A/N: Hello everyone, I'm having a bit of a break from my other stories at the moment and thought I'd try my hand at this 'Ashes to Ashes' story. Hope you all enjoy, especially after the last episode being shown last night. Please read review.

Disclaimer: Don't own anyone, yadda yadda.

Chapter 1 – Am I ever going to get back home?

It was no use, no matter how much alcohol Alex Drake had drunk or how tired she was, neither was ever enough to help her to get to sleep. The images of the past 48 hours still hung in her head as if she couldn't quite fathom why it had still happened. There must have been a reason, a reason why she hadn't been able to save her parents, a reason why she hadn't been able to get back home, back to 2007, back to Molly.

Silently she wept, the memories of her own daughter causing her to curl up into a foetal position as her body racked along with her crying. Why? Why could she not get back? After everything she had done she was still there … in bloody 1981!

She let out a soft moan as she reconsidered the events over and over again. How was she going to survive now, at least she'd had her mother before and Evan, but now she had no one. There was absolutely no way she could ever bring herself to spend time with Evan and her younger self, for god knows where that could lead. She would only ever be able to meet Evan on a professional level especially if she were to be stuck here for some considerable time.

So who could she bond with now? Some Thatcherite wanker with red braces? No, that wasn't even an option. Maybe one of her colleagues? Certainly not Ray or Chris, she wouldn't ever be able to get any kind of intelligent conversation from either one of them. Shaz? There was a possibility there but the difference in their ages could be problematic. Which left her with one option. 'And is that truly an option?' She thought, although in a strange way it made sense. Shaz had told Alex that she believed she was her guardian angel. Did that then mean that Gene was actually hers?

She got up and padded through the bedroom into the lounge. Bits of paper and newspaper cuttings were strewn all over the floor where they had landed from her outrage two nights previous. She looked around at the crossed off dates, the telephone numbers, her mother's face - pieces of the jigsaw she had been putting together in order to find her way home. What had it all been for? To what end?

The telephone had stopped ringing at about eight o'clock the previous evening, she never answered and as she was in an age of no '1471', 'caller display' and 'ringback request' she had decided to leave it that way, for the time being anyway. Not that she didn't know who it was, 'and if he were that concerned about me he could climb the bloody stairs and knock on my door to find out', she'd thought.

She looked at the red receiver cradled in it's companion and decided that she would call him, at least she could talk to him and have him talk back in his gruff way; out of all of her 'constructs' he was her favourite and would have missed him very much had she been able to leave. So, he wasn't the perfect gentleman, her idea of Mr Right, but he was male and didn't everyone know it. "Smell this, this is man stink!" He'd said on one of the many occasions they'd spoken of relationships. Once the Manc Lion roared there was no stopping him from being the King of his jungle. And in the 1980's world she'd found herself in, any woman would've bowed down to his charms. At least you knew where you stood with Gene Hunt, he may have been an erogenous dinosaur but his heart was in the right place, especially considering the scenes she had witnessed between him and the younger version of herself two days previously.

She crossed the distance to her phone and picked up the receiver, she began dialling the numbers to Gene's home but stopped when she spied the time from the corner of her eye. 3.36 am, she didn't think he'd appreciate a wake up call at that time in the morning, better to go and wake him up personally if she were going to wake him up at all. But first she'd have to pop by the office.

She got dressed pulling on her favourite dark blue jeans, her black scoop necked
T-shirt, and her black boots. She dispensed with make up and combed her hair through making herself presentable. A sharp knock on the door indicated the arrival of her cab and, after pulling on her coat, she was soon on her way to the Met building.

She ran in after asking the cabbie to wait, she heard him mutter about the 'meter running' as she quickly sped up the steps and through the doors making her way to his inner sanctum and the personnel records that she'd knew she'd find. Once she'd found the information she'd needed she retraced her steps, got back in the cab and was being taken to Gene Hunt's abode.

She was dropped off in front of an impressive looking building, a 1930's apartment block with an art nouveau façade brilliantly lit by the equally impressive lighting. Making her way up the path she noticed a buzzer entry system and pressed the number for his flat. Nothing, but then had she actually expected him to answer. She buzzed up again. Still nothing. 'One more try,' she thought as she held the buzzer in for a considerable length of time.

