Fic: And Many Other Last Names, Life on Mars
Fic: And Many Other Last Names
Author: Nakanna Lee
Pairings: None, really
Rating: Hard PG-13
Warnings: Violence
Summary: Wherever 1973 is, maybe it’s a second chance.
A/N: Wrote this about 2 years ago and rediscovered it on my flashdrive. The epic-long fic it went with never happened, but it can function as a stand alone. Hope you enjoy!
Aladdin Sane (1973)
“Time”
Gene hears the shot before he feels the bullet, and hits the ground before he ever feels cold. There are lots of bits missing. He tugs open his shirt and digs his fingers beneath the fabric and buttons, testing the hole and the heat of the blood. He inhales, sputters, and spews the metallic puddle gathering in the back of his throat.
A bust gone bad, that.
Through the haze in the cramped apartment Aladdin Sane stares down at him from the wall. It’s a clever trick because his eyes are closed. Gene scrambles backwards, the middle of the room too vulnerable, the heels of his palms tingly and going numb against the oriental rug. Legs too. Black spots poke at his eye sockets.
No.
His brain regurgitates the thought, the panic.
Stay awake.
A record still plays, just the same as it did when he first put his shoulder through the door. A refrain ago things looked much better. He’d felt his shooter in his back pocket then, security more than anything as he was opposed to reach for it. A wallet in his jacket pocket. Woolf had tried to give him a flask to fill the other, but Gene had never been a drinker.
A record still plays, just the same, but a different verse.
Alive, oh God, still alive alive alive.
The crowd of people once here have fled the room, stumbled through back doors and disappeared. A part of Gene wishes he’d called for back-up, another is relieved no one will have to see him like this.
One person remains. Approaches.
Through the haze his brother stares down at him. It’s a clever trick because he hasn’t seem him in two years. All the names Gene’s taken down, the doors he’s busted through and heads he’s banged together, all the bloody paper trails-to stumble upon him in this bust just doesn’t make sense.
Gene wonders if this is his apartment, in this infested underbelly downtown. If he’s been here the whole time. Pissing his life away with slow dilated eyes.
If he even recognizes him.
His brother is no more than a liquid shadow. Gene swallows down blood and pulls his head up. Same shoulders, same bad haircut over large ears. They both have their father’s jaw. His brother sets his and wipes his nose with the back of one hand.
The other is still gripping the gun.
Maybe recognition doesn’t go both ways. Maybe Gene should have taken the shot instead of standing there blinking and listing the odds and the reasons why he shouldn’t. If he had, maybe the trigger would have felt differently beneath his forefinger, more sensible and persuasive.
Maybe then he wouldn’t have to be staring down his brother’s barrel.
***
And when Gene wakes up it’s ten years earlier.
And it’s a second chance, writ ten years before, to get it right.
And in ten years he’s here again, and dammit if that twat Sam Tyler thinks he’s going to prance through the drug world and do things by the book. Gene knows from experience how that turns out. What that turns people into.
He thinks of his brother and how to save him.
He knows what he has to do to get home.
Hunky Dory (1971)
“The Bewlay Brothers”
Promotion was so close, Chris had already started calling him Boss. And DS Carling was not one to speak of counting eggs before they started cracking. He was going to enjoy it, like he enjoyed everything else that was good in coming.
He leaned out of the driver’s side window, squinting at the rising sun, and eyed up the rowhouse again. Not much movement since they parked alongside the street last night. Regular stake-out and let down, this was. If he had it his way, his DCI would have decided to sod it all and go straightaway in, surprise the bastards. Homicide was none too neat to start, and being careful about taking people in seemed a lot of nonsense.
“Take ‘im in and get ‘im talking, that gets you results,” he’d told Chris when they’d started, a dreary night made the more so for rain. This was hours later and nothing had changed. The weather had lightened, that was all.
Ray switched radio between shows. Eden and the Suez gave way to awful rock ‘n’ roll, which Chris seemed to enjoy. Ray switched it off completely when Chris started mouthing lyrics.
They found ways to pass the time. Chris had spent the last several hours doodling on his notepad. What had been a list of possible suspects and addresses of interests was now surrounded by tic-tac-toe games and a vulgar hangman.
He glanced over the notepad that Ray now held.
“T,” said Chris.
“Now you guessed that already, you div.”
“Sorry, Boss, I’m having a bit of a time tryin’ to read your handwriting.”
“Pay attention, Chris. Look at those blanks. Does a T look like it would even fit?”
“Not really one for word games, Boss.”
“It’s a plain four-letter word.”
“I know it.”
“Well then.”
“Boss-”
Ray looked up. “What?”
Chris scrambled for the door and threw it open. “They’re slippin’ out the back!”
