illness related. Christopher Skelton, GMP 1971-1980, London Metropolitan police 1980-1999, Rank: DS, Retired, current ware bouts unknown. Sharon Skelton, London Metropolitan police 1981-1999, Rank: Superintendent, retired, current ware bouts unknown. Raymond Carling, GMP 1967-1980, London Metropolitan police 1980-1986, Rank: DI, deceased, killed in action.

I stop to wipe my eyes. Even though I've read these a thousand times, I still upsets me. The final folder I can hardly bear to open. Gene Hunt, GMP 1962-1980, London Metropolitan police 1980-1983, Rank: DCI, deceased, suicide….

I know the story, having located it from many, many sources. It always works out the same. Five months after the disappearance of one Detective inspector Alex Drake, a respected discipline and complaints officer who had been working closely with her team (whose record has suspiciously vanished, along with all trace of him) accused her DCI, one Gene Hunt, of her murder. While the accusations appeared preposterous to her team and all who worked with Mr Hunt, DCI Keats was able to persuade senior officers to come around to his view and attempt prosecution. This failed to stick due to lack of evidence, but under the circumstances, Mr Hunt was let go from his job with the Met and DI Drake's disappearance became a murder enquiry. When, after nearly 8 months and no new leads, the case was shelved, and the body of DCI Gene Hunt was found by two former colleagues in his London apartment, following neighbours reports of hearing a gun being fired….

I can't go on, it's too horrible. And all my fault.