She heard a window open somewhere above her head and grinned to herself. "What the bloody 'ell is going on … has someone raped the Mother Teresa, they'd better had" stepping back she looked up and caught sight of Hunt's vested upper torso as he lent out over the window sill. "Might of known it'd be you, Drake. I'll open the door." Watching the window shut again she went back to the entry door and waited for Gene to buzz her in.

She was soon inside the hallway and up the stairs. Finding his front door she noticed that it had been opened a chink and politely knocked before she stepped inside the flat closing the door behind her. She wandered up the hallway noticing the dishevelled sheets on Gene's bed, 'looks like he's had about as much sleep as I have', she mused. The hallway opened up to a lounge/diner/kitchen area and noticed Gene, now with a navy blue dressing gown slung over his frame, pouring two shots of whiskey out into two glasses. "Take a pew", he ordered from over his shoulder. Alex made here way into the lounge and surveyed the scene, two pictures sat on the top of the television, one of a girl and one of a boy. She reached out, her hand instinctively motioning to that of the girl tracing the pig tails as they fell down the sides of the girl's head.

Realising that she now wasn't on her own she turned her head to see Gene standing very close to her behind her left shoulder. "That's my daughter," he muttered affectionately. "She'll be seven in January."

"And is this your son?" Alex asked pointing at the other framed picture.

"No, no. That's me godson, Sam Tyler's son!"

"Curious," Alex whispered as Gene handed her one of the two glasses he had nursed on his way from the kitchen.

"Mmm, well, do you think you could possibly tell me why it was that you felt the need to wake me from my dream date with Brooke Shields and a rather large bottle of baby oil?" He gruffed out; his normal pouting expression still in tact as he caught her eye.

Alex rolled her eyes at his remark. "I need to talk to someone!"

"There's always Timmy the talking clock, and I hear that Busby is a good listener."

"Gene, I'm serious, I really need to tell someone why I have been so neurotic since I got here and there's stuff I need to tell you about Sam. Is that really his son?" She asked looking back at the photograph.

"Aye, he's Sam's alright. Annie says he's getting right into …" Gene suddenly stopped; he looked up at her, his expression now bitter. "It's so sad, that little lad will never know 'is dad!"

"Like me!" Alex interjected, slowly taking a seat on the threadbare sofa that dominated the room. "Except, I never really got to know either of them." She looked down at her hands cradling the glass that she had been passed earlier. She took a swig from the glass letting the liquid amber flush down her throat, warming her insides as it made its way down into her stomach.

Gene looked at her, wondering what to do, never missing a thing. The delicate patter of her voice as she talked about her parents, the way her hair fell softly around her face as she took a sip of her drink, the single solitary tear that traced its way down over her pallid cheek on its way to desolation. He took a seat next to her gulping down his own drink before placing his glass on the smoky glass topped coffee table that was placed in front of the sofa. He looked back to her waiting for her to speak up.

For some minutes she sat and wondered what she was doing there. Did she really want to open up to this alpha male only to have him taunt her and cajole her at work? Could she trust him? She placed her glass on the table and got up, making her way around the ever watchful form of her DCI. "Where are you going, Bolly," he grabbed her wrist, evoking a response that he wasn't quite prepared for. The floodgates opened and Alex was crying again. He stood up taking her into his arms, trying to calm her down and soothing her with the best soft voice he could muster as his hands made circles over her back. "Shhh, Alex. I thought you wanted to talk?"

"I did," she bit out, suddenly aware of her surroundings again and in whose arms she was being comforted. "I do," she whispered. He motioned for her to regain her seat, Alex did as she was told and sat back down. She looked Gene in the face, tears still finding their way down her own. "There are some things I have to tell you, about Sam and me. Whether you believe me or not is totally up to you but I believe that in order to help myself there are certain issues that I need to bring to the fore."

"About Sam or both of you?"

"Both of us," she replied.

