Amsterdam, White Cortina, Sam/Annie, Sam/Gene, by talkingtothesky
Title: Amsterdam
Rating: White Cortina
Pairings: Sam/Annie, Sam/Gene
Wordcount: 3,796
Summary: Sam’s back. Annie wants answers.
Spoilers: For the premise of A2A, the events we learn about in 1x01 and the consequences of these on the characters. Tiny one for A2A 2x04, as well.
A/N: I started this way back when A2A first aired; annoyed that Annie was never given a passing mention let alone a voice. But I got stuck halfway through, until today, when I remembered it and suddenly everything I’d wanted to say just came pouring out. Unbetaed. You can listen to Coldplay’s Amsterdam here. Please do, it would make a wonderful fanvid. :)
Come on, oh my star is fading,
And I swerve out of control.
If I, if I’d only waited,
I’d not be stuck here in this hole.
Annie wiped the plates dry with practiced ease, mopping up soap bubbles and making sure not to miss the ridge on the bottom where the plate usually rested. It was clear her sister had never paid much attention to her washing up, as there was a thin layer of dirt hiding in this very place where the plate had been left to dry on its own time and time again. Rachel was good at paying very little attention to things. It was how Annie had persuaded her to let her stay here. But to give her credit, she did have the children to worry about. Her sole concern was making sure they were safe and happy, anything else paled in significance. So her sister moving back in to the family home did not cause any trouble at all, provided Annie didn’t have a problem with being woken at three in the morning when one of the kids couldn’t sleep.
It was always busy in the Tucker household: Rachel had married and started a family so quickly that it always seemed a blur to Annie. They had never been very close, so meeting at the occasional family get- togethers as they did, Annie had only ever seen Rachel with a baby in her belly and/or a child running havoc around her. Annie liked the family atmosphere, however. It was like being a young girl again; she could sit and play with the children after a long day at work and feel a bit more relaxed. Once, she’d even smuggled home the Tufty costume and they had delighted in it - twirling tiny fingers through the thick furry tail and giggling endlessly whenever Rachel’s husband Kevin put on the suit and stumbled around the room with the mask over his head. She hated to say it, but he brought that squirrel to life far too convincingly for her liking. He had a very pointy nose as a human, too.
But it was strange, living in the bustle of a house this big and still feeling like the loneliest person alive. Sometimes, when she was at her most bitter and downhearted, she felt angry at Rachel for being so absorbed in her new family to bother with her old. It would be nice, Annie thought, if someone only recognised that she wasn’t quite her old self. But no recognition came, and every day was a battle in itself that she dutifully continued to fight. She still worked in CID, dealing with a much lower level of respect from her new colleagues, who simply couldn’t be bothered enough to fire her. (Phyllis was still around, though, which helped.) She still had echoes of Sam in every corner there, but far from haunting her they became a comfort: she didn’t want to leave that. When Chris and Ray had left with the Guv, they’d been surprised when she’d said firmly that she would stay, but didn’t push her. She’d never asked, but she suspected they saw ghosts too. She’d watched the Guv staring at the article on his office wall for too long for this not to be the case.
“Hey, Annie! What happened to that bloke in the leather you brought round last time?” Her other sister Miriam had asked when Annie had last seen her. All Annie had been able to manage, setting her cutlery down on the table and swallowing nervously, was a short “He… left.” She’d wanted to tell Miriam to shut up, but instead she’d simply picked up her fork again and stabbed restlessly at the cold mashed potato.
“Hey, I told you he was a bit too up himself for you, sis. Bit too airy-fairy, you know. Skinny, too - being skinny and wearing leather is a sure sign a man’s a bit of a weird one.”
“Now, Miriam,” Mum had chipped in, looking disapprovingly down the line of people at her second eldest daughter. “Not at the table, please.”
The plate nearly slipped from Annie’s grasp. She gripped it fast and laid it gently on the worktop, realising she’d drifted off again. She’d be okay if she finished this later; she still had hours before Rachel and the kids were due back from the park. She could do with a walk. Maybe stop off at the shops for some more bread.
Five minutes later Annie had grabbed her coat and bag and was making swift progress on the short walk to the shops. It was a nice enough day; sunlight dappled through the trees, casting faint shadows on the pavement. Rich, early autumn leaves drifted down from the branches above her head, skittering along the pavement in the slight wind before coming to rest in the gutter.
Still, she kept her head down and guard up. This neighbourhood could sometimes be tough; she’d learnt that the hard way.
She turned a corner and was thrown off a little by the sunlight attacking her eyes. There was no tree cover here and she had to blink rapidly to get the spots from the corners of her vision. At the same time something barrelled into her from behind and the world had titled over before she had any time to stop it.