Dumping the notepad, Ray jumped out the door and started bolting after the three men who were disappearing down the alley. Chris was already several feet in front of him, sprinting full-out with the tails of his brown coat flying behind. His shoes splattered in the puddles from the previous night’s rain. He turned a corner beneath a series of fire escapes and Ray lost sight of him, but he could still hear the sharp sounds of his shoes hitting the stone.
Ray grabbed the side of the building to make a quick turn. An awful crack met him around the bend.
He stumbled to the ground, white bursts flashing between him and the littered alleyway he stared down at. Blinking, he caught a shadow of someone standing above him and he rolled to the side. A trashcan lid slammed where he had just been. The noise was enough to shake his vision back into place. Ray pulled himself to his feet and, reaching in his pocket for his gun, realized it had fallen out somewhere.
The man with the dented trashcan lid was missing a bottom front tooth. He was balding but had curly hair falling over the sides of his ears.
“Coppers think we don’t know you watching us?”
Ray scrambled for a name, a way to delay aggression and make connection.
“Bewlay, is it?”
“Nowt you know, pig!”
“I know your name, Bewlay, and I know what you and your ponce friends are suspected of. Double murder of your neighbor David Price and his girlfriend Rachel Evans. Assaulting a copper weren’t too pretty to put on that list.” He saw Bewlay’s eyes flash, his shaking hand drop an inch. Ray extended his arm. “Now put that down and it’ll go better for ye.”
Bewlay steadied, his mouth twisting.
“Go best if you can’t talk-”
Ray saw him ready to charge and beat him to it. He tackled him around the waist and fended off the trashcan lid, but not before it crashed down upon his arm. He heard the snap and felt the shatter, pieces of bone splintering off into tendons and blood vessels. He bit down his scream and smashed Bewlay’s face into the ground, ripping his hands behind his back and cuffing him. At least his cuffs had stayed in his pockets.
“Richard Bewlay, you are under arrest for the suspected murder of Dav-”
A crash and shout further down the alleyway gave him pause. The silence that followed left a dull spot sitting in his brain, spreading now that his adrenalin haze was subsiding. He listened harder but heard nowt.
“Chris!”
Hesitating for a second, he gave Bewlay a rough shove with his good arm before leaving him on the ground. Little chance he was going anywhere. He grabbed the trashcan lid nearby and started down the alley quickly, tense as he waited for some sort of sound and even tenser when nothing came.
Around the corner he swore beneath his breath. Spun around, checked for the two others wanted for assisting a homicide. There was no one, just trash left outside and a stray cat slinking past.
And Chris, pale, slouched against the wall. One hand covered his stomach.
Ray ditched the trash lid and dropped to the ground, grabbing Chris’ shoulder.
“It’s all right, Chris, just give us a look, yeah?”
Chris blinked slowly. Ray pulled his brown coat aside and the warm stickiness of blood hit him. Sweet and heavy up his nose. Deep red, almost purple-black, was drying between Chris’ fingers.
Knife wound, and in a miserable spot.
Ray glared at him, breathing heavily to force the reek of fluid from his face. “Shite, what happened to your shooter, Chris? Why didn’t you grab it?”
Chris’ head lolled to the side.
“You tried to bloody take on two of them, you ponce,” Ray said. He gave Chris a rough shake of the shoulders. His own bad arm jiggled against his side. “Listen up, Skelton. Come on, do you hear me? Wake up!”
He stared hard at him, as if he could keep Chris’ eyes from slipping out of focus. For a second he thought it was working. Chris looked confused, a furrow forming between his eyebrows in a direct line above his cleft chin.
Then something passed over Chris’ face, smooth and thick and final. His eyelids dropped and his neck gave out.
Ray caught his head before it dropped.
“Bastards,” Ray muttered. He tried to reposition Chris into sitting position, but he was surprisingly heavy, lanky, one big rag doll bent on caving in. His hand had flopped away from his stomach, and Ray ignored the puddle of blood and tissue that had gathered in his palm.
“Come on now, Chris. You’re a good copper, remember, you’re going to be a great one. Now get up. Skelton, that’s an order. DC Skelton!”
He’d barely finished yelling when he was grabbed back by the shoulder. The knife slid in quickly, and Ray collapsed beside Chris’ slumped body before he’d ever even seen a face.
***
And when Ray wakes up it’s seventeen years later.
And it’s a second chance, for Chris too, although there’s no memory shared between them.
And dammit if that wanker Sam Tyler thinks he’s going to waltz in and take his promotion, take Chris’ trust.
He thinks of Sam and what disaster he is bent on sending them all into.
He knows what he has to do to get home.