"Well tell me about Sam, then. Probably a good place to start considering you was goin' to tell me something about him when you first arrived."

Alex nodded, a small smile appearing on her lips. "Ok, as you know I'm a psychologist. One of my main functions is to profile prospective and actual criminals to build up pictures of who may be executing certain crimes," she watched him as his pout returned and he nodded toward her to carry on. "Another part of my job is to profile my colleagues. I look through case studies of police officers who have been injured or killed whilst they have been working. This can give us a good indication of how certain types of people will act or react to future situations they are faced with and help them through them with counselling, etc. Sam was one of my case studies. In fact, he was the last one I looked at before I came here. Sam left you all behind when a train robbery went wrong, wasn't that right?"

"Yeah, that's right, little bastard started running off into the tunnel, not sure why. He weren't a coward but I were surprised to see him come back."

"He came back straight away?"

"Yeah, straight away, must have had an attack of conscience or sommat, big jessie."

"When he came out of his coma he was in 2006 …" Gene put his hand up to stop her talking.

"This might be statin' the bleedin' obvious but we're in 1981, 2006 doesn't happen for another 25 years, Bolly!"

"Yes, I know, in your world. I knew nothing of Sam Tyler except what I've read and listened to, his tapes and written accounts of his life in 1973 make for an excellent narrative and if I'd never had experienced it for myself I'd have said there was a best selling book in it all." She watched as Gene's eyebrows rose skyward. "Look, Gene you may not believe me but that is to the point I know about, the tunnel when he walks away from you into the light. The next thing is he's waking up in a hospital bed with only his mother and Doctor Frank Morgan looking over him. No one expected him to recover but he did. He mentioned in his report that he had a tumour and that his doctor couldn't operate to remove it but that it was benign. Sam also mentioned that when he was in 1973 a DCI from Hyde by the name of Frank Morgan had told him that there was a cancer in Manchester and it had to be 'cut out'."

"That were me I suppose?"

"I can only assume that that was what was meant. Thing is though Gene that you all obviously had such an impact on his life that he had to find someway back to you. The reason why I was so confused about it all when Ray told me about Sam staying in Manchester for another 7 years was because in my world, he committed suicide. He must have decided that the only way he could get back to you was to put himself back into a coma or die. He threw himself off the top of the GMP building and must have returned back to 1973 in that tunnel as a result."

"'Ow did he get to us in the first place though? As far as I knew he'd asked for a transfer from Hyde."

"He'd been injured in a car accident, run down I believe. Ended up in a coma for a little while."

"And how do you fit into this then, Bols? And am I, with my esteemed colleagues, only just a construct?" He asked waggling his fingers at the word she had so loved to call them all.

"A busker was taken hostage by a gunman," she said, deliberately missing out Layton's name for the time being, "I was taking my daughter to school when I was asked to attend the scene. He'd asked for me by name. I went to speak with him and try to ascertain what the problem was; I was to become his hostage in place of the busker.

"Unfortunately, my daughter Molly, who I'd asked to stay in the car, and who made herself known to the gunman, became his hostage instead, allowing him the getaway he needed. I heard a shot fired, followed the direction my daughter had taken and thankfully found her alive and well. The gunman was nowhere to be seen.

"After asking her godfather to take care of Molly," again she missed out Evan's name, "and seen that she was in safe hands I headed off for work, telling her to make sure not to blow her candles out on her cake until I got there, as it was her birthday. I got back in my car in order to go to work and there he was, the gunman sitting in the backseat, and he'd got his gun pointed at my head. He asked me to drive to this place by the river and then took me to this old barge called 'Di'. He spoke on his phone to someone about having a piece of their past and letting me know the truth about how my parents died when I was 8. He took me inside the barge and sat me down on a pile of blankets. I tried to negotiate but he was only interested in the next phone call he received. Needless to say, he wasn't very happy; he took aim and shot me in the head.

"Next thing I know I'm waking up on this boat called 'The Lady Di', dressed like a prostitute with all these men groping me. And that's when I find you, after Markham tries to take me as a hostage that is."

"So you're tellin' me, you're from 2006?"