At least the pavement was warm, was her next thought. A glance up from the floor gave her a moment’s glimpse of a fluffy young Pekingese bounding its way around the next corner on frantic little legs. She frowned, wondering what had spooked it. Sighing slowly, feeling winded, Annie lifted her head further and felt gravel at her chin - it was grazed, her hands had caught only some of her weight and her head had landed after. Her palms were also scratched and bleeding lightly.
“Y’alright, miss?” Someone drawled from somewhere above her. Oh, no. It was Wayne; one of the boys she’d worked with on the department's ‘young people’s liaison’ day a few weeks ago. Well, ‘spent all day snapping at to keep his hands to himself’ would be a more accurate description.
“Fine, thank you.” She said shortly, refusing the offer of help from a pair of greasy hands and got to her feet herself, gathering her handbag to her swiftly.
“Oughta’ lie down in front of me more often!” The teenager yelled after her as she carried on with as much composure as she could muster.
Once she’d put enough distance behind her, Annie took a couple of tissues out of her handbag and started to clean her hands. They were sore but not too badly injured and she resolved to run them under the tap once she got home. She only wanted bread, but now that she’d come this far she might as well go on and get it. She’d dealt with worse than a mad dog and a rude teenager in her career.
In that moment Annie couldn’t have said where her sudden unease was coming from, but a few moments later and one last turning onto the main street, small but busy shops alive with trade and cars going by outside, she saw the panicked little Pekingese stumble and then screech desperately as a Vauxhall backed out right onto it at speed.
From there it all happened very quickly. Her own instinctive yell rang out just as tiny bones crunched soundly into the tarmac. Then there was a voice shouting her name and a pair of hands pulling her back out of the road into which she never remembered stepping. There was a great deal more commotion as people came out of the shops to look and the driver got out of his car, looking pale.
The arms around her shoulders pulled her further back and back towards the railings, but Annie ignored them, staring at the scene in shock. If it hadn’t been for the dog, she might never have seen that car and those could have been her bones breaking under several tonnes of metal.
A voice in her head mused vaguely that someone really didn’t want her to buy any bread today.
The hands released her and the man whom they had belonged to strode out towards the driver, bending down next to where the shaken man was kneeling. “Excuse me, I’m a police officer.” This announcement was accompanied by a quick flashing of a very tatty old warrant card; removed and then stowed away in a convenient pocket of oil-stained overalls. Annie made a mental note to check that it was genuine later. For all his odd appearances, the ‘police officer’ did actually seem to know what he was doing. He spoke with confidence and assurance as he took down the man’s details with an even more convenient pen and notepad. Policeman or not, he was organised enough to be one. She was yet to see his face, however. From the back she could see the scuffed and tattered heels of old brown boots, dirty grey overalls and longish, matted brown hair that curled against the back of his neck and settled just below his shoulders. He looked like a tramp. But he was busily writing down the driver’s statement and Annie was too confused to do much more than stare.
Finally he patted the driver on the shoulder and moved away, and Annie finally found her legs again. “Excuse me, sir…” She began but the ‘policeman’ was now busy shepherding witnesses away from the scene. She got right up behind him and half-yelled “Hello, aren’t you taking him back to the station?”
“Who?” She barely heard over the racket being made by shoppers and local residents alike.
“Uh, the driver?!”
“Nah.”
Amongst the jostling crowd she still could not get a glimpse of his face, and the curtain of hair blocked her from glimpsing any of his features. She was now almost certainly convinced that this had to be an impostor of some kind. There was no-one who worked at the police station that had that kind of hair, or if there were she had never met them.
“He didn’t mean any harm,” the man continued.
Annie was thoroughly annoyed now. She took a firm hold of his shoulder and yanked him round to face her, insisting he tell her who he was. Then she looked up into too familiar features and fainted clean away.
---
She awoke to find herself seated and strapped in to the passenger seat of a parked car. She sat up straight immediately, wincing as her head protested the movement, but looking around wildly for Sam.
Nothing. She must have dreamt it. So where was she now? She unbuckled the seatbelt, grabbed hold of her handbag from the footwell in front of her and climbed wearily out of the unfamiliar vehicle. Fresh grief and tiredness washed over her, but ever the policewoman, she got out her notebook and pen, taking down the car’s registration. That done and safe in her bag again, she looked around at the street she was in. To her surprise she found she was only ten minutes walk from her sister’s house, not far from where she’d seen…
“Annie?” He came from behind her, took hold of her shoulders and turned her around carefully. “Don’t faint on me again, please.” Sam was smiling at her. Her Sam.
