A/N This was supposed to be a drabble but it just kept growing. And possibly got a bit darker along the way.

Jumping The Gun

He slid the key into the lock and, with one last glance around, carefully and quietly let himself inside, the dark welcoming him and his matching his mood. He closed the door firmly behind him, resting his back against it in an attempt to shut out a world that was no longer his; a world that no longer revered him as the 'Manc Lion' or relied on him to be the sheriff, upholding the law in a wild town and with wilder means. A world that now only questioned his integrity and his character and didn't like what it saw. The tight feeling in his chest – the one that he knew wasn't the result of the brief ascent upstairs or the long hours he'd spent sneaking around prior to his arrival – didn't lessen with his new surroundings. Coming here might not have been such a good idea but he couldn't exactly go back to his own address - that was the first place they'd look for him. Well, maybe the second but he certainly couldn't go back to the station, his home from home, either. Emotions were running high and everyone there thought he'd shot her.

The awful truth was that he had shot her. And every time he closed his eyes he could see it happening all over again in painful techni-coloured slow motion; unable to stop it, unable to fully comprehend exactly how it had happened.

The tightness gripped at him again and he breathed deeply and slowly in a futile effort to shake it off, an unspoken mantra accompanying his breaths: it wasn't his fault. The actual shooting itself certainly wasn't but the events leading up to it weren't so clearly cut. His motives prior to the incident weren't as justifiable as they could have been. The revelation that he'd been wrong about her all along, courtesy of that cassette and her two-fingered response to it, had soured both his thoughts and his mood. She might as well have actually stuck a bloody knife in his back. He'd found it difficult to look at her without the contents of that tape whispering in his ear that she couldn't be trusted. It had only been the desperation in her reply when he'd blown off her fruitcake-like claims about the future that had stopped him suspending her there and then. That and the fact that he was crazy about a crazy woman, even one who wanted nothing more than to be as far away from him as possible. It hadn't been so much Jenette's sloppy accusation that Alex was involved in the heist that had twisted the knife further but what she had, dishonestly, represented. He had been wasting his time with Alex; all of the over obvious lechery, all of the quiet yearning - it was pointless. It always had been; worse - he'd always known it. So when Alex's detailed knowledge about the bullion job – the one in which he desperately needed a result in order to end the corruption that was eating away at the force - had emerged it had all come to a stormy head. Fuelled by anger and hurt, unsure if he'd ever be able to trust her again and with the rest of the team seeming to have already fallen under her spell, he'd responded the only way he knew how, the result condemning him to his fate - and her to hers.

It hadn't come as much as a surprise that she'd been bloody right about the blag; blind fury probably would have been the better term for what he'd felt when it had become clear that he'd sent everyone in the wrong direction and they'd had to high tail it back to King Douglas Lane and a deservedly smug Alex Drake. To his shame at that point he'd been silently cursing her as he'd swerved the car around every corner and had raced down every street. She had an uncanny knack about those sort of things - all that psychological guff had paid off more often than not and he should have known that. In hindsight he could see now that he had let his attraction to her interfere with their working relationship; if the bullion job hadn't been imminent he probably would have found something else to attack her with for all those hurtful words he'd heard on the tape. He hadn't really needed to overhear her conversation with that bent copper, the one who'd threatened to shoot her and the one whose body had mysteriously vanished from the morgue, to know that her only motivation was to stop the heist at all costs. And she'd paid too high a price.

It didn't help but he could see it all so clearly now. PC Summers must have seen or heard something about the blag whilst at Lafferty's site and had been bumped off accordingly; somehow Alex had worked that much out, had recognised the link between Summers' murder and Operation Rose. He just hadn't trusted her enough to believe her. Or she hadn't trusted him enough to confide in him until it was too late. Given everything they'd been through together with Mac it was a hard fact to swallow; it was even harder to acknowledge how the trust between them had slid so easily into mistrust. Though most of what had happened was obvious, providing there wasn't some kind of cover up being put into place, what he couldn't prove was that shooting her had been an accident. His parting shot to her in CID was now being thrown back in his face and he couldn't deny what he'd said, there were enough witnesses to the contrary. He was entirely reliant upon her and the sooner she woke up from that bloody coma and told everyone that it was an accident the better.

