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Behind him the thunder of the train gets louder. The metallic pinging of the electrified track builds around him. Suddenly his eardrums are blasted by a horn loud enough to wake the slumbering wildlife and a hundred birds launch upwards into flight from the electricity lines strung overhead between straddling pylons. He can feel the pressure of speed at his back, pulling him towards it. Every sound melts and melds into a cacophony from the furthest reaches of Hell; Hunt yelling, Annie screaming, footsteps slipping on loose stones, the shrieking calls of the birds from above and the screeching brakes of the train from behind. He feels heat as his ears explode with it all and without warning the sharpness of the noise is gone to be replaced by a muffled blur he remembers from his days of student pubs and neon clubs; it's strangely comforting. Something hard hits him, forces him off his feet, off the rails, to land with a series of agonies on the weed-strewn gravel between the railway and the barbed wire fence with it's red and white 'Keep Out' signs. Whatever hit him lands on top of him, and it certainly isn't the train which is impossibly long and still passing; with the piercing rush of wind and its clackity-clack like dead-men's teeth. Winded, he tries for oxygen but can't get any. His body paralyzes; every nerve on fire, every blood vessel constricting, reaching out over an unfathomable distance for death itself to take him. Then his lungs suddenly fill, his body's thirst is slowly satisfied, and he starts to feel what's outside and around him instead of just what's in. The heels of his shoes are raised slightly on the ends of two wooden planks. A thousand sharp stones are digging into his legs, back, shoulders and arms. And a great weight is pressing down on him, a weight he recognises from far distant, very different times. Unlike those nights spent in his metal-frame-and-hard-mattress excuse for a bed, the weight isn't moving against him, isn't murmuring excruciatingly sweet nothings to him - all the sweeter for coming out of that mouth. The train is still passing. Sam doesn't open his eyes. He lifts his arms like too-heavy weights and wraps them around the body atop of him. His sleeves are instantly soaked in the hot sticky syrup of Gene Hunt's blood and his eyes fill with tears that are wrenched up from somewhere so deep inside him he doubts he'll ever be able to stop the flood. Raising one hand, he settles the lolling, heavy head more comfortably against his shoulder and only then does he open his eyes to look. At first all he can see is the clear blue sky above them; chilly, wintry, like Christmas skies he remembers from his childhood; the crisp mornings of unbridled pleasure at the prospect of a whole day's play and no school anywhere on the horizon. Then he turns his head and gazes into the face of his Guv'nor. The features are slack, the lips moving slowly but no sound coming. There's still a light in the sharp blue eyes but it's dying now. With some effort, Sam manages to press his mouth to Gene's for one last kiss, tasting only the salt of his own tears. He tightens his arm around the lump of the man lying over him, not wanting him to slide free, silently promising as he has so many times before that he won't let him fall. He pushes bloody fingers into the wind-blown, hair, leaving dark red trails through the sunshine blond. The roar of the train stops with a low, hollow boom as it passes on its way into history and for a moment the noise is replaced with silence; a page break in time, the end of one era and the start of another. Things die in that silence. And things are resurrected. Sam's hearing for one, which moves subtly from a low reverb to an infinitely clear pick-up. But the silence lasts for no more than a heartbeat before it's shattered by the terrible sound of screaming. They're close enough to see what Sam's infinitely glad he can't. But he can imagine. It's not just blood his hand rests in. There are hard, smooth things he doesn't want to think about and he knows it�s the jagged edge of a broken bone that's cutting into his wrist. Annie's cry is high-pitched, her sense destroyed by the horror revealed. Chris is close to sobbing and Sam's now sharp hearing picks up the crack of his gun hitting the gravel on the other side of the tracks. Ray surprises him with his mantra of denial - "No" - that single syllable word, over and over. And there are others, coming down the path at a run only to skid to a stop, to the realisation that there is nothing to do. Pointless even raising Phyllis on the radio and calling for an ambulance. Already too late. Sam blots them all out, focusing on that tiny speck of light still shining in Gene's eyes, and he smiles gently through the cascade of tears that he needs to keep blinking away in order to see. There are questions he doesn't bother asking, recriminations he can't see the point in making. From his first step into the 1973 offices of Manchester CID, his fate was leading him here. From the first claw of Gene's strong fingers in his collar, the first crack of his spine against the filing cabinet, the first taste of that smoked whiskey breath; their bright, fierce relationship has always been on a collision course with this moment in time. Gene's lips move soundlessly but Sam has seen his own name on them enough times to recognise it. He tightens his embrace and knows the moment Gene hunt dies. He sees the light wink out and his whole body convulses in a grief so strong it consumes him. And he closes his eyes again, wanting to remember Gene alive; shouting and drinking and smoking and joking and making love to him in that dark, desolate flat they'd somehow managed to make their place. He wants that Gene back but now there's another sound breaking through the crying of their assembled team; a voice Sam never wants to hear again saying words he can't bring himself to believe. "You've destroyed Gene Hunt, Sam. You can go home." He opens his mouth and pours his broken heart and torn soul into a scream so violent it rips him away from the world he's known for an eternity, shatters the seemingly unbreakable illusion of 1973 and deposits him into darkness and numbness a long, long way from there. # Sam Tyler opens his eyes, sticky with drying and dried tears, and stares into the dawn light filtering through the curtains of his renovated textile mill apartment. His sweat-soaked body trembles as the dream fractures and leaves him with that hollow, empty dread he knows so well. The light duvet is twisted around his bare legs, his fingers gripping the top like a lifeline. He's too hot but for the moment he doesn't move out from under the covers. Outside the birds are singing from their perch on the electricity lines. They remind him of the ones that took flight above the railway line and he feels nausea skim the pit of his stomach. He needs a pee and a glass of water. But instead of getting up he stays where he is. The dream never changes, and as usual, Sam lies still and waits for whatever will happen next. |