Annie hitched a breath in, and it came out as a sob. She reached for him instantly, brushed her thumbs along a familiar jaw line, delighted when he didn’t melt away in front of her. “Are you real?” She asked quietly, daring to believe.
“Now you sound like me,” he laughed, took her cold fingers in his hands and kissed them. “I missed you, Annie.”
That was all it took to break her.
Annie couldn’t believe he’d had the nerve to say it. She reared back out of his embrace, bristling with long-suppressed emotion.
“You missed me?” She said furiously, threw her handbag on the ground and slapped him.
Sam stumbled back in surprise, clutching his cheek. Annie watched as he straightened up again, flexed his jaw experimentally. He must have recognised the danger he was in because he quickly held up a placating hand, giving her his best and patented puppy-eyed look. He looked so much the same, but so different in his overalls and long hair, and Annie loved and hated him more than ever.
“I know, Annie, I’m sorry. But let’s not talk about it here, yeah? I’ll tell you everything, I promise. Just not in the street.”
She felt her anger ebb away. Somewhat embarrassed at her outburst, she bent to pick up her bag, felt a bit dizzy again when she straightened up too fast.
Sam’s arms came back around her immediately. It took her a moment to shrug him off. “Okay?” He asked. “I did take you to the hospital, but they said you hadn’t got concussion, discharged you straightaway. Do you remember, or…?”
“Must have been too tired. I remember bits of it, yes. And you…” Sam was looking at her with concern. “I’m fine, honestly. Let’s go home. We’ve got a lot to talk about, you and I.”
---
Sam looked around and appeared to take into account the various children’s toys scattered everywhere.
He swallowed and asked “Kids?”
Annie realised his mistake and shook her head quickly “Oh, no, they’re my sister’s.”
“Your sister?”
“My sister has kids.”
“Oh.”
Annie grinned. Then Sam did the same. She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed that grin.
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“Yeah?”
“I mean, that your grown-up sister doesn’t still play with kids’ toys. Not that you’ve not had kids, because that’d be fantastic, that you’d had a family, really, of course it would, and…”
“Sam. I get it.”
“Okay.”
Annie remembered her manners with a sense of awkward politeness she wasn’t used to. She tried not to stare at him too hard, but the temptation was to make sure he was really there. She didn’t want to turn her back to make them coffee, wanted to feel his skin against hers.
As she sat back down on one of her sister’s cream-coloured armchairs, setting the coffee down, a thousand questions buzzed through her mind. She didn’t know where to start. He looked so incongruous, sat in the living room of her reluctant home, his overalls -
“Don’t worry, they’re clean.” Sam smirked at her. “I know they don’t look it, but…well. You know me.”
“I thought I did, Sam. Not so sure anymore. Please, talk to me. Tell me everything.”
Sam took a deep breath, shifted in his seat. “I…I really am sorry, Annie. It was…difficult, to come back and see you. But you’ve got to understand, it was the best - the only - thing I could do. Remember…remember Tony Crane? Well, he had it in for me, Annie, and I know it won’t make much sense to you, but I needed to do it. I needed him to think I was dead. If I didn’t -“here there was a crack in his voice, and Sam stared down at his hands, twisting them around in his lap before he could carry on. “I was scared he’d hurt you. He said he’d…” Sam took a deep breath. “I know I hurt you, and I should have told you, and I’m sorry, but it was worth it to know you were safe and sound, and Gene too.”
“Did Gene know about it?” Annie snapped, wondering how much more he’d kept from her. “Did he help you plan it?”
“No, no, God, no!” Sam pulled his hands apart, set them on the arms of the chair, knuckles white. “D’you think he’d have let me go through with it either? It was too risky, I could have…No, he didn’t, I promise you.”
“Have you…been to see him yet?” Something burned in Annie’s chest at the thought of it, even though she often felt Gene’s grief as strongly as her own. Even after all this time, the jealousy hadn’t quite abated.
“No.” Sam shook his head firmly.
Then she felt anger on Gene’s behalf instead of at him. “Well, why not, Sam? I could ring him if you like; get him on the next train up here! He’ll kill you when he sees you, mind. I -“
“Annie, no.” He prevented her from reaching for the phone by getting up and placing a hand on her arm. “We left it on bad enough terms anyway, and -“
She looked deep into his eyes and saw the vulnerability there, the untold pain. She could no longer bring herself to hate him.
Sam sat back on his heels, kneeling on the floor by her feet and Annie felt awkward, lowered herself from her chair to be on the same level as him.
“I don’t think he’d be able to take it if I turned up again.” He whispered hoarsely. Annie wrapped her fingers around his wrist, pulled the hand into her lap and stroked his fingers. You don’t give him enough credit, she thought.