If she woke up. The doctor's words swam around his head, the prognosis not exactly hopeful and certainly not reassuring in any way.

Forcing himself away from the door he took a step forward into the flat above Luigi's: Alex's flat. In truth there were other places he could have went, there was a whole country's worth, but he had persuaded himself that this was the last place they'd look for him; it was somewhere quiet where he could lick his wounds and had absolutely nothing to do with needing to be close to her. After his close call at the hospital he'd called in a favour or two and his Quattro, his beloved car, was currently being driven up North – it was too distinctive to keep and hopefully it would take some of the heat away with it.

Using his memory to navigate around the flat in the dark he headed towards the kitchen, dropping his key onto the counter a little too loudly, the noise echoing into the gloomy emptiness and reverberating through him. He stared at the area onto which he'd thrown the small metal object in quiet misery. He'd had a key to her flat for months now, in fact he couldn't even remember when or why he had acquired it, but she'd never once batted an eyelid over it. Because she'd trusted him.

God, there it was again: the guilt. He needed a drink. No, he needed an entire brewery. Groping his way across the counter, searching amongst the shadows, he came across a spirit shaped bottle; it wouldn't be whiskey – she only ever drank his – but it would be a start. If he could drink enough to numb everything, enough to blot it all out, he might even get some sleep. Grabbing the bottle he headed towards the living room, dropping heavily onto the sofa and sinking quietly into it. Unscrewing the cap to the bottle he took a long slug, the sharp warmth and familiar texture leading him to conclude that it was vodka he was imbibing. If this was what she drank whilst she was talking to herself and that bloody machine of hers then no wonder she never made much sense. It was like drinking meths. Taking another quick sip he rested his head tiredly against the back of the sofa. His eyes easily fluttered shut, the day's events finally catching up with him, but it only took the briefest of moments before images of Alex lying on the cold hard ground, the inside of her white jacket marred by crimson blood, slashed viciously at the blessed darkness behind his eyelids.

Eyes shooting open he sat forward and took another long swig before placing the bottle onto the table with a pained sigh. Oblivion wasn't going to be as easy to find as he'd hoped. He could run for the rest of his life but he was never going to be able to escape. Shrugging off his coat, preparing to drink however much it took to pass out right there on the sofa, he searched his pockets for his lighter but his fingers brushed against something else instead. Carefully extracting the small item, smoothing his thumb against the leather cover as he did so, he threw his coat to the other end of the sofa. In his hand was her warrant card, the one she had slammed down so defiantly – when she'd been so full of fire, so full of life – onto his desk. The one he'd demanded from her in a fit of fury because he'd been so sure that she, like everyone else, had betrayed him. His chest constricted once more.

Christ, how had he ever doubted her? Even Ray, not known for his glowing reviews of Alex, hadn't believed it for a second. The Sergeant's loyalty towards her had been unwavering, just as it had once been for his Guv but not any more; the look of bitter disappointment Carling had shot his way as he'd radioed for an ambulance had been just as firm. It had been on the faces of Shaz and Chris too, he'd seen when either of them had dared to glance up at him whilst clumsily tending to their wounded DI. Their unified show of dismay had been one of the few things to remain with him as the rest of the world had started to fade away and he'd only been able to stand there, gun in hand, rooted to the spot with sheer incomprehension at what had happened, at what he'd done, until all he could see was her. All he could still see was her.

Reaching for the bottle he knocked back some more of its contents, letting the alcohol burn a path all the way down his throat and into his empty stomach. He'd feel like shit in the morning but he didn't think he could feel any worse than he did right then. With his other hand he flipped open her warrant card but in the darkness it was difficult to see the photograph that was held inside. As the blinds in the flat were currently drawn - Alex must have neglected them that morning in her haste to leave - he took a risk and switched on the lamp beside him, a sudden urge to see her overruling common sense in much the same way that it had led him to her flat. And he really needed to see her; not lying in a pool of blood or unconscious in a hospital bed but as she once was. But casting his eyes down to the ID Alex only stared accusingly back at him and that ache in his chest tightened once more.