"Well no. It's 2007 now!"

"Always so precise. Well that explains a lot!"

"And what exactly do you mean by that?" Alex began on her usual spiral upwards, the one that only Gene Hunt could start her on.

"Well … I mean … look, Alex, if this is true, and I'm not saying I believe you as yet, then I need facts. Something solid that I can use my part-time detective work to mull over an' make sense of."

"Ok, the man that shot me was Arthur Layton." She said calmly.

"As in, that piece of scum we saw at Wormwood and not two minutes later were set free by Tim Price?"

"Yes, the exact same one."

"So if you were killed by him because he were goin' to tell you about the truth behind your parents' death then he must've been involved in some way. Gut instinct, Bolly, he killed your parents as well as helped Tim Price end his and his wife's life."

She looked up at him, his face twitching with the realisation that he'd have to do something about getting that piece of filth off his streets. Her face pleaded with him to make the connection. "Wait, that board you had goin', the one with all the events of the bombing from your so called snout. You knew about them – what from a dream, déjà vu? There were too much there for it just to be coincidence?"

"If I told you'd I'd been there twice, seen those events happen 26 years ago when I was 8 in 1981, considering I'm from the future. What would you say?"

"Bolly, don't test my patience, how could you have seen it twice? Unless … Caroline and Tim Price were your parents … and that little girl I carried into the station," he stopped looking deep into her eyes not believing that this could possibly be the truth behind the woman that was in front of him.

"Yes?"

"That were you?"

Alex nodded her head, tears welling up again, "I'm just sorry I don't remember you, but considering I only met you briefly as a child I don't suppose it was uppermost in my thoughts."

"So, Evan?"

"Is my godfather, and he looked after me until I was able to fend for myself."

"Right, I still don't trust him mind!"

"I wouldn't expect you to, it's just that I don't have anyone now, do I. My parents are still dead and Evan is now sole guardian of the younger me, so I can hardly strike up a relationship of any kind with him."

"Thank the lord," Gene remarked, under his breath.

"Gene, I'm all alone in this god damn image of a world I don't live my life in, and my one shot, my one hope and chance of getting home was blown up in a car exactly as it was 26 years ago. What the hell am I going to do? I'm not supposed to be here!"

"Then where are you supposed to be, you once said that this was all a dream and that we were all imaginary, if that were the case wouldn't Sam have stayed in 2006, I mean it must be such a better life if you're anchorin' after getting back there anytime soon?"

"My daughter is there, Gene!" Alex shrieked, as tears threatened once more.

"And mine's in Manchester, living with her mother and some fella she moved in straight after I left!"

She stood up to leave once more, "I'm so sorry, I should never have come. I should have just stayed in my flat, on my own, trying to think of a way to get back home, away from you, away from everyone."

He stood up as well, confronting her, "Alex, stop with the 'poor me's' will you! I only meant that there are occasions when things don't work out they way they were planned. My wife and I stupidly believed that a child would save our marriage, which in turn only served to increase the divide between us. Don't get me wrong, I love the little blighter but it were ne'er goin' to work. Do you remember what I said the other night about joining the land of the livin'?" He watched as she slowly nodded he head, the grief on her face piercing his very soul. "This situation may not be perfect, but it's what we do with it that counts. I'm buggered if I'd want to lose one of the best DI's I'd ever had working for me but I'd also do all I could to help you get back home, understand?"

She nodded, "I'm so bloody tired!"

"You always are! Come on, you can have my bed, I'll sleep in the sofa."

"No, Gene. I'm the guest I'll take the sofa."

"I am many things, Bolly, and a gentleman on my off days is one of them. Now no arguing," he insisted as he picked her up and made effortless work of carrying her to his bedroom. He helped her take off her boots and pulled the covers over her as she lay there watching his movements. He switched off the bedside lamp and turned to leave.

"Thank you," Alex said.

He looked back at her lying in his bed, an image he hoped he would be able to keep in his memory when a time came that she wouldn't be there in his world anymore. The slightest smile washed over his features, "my pleasure, Alex."

TBC