“You broke up with him, didn’t you?”
Sam flinched and pulled his hand back.
“Don’t say it like that. It wasn’t - we didn’t - how much did you know, anyway?”
Annie tamped down on her reflexive anger and continued to gaze at him levelly. “I wasn’t stupid, Sam. I knew more than you thought I did, at any rate.”
“Oh, Annie, I didn’t mean to -“ He was about to cry now, and Annie wrapped him in her arms instinctively, selfishly glad that she was here to hold him, Gene Hunt be damned. She felt awful afterwards for even thinking it, but she was only human, after all.
It was then, as they knelt unsteadily and hugged each other tight, that the front door burst open and in piled three excitable toddlers and a worn out Rachel. Annie stood up instantly, releasing Sam, and her head spun only minimally this time. She’d be alright.
Rachel eyed the scene critically and the children gawped. Annie straightened her top and took control of the situation. “Matthew, Alice, go get your mummy some ice-cream, okay?” The children’s faces lit up at this, and they bounded into the kitchen. It was okay for them to eat ice-cream while Annie’s brother-in-law was at work. He was strict about food and nothing else while Rachel wasn’t strict about anything.
The third child, Chrissie, looked sad to be left out of the ice-cream hunt. Ignoring Sam and Rachel for the time being, Annie moved towards Chrissie, took hold of her hand and led her through the hallway to the foot of the stairs. She stroked the little girl’s blonde hair and told her quietly it was time for her afternoon nap. Chrissie still looked forlorn as they listened to her brother and sister clattering around in the kitchen, so Annie reassured her. “Your Mummy’ll let you watch telly, okay?” At this Chrissie nodded and went calmly up the stairs, smiling back down at Annie as she went, hugging her toy clown.
Annie returned to the living room to find Sam awkwardly introducing himself to Rachel. Rachel looked unimpressed. “I’m a former colleague of Annie’s. But I’m a mechanic now, explains the overalls.” He smiled sheepishly.
“Who stops being a DI to become a mechanic?” Rachel asked sceptically, then looked relieved as she spotted Annie in the doorway and went to see what her children were up to.
“I told Chrissie to go to bed,” Annie told her as she brushed past her, and Rachel nodded dismissively.
Annie let her eyes rest on Sam once more, realising she wasn’t as scared now that he was about to disappear on her again.
“C’mon, Sam. We’ll go and talk somewhere else.”
---
They found a reasonably secluded park bench, and Sam looked much more composed. His hair was still a mess, she couldn’t get used to it long, but he no longer looked as though he was about to cry. Annie was glad of that, because if anyone had the right to cry here, it was her. Sam had known what he was doing, had time to prepare, had known long enough to end his relationship with Gene because of it. Annie had simply woken up one morning to the news that he was dead.
“How did you survive?” She blurted suddenly. “That car was a wreck; they found the sleeve of your jacket torn off under the seat! We had witnesses that saw you driving when the car swerved out of control and went into the water.” Annie managed to recite all this with a tone of professional detachment. That didn’t stop the images flickering up in her mind’s eye: weeks of trawling the canal, Gene’s face…She shook her head.
Sam seemed to be lost in memories of his own. “It was awful, Annie. I had to hold my breath until the car was completely submerged, then get the door open…it was impossible, really. I would never have attempted it, if I hadn’t already known…”
“What? Known what, Sam?”
There were more uncomfortable truths to come to light here, Annie knew.
Sam sat back on the bench, stretched his legs out and looked up at the sky. “Remember when I told you about the roof? About 2006?”
Annie nodded, listening intently to his every word, watching his chest rise and fall with every breath, so glad that he was alive and sitting next to her on a Tuesday evening.
“I read about it. When I went back there. I expected to find something about the train heist, but no - there it was in black and white - the obituary Jackie Queen wrote for me. When I came back, I already knew what I had to do. But I also knew that I had seven years before that happened. I read about today, too. That was how I knew where to find you, where you lived. Cause one car accident and stop another. I’m sorry, Annie, I really am.”
Annie knew her eyes were open wide as she struggled to take all of this in. But Sam took his eyes from the sky and looked back at her then, looking for reassurance, comfort.
“It’s okay, Sam. It’s okay.” She told him, and almost believed it herself.
They sat in silence while the sun dimmed and the cold gathered around them.
Eventually Annie stood and reached for his hand. He stood beside her, breathing deep. Just one last thing. “He deserves to know. I’ll come with you.”
Sam looked into her eyes, regret and fear burning deep. “Thank you.”
And time is on your side,
It’s on your side now.