Low (1977)
“Secret Life of Arabia”
DC Cartwright was first on the scene.
The others showed up quickly. She could still see the accident from where she stood, on the outside of a ring of flat-faced cops repeating medical jargon caught from within the ambulance. Someone was bringing a stretcher.
The surrounding streets were cordoned off. The highway stretched long and empty, a telescope without mirrors. All directions seemed frozen now. She shook her bangs out of her eyes and approached the man standing on the inside edge of the yellow police tape.
He didn’t turn as she touched his shoulder. At least he didn’t cringe.
“Sir, is it-”
Bad? Of course it was. She cut herself off and watched, pursing her lips. Things happened so fast, everyone running at the speed of life never expecting it to stop.
Just yesterday morning she’d been analyzing the case. It was the first big one she’d been assigned to and was hoping to make a good impression. Reference books and articles and bio files were strewn across her desk in attempts to make some headway. There were women missing. Psychoanalysis could at least offer some leads in the meantime. Waiting two hours for forensics was much too long.
The man in front of her cleared his throat, then ducked back beneath the police tape.
“Sir,” she said. “DI Nelson-”
He turned. His face looked oddly calm, and Annie was relieved. At least he made eye contact with her. Maybe it wasn’t so bad.
“Go see him if you want,” Nelson said. He wiped a hand over his mouth and walked back to his car alone. She watched him until he’d closed the door and his face vanished behind the reflection of the front window.
There was no one else nearby as the medics lifted the stretcher into the ambulance. She tried to squeeze between two men who were hooking him up to oxygen to catch a glimpse of his face.
He wasn’t an especially happy man, from what she’d heard. Her recent transfer to Manchester introduced plenty of gossip about their DCI but not much else. He was private, focused, disciplined. Apparently he had a girlfriend who worked in the force, too, but Annie hadn’t met her and from what it sounded like, DCI Tyler wasn’t the kind of person who was interested in relationships.
One of the three medics jumped into the back of the ambulance. The second hustled her aside as the third started closing the ambulance doors. She tried to peer in one last time at the still figure beneath a light blue sheet, cords descending on his mouth and arms. She wondered what he’d been doing out here on his own. What his voice sounded like.
The doors shut her out.
“He’s going to be all right, yeah?” she asked. She grabbed a hold of the nearest medic’s arm, walking with him to the front of the ambulance.
The medic stopped to size her up. “You the girlfriend?”
“He’s my DCI.”
“Well then. He’s bloody brilliant.”
Annie stared him down, her mouth setting firmly. “Where are you taking him?”
“His family will be contacted. You can talk to them.”
Annie had never thought of DCI Tyler with family. Or much of a life, if she were being honest. The police force seemed to be his life. She wondered if anyone would even go to the hospital. Maybe he still had parents about, or siblings. She tried to create an image of cards and concerned faces around his white, sterilized bed.
“Can you just-”
“Determined bird, aren’t you?”
Cartwright had had enough of archaic disrespect. “Sir, I am speaking to you as a member of the Manchester Police. Now where are you taking-?”
“Hyde,” the medic snapped. “It’s the closest hospital to here. Now let go of me arm so he doesn’t die in the back of the ambulance.”
“Hunt! Get up here,” called the other medic. Annie watched as both stepped into the ambulance. She stood still as it started off down the empty street, its sirens flat and blaring as it drew further away and out of sight.
DI Nelson waited with her until all the vehicles were cleared away and everyone in uniform slowly returned to their cars. No one spoke to her, but she hadn’t expected that they would.
Traffic returned to the street. Annie stood with her arms crossed staring back out at the spot in the road, listening as DI Nelson continued breathing beside her, steadily, in and out through his nose. She wanted to tell him he didn’t have to stay, but shock was subsiding and her throat felt too tight for words.
She thought of the shape in the ambulance, blue sheet and cords.
“I didn’t see him,” she said.
DI Nelson remained motionless.
“You know I was rushing. I was late for work, and there was a lot to be done. Paying attention, I was, but I never saw him-why was he just standing in the street like that?”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I can’t believe I-”
“It’s not.”
Annie wiped her face with a hand. She could still hear the thud, the sound of him rolling up over the roof. She’d slammed on the brakes and just sat there just trying to inhale. She’d stared at the dust on her dashboard.
“Come on, DI Cartwright,” Nelson said. He nodded towards his vehicle. “I’ve got to take you in.”
***
And when Annie dies it’s much later, much safer, in a white room with cards and faces.
And when she wakes up it’s much earlier.
And when she sees Sam there it’s for the first time but isn’t, and she knows it but doesn’t.
She thinks of Sam and knows why he’s here. To stay.
And if he does she knows that she’s home.
end