Glancing away he tried not to think about the possibility of never seeing her again or the fact that it had been his greatest wish just a day or so ago. And he tried not to believe that he might have already lost her because there was no guarantee she would ever forgive him if she did wake up. Sure, she might forgive him for shooting her, not that it would make him feel any better about it, but would she ever forgive him for doubting her? He might, if he was lucky, get her back as a colleague but that closeness, that connection he was so sure they shared, might have been severed for ever. He swirled the alcohol around the bottle, watching intently yet absently as the liquid curled around the glass. Maybe if he had let her in like she'd asked, maybe if he had dropped his guard just a little further, this wouldn't have happened. He sighed at himself, at the stupidity of such a thought. He'd always known, right from the moment she'd first strolled into Luigi's in that leather jacket, her place in his dreams already assured by that point, exactly what he'd wanted from her but he'd also known that it would never happen. Could never happen.

He swigged from the bottle once more, his gaze then wandering aimlessly around the room until it fell upon the audio tape that had instigated the rot between them. It was lying there on top of the television where it had obviously been abandoned in a rage that was probably not dissimilar to the one he had been in when he had returned the tape to her. At times they were so alike it both worried and thrilled him. He eyed the object warily from the sofa; she had claimed that it had been planted on his desk in order to drive a wedge between them and it had certainly worked. That tape held the worst words he'd ever heard her say, awful bruising sentences that had knocked him for six. It contained things he never wanted to hear her say again. Yet at the same time it held her voice; the voice of a posh mouthy tart that he'd give anything to hear right then.

Placing both the bottle and her warrant card on the table he stood slowly and walked towards the television. He hesitated only briefly before picking up the tape and heading towards the stereo and placing the cassette into the machine. Again he hesitated, his finger hovering over the various buttons for a second or two, but he quickly gave in and pressed what he thought was the 'play' button but sent the tape into reverse instead. Muttering a curse he jabbed at the buttons again, this time hitting the intended target and the tape stopped dead. Rubbing briefly at his eyes he refocused on the buttons and successfully set the tape away.

"I've got to get out of here. I have to get away from him. I hate this place. Maybe Summers can help but Hunt must never know."

He closed his eyes once again, the pain striking just as deeply second time around but keeping those images of her plying prone on the floor at a distance. Though it would never justify what had happened, though it couldn't erase the fact that he'd thought she was bent, hearing the tape again reminded him that she didn't feel anything for him. As badly as he wanted her she only desired to escape him. She hadn't denied it either; she'd stood there in his office and lied right to his face, all that nonsense about the future and having to get back there. In a strange way listening to the tape again made him feel ever so slightly better, like pressing down on a wound to disperse the pain; it was still there, it just didn't present itself so acutely.

"He's my only light, my only constant, my lifeline in this dark world. My Gene Hunt. I don't know how, or even if, I could have survived this long without him."

Gene's eyes shot open, his legs swaying uneasily beneath him. He stared down at the tape, which was still whirring happily away, for a beat before lurching for the button marked 'stop'. He didn't need to rewind the tape and hear her say that again; the middle sentence and the way her voice had softened considerably as she'd spoken would be imprinted on his mind for him to savour for the rest of his life but right then it was busy casting doubt on everything he'd presumed about her from the previous seconds' worth of tape. Guilt held him tightly once more though it didn't stop him from setting the tape away again.

"But he must never know how I feel... How I feel about him. Because I... I can't stay here. I can't. I mustn't. However much I want to at times. I have to keep fighting him... I mustn't give in to him because I have to get home. I have to get back to Molly."

As the tape played on blankly he stared at the machine with a torrid mixture of disbelief, regret and guilt. Scrabbling with the buttons he alternately forwarded and played the tape, desperately searching for more from her but there was nothing else on it. Just silence. The same silence he'd received from her at the hospital. He backed away slowly until one leg hit the coffee table and he stopped dead, his eyes still on the machine, her confession playing over and over in his head. His brain maliciously supplied a flash of her slumping to the ground to accompany the soundtrack. The words, 'it was an accident' suddenly seemed woefully inadequate. And he knew he'd lost a damn sight more that he'd thought he'd had.

Turning around he spied the bottle of vodka and snatched it up, forcing as much as he could down his throat as he edged towards the sofa. Throwing himself onto the black and white material he took one last slug from the bottle and quietly turned off the lamp.