"Gene, you're going to be late! Gene!"

He's stumbling out of bed, yelling down to his mother that he's getting ready. The smell of bacon wafts upstairs and he smiles, turning towards his wardrobe, flicking through the suits hanging there. He pauses. What rank is he? He was a bloody PC last time he lived with his mother...

But her voice calls up again and before he knows it one of the suits is wrapped around his strangely thin body, baggy and slightly uncomfortable, tightening as he moves. He struggles his way downstairs, leaning on the cold, hard banister for support. When he looks down at it it looks like oak, but when he reaches out to lay his fingers on it it has the smooth, cool texture of painted plaster. He can even feel the paint flaking against his fingers, even as his mother emerges from the kitchen and guides him into the dining room, placing a plate full of runny, coagulating ketchup in front of him.

"Ketchup? Where's the bacon?"

She smiles, and suddenly her eyes are red and black and swirling grey; he yelps, jumping back, shying away from the mother-demon's hands as they near him, smacking over his mouth, his nose, suffocating and strangling, he can't breathe, can't breathe, can'tbreathecan'tbreathecan'tbreathe...

He whoops in air suddenly, stars snapping in and out of life in his eyes; the room has disappeared, along with the- thing- he has just encountered. He tries to move, but his arms are pinned to his sides; struggling only tightens the invisible ligature around his midriff. Kicking one leg proves to be the same. His chest is aching, clawing in oxygen desperately as he leans his head back, writhing and hissing, bucking like a fallen horse.

Something gold-brown flashes across his line of sight, and he cranes to look at it, frowning as the Cortina comes to an abrupt halt beside him, the tyres silent, not even smoking. His younger, past self slides from the passenger seat, keeping his head down, and he screams his own name without even thinking, grappling at the restrictions around him as his doppelgänger sits on the pavement, bending further as a sopping wet and filthy Sam Tyler steps from the driver's seat of the car and comes round, kicking the past Gene until he is bloodied and battered, curling up, unresistant. Sam turns to look the real Gene straight in the eyes, but his irises burn darkly and Gene turns his head away, yelping and gasping, feeling the hideous warmth of blood streaking down from Sam's hands as they grasp either side of his face, pulling him round to force his gaze upon the younger Gene slowly dying.

"Yer left me that," he hisses, "a weakling of a Guv ter follow! Yer left me a dirty river an' a widow's grief, a rushing tide an' a scrapped future. Yer left me the square root o' Jack Shit, Gene!"

He reaches down to Gene's side, and suddenly it splits in pain, crippling pain so excruciating Gene screams, his whole form contorted in burning agony, a thousand hellfires all at once. Sam beams, the innocent smile of a child, masked by the diabolical glare of his eyes.

"Don't you like me and my clown?" he asks, a little girl's voice streaming cutely and coldly from his mouth, and Gene can only watch as a white, ruffle-clad clown with one highly-arched, blood-red eyebrow and shuttered eyes peers darkly down at him, curious and condemning.

"I wanted to take you, Gene, just as I wanted to take my Alex."

"No!" Gene yelps, the pain snatching his breath from his lungs as he thrashes in Sam's metal hold, the clown reaching forwards to press on his forehead. His fingers are soft and warm and beautiful, and Gene doesn't want to push them away; he relaxes into them as the pain suddenly stops, ceasing as quickly as a baby's eager blink, and something is trying to reach him from consciousness, he can feel it tapping away at his ears...

But it won't reach, and suddenly he is facing a blaring whiteness, his body abruptly like a furnace beneath the shackles; a child's car-patterned curtains swing in a gentle breeze as a blonde-haired woman with a scarlet uniform opens the door, her cooing voice soothing but the words inaudible. He watches her, and with a jolt he turns to see the clown standing next to the door, smiling enigmatically, nodding slowly, pleased, pleasured.

"I shall take you all. I promise I will take you all. And a promise must become truth. The truth cannot be sullied."

David Bowie's uneven eyes turn with destruction in their depths, mouth dribbling blue blood as he whispers the words to Ashes to Ashes, his voice rising on the word "junkie", motioning to the corpse of a young, blond-haired man lying next to Gene's bed, reaching up towards Gene with nothing in his gaze, just an empty line of sight; Gene recoils, huddling beneath the duvet he has never seen before in his life, beads of sweat running into his eyes as the hand nears, morphing and blurring and obfuscating, stroking his cheek with a softness that saps the strength from him.

"It breaks my 'eart ter see yer like this," the woman says, turning and nodding to the clown.

Gene cries out as the bed caves in beneath him, leaving him freefalling, red blankets billowing around him like dead sails, his body twisting limply in the ferocious wind blustering through him. The clown's laughter rings in his ears, harsh, cruel, human and inhuman all at once, as dark as a murderer's mind...

The soft bed his body suddenly falls into is relief beyond anything he has felt in a long time, and he turns to grasp at the pillows, panting into their linen sheen as someone touches his shoulder.

"Gene? Gene, come on, wake up."

His eyes flicker open.

His DI, Alex Drake, swims into focus above him, her hand on his forehead, his body sunk into her bed above Luigi's. A box of pills and a glass of water rest a couple of inches away from his nose, and he lets himself study them, looking back up towards Alex, his gaze quizzical.

"You've been fighting a fever off, Gene. Been asleep pretty much solidly for a couple of days now. That must've been some dream, I've never heard anyone scream that loudly," she says quietly, gently, her voice so wonderfully soothing after the diabolical laughter of the clown. Gene shrugs as best he can.

"Er, sorry."

"It's OK. Not your fault."

Alex turns away as someone knocks on the door, frowning.

"OK, Luigi, just coming! Sorry, Gene, he probably heard you, I'll placate him."

Gene's eyes follow her arse to the door appreciatively, drinking in the sight of her hips swinging to the side as she turns towards the front door. As it vanishes, he looks round to take in the sunlight surging into the room, basking in it, letting it bathe his sweating body in brilliance as Alex talks quietly with Luigi in the hall. A tiny, grateful, relieved smile curves his dry mouth; he reaches out clumsily towards the water, gently shaking fingers brushing against its comfortingly cool sheen.

His hand stills as the wardrobe doors erupt and the clown screams silently towards him, laughing and laughing as Gene yells, scrabbling away, catching Alex running back in out of the corner of his eye as the clown's deathly fingers steal closer to him, rest on his scalding forehead, smooth some of the droplets of perspiration from his skin, sting and smart and leech what little strength he has away...

"I will take you, Gene. You and Alex. I will take you."

The Railway Arms sings in the distance.

"I will take all of you..."

Keats' brown eyes darkened with hatred, loathing, failure.

"Don't you like me and my clown?"

Gene clenches his hand on Alex's.

A/N: I hope you liked it... sorry, I know it's a bit weird, but hey, I'm weird. I have radioactive ostriches. :D I tried to include as many quotes and scenes from LOM and A2A as possible, so I hope it worked. Please, please review! Jazzola :)